22. Jensen #2
Cody is waiting outside baggage claim with a baseball cap pulled low on his head, which is at least one instruction he managed to follow.
He spots the SUV and breaks into a jog, hauling a duffel and two guitar cases.
Before I can get out to help with his bags, he’s yanked open the cargo area and thrown everything in.
“Miss me?” he asks as he gets in, leaning between the front seats to give Sloane a hug so enthusiastic she has to brace against the headrest. “I’m Cody. If you like Jensen, you’re going to love me.”
“I never said I liked him,” Sloane says, but she’s smiling.
He turns to me and squints. “Dude. You’re so sunburned. And is that more gray hair? Do you need a walker for the next hike?”
“Put on your seatbelt, loser.”
“I’m just saying, the mountain air aged you. In, like, a distinguished way.” He pauses. “Distinguished is better than haggard, right?”
“Is there any version of this where you shut the fuck up?” I demand.
Cody pretends like he’s considering the question. “Nah, fam.”
We order pizza from the car, pick up the case of beer Cody requested, and get to the rental house just as the sun is slipping behind the mountains.
The house is clean, but nothing fancy. Three bedrooms, a back deck overlooking the lake through the pines, and a kitchen that’s a step up from the cabin. It’ll do.
The pizza arrives shortly after we do, and we eat at the kitchen table while Cody flirts shamelessly with Sloane, who treats him like a younger brother.
She asks about his music, and he tells her about the new single dropping next month.
She admits she’s more of a Joni Mitchell person, and his face falls so dramatically, I nearly choke on my beer.
“Joni Mitchell,” he repeats, sounding wounded. “Jensen, your girl likes chicks with guitars.”
“She’s not my—” I start, but Sloane cuts me off.
“I contain multitudes, Cody.”
Truer words…
Sloane pushes back from the table around eight-thirty. “I’m going to turn in,” she says. “Long drive.”
“I thought you slept most of it,” Cody points out.
“Maybe I’m just being polite because my book is better company.” She winks at Cody, then gives us both a little wave. “Night, boys.”
“Night, Sunshine.”
“Night, folk chick,” Cody calls after her.
She flips him off over her shoulder without turning around, and he grins at me like he’s won a prize.
After she disappears down the hall, I settle back in my chair and take a long pull from my beer.
We sit in easy quiet for a few minutes before Cody grabs the backpack he dropped near the front door and pulls out a battered composition notebook.
He slides it across the table toward me without making eye contact.
“I…uh. I’ve been writing some stuff.”
I pick up the notebook and flip it open.
The pages are filled with his messy handwriting.
There are crossed-out words, arrows connecting ideas, and little diagrams of chord progressions in the margins.
I scan through the first few pages while he sits across from me, vibrating with barely contained anxiety, one knee bouncing under the table.
The lyrics aren’t polished, and the rhyme scheme is inconsistent. A few of the metaphors need serious work, but the bones are there. A rawness beneath the surface-level bravado he usually hides behind.
“These have potential,” I tell him, and he lights up so bright it’s hard to look at.
This kid has more talent than he knows what to do with, but he’s been coasting on charisma, that velvet voice, and a face that sells records.
Now he’s grinning at me like my approval means everything.
It reminds me so much of Jamie before the drinking and drugs, before the anger, when he still believed that love and hard work could fix anything. God, I miss what used to be.
“You think?” Cody leans forward, elbows on the table. “Because I wasn’t sure about the bridge on the third one, and the second verse might be too—”
“Get your guitar, and let’s work on them.” I close the notebook and hand it back to him. “Definite potential, Cody.”
He nods, tucking the notebook into his lap like I might change my mind. “Cool. Yeah. Potential.”
I grab my guitar case from where he left it by the front door, and he retrieves his instrument from the bedroom.
I can see a light on under the door of Sloane’s room, so I’m guessing we’re safe to play for a while on the back deck.
Nothing structured, just picking through his rough melodies while the lake glitters under the fading daylight.
The temperature drops, but playing outside with the notes disappearing into the darkness instead of bouncing off studio walls always reminds me why I fell in love with this in the first place.
We call it after an hour or so. I brush my teeth, change into the sweats I bought at another gas station on the drive, and climb into the queen bed in the room at the end of the hall.
The sheets are cold and stiff against my skin as I reach over and switch off the lamp.
The room goes dark except for a thin strip of moonlight cutting across the floor.
I’m lying there staring at the ceiling, my mind still turning over Sloane’s words from the car—radical acceptance, her parents pretending she was fine, two months in a Nashville hospital without me knowing she was there—when the door opens.
I push up on one elbow, and there she is in the doorway, backlit by the hall light, in an oversized T-shirt and a pair of socks, her hair tousled like she’s been running her fingers through it.
“Mind if I join you?” she asks softly.
My heart expands, and I don’t trust myself to speak for a second, so I just pull back the covers.
She crosses the room and climbs in beside me, and I settle the blankets over both of us while she curls against my side like she’s been doing it for years instead of days. Her cold feet find my calves, and I flinch but don’t pull away.
“Your feet are freezing.”
“You make a good personal space heater.”
I press my mouth to the top of her head and close my eyes as a sense of contentment spreads, slow and warm, through my entire body.
She fits against me like she was made for this.
She has since that first night in Nashville when I’d known in some inarticulate way that I’d spend the rest of my life trying to find my way back to her.
That thought would likely send her running, so I hold her in the dark, her breathing slowing against my chest, and let myself have this without questioning how long it’ll last.