Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Getting Harrison to sit in was easier than I thought it would be.
I asked him at the fire pit the night of the babies’ party, half expecting him to laugh me off, and he said yes before I could even tell him why I wanted him there.
Katelyn said he’d been practicing his radio voice in the shower.
He denied it, but his cheeks said otherwise.
He’s never been nervous a day in his life, but he’s nervous now. I can tell because he keeps moving the mic Bex already set for him, a quarter inch one way and then right back.
He looks around the booth, taking everything in. “It’s different,” he says, “Sitting here now versus when you brought me in the other day. Now, it seems more real.” He runs a hand along the edge of the desk.
“I felt the same way. When Bex pitched the idea, I said no. Told her to go back to New York. She stayed because she saw something in me. Now . . .” I spread my arms out. “We’re expanding. Not only did this idea grow and sprout, but this gives Elle an opportunity to expand.”
“You built all this out of a call-in show about feelings,” he says. “I’m proud of you and I hate you.”
“Ah, man. Come on, you’re getting me in the feels.” I place my hand over my heart. “Relax,” I tell him. “It’s just talking. People either listen or they ask a group on social media what they’re supposed to do.”
“To how many people?”
I tell him it depends on the night. Closer to the weekend, more people tend to call in. Earlier in the week and people are still recovering from the weekend.
Bex talks to us over the intercom. “You guys ready?”
I nod and motion for Harrison to put the cans on. Bex puts her headset on and begins counting. Paige is watching her and when Bex gets to two, Paige motions that we’re live.
The light goes red.
“Good evening and thank you for tuning into The Love Line. I’m your host, Liam Page.
” I let my words sit for a second. “Tonight, I’m not alone.
Not only do I have you, my producer, and social media manager, but I also have the man who has kept time behind me for thirty years.
He’s not only the drummer in 4225 West, but he’s my best friend, we share grandchildren together, he’s my son’s father-in-law, and although they’re not married, he’s my wife’s best friend’s husband.
Please help me welcome my co-host, Harrison James. ”
I glance at Harrison and nod. He smiles and leans into his mic after moving it again.
“Evening,” Harrison says, and it’s the least comfortable I have ever heard him sound. The regulars are going to love him.
“Before we take our first call, we’ve got news,” I say. “Some of you have heard me talk about building something bigger than one show. As of tonight, it’s real. 4225 West has its own station.”
Bex cues applause over the air.
Harrison leans in. “A whole channel,” he says. “The records, the deep cuts, the stuff that never made it onto anything. Live concert sound. Us, on the air, being idiots, apparently.”
“Around the clock,” I add. “Everything we’ve ever made, and everything we’re still going to.”
Every line on Bex’s board lights up at once.
She holds up all ten fingers, drops them, and holds them up again, which is her telling me the whole country called in the same ten seconds.
Harrison looks at the lit-up board, then at me, and mouths a word I can’t put on the air.
I point to the screen and show him every name Bex has added.
“Let’s take a call. You’re on The Love Line with Liam and Harrison.”
“Hi. I got divorced a couple of years ago,” A woman says. “And my friends keep pushing me to date again, and I don’t think I have it in me to start over at my age.”
“You’re not starting over,” I tell her. “You’re not the same woman who married the first time, and that’s the good news. You know things now. Go slow and know that you’re allowed to.”
Harrison doesn’t wait for me to hand it to him.
“I met my partner, Katelyn, at a Christmas party this fool threw,” Harrison says, and points across the board at me.
“She was a widow with two little girls, five years old, and a life she was piecing back together.
Everybody figured I was out of my mind to take that on.
Best thing I ever did. Those girls are grown now with babies of their own, and I wouldn't give back a single day of it. You're not too old and you're not too late. Complicated isn’t a reason to say no. Half the time it’s the reason to say yes.”
“Let me ask you something,” I say after we end the call. “Do you refer to Katelyn and your partner or wife?”
“Wife,” he says happily.
I already knew the answer but wanted the listeners to hear it as well.
“You’re on The Love Line with Harrison and Liam,” Harrison says as he winks at me. I guess he only needed one call to take over my job.
“Hey,” the young man says. “I’m marrying a woman who has two kids from before, and everybody keeps telling me how hard being a stepdad is, and it’s honestly freaking me out.”
