Now here he was in Meager on his own, about to sing in our townie bar. He must be here visiting his mom, but why was he singing at a Pete’s open mic night with all the amateurs and ambitious hopefuls?
Beck got up on the small stage and settled onto a stool, adjusting the microphone stand. My pulse did a double take. He was more outrageously attractive than the last time I’d seen him. Taller, more muscly in a lean kind of way, his hair longer and unruly, in the sexiest kind of way. I swallowed down more whiskey sour, an icy wash flooding my burning throat.
Beck was the lead guitarist, sometimes piano player, and main songwriter for his group, but he wasn’t the lead singer in Freefall. He often sang backup for the lead singer or sang along with him, but never sang solo.
I drained my glass, crunched on the ice. This is a moment.
The lights dimmed, the lone spotlight settling on Beck, who was warming up a guitar, the muscles in his long arms flexing and working in his cut-off T-shirt. He stopped and raised his head, and in the bright light, his eyes shone impossibly blue-green, just like his mom’s. His boyishly innocent face now serious, he leaned into the microphone. “This is for you, Mom.”
Kill. Me. Now.
With his velvet pronouncement, the whole bar fell into complete silence. There was never such a silence in Pete’s.
Clear notes filled the room as Beck played an intricate web of chords, making that wooden instrument in his hands sing. His wavy, longish, dark-blond hair fell in his eyes as his body moved with the music he was making. He leaned into the mic again, and I held my breath. On the edge of my seat. On the ledge.
His voice washed over me like a warm, perfumed bath. There was a purity, a clarity, an ease to his tone. Simple yet so rich. His emotion built with every verse. I closed my eyes. He could be singing just to me. He was.
The steady tempo grew dramatic. It built—built as he drove into faster rhythms with a punch of verses, a jolt of chords. Rough breathiness showed through on his higher notes, yet all with that velvet ease. His voice had a unique sensuality.
The blood simmered in my veins. There was something so magnetic and charismatic about his onstage presence even though he was only twenty-two and had been performing for only a few years. He had IT.
My heart ticked with a new beat. I soaked it all in. I didn’t want to miss a second. I wanted to remember it always. I wouldn’t have torn myself away even if a tornado came blowing inside Pete’s this very second.
My fingers closed over my phone, and I brought up my camera. I got Beck into frame, took a rapid succession of photos. I hit video.
He sang about a powerful storm. About the terrible, fantastic noise of a waterfall that dared him, kept him moving forward. How he wanted more.
Was his mother the storm? The waterfall?
Yes, she was.
He danced in her wind, sang in her roar.
He held Lenore’s gaze, who moved to the music in Finger’s embrace, captivated by her son’s tribute. She had inspired these beautiful, powerful lyrics. This moving song was a ballad filled with intense emotion that he let breathe in the air like a freshly opened bottle of fine wine. The flavor became more intense. Mesmerizing to my nose, exhilarating to my tongue.
“He’s good, huh?” Derek’s arm moved around my chair, his body suddenly close to mine. The urge to swat him away like a fly came over me. I shut the video. I’d forgotten about him and his friends. I’d forgotten about everything else. My body stiffened, leaning away from his, and I took more pics.
“There she goes again,” Derek muttered.
“Shh.”
Beck’s voice soared, laying bare the final verse, and something pinched my heart, twisting it. Mangling it. The grip I had on my phone only tightened. I clung on for dear life. The way he pulled notes out of that guitar was striking. Playing that instrument was instinctive for him, intuitive.
His final chords hung in the air, vibrating in my soul, dissipating in the bar. All that emotion pulled through us all. Beck’s eyes closed, his hands stilled, his lips pursed. He’d finished. I took more pics, I had to capture this.
His eyes blinked open as if he had summoned himself out of a trance. A moment of self-consciousness must have swept over him because his gaze snapped away from the audience and went back to the guitar in his hands.
The crowd erupted into a roar, clapping wildly, whistling. Everyone was on their feet. I was, with my fingers to my lips, sending sharp, loud whistles through the air. Meg was next to me, hopping up and down, whooping and clapping, hair flying.
Lenore ran to the stage, face flushed. Beck put the guitar down and leaned over and hugged his mother, lifting her up on the small stage with him. The two of them speaking to each other, rocking back and forth in each other’s tight embrace. My heart beat wildly, uncontrollably. I grinned from ear to ear. My vision got watery, and I sniffed in air to will the tears away. Why did this make me sad? Sad but so full of joy?
I was so unhappy, that’s why.
What Beck just did was everything that was right, true, honest. Inspiring. My chest tightened, My cheeks stung. What had I accomplished so far? Still gripping at ripped seams. Still stirring my bubbling cauldron of anger and grief and so many other dark, bitter poisons.
Beck was being true to himself, expressing that truth from his heart out to the world through his work. That was brave, so bold. And, I imagined, so incredibly satisfying.
A dream.
Lenore dove off the stage back into Finger’s arms. Beck shook hands with Malcolm who thumped him on the back. People jostled to take photos of the two of them with their phones, flashes of light bursting.
“Let’s get outta here, huh?” Derek’s voice cut through the air. My jaw tightened. Everything that was pathetic and stubborn about me was in that lazy drawl of Derek’s I had once found appealing. His hand went to my back, and my body shrank at his touch. Everything that was fake, dull, and meaningless about me and Derek was in that touch. A scream thundered up my throat, but I choked it to a halt. I was good at exerting willpower over myself, but that dam would break soon if—
My Grandma Holly had once told me about Oprah Winfrey’s idea of the “positive no.” How important it was for a woman to understand this, to use it. Now, for the first time, it clicked. I completely understood what she meant. Finally. Absolute clarity.
My chin lifted. “No.”
“Huh?” Derek’s head tilted, that are-you-shitting-me-what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about look crawling across his face. He didn’t like being told no. Ever. And he certainly wasn’t used to being told no by a girl.
“I need to go.” I got up from the table.
“What? What the—”
Where was I going?
Didn’t know.
Didn’t matter.
Just away.
2
I pushed through the crowd.
“Hey!” Derek’s voice got strangled in the noise of the throng as I slid through the mass of people. My heart beat faster, louder. A grin perked over my lips.
Positive fucking no had slayed the paper dragon.
Fresh air, I needed fresh air.
The melodic notes of a piano rose over the now softer, pleased din of the crowd. Laughter and clinking glass muted as I made it down the back hallway to one of the emergency exit doors—I knew the alarm didn’t work. A cousin of mine bartended here for years, and I knew this place inside and out.