Behind the Strings (9 page)

22

The weekend came and went and another was arriving. It had been over a week since I last saw Jesse and I couldn’t tell Jaycie for fear of a riot, but I was doing my best to avoid him. We had talked a bit since that night, but every time he had asked about my plans, I made sure I always sounded busy. My heart was not winning this battle. My head had spent many years leading the way and it continued to do so. My heart was not winning this battle. No matter how bad I might have actually wanted to see Jesse, I couldn’t.

I tried to push it to the back of my mind long enough to slide a pair of translucent orange earrings on and hand-iron my strapless dress as I stood in front of my bedroom mirror. It was Friday night and Logan was back in town. I received an invite a few days ago to a dinner party he was throwing at a new restaurant nearby. His name was on it, of course, but I knew better than to think he’d actually be planning it. When it came to parties, the only kind that Logan preferred to coordinate had to include a keg and a ping-pong table. His publicist Ivy was the obvious hand in this cookie jar, but either way it would be good to see him, and I needed a good night out anyway.

There was a plus-one on the invite I received, and that usually fell on Jaycie, but she couldn’t make it this time. Even though there were a few weak moments where I thought about asking Jesse, I decided against it. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that he would’ve received his own invitation. Not until I was already inside with a cold glass of liquor in my hand did I realize how small of a place Nashville really was. It was a Friday night, the list of bars to hang out at was never-ending, and yet as I rested my elbow on the bar and turned toward the crowd I realized that out of them the bars in town, Jesse was in the same one as I.

Our eyes locked almost immediately and if I were to turn away now I knew I’d make it obvious that I was avoiding him so instead I gave a slight wave on top of a friendly smile and turned back toward the bar. Of course that wouldn’t be the end of it; not in my life. He waited a bit, I’d like to think as long as he could stand it, then I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“You look amazing,” he said.

“Thanks.”

I could tell by the way his eyes wandered that he was just as uncomfortable as I was. He wanted to say something significant, but the silence was too much to handle, so instead he kept blurting out random questions. “
How was your day?” “Who are you here with?” “What are your plans for the rest of the weekend?
We made small talk for a good twenty minutes before Logan and Ivy requested everyone’s attention.

“On behalf of Logan, I want to thank everyone for being here tonight,” she began. “This is a very special occasion and a little surprise celebration, actually, for our man over here.”

Logan gradually put one foot in front of the other as she waved him over. I could tell by the look on his face that he truly was surprised at whatever it was she was about to say. He had both hands stuffed deep in his pockets. That was always the case when we were growing up. It was a habit I had told him he needed to break. It’s how his mom always knew when he took the car without asking or stayed out past curfew.

“It was really hard to keep this secret until now. So many of you standing here today have worked so hard to make this happen, but as of this coming Sunday, Logan, you officially have the number one song on country radio.”

It was an instantaneous reaction, almost involuntary. I turned to Jesse and squeezed his forearms with all my might. My mouth shot open as if I wanted to scream, but nothing came out. I stood there, watching his body jolt at the reaction of my own.

“Oh my gosh!” I said.

“He is the man!” Jesse said, sounding genuinely excited.

I threw my arms around Jesse while the rest of the room continued to applaud.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I removed myself from his grasp, “I guess I got carried away.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Jesse said, “we’re all happy for him.”

I took a few steps back and listened to Logan as he started to address the room. I snapped a few quick pictures as he thanked everyone he could think of, including me, and when he was done he made his way over so I could hug him. We both squealed and I hung there in mid-air for some time before he let me down. Jesse reached out his hand in between us for Logan to shake.

After the congratulations were over the deafening silence fell upon us again. I could tell and the way Jesse swayed from side to side made it obvious he could as well, it seemed the tension between the two of us was rather apparent no matter how hard we tried for it not to be.

“Everything okay over here?” Logan asked.

Jesse and I interrupted each other as we both tried to convince him it was. He nodded his head, patted us both on the shoulders and told us to have another round while he made his way through the crowd.

“Look, Celia,” Jesse started once Logan had walked away, “I don’t want things to be weird between us. It’s okay if you aren’t into this.”

“Oh Jesse, that’s not it at all. Look…my life is really complicated.”

“With Logan?”

I looked over in the direction his head turned. Logan was in the midst of a group conversation, but I could see him glancing over in our direction out of the corner of his eye.

“No, it’s not Logan, I promise,” I said. “And I had a really great time the other night.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

“This terrifies me. Relationships, dating, guys, love, all of it.”

“Listen,” he said as he took my hand in his, “I’m not asking you to marry me. I don’t plan on getting down on one knee tomorrow, but I would like to get to know you better. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you and well, that’s a lot coming from a guy like me.”

