“And besides the awkwardness anybody else would expect, that was a special problem for you, because you were in love with her.”

I don’t know what made me say it. I’d suspected she had a thing for him—besides her more obvious thing for Sam—by the way she’d sat protectively beside him onstage last night and watched other women jealously as they passed. I’d thought he had a thing for her because of the way he watched her flirt with Sam without ever commenting that he was tired of it or it was gross, just taking it with a carefully composed blank face. I’d deduced the feeling was mutual because they’d ridden to the gig together. Who’d set that up, and what excuse they’d used, I didn’t know, but they’d both allowed themselves to be assigned to that minivan together, and to work as a team against Sam when he seduced a fiddle player later in the night.

I could have stayed quiet. Should have, maybe, if my goal was to get out of this band. But the longer we’d talked and listened to Sam singing below us, the more resigned I’d become to the fact that I was probably stuck with them, at least for tonight. At least until I got my fill. And I needed Ace’s confidence now, because that way he might help in my exit strategy later.

“I was not in love with her,” he said so loudly that several people at the very back of the crowd around Sam looked up at us curiously.

“I see,” I said smoothly. “You only had the worst kind of crush on her, then. You felt guilty that you had a thing for your best friend’s girlfriend. Then they broke up, and you and she became friends, and the crush only got worse, and you fell in love with her more gradually, later.”

“We’ve ridden together to all these gigs for months, and we are friends, and that’s all,” he said self-righteously. I didn’t believe him, and I was pretty sure he knew that, but there was nothing he could do about it but brush it off. He sat back in his chair and tried his best to relax his shoulders so I wouldn’t notice how antsy he’d gotten. Too late.

“To answer your question,” he said, “no, I didn’t want to be in this band just because Sam wanted me to, but that’s part of it. He’s had a really hard year.”

Because of the fifty-two girlfriends? Poor baby.

Ace went on, “Anybody who knows him, even all the girls, will tell you he’s a great guy, and they’ll do anything for him, right up until they want to kill him.”

I nodded. We were on the same page there.

“He literally got down on his knees and begged me to be in his band. I’m sure he’ll do this to you, too, at some point, if he hasn’t already. In public. When he did it to me in the football locker room, I said yes. And now . . . God, we’re all fighting like cats and dogs, but I can’t imagine not playing in this band. I mean, I loved playing in my brother’s band. But the bar last night had an energy, you know?”

“I think that was from the bachelorette party.”

He eyed me like he didn’t believe me, waiting for me to admit the truth.

After a long pause, I admitted, “Fine. I felt it, too.”

Watching me over the rim of his glass, he drank the rest of his tea, then glanced at his watch. “It’s time for Sam to wrap up. I have a family reunion to get to.”

“Oooh,” I said. “Good food?”

“You got that right.” He stood as carefully as he’d sat, stirring not a single wave in my tea. “Do you want me to tell him you’re up here?”

Applause broke out below us. Sam had ended a song. He said a brief thank-you and started the next tune as if impatient with the crowd’s response. All he wanted to do was play some more.

I said, “Yes.”

Ace returned to his post next to Sam, and I passed another quarter hour there by myself, listening to Sam’s voice, contemplating how little he needed me and how long it would take him to realize that whatever I contributed to his band wasn’t worth the trouble. Finally he nodded to the crowd and started to scrape and stack the money from his open guitar case into his pockets. Ace glanced up at me once more. They both disappeared under the deck where I was sitting.

I made my way back down through the building and onto the sidewalk, where Sam was waiting for me.

“Hey,” he said, half smiling.

“Hey,” I said.

He nodded to my fiddle case. “Why didn’t you come play with me?” Immediately he rolled his eyes at himself. “That’s not what I meant.”

