The Perfect Love Song (7 page)

“I know,” Kara said, also knowing that sometimes there
are no words to fix a situation, that sometimes a friend just wants to hear “I know.”

C
harlotte rearranged the swatches on Mrs. Carson’s design board, attempting to focus on her work, on color and scheme and cushions, avoiding thoughts about Jimmy. But that’s the thing with trying not to dwell on someone: The harder you try
not
to think about them, the more you do. A sad fact.

She turned up her Norah Jones CD and then poured a glass of wine. Maybe this wasn’t the kind of life she wanted; Peyton, unfortunately, may have been correct. Waiting for a man who was constantly surrounded by other women, waiting for a man who wouldn’t be there, wasn’t the best way to live.

She sat down on the couch, unable any longer to focus on the demanding Carson job. She had just flicked on the TV when her cell phone rang. She glanced down: JS. She answered. “Hey.”

“I’m an idiot,” Jimmy said without preamble. “I just am. Will you even see or talk to me?”

“Of course I’ll talk to you,” she said.

“Well, good, then let me in. I’m outside.”

She dropped the cell phone without hanging up and opened her front door to his beautiful face. He hugged her and then followed her into the living room, where she poured him a glass of wine. They sat facing one another across the dining room table; he pushed aside the fabric swatches and reached for her hand. “Charlotte, I am so sorry. I know you weren’t lying. There is just this thing in me that sometimes rises up in defense of my brother, and then I lose sight of everything else. I am so, so sorry I walked away. That is what I should never do, and something I promise I won’t do again.”

She nodded.

“But can I ask you—do you think this is love, or do you think it’s some kind of convenient infatuation?”

“I love you, Jimmy Sullivan,” she said, her voice sure and steady. “No, I don’t know how to define what that is. But then again I don’t know how to define a lot of miraculous things. I do know that as I sat here trying to talk myself out of loving you, I only loved you more.”

Jimmy stood and walked around the table, took her hand for her to stand, and then he held her. “I love you too, Charlotte. I just do.”

And without a definition of love, love is still confessed.

—MAEVE MAHONEY TELLING HER STORY TO KARA LARSON

 

 

 

 

B
y the end of May, when the tides were higher than normal and the summer crowd was beginning to arrive and clog the streets of Palmetto Pointe, the phone call came in for Jimmy.
The Call.
It was Milton Bartholomew, calling to ask if Jimmy would please consider being part of Rusk and Hope Corbins’ Christmas tour.

Jimmy, not quite used to getting good news, was confused at first. “Huh?” he asked into the phone.

“It’s Milton. Can’t you hear me?”

“I can hear you fine, but I’m on the tour bus, and it’s loud. Now, what? You want us to do that Holiday Jam thing again?”

“No, Jimmy. This is bigger. Much, much bigger. This is the world’s biggest country duo. They do a Christmas-concert tour every year, and this year they’d like you to open the concert with your perfect Christmas song. That one.”

“Um, Milton, man, I think you got me mixed up with someone else. I don’t have a Christmas song.”

“Yes, you do.”

Silence echoed back and forth between the phone lines as Jimmy searched his mind for some type of Christmas song. “Jingle Bells.” “Silent Night.” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” What was Milton talking about? Jimmy didn’t want to seem the idiot, but by God, he had no idea what to say at this point. Jimmy waited in silence.

Milton coughed. “‘Undeserved.’”

Jimmy’s mind reeled backward five months to the New Year’s Eve concert, to the single comment about the perfect Christmas song.

“Oh, oh, that song. Yes.”

“Yes, we are going to rename the song. Rusk heard the recording and wants to call it ‘Christmas Love.’”

Jimmy’s reaction was gut level—the kind that comes
when we know we’re right and we aren’t going to bend. “No,” Jimmy said. “It’s called ‘Undeserved.’”

Milton laughed. “I don’t think you get it. This married duo—Rusk and Hope—is the most well-known country-powerhouse married couple in the business, and they’re asking you to go on one of the most popular Christmas tours in the country with the Nashville Symphony. You’re being asked to join to sing this song. They want to open the concert with this love song to Christmas.”

“I get it. I think. But we don’t change the name of the song to make it something . . . else. It is what it is. A song about undeserved love.”

Milton made a noise that sounded somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “I’ll tell them you’re in. Then we can negotiate the name.”

“What exactly does ‘in’ mean.”

“Fame. Adoration. Money.”

“Milton, that’s not what I meant. Dates. Concerts. My band?”

“It’s not your band. It’s just you.”

“Dude,” Jimmy said and stopped, glancing around the bus, “me and my band—we’re one and the same.”

