Chapter 4
Chapter four
LEE
“Brooooooo! We’re going to hit up every single one of these haunted tours. This one, dude, you can go into the haunted house. Can you imagine the material we could get from this kind of shit? Unbelievable, my guy.”
Ryan was sitting in a chair by the window of the airport, both of us nursing beers and scrolling through our phones. Only one of us was looking forward to the trip.
I stopped my incessant stalking—it’s not like she had any personal social media of her own—to address the madness unfolding in front of me. “You want to write an album about a haunted house? Who would buy that?”
He began belting out some lyrics, “This house is haunted… with the ghost of you and the ghost of me… I’ll eat some fried chicken and be happy… Man, I have to pee. Hey! That rhymed. Write that down.” He hopped up and jogged toward the bathroom, humming to himself along the way.
Savannah was haunted, alright. Ghosts of the town’s past floated through the squares and houses, but nothing haunted the city more than memories. And I had far too many to count.
For the most part, I’d put the memories on shelves in my head and let them collect dust, but going home was going to kick that wreck right back up, and I knew it, which is why I stayed away for so long.
I couldn’t imagine strolling through the squares, lazing by the river, seeing her face.
It would undo ten years of work. All the girls, all the bars, all the booze and the songs.
Ryan skipped back and slipped into his chair across from me in the Diamond Lounge. We weren’t celebrities by any means, but every now and again, our label treated us to some perks and flying in style was one of them.
I’d been writing music forever, but nothing compared to the stuff I cranked out my first year in Nashville.
My heart was shattered, and I channeled all that pain into my songs.
It felt like I was just surviving from one day to the next, struggling to find a spark of hope while dealing with the loneliness of a new city and missing her.
I sent my demo tape to a bunch of studios, and Horizon Sound Studios ended up picking up my album, Fading Echoes of Us.
Jesse Lynn Carter, one of country’s hottest stars, heard our single “Walking Away Slow” and reached out.
Meeting him was a game changer; he helped me refine the song, blending his own magic with my raw emotion, turning it into something incredible.
Even though winning a Grammy with Ryan was amazing, the loneliness never really left. All the success and accolades felt bittersweet, especially when they didn’t fill the emptiness inside. It was like living a dream while still missing the reality of what I once had.
“So, are we going to see her?” Ryan asked, motioning for two more beers from the server and pulling me from my thoughts.
“My momma?” I quipped, playing dumb.
“Magnolia, you idiot. You know, the inspiration behind about seventy-five of our songs? Does she know you have a framed picture of her in your writing space?”
“That’s a picture of our friend group, you asshat. And she’s not the inspiration behind our music. She’s just another chapter in my life.” The server dropped our beers, and I gave her a sly smile to match her googly-eyed stare.
“I just don’t get it, man. All the girls in Nashville fall at your feet every time you get on stage, and no one has been able to really land you. I know it’s because of her.”
He wasn’t half-wrong there. I’d had my fair share of women, and they drew to me like flies on shit the second I picked up my guitar.
But despite all the women and all the attention, the moment I got in my car and left Savannah for Nashville, loneliness hit me like a freight train. That hollow ache never let up, and no matter what I did, nothing could fill that gaping void.
“I guess you’re not going to answer that,” Ryan said, pulling me back to reality again. “Do you think your dad’s going to cold clock you when he sees you?”
“Hard hitting questions today, my friend. You should have been a journalist.” I took a long sip of my beer and avoided his stare-down.
“All I’m saying is I need to try this Mrs. Wilkes’s fried chicken,” he said, shoving a website in my face and throwing his hands up. “They say it’s the best.”
“You haven’t tried my friend Sutton’s cooking. You’ll fall in love,” I offered, feeling a pang in my heart for my friends like I did most every day.
“Yo! Is she hot? If she can cook and she’s hot, I call dibs.”
I had to laugh. “She’s gorgeous. But stay away from her, seriously. She was like a sister to me.”
Was being the operative word there. I hadn’t talked to her in years, which sucked, because we were once so close. I stared out onto the tarmac and let my mind wander back to a time when things weren’t quite as complicated as they were now… and had been for years.