Dirty Little Secret Page 6

  He grinned and ran his hand across his jaw. “The stubble is for style. See you there before nine?”

  “Nine,” I affirmed, sliding along the side of my car to the driver’s door.

  “Before nine,” he repeated. “Not right at nine. When everybody isn’t there on time, I tend to have a stroke.”

  I thought of a song as he was walking away. As soon as the idea hit me, I wished he would walk away faster so I could get it down in my notebook. I didn’t want him to see me scribbling. Months earlier, Toby had taken my notebook out of my purse and read my lyrics in a sneering voice. I’d always kept my songs to myself, fearing that he’d ridicule the thing I loved most, and true to form he’d confirmed my worst fears. Thank God he couldn’t read music. If he’d tried to sing to me, I would have hated my own work forever.

  In my rearview mirror I watched Sam walk one row over and put his guitar case behind the seat of a Chevy truck. The truck was older than he was, with a scratched and dented bed, but I knew from experience on my parents’ farm that pickup trucks were hard to kill. I could wait to write in my notebook until he drove off, but he was probably already wondering why I sat motionless in the driver’s seat. I started the ignition, drove about a mile toward my granddad’s house, and pulled off at a gas station to jot a few lines of poetry and music before I forgot them.

  When a song stuck in my head like that, I felt like I was holding my breath until I got it down on paper. Finishing, relieved, I looked up and noticed everything I hadn’t noticed initially about the gas station: the people going in and out of the building, the riotous colors of the beer advertisements in the windows, the sweeping noise the traffic made on the nearby street. My whole trip here hadn’t registered with me, either. I’d driven the car and navigated the road, but my brain had waited until now to start processing again. Even driving away from Sam hadn’t registered.

  I thought of him bending over to put his guitar behind the seat of his truck, big biceps moving underneath the sleeves of his T-shirt. His father had been nowhere in sight, which must have meant they’d driven to the mall separately. Maybe Sam didn’t even live with his dad anymore. He had more and better friends than I did, potential roommates, and the second he’d graduated from high school, he’d moved out.

  But as I pulled back onto the street and puzzled through Sam, I decided he more likely was stuck with his dad like I was stuck with my family. He relied on his dad for the job like I relied on my granddad. I could tell from his enthusiasm that nothing had ever been more delicious to him than the taste of his own gig tonight. It took a lot for a big guy like him to give the impression of a wide-eyed puppy.

  I felt like that myself—about the gig, and about him. I couldn’t wait for before nine.

  I pulled up to my granddad’s house and walked through the front room, which he’d converted to a workshop and showroom. Most of the time even his living space in the back smelled like sawdust and varnish. At the moment it smelled like steam and spaghetti. He was a pretty good cook for only having learned ten years ago when my grandmom died, and I was hungry. My stomach growled, and my heart leaped. I missed sitting down at the dinner table with my whole family, but I still looked forward to eating with my granddad.

  “Hi,” I called, popping into the kitchen.

  “Hey,” he said, turning around from the pots on the stove with a spatula in his hand, wearing my grandmother’s apron over the denim shirt and jeans he worked in. When we were younger, Julie and I had made fun of him behind his back for cooking us dinner in the frilly apron. My mom had told us sternly that he missed her mother, and not everything in life was fodder for cruel little girls.

  His eyes lingered for only a second on my asymmetrical hair—it seemed that in a year, he’d never quite gotten used to it—before he asked, “How was work?”

  “This was probably the best day all week.” At least, the day sure had looked up after work was over. “I got invited to play another gig tonight.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  Stunned, I stared at him with his sauce-covered spatula in the air. Technically, I was forbidden by my parents to play any gig at all. But my granddad had gone out and gotten me the first one, so I’d thought he would agree to the second one, too, if I presented it the right way. I’d rehearsed my speech all the way from the gas station, and he’d just cut me off.

