The Perfect Love Song (10 page)

—OLD IRISH PROVERB

 

 

 

 

M
orning arrived quickly for Jimmy, as he’d been asleep for only three hours when the bus pulled out of the parking lot and headed toward Nashville for that evening’s concert. He rolled over on his cot and groaned.

The curtain slid aside, and Milton stared at him. “Wake up, party boy. You’re a star.”

“Huh?” Jimmy rubbed his eyes, sat up too quickly, and banged his head on the top of the bunk. He swung his feet out and, rubbing his head, asked, “What are you talking about?”

Milton waved an
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Sunday paper in his face. “You. Front page of the Arts section. All about the new rising star traveling with the Nashville Symphony and the famous country stars. But it’s all about you. You.”

Jimmy grabbed the paper from Milton. “Really?”

“Yep.” Milton handed him a cup of coffee. “And you need to get your wits about you. I have more than seven magazine and newspaper interviews lined up for you today—all on the phone except for the live TV interview with
CMT Insider
at 4:00 this afternoon. So get your head together, get up, and let’s get moving. Superstar.”

“This is crazy,” Jimmy mumbled, taking a very long swallow of coffee. “It’s one song.”

“One song. That’s all it ever takes, son. One perfect song.”

C
harlotte awoke to the ringing cell phone and stared at the screen. She hadn’t slept most of the night, and morning had come with a blinding headache. It was Sunday morning when she could sleep in. Who was calling?

She slipped her glasses on to see JS—his sweet initials. “Hey,” her voice cracked on the line. She didn’t understand her relief in hearing his voice, but relief there was.

“Hey, baby. Did I wake you?”

“Yes, but I’m glad you did. Where are you? How are you?”

“I’m somewhere on the highway, pulling out of downtown Atlanta and pointed toward Nashville.”

“I wish I were there,” she said.

“Oh, so do I.” His voice cracked, and he leaned over the phone so no one else on the bus would hear him, although he knew they’d hear parts of the conversation. For all the supposed glamour of band and concert tours, there is absolutely zero privacy. He didn’t used to care, but now he did. He wanted to pour out his loneliness, his deep need to see her. He wanted to holler about the newspaper article and the CMT interview. The feelings were piling up inside him like snowflakes, slowly, slowly, but insistently.

They were both silent for a moment, as if in reverence for the moment between them, the love and the aloneness that can never be cured with a phone call.

“I have some good news,” he said.

“Tell me,” she said and closed her eyes. “I’ll pretend you’re lying right here telling it to me.”

He sighed. “They wrote an article about me. Front page of the Arts section in Atlanta, and now I have all these interviews lined up. I’m gonna be on CMT this afternoon
at 4:00. Live. Watch it. They want me to sing the song. Your song.”

“Oh, Jimmy,” she said, and her heart filled in that way where words are never enough, where there just aren’t any words to say at all because not one would be good enough or big enough.

T
he
CMT Insider
hostess, Meagan, sat on a stool in front of the camera while a makeup artist applied powder to her face, added eyeliner.

Jimmy stared at the studio as if he were in a dream. He had walked into the building wearing jeans and “The Unknown Souls” scripted across a black T-shirt. Within a minute, Milton’s assistant had given him a plain black ribbed cotton shirt with two single buttons at the top and a gray cowboy hat. Jimmy slipped them both on and then looked at her. “I would never wear this.”

“Today you will.” She smiled at him and pushed down on the hat. “You look great. Seriously great. You’re gonna break some hearts this afternoon singing that song, looking like this. Just smile and do your thing. You were made for this,” she said. “Made for it.”

Jimmy shook his head. “You might be going a bit overboard.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Smile, now.”

The producer made a motion for Jimmy to walk toward the couch where Meagan stood. He hooked a microphone on the T-shirt while rattling off directions. “Okay, this is live. So when Meagan starts to talk, look at her. Never look at the camera. You are talking to her and only her. When she casually asks you to sing the song, decline and then let her talk you into it. Then say, ‘Okay, sure.’ And then you’ll have exactly two minutes to sing.”

Jimmy lifted his arm to allow the tech to slip the microphone cord into his shirt and behind his back. “The song is three minutes long,” Jimmy said.

“Then shorten it, dude.”

Meagan stepped forward. “Hey, Jimmy. I’m Meagan. Listen, no worries about the length of the song—just sing it, and the camera will cut off for commercial while you’re singing. It’ll give them a taste without the entire song and sell tickets.”

Jimmy held out his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m a big fan of your show. It’s a little surreal to have you interviewing me.”

She smiled, motioned to the couch. “Sit and talk to me like we’re sitting in my living room. Okay?”

He nodded and sat, but the cowboy hat was bugging him, pressing against his forehead, digging into his skin.

“Six seconds!” the tech hollered and moved behind the camera. He then counted down, and Meagan turned to Jimmy and smiled, nodded, mouthed, “Relax.”

