Nashville 3 - What We Feel (2 page)

“Yeah,” Andrew says with a half-smile. “Hart had just finished up his new record when somebody told him about it. He’s bumping another song to include this. I gotta tell you, if there’s any such thing as a lucky break for a songwriter, this is it. Think you can get your friend down here, like ASAP?”

Under most circumstances, the answer would be an immediate yes, but Thomas had yet to talk Holden into coming back even once. After his last trip to Atlanta to see Holden, Thomas returned with the admission that maybe it was time he accepted that Holden was through. “He said he’d write songs for me as long as I want him to,” he’d admitted, more down than I’d ever heard him, “but anything else, he’s moved on.”

“I’m not really sure,” Thomas says now, and I flash a quick look at him.

Andrew hands Thomas a card. “My number is on there. Ask him to give me a call and let me know when we can meet with Hart.”

“Will do,” Thomas says.

“All right, then.” Andrew drops us a nod and walks out.

Thomas and I look at each other but wait a full sixty seconds before saying a word.

“Did he just say Hart Holcomb wants to record Holden’s song?” Thomas is smiling.

“Yeah, he did.”

“Good friggin’ day! That’s like somebody dropping in to say you won the lottery when you didn’t even buy a ticket.”

“It’s a great song,” I say, deliberately keeping my voice smooth.

“It is.”

“Do you think he’ll come?”

Thomas’s smile fades instantly. “He has to come. If I have to drive down there and drag his butt here myself, he’s coming.”

I don’t doubt Thomas means it, but I also know that Holden has chosen another life and made it clear that this one is behind him. Something flutters low inside me at the thought of seeing him again. It shouldn’t, but it does.

“In fact, I’m calling him right now.” Thomas pulls his phone from his shirt pocket, swipes the screen and then taps his number.

My heart kicks into overdrive now. Which is ridiculous considering I’m not the one calling, and Holden won’t even know I’m in the room. My palms instantly start to sweat. I pick up my guitar and mouth to Thomas, “I’m leaving. Beck is…”

“Hold on a minute,” Thomas says. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Holden answers because Thomas says, “Hey, what are you doing?” A pause and, “You’re still at work? I thought the corporate world went home at five.” Another pause. “Are you sitting down? Well you should. We just finished up a set at the Blue Bird.”

I notice he doesn’t say my name.

“And you’re not gonna believe what’s happened. Hart Holcomb wants to record “What You Took From Me.” Silence and then, “Ah, hold on, maybe you didn’t understand what I said.
Hart Holcomb
wants to record your song. This is pretty much a once in a lifetime opportunity. Can you come down tomorrow, man?”

A pause before, “Seriously! Two years ago, you would have sold your eyeteeth for a chance like this…Yeah, I know things are different now, but do you have to stop living…Well, not the life you planned to live.”

Another stretch of awkward silence. Thomas says, “You know what, I’m going to pretend for now that somebody hit you over the head with a two-by-four, and you’re not yourself. I’ll call back in the morning and hope the Holden I used to know will answer the telephone.” And with that he clicks off.

It’s a rare thing to see Thomas angry. I’ve seen him mildly aggravated a couple of times, but this is far beyond that.

“Aliens have taken over his body,” he says, looking at me and shaking his head.

“He made a choice, Thomas.”

“But he said she’s doing well. It’s like he thinks if he resumes his life, she’ll get sick again.”

“Maybe that’s how he’s made peace with it,” I say, even though something at the core of me aches with a deep dull throb. I had made my own peace with it eventually; not right away, because it simply hurt too much. Watching Holden go and not come back was the first time in my life I fully understood the meaning of wanting something heart and soul and not being able to have it. Before that, if I had been asked, I would have said I knew what that felt like. There had been things in my life that I didn’t get, that I yearned for at the time. I didn’t get the puppy I wanted for Christmas when I was seven. I didn’t make the cheerleading squad in tenth grade. And after standing in line for almost two days to audition for
American Idol
, I came down with the stomach flu and had to leave.