  This couldn’t be happening. Not when Sam was involved. I took a deep breath, kept my cool, and started again. “This gig is in the District—”

  “Even worse,” my granddad interrupted. “In a bar? You’re underage. And you’re more likely to attract attention playing in the District. That’s exactly what your parents said to keep you away from. I didn’t see the harm in the mall job, no matter what your parents thought, but even I can see you shouldn’t be playing in the District, like you’re trying to get your own recording contract. Julie’s record company asked us not to talk about you because they don’t want the public to hear she used to play with you. What if the record company found out?”

  I stared at him a moment more, this rangy, white-haired man in a woman’s apron, controlling my life. He was the one who’d gotten me into this mess, in a roundabout way. He’d taught my mother to play guitar. He’d taken her and her brothers to blue-grass festivals. That’s where she’d gotten the idea that a drive for musical fame was fun for the whole family. My granddad still had one toe in the music industry. He might not have caught the bug that badly himself—he’d never seemed to crave the spotlight—but he was ultimately responsible for all our obsessions with it. And he was the one taking this gig away from me. If he wasn’t my ally against my parents anymore, I didn’t have a friend left.

  He watched me uneasily for a moment, then added, “I’m just doing what your grandmother would have done.”

  At his mention of my grandmother, I felt a heavy shroud of failure descend across my shoulders. I wouldn’t argue with him when he invoked my grandmother. He loved her too much, living his life as if she were still around. She’d been dead since I was eight, but I remembered her as a lady who liked pretty things and proper girls and never clapped loudly enough when Julie and I performed for her, as if music wasn’t what she was after.

  “Dinner’s ready,” he said. “Why don’t you sit down at the table, and you can tell me about work.”

  Usually I helped him with dinner when I came in. If he was offering to serve me, he felt bad about forbidding my gig.

  I wasn’t sure how far I could push him, though. We were close, but I still couldn’t pitch a fit to him like I had in the past to my parents. Getting angry and rebelling against my granddad because he wouldn’t let me play a gig, which I wasn’t supposed to play anyway, was another in a long line of reasons my parents could give for pulling the plug on my future.

  “You know, Granddad . . .” There was no way I could sit down at the table and eat with him now. But I wanted him to know I appreciated the dinner, and I was sorry he seemed so lonely without my grandmom. All I could manage was, “Not hungry,” as I ducked out of the kitchen, rounded the banister, and jogged up the stairs. I felt like a bitch—because I was one.

  As I burst into the room we pretended was my bedroom, I had an urge to chuck my fiddle, case and all, as hard as I could into the bookcase laden with sheet music and festival awards nobody had cared about in thirty years. The adrenaline rushed to my fingertips.

  Face tight with an expression so ugly I could feel it, I closed the door behind me, carefully set my fiddle case on top of the dresser, then fished my phone out of my purse to call Sam.

  First, though, I quickly scrolled through the texts from Toby that had accumulated while I was at work. Since spending Memorial Day at the lake, he’d been sending me insults when he was drunk, and apologies and pleas to see me after he’d sobered up. I’d thought about blocking him. I’d already written my fill of songs about him, and I didn’t need more material. But now he had the power to take away my college education if my pare
nts thought we were still together. Keeping tabs on Toby seemed like the best way to avoid him. Fear of him had consumed big parts of my week, but I’d obsessed about him less today, since I’d met Sam.

  And now my night with Sam had gone south, too. I texted him. Seconds later, my phone rang in my hands.

  “What do you mean, you can’t go?” He sounded outraged.

  “My granddad doesn’t want me to play a gig in the District.” That was as much of the truth as I could tell him without explaining way more about my sad life than I wanted to reveal to a guy I would never see again, except at the mall.

  “What about your parents?” he insisted.

  “I’m staying with my granddad this summer. Look, I can’t go. I’m sorry, Sam.” I clicked the phone off.

  At some point while I’d talked to him, I’d sunk to the floor with my back against the bed. Now I looked around the room that wasn’t mine, used as a bedroom so long ago and piled with so much impersonal junk that I honestly wasn’t sure whether it had once been my mother’s room or one of my uncles’. The time was almost seven and the room had grown dusky, but by comparison the windows looked bright with daylight. The twilight seemed infinite in Nashville this time of year, like summer in Alaska, one day merging into another in an endless wash.

