I understood. I’d always thought of bluegrass musicians as interchangeable, like the tribute bands at the mall, but that’s not what he wanted. I said, “You want the band to be like a family.”

“The one I have at home definitely isn’t working, so, maybe.” After a glance around the sidewalk to make sure no scary men were lurking, he pulled wads of cash, his take from busking, out of his other pocket. He dropped them in the plastic bag I was holding out for him.

“The problem with feeling like your band is a family,” I said, “is that when you have another kind of relationship within the band and that relationship goes south, the whole band suffers. Ace and I were talking about you and Charlotte.”

“That’s . . .” Sam was tactful, and I could tell he was searching for a polite way to explain as he shoved his hand deep into his pocket to make sure he hadn’t missed any bills. “That’s on Charlotte’s end.”

“No matter whose fault it is, it’s there. And for that reason, if you and I are going to play together, I don’t think we should pursue another sort of relationship.” It pained me to say it, but better to cut us off now than later, when he’d broken my heart.

I expected him to gape at me and then protest there on the church steps, but he only gave me a baleful glance and murmured, “Thank you,” as he took the bag from me. Sealing it, he said, “Luckily, you have repeatedly stated that you’re not going to be in my band. We can pursue any kind of relationship we want.” He turned and stuffed the bag through the mail slot in the church’s massive front door.

Now I gaped at him, then shoved the door, then jerked the large iron ring that served as a handle. The door was locked. “Sam! How much money did you just give to that church?”

He blinked at me, then lifted the mail flap and peeked through the slot. “I didn’t count it. Why?”

“I didn’t peg you for a religious person.”

“I’m not.”

“Or a giving person.”

“Thanks.”

“I just mean—”

“That you’d expect me to buy a new amp with it?” He shrugged. “I’m cheating a homeless person out of panhandling money. This is my way of giving it back. The church feeds them sometimes. You’re not supposed to give cash to the homeless in case they buy booze with it. Come on.” He took my hand.

I didn’t pull away. We really were playing with each other, toying and testing. I let him swing my hand a little as we made our way back down the hill toward the lot where we’d parked.

“You have a great voice, too, you know,” he said. “It’s not very strong, but if that was your goal, you could take lessons.”

This wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. I walked beside him in stunned silence. His hand around mine now seemed ironic.

“That didn’t come out right,” he said. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“You’re not taking it back, either.”

He turned to me as we walked, watching me silently.

“Wow. Nobody ever told me that before.” With a few words from him, I was reevaluating everything that had happened between Julie and me. “I guess the record company picked my sister because her voice was stronger. And here I thought it was just because she was the one singing melody and getting the attention—and that was only because she got confused when she sang harmony. Nobody ever sat me down and said, ‘Julie is a better singer than you.’ ”

“You have the ideal voice for harmony, high and sweet, and you have perfect pitch. I would kill for perfect pitch.” He squeezed my hand. “Just because she got a development deal doesn’t mean anything is going to come of it. A lot of those deals never pan out. The singer drags herself back to town with her tail between her legs.”

That was not going to happen to Julie. Her development deal had panned out just fine. And the instant I said this to Sam, he would never leave me alone about using her as a door into the industry.

As we walked down Broadway hand in hand, I felt the strangest sense of peace. Resignation might have been a better word. Sam hadn’t meant to insult me when he said my voice wasn’t strong, and he hadn’t. He’d opened my eyes. I was seeing everything, including myself, more clearly than I had in a year.

And my relationship with him was the clearest of all. In the next few days he would start hearing Julie on the radio and find out exactly what her development deal had turned into, and how successful she was about to become. Everything would change then. For now, Sam was mine, and I would enjoy this moment.

He dropped my hand and put his arm lightly around my shoulders. “Bailey, you’ve been avoiding the subject, but please come play with us tonight. I want to play with you. And I just want to be around you. You’re the only person I know on Earth that I can have a conversation about songwriting with who doesn’t have sideburns.” He reached around to touch my other shoulder and stop me. “Be my friend and play with me, please.” He wore a pitiful face with his bottom lip poked out. “Just this once.”

“Just this once,” I mocked him. “That’s what you said last night. Repeatedly.”

“It is for just this once,” he insisted. “Every time. It’s like a movie rental at one of those kiosks. There’s no contract to sign or membership fee. I’m not asking you for anything beyond tonight.”

“Okay,” I said.

His lips parted. He was ready to argue with me. He didn’t seem to know what to do with my agreement. Finally he repeated, “Okay,” and we rounded the corner to our parking lot.

He glanced at his watch. “The gig isn’t for hours. What say we grab some dinner? Then I have to keep a promise. It won’t take long. You can come with me. And then we can swing by your place and let you change.” He nodded to my shoes.

“What about you?” I gestured to his regular-guy, not-a-country-crooner-wear.

“Normally I wouldn’t go in this,” he said, looking down and brushing an imaginary piece of lint from his T-shirt, “but nobody’s going to be looking at me anyway.” He unlocked his truck and opened the door for me. “They’re looking at you.”

9

After twenty minutes on the interstate pointed south of town, we pulled off and stopped at a meat and three that looked a bit dubious to me from the outside. Sam said he’d eaten there a million times, though, and the nearly full parking lot indicated he wasn’t the only fan. As it turned out, he was right and I was wrong. We stuffed ourselves with black-eyed peas and collards and sweet potatoes like candy.

Between bites I asked, “Is there something going on between Ace and Charlotte?”

He seemed surprised. “Not that I know of. Why?”

“They rode to the gig together last night. I got the impression they’re used to doing that.”