Jimmy smiled back at her. She turned to the camera. “Welcome back to
CMT’s Insider New Talent.
This afternoon we are privileged to catch Jimmy Sullivan on his whirlwind Christmas tour with Rusk and Hope Corbin and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. I know you might not have heard his name before, but after today, you won’t be able to stop talking about him. I promise.”

Meagan flashed her smile at the camera and then turned to Jimmy. “So, tell us, Jimmy Sullivan, how has it been traveling on this Christmas tour?”

“Amazing,” he said. “A dream come true. The crowds have been enormous.” He waved his hand in the air. “Now, I know those crowds aren’t for me, but they’re great anyway. I sing just one song, but for that one song, I can pretend they’re all in their seats for me.” When Meagan laughed, he was relieved, felt comfortable, and didn’t think about what he did next—tipped his cowboy hat. He’d a little too literally taken her advice to make himself at home.

She laughed at and with him, leaning back. “Well,
then, Jimmy Sullivan, after we hear you sing I have a feeling that some of the crowd will be there for you.”

“Ah,” he said, now flustered, “I’m out there with Grammy and CMA Award winners. Rusk is in the Country Music Hall of Fame—I’m not kidding myself who the crowd is there to see. I’m just there to sing.”

“We all want to know where you came from. Why haven’t we yet heard from you before now?”

Jimmy smiled. “Guess y’all just didn’t hear us in our neck of the woods out there in South Carolina.”

“Is that where you’re from?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Yes and no. We’re from a little bit of all over. I grew up in Palmetto Pointe.” He meant to continue, to talk about the band and Jack and Texas, but Meagan had other plans and interrupted him.

“Now, I understand that this song has been called ‘The Perfect Christmas Song.’”

He laughed and leaned back into the pillows of the couch, threw his arm over the backrest, and flashed that grin that had caught Charlotte by surprise that night on the back deck. “I think maybe one person called it that, but it’s nice to hear.”

“No,” she said, “I’ve heard this from several sources, and also from Rusk and Hope themselves. Can you tell us why you think it is being called that?”

Jimmy shrugged. “It’s about undeserved love. The kind that comes into your world and takes you by surprise. The kind that opens your heart and changes your life. That kind.”

“Exactly like Christmas,” she said. “When love entered the world in an unexpected way and opened hearts, changed lives.”

Jimmy nodded.

“Well, can we hear a little bit of it?”

Jimmy reached down and grabbed his guitar, strummed a couple chords, and then remembered he was supposed to resist, which seemed silly. “Absolutely,” he said, standing up and moving toward the microphone they had pointed out to him earlier. As he walked toward it, the camera shifted back to Meagan.

“Here, live from Nashville, singer-songwriter Jimmy Sullivan singing his perfect Christmas song.”

The camera swung toward Jimmy, and he opened the song:

Charlotte, Kara, and Jack huddled around the big-screen TV in Thomas’s Pub with the remaining Unknown Souls. When Jimmy finished his song, the entire pub cheered and lifted glasses to Jimmy Sullivan—a hometown boy, they called him. Here’s the thing: Anyone and everyone who’s ever heard of Jimmy Sullivan will now say they were his best friend in second grade, or his girlfriend in fifth grade.

Isabelle was the only one not cheering, and Jack put his arm around her shoulder. “You okay?”

“He didn’t mention the band or Charlotte or you or why he really wrote the song. He let them turn the song into something else. And what the hell was that cowboy hat all about?”

“Isabelle,” Jack said, “it’s just a two-minute interview. Don’t get all tangled up about it. He’s not deserting Charlotte or us. You know that.”

“Do I?” She stood now, wrapped her coat around her body, and threw her scarf around her neck. “Listen, I gotta go. I’m wiped. I’ll see y’all tomorrow.”

Jack turned to Charlotte. “Pay her no mind. She’s always been supersensitive about losing us. We’re her only family.”

The jukebox music blared now, and Kara leaned closer to Charlotte and Jack to be heard. “Yeah, she practically accosted me the first time I was ever on the tour bus. She asked me how I knew Jack, and told me I had no right to be there.”

Jack laughed. “I don’t think that’s exactly what she said.”

“Well, whatever she did say, that’s what it sounded like.”

Charlotte nodded at Jack and Kara, but bit the inside of her cheek. She didn’t want to admit it, but she agreed with Isabelle. Jimmy hadn’t mentioned any of them. He hadn’t said whom the song was for or what the song was really about. She didn’t want to be the “sensitive one.” She didn’t want to pout or whine because her boyfriend was just on Country Music Television and didn’t say her name. But something deep inside her shifted, and she fought the rising tears.

“He looked cute, didn’t he? Even in that silly cowboy hat, he looked adorable,” Charlotte said.

“More than cute. Like a . . . star.” Kara leaned into Jack. “This is really great, Charlotte. Really, really great.”