By world standards, those are ridiculously minuscule things, but in nineteen years of life, those events were my measuring stick for disappointment. Maybe it’s their flimsiness that made wanting Holden and not being able to have him all the more excruciating.

On the morning he left, I lay in bed listening to the sounds of his going. The shower starting up in his room. The zip of his luggage. The snap of his guitar case. The squeak of the bedroom door. His footsteps in the hallway. The gush of water from the kitchen faucet. Muffled words between him and Thomas, their tones low and somber. Then the opening of the door and the clicking sound of it closing behind him. I had been holding the tears inside. With that final sound of his leaving, they had gushed up and out of me with the force of a geyser. It was as if my holding them in had only increased the pressure beneath, and I could not stop myself from sobbing. I buried my face in my pillow, but Thomas heard me and came into the room.

Sitting down on the side of the bed, he pulled me up against him. He folded his arms around me like a big, broad band of comfort, and he let me cry. I cried until there wasn’t a single tear left in me. I lay limp and empty against his wide strong chest. He rubbed the back of my hair with one hand and said, “Damn, it sucks.”

“I’m not just crying for me,” I’d said. “I’m crying for all of it. How could someone so young, how could she-”

“I don’t know,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “It’s a wretched fuck of a disease.”

I bit my lower lip and refused to let another dry sob slip past my throat. “Will she be okay?” I asked, like a small child looking to a parent for reassurance of things simply too big to process.

He continued rubbing my hair. “I pray like hell she will.”

“I didn’t mean to fall in love with him,” I said in little more than a whisper.

Thomas said nothing for a bit, and I wondered if he hadn’t heard me. But then he said, “I don’t think he meant to fall in love with you either.”

And that, just that, broke the dam again. Thomas had held me and let me cry. At some point, he slipped us both under the covers, and he stayed there with me until sleep stole my tears and gave me relief. An unbreakable bond was forged between the two of us that night. Our loss was mutual. It would be a while before either of us knew the extent of it, knew that Holden wasn’t coming back for good. Once that became clear, something in Thomas dimmed a little. Holden had not only been like a brother to him, but was probably the only other person in the world who understood what music meant to him and felt the same way about it. They had been on a journey together for a long time, and when Holden’s path had veered off in another direction, Thomas was just kind of lost. Everything he thought he’d wanted to do in this town was now up for question.

He’d been in the living room one night when I got home from working in the restaurant. He was sitting on the couch with Hank Junior nestled up under the crook of his arm, his head on Thomas’s lap. I know my Hank, and I could tell by the look on his face that he was worried about Thomas.

“Everything okay?” I asked, dropping my purse on the coffee table. Hank thumped his tail, looked up, and licked Thomas’s cheek.

“I swear your dog has telepathy,” Thomas said.

I walked over and rubbed Hank’s head. “So what’s wrong?”

“I’ve been thinking. Maybe I ought to hang up this gig too.”

I felt my eyes go wide, my lips part in surprise. “You mean quit music? Leave Nashville?”

“Well, it’s kinda not making much sense now. Without Holden, I’m not sure it will ever work for me.”

I sat down on the sofa next to him. “I know you miss him,” I said.

“I think maybe I never realized quite how much of the driving force he was behind the two of us. Heck, CeCe, I just like to sing. I’m not any good at writing or scheduling gigs. That was Holden’s thing. And it all…well, it feels flat without him.”

I wanted to disagree, but I couldn’t. It was like going on vacation to a place normally completely sunny, only to have your seven days there filled with clouds and rain. Somehow, it wasn’t the same. “Would he want you to leave, to give all this up?”

“Well, no, but that’s not really the point. He doesn’t get to say whether I do or not.”

I studied him for a moment and then said, “I’m not sure you know exactly how much of a gift you have in that voice of yours. People love to hear you sing, Thomas, and you love to do it. I bet, if you asked him, Holden would keep writing for you. He loves to write. I can’t imagine that he would give that up forever.”

“I think he wants to forget all of it.”

“You don’t know until you ask.”