“Not for this, you aren’t. What it means is this: Fifteen concerts across the country. You travel in the band bus—not
with the stars. Starts November 27 and ends December 23 in Orlando.” Milton rattled off the names of some cities from Atlanta to Nashville to Sarasota. Then he told Jimmy the amount of money he would make for singing this one opening song.

Jimmy drew in a quick breath and looked at his brother, who was sleeping in the bus seat next to him, his head back and his face peaceful. This money could buy them a new bus, new instruments, and a few other luxuries they’d been forgoing.

“I have to be in Ireland by the twenty-fourth,” he told Milton.

“No problem. There’s a meeting in Nashville in two weeks. I’ll e-mail you the information.”

“Okay,” Jimmy said, but he spoke to an empty line because Milton had hung up; when Milton was done, he was done.

Jimmy spent an hour staring at the highway landscape streaming out the window like a river of his private world. He was accustomed to this view—highway stripes, rest-stops signs, smaller cars buzzing by, thin, tall pine trees lining the eight-lane like sentinels of the southern highway life. He could be anywhere, but the view around the bus never changed. And he loved this—that no matter where he was or
how far they traveled, the view
inside
the bus never changed: Jack. Isabelle. Luke. Harry. There hadn’t been a lot in Jimmy’s life that was familiar or stable, and when he found solid grounding—a home of sorts, in that bus with those people—it was enough.

How, he thought, could he possibly leave this band, his family, for a solo gig? But he’d said yes, hadn’t he?

He needed to talk to Charlotte. There were moments when Jimmy was overcome with something miraculous in beauty or devastating in sadness, and both of these, as disparate as they seem, caused him to turn to Charlotte. This might be one of my favorite descriptions of love—this need to turn toward the one person who matters the most. Bobby, the guitar player, once asked Jimmy how he really knew he was in love with Charlotte,
really knew
. Jimmy thought for a long while and said this: “She’s the one I reach for first.” He’d finally found his definition of love.

Jimmy took out his cell phone and, taking a quick, guilty look at his brother, moved to the back of the bus to call Charlotte.

She answered immediately. She hates when he’s on the road. Always worrying about him, always wondering and missing him in that deep-ache way. “Hey, you,” she said.

“Hey, baby,” he whispered. “Can you hear me?”

“Yep,” she said. “Is everyone else asleep?” She’d learned the bus routine—grab sleep when and if you can.

“I just got the strangest phone call,” he said, staring out the window to see Exit 14; they were now four hours from Palmetto Pointe. He knew almost every landmark that led from anywhere to Palmetto Pointe and how many miles stretched between that landmark and Charlotte.

“From who?” she asked.

“Remember that concert organizer, the one from last New Year’s Eve?”

“Of course.”

Jimmy recited his entire conversation with Milton about the holiday tour. Silence filled the line, and he though maybe he’d lost connection. “You there?” he asked Charlotte.

“I am. I am. I don’t know what to say—this is so amazing. Really amazing. Your song will be known everywhere.”

“Correction. Your song.”

“You know what I mean, Jimmy. You wrote it. You sing it. It’s yours.”

“But see, that’s the thing. It’s not really mine. It’s all yours. Everything about it is yours. And I don’t know if I want them to make it into something else entirely.”

“They can make it what they want,” she said. “We’ll know what it really is.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, we will.”

“How far away now? Please say you’re almost home.”

Jimmy let the word echo through his body and heart. Home. He never, ever thought he’d again call Palmetto Pointe by that name.

That’s the thing of love: Things we never thought would or could happen, do.

“Four hours,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”

“I love you,” she said.

“And I love you.”

Jimmy hung up the phone and dropped his head against the window, closing his eyes while the bus rolled toward Palmetto Pointe. Toward the love he now believed he’d never lose.

But here’s the thing of it—we can all lose the most precious things in our lives if or when we forget their very value.

T
he whisper of summer heat filtered through the cool May breeze. Jack, Kara, Jimmy, and Charlotte spread a picnic across the sand of the deserted barrier island, sitting on blankets and towels. Now, at a time like this on a beach, the sun warming the hearts and minds, the dolphins nosing around, the holidays
seem to not exist at all, so far away they are. But we move—in every moment—toward the future, whether we think about it or not.

Jimmy had all but fallen asleep on the blanket, that half-sleep that allows one to listen but not participate. Charlotte’s voice drifted over him.

“Has Jack told you about the holiday tour?” She was talking to Kara.

Jimmy’s sleep burst open to consciousness. He sat bolt upright. “Charlotte,” he said. She sat next to him, her leg entwined with his like roots of a tree, their feet touching.

“What?” She turned away from Kara, who leaned back on her elbows.

“I haven’t . . . yet . . . ”

“Oh.” She covered her mouth with her pretty little hand, which is something she does when she feels that she’s talked too much or told too much or said something stupid.

“You haven’t what?” Jack stood and then walked across the sand to the cooler.