Chapter 29 #2
My nerves sharpen the closer we get to showtime.
I hardly touch my dinner, sick to my stomach.
Liam is scarce, dealing with a VIP crisis, and it’s business as usual for everyone else.
I’m alone with my thoughts, letting them build like carbonation until the pressure in my skull is painfully tight.
I haven’t felt this way since my early years of college when it was my turn to share with the class.
It doesn’t help that I catch Penelope whispering with Gretta and Henrietta, all three of them glancing my way once in sync.
When it’s time for the Etta Girls to go on, I’m completely leaden, a husk of myself. I walk to the backstage viewing area, clutching my elbows, heart racing.
They perform their usual songs first. I’m chilled to the bone when the last song of their old set list begins, frigid by the time it ends.
Liam migrates behind me at some point, hands around my waist and chin on my head.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
Onstage, Gretta says, “Do you guys mind if we share some new stuff with you?”
The crowd bellows.
Henrietta adjusts the capo on her guitar while her sister makes her way to the keys.
“These next songs were written on this very tour, in partnership with our dear friend Paige Lancaster. We’ve never written on the road before, and the experience was incredibly special.
They’re going to add a whole new dimension to our upcoming album we could’ve never anticipated, and we really hope you like them. ”
Liam’s hand moves over my heart, feeling it beat. “Breathe,” he whispers into my ear.
I’m trying.
“This one’s called ‘nice try, darling,’” Gretta says, and then the twins start to play.
What happens to me after that is, to date, the most disorienting experience of my life.
Because I’m remembering where I was when I came up with that melody (the Target checkout line in Nashville) and I’m also thinking of what my professor said when he first heard it: Great start, but can you add a pithier bridge?
Then it’s a recall of my meeting with Paul; this was maybe the fourth or fifth track he heard.
And when I rerecorded the song without lyrics, I’d been on Candice and Hailey’s rooftop while Liam was showering downstairs.
The twins started working on the song on the bus headed to Dallas.
They finished it in a dressing room in Houston.
And now, in Washington, DC, tens of thousands of people are listening.
Art moves in a circle, I realize. It has the vaguest beginning and no end in sight, and it’s impacted by every person who ever impacted the person who fashions it.
This song will morph into another, just like it was pieced together by influences that came before.
Songs come from poetry and novels come from paintings and video games come from design and storytelling and code.
And I am just one point on a circle with infinite points.
They play two more songs; the crowd loves both.
Penelope glances over at us from her spot near the curtains. She’s looking at Liam with significance.
He turns me around in his arms. “Paige,” he says, the lights of the stage reflected in his eyes, “the girls organized it so you can go out there and play something if you want to.”
My stomach seems to blister, even though—
Even though—
Even though part of me knew this was coming.
The whispers. The earlier questions. Most importantly: a face for the music publishers to latch onto when they hear about the Etta Girls’ cowriter.
I start trembling, and Liam pulls me into a hug. “You don’t have to,” he says soothingly. “You don’t.”
“Do you want me to?”
He hesitates, then nods. “I want you to try it. Because I’m me, and of course I want you to try something that unsettles you. But I’m not pushing it. You know your own limits more than I or the others ever could.”
His gentleness is a total switch, and so is my matching bravery, though the truth is I’m not doing this as a personal experiment. I’m doing it as a career chess move.
I nod. “Okay.”
He lifts a brow. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I say again, forcing a smile. “But if I don’t like it, you have to believe me when I say that, and I don’t want to hear a single thing about performing ever again.”
He says, “I swear.”
He means it.
Liam nods at Penelope, who smirks and says something into her earpiece. At the keyboard, Gretta does a subtle thumbs-up. Liam pulls his AirPods out of his pockets and grabs just one of them, sliding it into my ear. He finds a song on his phone and hits play: “Good Day.”
“Walk-up song,” I whisper.
“It’s yours now,” he says back with a grin.
A miles-deep chasm isn’t big enough to hold my feelings for him. Between his smile and the nostalgia of this song, my nerves loosen and break apart, crawling into the shadows of the auditorium.
“So glad you liked the new songs!” Gretta says into her mic. “We’ve got one more surprise for you before Penelope Parker. A song by our cowriter, Paige Lancaster!”
The cheering is loud, and today, humanity is a little bit better than good, and Liam kisses me once before spinning me and smacking me on the butt.
The minute I step onto the stage, I know with absolute certainty that this is the last time I’ll ever do this. Not because I’m afraid or anxious, though those feelings are there, but because the appeal of performing has never existed for me, and now that it’s happening, I know it never will.
