20. Something Different #2
These two things can both be true.
I go inside.
"Ivy wants to see you," Angel says from the doorway.
"Ivy's here?"
"She came over when she saw your truck."
* * *
Ivy Brooks is sitting on the barn bench when I come in.
She has her clipboard and her coffee and the unhurried mood of a woman who has nowhere she needs to be faster than she is already going. She looks up when I come in, and she takes me in the way she takes in everything, completely, once.
She doesn’t say anything for a moment.
She just looks.
Ivy does this. She looks at people the way you look at the sky before weather changes, taking in the whole picture before she says anything about it. I have worked alongside her for long enough to know that the pause before she speaks is worth waiting for.
"Sit down," she says.
I sit on the bench beside her.
She looks at her coffee.
"Something happened," she says.
"A lot of things happened."
"I know about the ranch. Angel told me. The plan, the lender, Tommy, saying yes." She pauses. "That's not what I mean."
I look at the barn wall.
"Jake Wilder happened," I say.
Ivy is quiet for a moment.
"How?" she says.
"He said what he meant on my father's land in the evening light, and I said what I meant back." I pause. "And I kissed him. Or he kissed me. I'm not entirely sure who moved first."
"Does it matter?"
"No," I say. "Not really."
Ivy looks at her clipboard. She writes something. I have no idea what she writes. She always writes something.
"And now you're back in Nashville," she says.
"And he's in the Panhandle. And I have sessions and a program schedule and a Nashville apartment and a decision I have been circling since before I went to the Wilder Ranch."
"What's the decision?"
"Whether Nashville is still the answer."
Ivy is quiet for a long moment. Long enough that I think she is deciding whether to say the thing.
She says it.
"What was the question?"
I look at her.
She looks back with the complete, steady attention she gives to everything. She is not going to look away. She is not going to redirect. She is going to wait until I say it.
"The question was: how do I not need anyone?" I say. "Nashville was the answer. The road was the answer. The drum kit in front of ten thousand people, where nobody looks at you, was the answer."
"And now?"
"Now I think that was the wrong question."
Ivy nods once. She stands. She picks up her coffee and her clipboard.
"You already know what comes next," she says. "You just haven't let yourself say it yet."
She goes back to Sycamore Ridge.
I sit on the barn bench in the First Note Farm, quiet.
Shadow is at his fence rail. I can see him through the open barn door. Ears forward. Waiting.
She is right.
I know.
I have known since the east fence at Promised Land Ranch.
I just need a few more days.
* * *
Nashville Apartment — Evening
I am making dinner when the email arrives.
Not the phone call I expected. An email is more formal than a conversation, more considered than a text, and the sender wants me to have time to read it before I respond.
The subject line is: Touring Offer — Full Season.
I read it standing at the kitchen counter with the stove going.
Permanent seat with the Calloway Brothers touring band.
Full season starting in six weeks. Major venues across the US and three dates in Europe.
The rate is significant. The band has been looking for a drummer for three months.
A producer I respect personally recommended me, and they want an answer within two weeks.
I read it twice.
I turn off the stove.
I sit down at the kitchen table.
The Calloway Brothers. I know the music.
I know what touring life with an act this size looks like.
I know exactly what this offer is and what it represents.
It is the kind of offer I have been preparing for since I was nineteen years old, when I packed a drum kit, drove to Nashville, and decided I didn't need anyone.
The exit I kept ready.
The door I kept unlocked.
I look at the keyboard against the wall. Cover off now. The keys are visible; the song with its second verse is now found, sitting there, available.
I look at the kitchen table. The session charts. The coffee maker. The plants on the windowsill.
The apartment was built for a contained life.
I read the email a third time.
I close it.
I don't answer tonight.
Instead, I call Jake.
He picks up on the second ring. I can hear the Panhandle dark behind him, the cattle, the quiet of a night that has too much space for sound to fill.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey," I say.
I don't tell him about the email.
Not tonight. Tonight I just want to hear his voice, tell him about the session, hear him laugh when I tell him about the second-verse breakthrough on the song, and let the apartment feel a little less small.
We talk for an hour.
When I hang up, I sit in the kitchen for a while.
The email is still there. Unanswered. Two weeks to decide.
I don't answer tonight. I sit at the kitchen table, look at the email, and think about what the road felt like before I stopped. The focus of it. The music every night.
The feeling of being locked into a show with people who are very good at what they do.
Then there’s the east fence at Promised Land Ranch. I think about both things a lot. I don't know yet which one I am choosing.
That is the truth, and it is not comfortable.