“A guy like you?” I asked.

“Can we go outside for a minute? I’d like to talk about this, but not here.”

I was hesitant at first. Then I looked at everyone standing around us. They were all immersed in business like conversation. Clearly it wasn’t the place to be having a conversation like this. I nodded, but followed far enough behind him as not to make it obvious we were going anywhere together.

“So, a guy like you?” I asked again once the door to the bar door shut behind us.

“This world we live in, music? It’s not like any other. It’s not a 9-to-5, always-home-for-dinner, straight-and-narrow kind of life. It’s hard to find people who understand that. And when you think you’ve found them, you realize they only want you because they’re infatuated with this fantasy they’ve created in their head of what could be. They want the bright lights, the red carpets, and the fancy cars. They only want to be there while you’re on top, and when you haven’t gotten a gig in a while and you don’t know how you’re going to pay your rent at the end of the month and the glamor they thought they signed up for is gone, they’re walking out the door, leaving you to pick up the pieces. You don’t know who you can trust. Not everyone has the best of intentions, but
you
, Celia, you love music the way I do. I see the passion for it in your eyes. You get it. You give me a reason to believe something real is still out there.”

“The glamor…some people, they can’t live without it. I’m sorry that you know what that feels like,” I said, staring at him blankly.

“It’s taught me to hold on to the loyal ones, that’s all. I’m a little leery now, but I haven’t lost all faith yet.” The way his voice rose at the end of that sentence I could tell he was trying to lighten things up, but his words were all too real to me. My mind was clouded with the sadness and tears of my mother that I had seen countless times. She was never anything but alone, and even through the strength that she always showed me, I could see the pain.

“Music for me is a double-edged sword,” I said, looking down. “I’ve never loved anything more, but it’s also the one thing that has caused me an incredible amount of pain.” I felt a single tear stream down my cheek.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, reaching out to console me. I felt his hands fold around mine, but I couldn’t let him continue to see me like this. I was fighting back sadness in my eyes and I needed to get out of there. I pulled away.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Celia…” his voiced raised as I walked away from him.

I pulled the door back open and went inside. Jesse didn’t follow. He stood there in the back parking lot and watched me go. I couldn’t handle anymore of tonight. I scanned the bar until I found Logan. He had just finished up a conversation with his manager by the time I got to him. I hugged him again as a couple cameras flashed in our direction.

“I’m so proud of you,” I said to him.

“Thank you. And thank you for coming tonight. It means a lot to me.”

It was a moment I knew he had dreamed of pretty much his whole life. All the stages, the road trips, the late-night songwriting sessions and guitar lessons all led up to this. With all the years we spent apart I was glad I was able to be here for it. That smile wouldn’t be leaving his face anytime soon. I, on other hand, was leaving his party and I hoped he could understand.

“Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asked.

“Absolutely. I’ve been working a lot of late hours and I think it’s catching up to me, that’s all. I’m exhausted.”

“All right,” he said, hugging me goodbye, “I’ll check on you in the morning. Be careful getting home.”

I nodded and turned toward the door, but I wasn’t fast enough. An innocent, friendly gesture had caught the eye of none other than Hunter Jennings. He had fled his way through the crowd of people and called out Logan’s name right as I was about to leave.

“Logan, how about a picture with you and your girlfriend?” he said.

He lifted the camera up and waited. I could see the annoyance in Logan’s eyes. This was his night, his party, his celebration, which for him meant he had the right to say or do whatever he wanted.

“Celia,” he said, reaching for me, “is a dear friend of mine. So even though your television drama likes to think there is, there’s no story here. No relationship. We’re friends, and she was just leaving.”

Hunter set his camera back down to his side and apologized before walking away. I smiled thankfully at Logan and he winked back. Before anyone else tried to stop me, I quickly turned again to leave. I was exhausted. I was tired of these heels. I was tired of these bobby pins that were tugging at my head and I needed to get out of there, away from Jesse. As soon as he grabbed my hand, that feeling from the other night flowed through me, and I couldn’t do it. I had to go. It didn’t, however, stop me from turning around to look back one more time before I stepped into the street.

23

The next morning, I took advantage of my close proximity to Soulful Grinds. Before I even washed my face, I threw my hair back, pulled on a pair of jeans under my oversized nightshirt and hobbled over. I had tossed and turned for most of the night, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t actually fallen asleep until after the sun started to gaze through my window, so I wasn’t exactly coherent as I pulled the door open to the heavenly smell of dark roast.