  An hour must have passed—now it was the fireflies I noticed out the window rather than the sunlight—when a knock sounded on the door.

  I didn’t feel comfortable enough with my grandfather to have a talk with him. I didn’t want to see him right now or discuss how I deserved this. I’d already done that once with my family. But I was living in his house, and he’d gotten me the job. After a resigned sigh, I called, “Come in.”

  I heard the door open, but I kept my eyes on the old wooden floor, feeling hungry and sick to my stomach at the same time. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t be ironic and therefore pathetic. I saw myself as he must see me, a punk sitting on the floor, a defiant girl utterly beaten by an old man and a “no.”

  When the seconds stretched and he didn’t say anything either, I looked up. It wasn’t my granddad in the doorway. It was Sam.

  He squinted into the dark room, unable to locate me. But I saw him perfectly, his dark hair shining and his face bathed in the softest light from the windows. Maybe he thought he’d come to rescue me, but I knew from the way my heart pounded at the sight of him that I’d never been in more trouble.

  4

  He flicked the light switch on and saw me. “Oh, I’m sorry, I—” Embarrassed, I backed against the bed like a mouse in a cage with nowhere to go. He’d already seen the mascara stains under my eyes. I hadn’t been crying. My granddad refusing to let me play a gig was nothing to cry about. But I’d been rubbing my eyes pretty hard, something I tended to do when my looks didn’t matter. And I hadn’t thought anybody but my granddad would see me until next Tuesday at the mall.

  Instead of retreating out the door, stammering in embarrassment, Sam stood still with one hand on the knob and the other gripping his guitar case. His face was open with concern. “What’s the matter?”

  I ran my middle fingers under both eyes at once, assuredly emphasizing my beaten-up look, which is what I got for wearing heavy eye makeup in the first place. It didn’t matter what Sam thought of me anyway. I deserved what I got. All I wanted now was to release him with as little further mortification on both our parts as possible. I mumbled, “I told you, my granddad won’t let me go tonight. It’s not even that. It’s just been a long . . .” Week. Month. Year. “. . . day.”

  Sam looked over his shoulder, as if he could see down the stairs and around the walls to my granddad. Then he walked into the room and slid his guitar case onto my bed.

  He’d changed again from his T-shirt into a different color of the same plaid shirt he’d worn as Johnny Cash’s son, tight across his chest, with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows like a 1940s farmhand. He’d traded his Chucks for a pair of cowboy boots that looked like they’d seen a few seasons herding cattle. I was pretty sure they hadn’t, though. Sam didn’t strike me as the cattle-herding type. Sam herded people.

  He walked back around the bed and stood right in front of me, gazing way down at me, his boots toe to toe with my sneakers. “You can’t wear that,” he said. “You’re cute, but I need you to pull out some stops for me.” He held his hand down to help me up.

  The ceiling light behind his head made the edges of his hair seem to glow. I blinked up at him as I put my hand in his. When he pulled me to my feet, I realized how sore my butt had gotten from sitting on the bare floor for an hour.

  “What are you doing here?” I whispered. “I can’t go.”

  “This isn’t about the gig,” he whispered back. “This is about a date. I told your granddad I met you today and found out you were living with him, so I happened by, wondering if you wanted to go see a band with me tonight.” He reached over to the bed again, opened his case, and looped his guitar around his neck. He placed my fiddle case in the empty space and buckled the guitar case shut. “I said it was a band I know really well.” He beamed at me, pleased with his half-truth.

  “And he said yes?” I asked incredulously. It seemed impossible that after I’d agonized for an hour over my death sentence, Sam had fixed everything with a simple lie.

  “All he told me was to bring you back in one piece,” Sam said, “which sounded to me like he’s letting you go. He likes me.”