The truth of it calms my nervous system until I’m almost eerily settled.
This isn’t me, I think as I grab the guitar from a smiling Henrietta and loop the strap over my head.
As I blink against the blinding, saturated lights aimed my way.
I can’t even see the audience, only black and blue orbs.
Nothing about this feels natural or soothing, not in the way the rest of it always has.
Being widely perceived will not make me a more self-actualized person. There’s no award on the other side of this performance. On the other side of my songwriting degree. On the other side of getting signed.
I’ll still be me.
“Hi,” I say into the mic, squinting. “This is a song about a person you love betraying you in the worst way you can imagine.”
I play “I prefer shadows,” and do my level best to inject emotion into the performance, recalling how this song felt when I made it. I was pure fury, a whirling dervish of angst, and that’s how I try to sing. I’m speeding up, my tempo shot, but my voice holds steady.
When it’s over, I say, “Thank you,” and then find the cognizance to add “Get ready for Penelope Parker!”
The crowd cheers once more, still just a giant blob of indiscernible noises. I set the guitar on its stand and run offstage.
“Do you forgive us?” Penelope squeals when everyone wraps me in a hug. Even the guys are out here, Marlowe’s shaking laugh nearly drowning out her question.
“Nothing to forgive,” I say.
“You were amazing!” Henrietta shouts.
“POPPED THAT STAGE CHERRY REAL GOOD!” Jake bellows.
I’m shaking now, adrenaline loosening its claim on my body. I eventually fight my way past everyone to Liam, who’s beaming with midday sunlight.
“I hated that,” I tell him.
“You’re grinning ear to ear,” he says.
“Because I pushed myself. And that’s why I trust how I feel about it.”
I’m melted sugar when Liam lifts me into his arms. He starts walking as I wrap my legs around his waist. “And how do you feel about it? If you can put it more eloquently than I hated that,” he teases.
“Hate is maybe too strong a word,” I say. “If my music is meant to be fulfilling, then that didn’t contribute to the feeling of fulfillment for me. It just didn’t.”
“You and I are so different,” he muses, still walking.
“How so?”
“When I played baseball”—Liam maneuvers me into one arm so he can use the other to unlatch a door—“I loved the crowd involvement. It was at least half the fun.”
“You like games more than practice?” I ask, and Liam hums his assent. “I like practice more than games.”
We’re in an unspoken-for dressing room that’s bare-bones and dimly lit. Liam drops me to my feet, pulls me deeper into the room with him.
“I see that now,” he says, voice rough. “I understand, Paige.”
“Are we…?”
“Yeah. If that’s okay.” He says it in a plea, eyes dilating while his gaze moves over me.
I nod, and he comes to me, coaxing his mouth against mine with soft hums, teasing bites. A spark of want flares between our chests like an Edison bulb. Liam finds a bare stretch of wall and pins me, his hands too capable by half.
We strip bare. He’s focused to the point of silence, and restlessly impatient. Liam maneuvers our bodies sideways along the couch and wastes no time.
“You’re being very quiet,” I whisper on a moan when he enters me, the fit tightening as he hikes up my leg.
“Because I’m having bad thoughts,” he grumbles against the back of my neck, rocking gently. “Selfish, awful, indulgent thoughts.”
“More eloquently?” I ask on an exhale.
He rolls into me once more from behind. Every atom in both our bodies concentrates around the connection. “Carnal instinct,” he says roughly, “of marking my territory.”
When I say nothing, floored and enraptured by his admission, Liam gets a little rougher.
His thrusts are jumpy, and he trails one hand across my breast, the other between my legs.
He rolls on top of me, my back to his chest, his hands slipping under my body to work me, his hips rising and falling.
I come apart first; he’s undone in an instant-release climax moments later.
We lie tangled for a while before Liam swallows thickly and says, “I would have sucked it up if you came off that stage with any other attitude. I promise I would have, but fuck. The whole time you were out there, I was viciously jealous of every person in the audience. I wanted you backstage with me. I wanted to drag you back to the hotel room to sing only for me. Which is confusing, because I’m also proud of you, but all I want to do right now is remind you”—he twists me to face him, kisses my forehead once—“what it’s like”—a kiss to my nose—“when you and I are in private.”
One last kiss, this one to my lips. “I would have gotten over it,” Liam says eventually, a weak promise.
“I doubt it,” I say, remembering him on the pitcher’s mound. “I never did.”
There’s a contact form on my minimalist website that hasn’t gotten a scrap of action since I asked Folly to test it for me.
I wake up the next morning to a flooded inbox.