The warmth of the cup took the chill from my hands on what was a brisk morning in early October. I made myself comfortable back on my porch swing and rested my eyes between sips of my latte. The cool breeze massaged me to sleep, still holding steadily onto my half-empty cup.

It had to have been a good thirty minutes or so before I awoke again to the settling of the swing. My eyes shot open and what was left of my latte had splashed onto the planks below as the cup flew from my hands. I could hear the sound of Logan’s voice chuckling while I gained my composure.

“I think you have a little bit of drool on your face right there,” he said, pointing to his chin.

“You’re hilarious,” I said.

“I’m a pretty funny guy.”

A laugh came out of me as I smacked his knee. We went inside my place together, and I offered up my cooking expertise and popped four frozen waffles into the toaster oven while Logan filled me in on the rest of his night. Of course there were press interviews and lots of pictures. He even did a spontaneous acoustic version of “That Was Yesterday,” his current number-one hit. I kept repeating that as the toaster sizzled: “number-one hit.”

We both leaned on the island in the kitchen and munched on our perfectly cooked waffles while Logan showed me the video of him singing. My best friend, my lifelong companion, had the number-one song in country music. It was so insane to think of where we were at that moment: both living in Nashville, doing what we loved, and being pretty darn good at it.

“I’m seriously so proud of you, you know that, right?” I asked.

“Of course I do.”

“When you walked over to make your speech, I thought you were either going to throw up or faint. The look on your face was priceless.”

“Uh-uh, no way,” he said as he moved into the living room. He plopped down on the couch and rested his feet on the coffee table.

“I swear. If you want to scroll through my phone, you’ll see the pictures. I caught you red-handed.”

He reached over to the other side where the phone sat and scrolled through the camera roll. I could see his reaction as he swiped through the photos I’d taken. I took the last bite of my waffle and threw the dish in the sink.

“Ha, I do look like a deer in headlights, don’t I?” he asked.

“Yes, yes you do, but then came this one.” I sat down next to him and swiped a couple more times to the right where Logan was confidently giving his thank-you speech.

“Great recovery, look at that,” I said. “And the way you handled Hunter Jennings last night? Priceless.”

Logan rolled his eyes. “I hate that guy. If every story he wrote about me was actually true I’d have dated more girls in the last six months than I have my whole life.”

We both laughed. I felt Logan’s hand slowly move over mine. He lifted his other and rested my cheek on it. I didn’t know what he was going to do. He sat there, rubbing his fingers across my cheek. Slowly, he leaned in towards me and just before our lips met, I softly whispered his name and pulled back. I couldn’t let getting caught up in a moment happen again.

“I know,” he sighed heavily.

“I finally have you back. I don’t want to screw it up, you know.” We sat there glumly, confused in a way we had never felt with each other before.

“Why do you think we would screw it up?” he asked. I looked over at him, puzzled. “Why would you and me together be so wrong?”

“We’re supposed to be celebrating an amazing thing. Can we not talk about this right now?”

“Then when are we going to talk about it?” he snapped. “You didn’t want to talk about it five years ago and you don’t want to talk about it now.”

“Fine, I’ll talk about it. The truth is, I’m not ready for that and I don’t know when or if I ever will be. I don’t know what I would do if I ever lost you again and I cannot take that risk. I’m sorry. You told me the morning after your concert, right out there on that porch, that you would rather have me as your friend than nothing at all, right?” He nodded. “Then please, Logan, just be my friend.”

“I am your friend. Come here.” He pulled me close to him and kissed the top of my head. “You’re stuck with me until the moon no longer says goodnight to the sun.”

We both laughed. Logan held on to me for a bit longer until I had an idea that finally broke the silence.

“You know what we should do?” I asked. “We should celebrate this like old times. Remember our sophomore year in high school after Mr. Peterson’s algebra final?”

There was no way Logan could’ve forgotten that. He spent every night at my house the week before preparing for it. Both of our grades depended on it. I don’t think we slept for at least 48 hours before the day came until about half an hour before the alarm went off on the morning of the test. I woke up to find my head on Logan’s chest and one of his arms hanging off the side of my bed. I shook him awake and he sluggishly rolled himself out from under me to head back home and get ready.

Both of us felt confident as we completed problem after problem, and when the tests came back a few days later we each flipped our papers over to see a big fat B+. This meant there was only one thing left to do.

“Laser tag!” he crowed as he jumped up off the couch.

We may have now been legally able to drink alcohol and rent a car, and to the rest of the world we were full-grown adults, but when it came to laser tag, we were never too old. That morning in my house, I swear I could see that sixteen-year-old Logan standing in front of me with the same kind of excitement in his eyes, like he had not a care in the world.