He shrugged. “She doesn’t have a car. He can have any car he wants on loan, anytime. They can get her whole drum set in the back of a minivan. My truck bed is open. We couldn’t stop anywhere if we wanted to. We’d be in trouble if it rained.” He sipped his tea, eyeing me over the rim of the glass. “Do you think there’s something going on between them?”

“I think Ace has a thing for Charlotte, and Charlotte has a thing for you.”

He grimaced. “I don’t want to hear it.”

I nodded slowly, thinking about the near-date we were on, and everything Charlotte had warned me about. “I hear you’ve had fifty-two girlfriends in the past year.”

He rolled his eyes. “I wish people would stop saying that. I don’t know who started it, but it’s an exaggeration. I doubt I’ve dated half that.”

“So, more like twenty-six?” I echoed Ace.

Sam shrugged noncommittally, then busied himself with scraping the last forkfuls of food off his plate. He changed the subject to a new song we’d heard on the country station as we drove down here . . . and in midsentence a tune came to me, and lyrics using the trope of the twenty-six girlfriends. I pulled my notebook out of my purse. Angling it carefully so he couldn’t see the staffs, but holding my body casually enough that I hoped I didn’t look like I was trying to hide anything, I scribbled this idea. The illustrations in colored pencil would have to come later. “Just writing something down,” I said defensively when he spoke, though I hadn’t registered what he’d said.

“Bailey.” He put his hand on my shoulder. Looking up from my notebook for the first time, I realized the restaurant crowd had thinned. He was holding a to-go box like he’d had time to go all the way through the buffet line again.

“Still hungry?” I laughed. Quickly I flipped my notebook closed and slipped it into my purse.

“I promised my mom I’d pick her up some dinner.” When we got back in the truck, he handed me the foam box to balance on my bare knees. “I could tell she felt down when she went in to work today. She’s worked a month straight at the car plant without a day off.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “Why?”

“They have a lot of orders. The opposite problem is that they get laid off because they don’t have enough orders. This is hard, but trust me, it’s better.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “I thought auto workers had unions to protect them from that kind of thing.”

“They have unions up north, in Detroit. But the car factories moved to the South to get away from the unions. Maybe the workers don’t need them anymore. I mean, yeah, my mom has to work all the time, but she gets paid for it. She gets time and a half and sometimes double time, and I guarantee you no hourly worker in Tennessee has ever seen base pay like this before.”

He slowed down and waved to the uniformed man in a guardhouse, who grinned. He parked in an open space on the fringe of the largest parking lot I’d ever seen. The asphalt gave off waves of heat and scent as we hiked across the lot toward the vast factory building. Out front, workers in jeans and uniform polo shirts smoked cigarettes or played peekaboo with visiting toddlers or accepted dinner from family members. As we approached, a tiny, pretty blond lady who looked nothing like Sam left her chat with a group of workers and came toward him with her arms out.

He hugged her without embarrassment and kept his arm around her as he pointed her toward me. “Mom, this is Bailey Wright.”

“Oh! Very nice to meet you.” She shook my hand. Her eyes drifted to the right and took in my asymmetrical haircut. Immediately she turned back to Sam. I knew what she was thinking. She wanted to be nice, but she saw no need to invest time in getting to know me, because I would be replaced next week. I was Girlfriend Twenty-seven.

“You know that job your father wanted you to get?” she asked him.

The smile never left Sam’s lips, but he wasn’t smiling with his eyes anymore. “Yeah, I know that job my father wanted me to get.”

“Jimmy says he has an opening for you on the loading dock, but you have to come in for an interview tomorrow or Tuesday. He wouldn’t grill you or anything. The interview just has to be down on paper. The Japanese want things done a certain way. It’s not like a Ford plant.”

Still smiling, Sam nodded. “I have something else to do tomorrow and Tuesday and every other day Jimmy is available to interview me.”

His mom gave him a warning look. “You have to do something this summer, Sam. Your father thinks this job would be great experience when you switch your major from music to engineering.” She grinned, a joke, and showed him her crossed fingers.

“If my father thinks working on a loading dock would be such great experience,” Sam growled, and I took a step back because I’d never heard this angry tone from him before, “my father should come interview with Jimmy tomorrow or Tuesday. I’ll bet he’s not busy.”

His mom looked hurt, like he’d insulted her as well as Mr. Hardiman. Her gaze slid to me, then back to Sam. “Seriously, Sam. He’s going to make you get a job or get out. This wouldn’t have anything to do with the music career you’re not supposed to be pursuing, would it?”

Sam took a deep breath through his nose and let it out slowly. Then he leaned down, kissed her cheek, and took the box of food from me to hand to her. “There’s banana pudding.”

“Oh, baby!” she exclaimed. “Bless your heart! Thank you, Sam.”

He gave her a halfhearted wave as he turned, and we crossed the parking lot to his truck again. I knew he was in a terrible mood because he went a whole two minutes without saying anything, which was probably a record for him.

We were through the gate, down the road, and back on the interstate toward Nashville before he burst out, “She’s as high as she can go in the factory without a college degree. In fact, they’ve told her they’ll pay for her to go to college. But there’s no way she could do that, working like she does. She’s exhausted. She’d have to quit temporarily. There’s no guarantee the job would be waiting for her when she got back. My dad would have to get a real job.” He paused. “Which might be good. He wouldn’t get to play gigs for a living, but he wouldn’t get to drink like he does, either.”

I nodded. He was talking more to himself than to me. I stayed quiet and watched the emotions pass across his face.

“Maybe it will be good for my parents when I go to Vandy in August and move out of the house,” he said. “Maybe I’ve been taking up some of the slack for both of them. I’ve always thought I was helping them out, but I’ve really just been the glue holding them together when they would have been better off apart all along.”