I didn’t point out that if he was constantly hearing double entendres in his own words, he had a dirtier mind than he wanted to let on. Sam having a dirty mind was okay with me. It was adorable, actually, as long as his mind was on me. “You didn’t really want me to play with you. You were a soloist today.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t have to be. I always like company. I always like your company.” He leaned down and, before I could protest or remind him I was still mad at him, kissed my cheek. “You look beautiful.”

I smiled demurely and said, “Thank you.”

“I hope you’re not planning on wearing that to the gig tonight, though. You look like L.A., not Nashville. Where are you parked?”

Without a word, I pointed up the street toward both our cars. I didn’t really think he assumed I was playing with him tonight. He just hoped so. He thought that in saying it, it might come true. Now that I hadn’t protested what he said, he would use that against me later. And I didn’t care. His arguments worked on me only if I let them.

Seeming to sense that he’d overstepped his bounds, he eyed me as we moseyed up the sidewalk. “Ace said you talked a few minutes ago. He said you might play with us after all.”

“Hm,” I said noncommittally.

“Charlotte said she called you, and that conversation didn’t go over as well.”

“Hm,” I said again, finally relaxing my hauteur to glance over at him. Beads of sweat balanced at his hairline. To make him sweat a little longer, I changed the subject. “Charlotte said you wear your heart on your sleeve.”

He craned his neck to peer down his arm and lifted his sleeve up with the other hand as if to get a better look.

“You sang all those songs this afternoon with such emotion.”

“Thanks,” he said, as though I’d complimented him on his confident stage presence or the mellow tone of his voice, something he’d worked on.

“I was confused by that,” I said. “Those songs were about getting married. Getting divorced. Stuff that older people have been through and you haven’t. Take ‘Remember When,’ for instance.”

He looked surprised. “You were listening that long?”

I brushed his question off. “What were you thinking about when you sang that? You said last night that you had to be in the right mind-set to sing. I didn’t think you were saying that just to sneak a kiss.”

“Hm,” he murmured, imitating me. The longer I was around him, the smarter I was afraid he was. I’d thought I was making him sweat a little, but it might have been the other way around.

“When you sang Alan Jackson,” I went on, “you weren’t remembering getting married, obviously, or having kids.”

A crowd blocked the sidewalk ahead. They were listening to a banjo player and a guitarist who stood on the front steps of a saloon, playing a mini-set to entice people inside. Automatically, Sam took my elbow as I stepped from the curb down to the street in my high heels, but he was looking back over his shoulder at the musicians. The banjo player gave him a little nod.

Supporting me as I stepped back up on the sidewalk, Sam said, “I guess I was thinking about Alan Jackson himself. Being him. You know, he dropped out of Newnan High School south of Atlanta and married his high school sweetheart. His wife was working as an airline stewardess when she saw Glen Campbell and gave him Jackson’s demo tape, which is truly how Jackson got his start: through luck and a lover.”

“Right.” I knew this story. Everybody in Nashville did. It was why we dreamed of playing the bars on Broadway, where a country legend might drop in and change our lives with one phone call. It was why my parents had instructed me to share the stage with anyone who asked, on the off chance it might be Shania Twain.

“Jackson dragged his wife to Nashville and eventually made it as a country star,” Sam said. “So when I sing his song, I’m thinking about the fact that they fell in love with each other way before he was famous. How hard it was for them at first, and how easy it is now. What a relief it must be that they can pay for their kids to go to college instead of crossing their fingers that their kids are smart enough, or good enough at music, to get a scholarship.”

“So you think he wrote the song about his real life?” I asked.

“I don’t know where else it would come from. Some of the details aren’t right, though. In the song, they aren’t getting along, but then they have kids and everything’s all right again. In real life, having a baby doesn’t solve anything. It just causes more problems.” He sounded so high-and-mighty that I was about to ask him exactly how much he’d been watching those reality TV shows about teen pregnancy when he went on, “If you’re an alcoholic, the last thing you should do is get your wife pregnant. You should go to rehab instead. Let your wife make a clean break and leave you. Don’t try to charm her back to you. She can live happily ever after and have a baby with someone else. The baby won’t know the difference. He’ll probably be a lot better off.”