“Here’s what nobody tells you,” Harrison says.
“You are not there to be their dad. That spot’s filled or it isn’t, and either way it’s not yours to grab.
You’re there to love their mother and be steady and boring and around.
Do that long enough, and the kids work out what you are to them on their own.
Don’t rush them. I was in the same boat.
My girls had just lost their dad; they were young and confused and the last thing they needed was someone trying to parent them.
I became their friend first, their confidant.
We had special days where I took the girls and my wife took my son.
It’s how we bonded. Our three kids are unbelievably close because we allowed the relationship to mature on its own.
No forcing. If one didn’t want to do something the others were doing, no problem.
Everyone’s feelings mattered and were heard. ”
“And when you get it wrong,” I add, “and you will, you own it and apologize, without making it about how hard you’re trying. Kids see through that in a second. You just keep showing up.”
Between calls I cue up one of the old tracks, one from before either of us had gray in our hair, and Harrison shuts his eyes and taps it out on the edge of the desk with two fingers.
It’s all still in his hands. For a few seconds he’s behind his kit, playing.
Maybe surgery is the way to go, to keep this part of him alive.
“You’re on The Love Line with Liam and Harrison.”
“My boyfriend took a job across the country for a year, and everybody keeps telling me long-distance never works,” the woman on the line says.
“I spent the better part of twenty years leaving the woman I love in one city and waking up in another,” Harrison says.
“It works if you both decide it’s worth the phone calls and neither one of you keeps score about who called last. If he’s worth it, a year is nothing. If he’s not, you’ll know it by spring.”
“Set the end date and count toward it, not away from it,” I tell her. “A year with a finish line is a plan. A year without one is a problem. Make sure you’ve got the first kind.”
Somewhere around the fourth call the last of the nerves are gone, and the Harrison I know shows up.
He starts giving me a hard time on the air, about my hair, about the fact that I read a caller’s letter with my glasses on.
Bex is laughing behind the glass. Paige has to move away from the live stream to laugh right along with Bex.
I’m just the laughingstock of FMG Records.
“You’re on The Love Line with Harrison and Liam.”
A man, laughing before he even starts. “This is going to sound stupid. My girlfriend wants us to get matching tattoos, and I think it’s a bad idea, and she says if I really loved her I’d do it.”
“A tattoo isn’t a love test, and neither is anything else somebody frames that way,” I tell him. “You love her. You also get to keep your own skin. Tell her both, in that order.”
“My wife never once made me prove I loved her,” Harrison says. “Not one test, not one time. That’s how I knew she was worth keeping. Anybody who’s keeping score on you, that’s your answer right there.”
“You’re on The Love Line with Liam and Harrison.”
“My oldest moved back home a few months ago, and I don’t know how to have him here now that he’s grown.” The man on the line sounds tired.
“He’s not a houseguest and he’s not a kid anymore, so stop treating him like either one,” I tell him. “Rent, chores, and grown-man respect, both directions. You’re not raising him now. You’re two men sharing an address for a while. If he can’t pitch in, give him a timeline.”
“And stop giving him advice he didn’t ask for,” Harrison says. “My oldest is grown and gone, and I still had to learn to shut my mouth and let him be wrong sometimes. It’s the hardest thing you’ll do all year. Ask me how I know.”
I look at Harrison oddly. I’ve never, in my life, seen Quinn and Harrison at odds.
Harrison presses the button to bring the next caller in. “You’re on The Love Line with Harrison and Liam.”
“Hi, wow. I can’t believe I’m on the phone with both of you. Anyway, we’ve been together five years and he still won’t propose, and I’m tired of waiting.” The woman sounds exhausted.
“Marriage isn’t for everyone,” Harrison says.
“When my wife and I got together, she said she didn’t want to remarry.
I was fine with it because it wasn’t the piece of paper I wanted.
I wanted her. Her kids. The family I saw us having.
She’s my wife, in every sense of the word.
Her girls are mine, and my son is hers.”
“Does she wear a ring?” the caller asks.
“She does. I put a ring on that finger first chance I could because she deserved it. Not because it was the thing to do or I needed to assert some sort of ownership over her. Regardless, five years is a long time to wait on a question,” Harrison says.
