She tells me the marquee tests went well. The blue reads at a distance; the ribbon icon needs a hair less weight. She says she’s pushing the tour grid into a system that even a venue intern can’t break. I tell her I changed the left hand in the bridge so the chorus lands cleaner. We trade small notes like two people who like making things more than talking about them.
The food is good. She eats the lemon wedge off the fish.
I have never seen someone do that. “Good lemon?”
She giggles like she just realized she did it. “Habit.”
“How so?”
“Growing up, fresh fruit wasn’t much of a thing, so when you got some, even if it was just a lemon wedge, that got eaten first.”
Growing up in foster care, she means.
I don’t want to dig into it and drag the night down. But I will circle back to this with her one day.
The piano player clips the end of a standard. I forgive him because his balance stays even. A flash through glass pulls at the edge of my vision. Paparazzi outside. Not a swarm, just two standing near the fountain with long lenses, getting reflections and angles through the window. I breathe, then breathe again.
Acting out makes it worse. I learned that lesson five years ago, and again, thanks to Salem and Troy’s mishap. I tip my chin at them so she knows I see it.
“Do we move?” she asks.
“No. We finish dinner. We walk out calm. Security can escort if they get loud.”
“Okay,” she says, and the word lands like a hand on my back. I like that too.
We don’t rush. I thank the server by name at the end, and we head out. Outside the doors, the air is warm and the lights are bright. Vegas ambiance. The two with cameras step closer but keep to the public side of the line on the pavement. I face forward. Lou keeps her chin level. The shutters sound like sprinklers on a lawn. A third guy angles in from the right and sitson the line with one foot like he wants to test an invisible rule. Most of the time, the paparazzi here aren’t too bad. It’s not like Los Angeles. But sometimes, they’re ambitious.
He lifts his camera and lowers it and then decides to try words. “Hey, Lou,” he calls. “How does it feel to be the Turner Brothers’ whore?”
My hands go up before I think. I take one step. Security is already moving. I stop myself at the last half second, fingers curled, knuckles tight, the bones in my forearms ringing.
I could lay him out. I want to.
I don’t. I hear my mother’s voice telling me to save my hands for the instrument. I hear Lou breathe in.
“That’s enough,” I growl.
The guy grins like he won something by getting a rise out of me. Security steps between us. The other cameras keep clicking because that’s what they do. I open my hands and let the shake show until it leaves. I take Lou’s elbow and ask the guard to walk us to the garage. We don’t run. We don’t speak.
The elevator is a quiet box. I watch the numbers. Lou looks at our reflections. I realize I haven’t said a word that counts.
“I’m sorry. I almost lost it.”
She snorts, soft. “After a year with Troy, that was nothing.” I make a face, and she smiles on purpose to let me off the hook, then gets serious again. “I appreciate that you stopped. I appreciate that you want to be better than that.”
“I don’t want to be a headline you have to live through.”
The valet brings the car. I drive. She rests her hand on the console, and the calm returns. We take the long way back because the long way gives us quiet. She hums without thinking. It’s the melody from “Locket.” She only realizes she’s doing it when I turn the radio down to hear more.
“What?”
“Keep going,” I tell her.
She hums the chorus and adds a second line under it, a tiny echo that never tries to be a lead. I take the next exit.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“Sagebrush. Now that it’s ours, we can drop in.”