“Wait. You lost me. Alan Jackson is an alcoholic?”

“No. Sorry,” he said, waving away the idea with his free hand not carrying the guitar case. “I’m talking about my dad. I wear my heart on my sleeve, remember?” He said this pleasantly as ever, but he plodded up the hill a little more quickly after that.

I wanted to change the subject as much as he did. So I teased him, “Speaking of which. Did I hear your voice break a little at the beginning of that song, when you reached the lyrics about making love to your girlfriend, how you were each other’s first?”

I’d meant the question as a flirtatious ribbing. I never meant for him to look over at me with his dark eyes wide with horror. He muttered, “I don’t think so,” quickly checked both ways for traffic, and stepped into the street.

I trailed him on my high heels, wondering what can of worms I’d opened. My first thought was that he was horrified at my flirting—and the very suggestion that he would make love to me. But that didn’t seem right. He was shocked because he’d thought I was bringing up something I knew, something that had happened to him. And it stood to reason that he’d lost his virginity with one girlfriend or other, seeing as how he’d had twenty-six of them.

“Sam,” I called.

“What,” he answered without turning around.

“My car’s back down there, and so’s your truck.”

“I am so sorry!” he exclaimed, turning around. “I forgot you’re dressed like L.A. in your . . .” His voice trailed off as he eyed my high heels, then let his gaze travel up my legs. Forcing his eyes to my face again, he said, “I just need to go right up here to deliver something, but you don’t have to come with me.”

“I’ll come with you.” When I caught up with him and we turned to resume our trek, I asked, “If you want to make it in this business, why don’t you try out for one of those singing reality shows? You’d win.”

“Those contracts are too restrictive,” he said immediately. He’d thought about this a lot, and probably got asked this a lot, too. “You’re only successful if they decide you’re going to be. Kelly Clarkson was the first. She wrote a lot of her own songs, so she had a leg up. But when she decided to do something different for her third album, the record company dropped their support. She had to struggle back. If you go on those shows, you have to agree ahead of time to whatever contract they offer you. You have no control over the exposure you get or the songs you sing, at least at first, so you really wouldn’t have any control over your own career. If you’re going to get no support from the company, you might as well not sign a contract. You go from your name meaning nothing to your name being a joke. I’ll bet we can’t even recall today who most of those winners have been.”

In protest, I named the winner who’d become a household name in country music: “Carrie Underwood.”

“Exactly,” he said, pointing at me, “and what song did she get?” He gestured to the church we’d reached on our hike up the hill. “ ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel.’ That is a great song. It has a good melody and a good story hook, plus Jesus. Country music fans love their Jesus. If all she’d had was ‘Some Hearts’ or ‘Good Girl,’ I don’t know that she’d be as big today, but the record company saw fit to give her Jesus.” He turned and walked up the sidewalk toward the church’s front door.

“So you might not get the Jesus tune with the great hook,” I acknowledged, following him, “but somebody would be feeding you songs. At least you’d have a chance. You’re so talented, Sam.” Out of the blue, I was pleading with the back of his T-shirt, wanting him to be successful, wanting him to pursue that without threatening my college career as collateral damage. “You could make it big with your band, or more likely as a solo artist. I honestly don’t see what you have the band for.”

“Help me out here.” He shoved his hand in the pocket of his shorts and pulled out his handkerchief, which he gave to me. “The thing is, I don’t want to be this big head.” He curved his hands around either side of a wide imaginary circle to show the potential for his big head, possibly on an album cover. Then he pulled an empty plastic bag out of his pocket and put that in my outstretched hand, too. “I want to jam, like last night. I want to look behind me to see if Charlotte’s ready, and look over at Ace to see what he’s going to do, and point to you for a solo, and listen while you take off.”