  “Really?” I squeaked. I wanted to go—more than anything. But maybe Sam was making this up. He was lying to me about my granddad giving me permission, and he was planning to sneak me out of the house somehow. My granddad wouldn’t believe me when I tried to explain later. He would tell my parents, and there went Vandy. There went the hope I’d been clinging to for the past year that I would find myself again when I got out from under this family.

  But Sam sounded absolutely sincere as he said, “I’ve been coming here since I was little, you know.”

  “Oh,” I said, remembering that Sam had guessed who my granddad was as soon as I mentioned my fake last name. “So as long as I’m with you, I can do what I want? That’s some power you have over people.”

  “Isn’t it? I’ve fooled them all! They have no idea their trust is way misplaced.” He winked at me.

  “Wow! You are one talented guy.”

  “I don’t know. What does it say about me that girls’ grandfathers reverse their punishment when I step in the room? That’s kind of disturbing.”

  “He must think you won’t lay a hand on me.”

  Sam’s eyes brightened. With a small smile playing across his mouth, he said quietly, “We’ll see.” He nodded toward my closet. “I’ll go back downstairs while you change. Do you have any other charges you want me to get you out of while I’m down there? Parking tickets? Bank robberies?”

  I looked down at my T-shirt. “What do you want me to wear?”

  “I believe in you. Just give it another try. The band is counting on you. And don’t forget to bring the guitar case down casually, like, ‘Hey, Sam, you totally left your guitar case upstairs! It’s totally empty and not suspicious at all!’ ” He backed out of the room, then paused. “By the way, your granddad told me you were upset with him and you hadn’t eaten your dinner. You need to eat. I’ll be working you hard tonight.” He flinched as he heard his own words. “That didn’t come out quite right.” He pulled the door shut.

  I stood there stunned for a moment, not believing what had happened. In the past year I’d gotten used to bad shit happening out of the blue. This was good—the best—and I wasn’t convinced it was real until I heard Sam’s footsteps headed down the creaky wooden staircase.

  I sprang into action, running for the tiny closet with a tinier space cleared out for my dress bags, which I’d lifted whole from my closet at home, lacking the energy last weekend to pick and choose what to bring. Sam had said he wanted me to look older. Facial hair wasn’t an option, but I could definitely dress lik
e a college student. I ripped through one of the bags for the dress I had in mind, black sprigged with red rosebuds. I’d worn it at a festival and Julie had worn a matching one. At the time they’d looked countrified. Now, though, the dress could pass for sexy vintage, especially since I’d gained another half a bra cup size.

  I pulled the dress on over my lacy black bra. As I’d thought, I had actual cleavage, not imitation cleavage that Ms. Lottie constructed out of tissues stuffed into my Dolly costume. My bra straps showed underneath the thin straps of the dress. Back when Julie and I had worn the dresses as costumes, she hadn’t needed a bra at all, and my mom had bought me a strapless bra. She never would have let me out of the house with my bra straps showing like this—but she wasn’t around.

  I stepped into the red cowgirl boots I’d worn with the outfit back then. They still fit. I slipped on dangling red earrings and bracelets faceted enough to sparkle in the dim bar, but lightweight enough that they wouldn’t clank up and down my arms when I played fiddle. Then I went to peer at myself in the bathroom mirror. My mascara hadn’t smeared as badly as I’d thought, and I cheered up even more now that I knew Sam hadn’t seen me looking like a heroin addict. I cleaned my eyes up a bit, adding glittery highlights underneath my brows, and applied another coat of blood-red lipstick. I removed my contacts and slipped on red horn-rimmed glasses I’d chosen on a whim at my last eye exam a couple of years ago. My mom had said they made me look like a granny. Power surged through me as I put on this accessory my mother specifically and vocally disapproved of. So there.

  Looking at my reflection, I decided that if my mom wouldn’t let me go out with my cleavage and bra straps showing, my granddad, though unlikely to say something to me directly, would mention it to my mom the next time he talked to her. I pulled a black shrug out of the closet and buttoned it over the neckline of the dress. I’d worn it on some cooler nights at festivals up north. Now it would get me out of the house.