We sat there on the couch for a good long while. Now that I was home to take over soothing duty, Hank Jr. snored softly, his head still resting on Thomas’s leg.

“Assuming that he does want to keep writing,” Thomas said finally, “and that’s a big ‘does,’ what about the two of us going on with the Barefoot Outlook thing? I know you’ve been doing your thing, and I’ve been doing mine but I don’t much like being solo.”

“Me, either,” I said. And even though it wasn’t what I had once imagined for myself, I realized that I did like what we had begun putting together as Barefoot Outlook. Before Sarah’s diagnosis and Holden’s leaving. “Think it will fly with just the two of us?” I asked.

“Won’t know until we try.”

Since that night, that’s what we’ve been doing. Holden did agree to continue writing, and most of the songs he’s sent us were written to include us both. All of our communication went through Thomas. And I hadn’t spoken to him since the morning he left the apartment. I guess it’s better that way because what would there have been for us to say to each other?

Holden did the right thing. I have not questioned this, even at its cost to me. From the moment Sarah’s diagnosis became a reality, I never once thought that he would choose me. I never once thought that he would do anything but the right thing where Sarah was concerned.

A person can only be what they are, and what I know about Holden is this. He’s the guy who’s going to walk the little old lady across the street, pick up the starving dog on the side of the road. He’s the guy who sees right as right, and wrong as wrong, and there’s no in between, no gray. Because if he hadn’t been that guy, it’s as simple as this. I would never have fallen in love with him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Holden

It’s nine-thirty by the time I leave the office and head home. I take Peachtree Road out of downtown Atlanta, choosing traffic over the interstate. The Volvo belongs to Sarah’s father’s company. As an employee there, part of my compensation package includes a vehicle to drive. I had actually put up an argument over being given such an expensive ride for an entry level position, but Dr. Saxon is not a man too many people win an argument against. My job is a good one, a job most college graduates would be thrilled to get just coming out of school. And under any other circumstances, having the opportunity to work with Dr. Saxon would feel like something of a coup.

Sarah’s father is a smart guy. His first invention, over twenty years ago, made him a multimillionaire. He developed a cream for burn victims that accelerated the healing process by as much as thirty percent. From there, he created other medicinal products, mostly rooted in natural sources, that were eventually sold to pharmaceutical companies and put his worth at over two hundred million dollars.

In fact, it is probably Dr. Saxon’s unyielding determination to help Sarah beat her disease that got her to where she is now, in remission, feeling and looking like herself again. I wonder sometimes what would have happened had he not pushed her from clinic to clinic, including one in Mexico, trying countless methods of boosting her body’s immune system. Watching him do everything in his power to help her made me wonder many times if he was fighting not only for Sarah’s life, but his own as well. I really believe that if Sarah had died, he would have too.

That kind of love isn’t something I ever saw growing up in my own home. My father’s love had never been rooted in selflessness. I’m sure there was a reason for it. Maybe it was my mother’s leaving when I was six and the house suddenly becoming a place where Dad and I basically crossed paths and little more. He saw his role as raising me, preparing me for the world and then pushing me out into it.

I know that’s what a parent is actually supposed to do, but my dad’s efforts always felt as if they were rooted in obligation. As for Sarah’s parents, especially her father, everything he did for her stemmed from the purest kind of love, a love I have often wondered if anyone else in her life will be able to live up to.

Our apartment is in a nice section of Buckhead, in between the Buckhead Diner and Phipps Plaza. It’s actually a condominium that Dr. Saxon bought for Sarah about six months after she got her first clear checkup. It’s in a high-rise, its only drawback being that Patsy absolutely hates the elevator and refuses to get in unless I’m carrying her. I’ve discovered that an older Beagle pretty much personifies stubbornness. When the two of us moved in here with Sarah, I expected Patsy to be a permanent bone of contention between us, but somewhere along the way, Sarah decided that my having a dog wasn’t such a bad thing. Although she still doesn’t like for her to sit on the couch or sleep on our bed, she’s okay with her. I should say they’re okay with each other.