“So quit waiting for it. Tell him you’re not asking him to get down on one knee, you’re telling him you need to know where this is going.
If marriage is something you want and he doesn’t, you’ll have to have the hard conversation. ”
We take a breath and I put on a slow one, and for the length of it neither of us says a word.
Harrison has his eyes closed again, keeping time to a song we wrote at my grandmother’s or in the backroom at Metro when we were nobodies.
It’s good to be working next to him. I’d let myself forget how good.
“What do you think?”
“I never thought I’d have the answers, but everything is so relatable. Like the marriage one. Katelyn was clear, I never pushed her to change her mind.”
“Would you today?”
He shakes his head. “A piece of paper isn’t going to change anything. She owns me, through and through.”
I smile and press the button for the next call. “You’re on The Love Line with Liam and Harrison.”
“Oh my god, hi, I can’t believe I got through. I’ve been a 4225 West fan my whole life, my mom raised me on you guys, and the station, is it real? Is there going to be new music?”
Harrison grins. “It’s real. And yeah. We’re not done. Not close to done.”
“Tell your mom we said hello,” I say.
“She is going to lose her mind,” the kid says, and I don’t doubt it for a second.
Bex feeds us a few more, and Harrison gets steadier with every one. He’s blunt where I’m soft and soft where I’m blunt, and somewhere in there we stop trading the callers back and forth and start actually working them together.
“One more tonight. You’re on The Love Line with Harrison and Liam.”
“My husband and I just found out we’re having a baby, later than most people do, and everyone has an opinion, and I’m scared we’re too old to be starting this,” the woman says.
“I’ve got a grown son and a little one at the same time,” Harrison says. “Bedtime stories with one and mortgage advice for the other, same night. Am I tired? Always. Would I trade either of them? Not a chance. You’re not too old. You waited for this, and you’re going to feel every second of it.”
“Let them talk,” I add. “You don’t have to listen. You nod and move on.”
Bex gives me the wrap sign. I close us out the same as every night, except tonight I’ve got company.
“That’s our show. I’ve been Liam.”
“And I’ve been Harrison, and I have no earthly idea how he does this five nights a week.”
“You’ll be back?”
“Try and stop me.”
The light goes dark. Harrison pulls off the headphones and sits there a second, and I know the exact look on his face, because I wore it after my first one too. “That was fun,” he says. He sounds surprised to be saying it.
“Told you.”
Paige is already in front of me with her phone. The clip of Harrison telling the divorced woman to make the call is climbing by the second. “This is the one,” she says. “Look at the comments coming in.”
“Let me see,” Harrison says. Paige shows him her phone. “Thirty years of drum solos, and the thing that takes off is me telling a stranger to go on a date.”
“Welcome to my life,” I tell him. “Paige gets a lot of credit for putting the show where it is. Without her, we may not grow as fast as we are.”
Harrison gives Paige a high-five. “I know Elle appreciates everything you do for the bands.”
Paige beams. “Marketing may be my thing.”
“Is she on payroll?” Harrison asks.
I nod. “Yep, and worth every penny.”
Paige kisses me on the cheek. “Thanks, Daddy. See you oldies at home.” She laughs as she heads into the production room with Bex.
“See you oldies at home,” I mimic in her voice. “Brat.”
Harrison laughs and pats me on the shoulder. On our way out, we stop and chat with Bex, who is beaming at the numbers rolling in.
“I just love you, Liam.”
She hugs me around the middle. I look wide-eyed at Harrison and shrug.
Outside, he climbs into the truck. Katelyn calls and says we sound happy. We tell her we’ll be home shortly.
I pull into the water tower, get out to unlock the gate, and back my truck up.
“Is there a cooler in here I don’t know about?”
“Nah, it’s on the way.”
We get out and start climbing when two more sets of headlights turn in. Noah and Nick carry a cooler up the metal staircase, with Ben and Quinn following behind. We all sit, grab a bottle, pop the top and chug.
“On the count of three,” Ben says. “One, two, three.”
We launch our bottles into the bed of my truck and cheer like we’re in high school, and then we sit back and start gossiping like we’re at Josie’s book club.