Rehearsal shifted up a gear.Sean called a start.Axel counted them in.The verse landed clean.The chorus carried more weight than it had that morning.Livia slipped into a high line, and Maddyn found a low thread that braided the thing into something that felt less like a song and more like a conversation with your favorite person.
Carlene forgot to breathe for a few bars.
They worked for an hour, took a break for ten minutes, then worked again.When they finally let the last chord hang and fade, the barn sighed like it had been holding itself tall on their behalf.The band drifted apart to water, texts, and a quick word with Tony.Jami sat where he was and listened to the empty room.He looked toward Carlene like he knew she’d been listening too.
“Wanna take a walk?”he asked.
“Sure,” she said, and closed the laptop.
They took the path toward the grove, the air warm and green.Somewhere below, the water worked the rocks.The shade smelled like citrus and the faint clean smell of rain that hadn’t fallen yet.
“I checked the numbers,” she said.“The stills are doing exactly what we hoped.Comments are friendly.Shares are mostly locals and fans who talk like locals.”
“Good,” he said.“It felt good.”
They walked a few more steps in quiet.
“I used to come down here when I got stuck,” he said.“Before the band, after the Army.I’d sit on the bluff and try to hear what I wanted.Sometimes it was nothing.Sometimes it was a line that changed my whole day.”
“Today gave you one,” she said.
“I did,” he said.“And seeing so many people at Mae’s felt like, I don’t know, a room I understood.”
“Rooms get easier when no one expects you to be a hero,” she said.
He huffed a laugh.“Except for the eight-year-old with the unicorn notebook.”
“She’s going to own us all,” Carlene said.“We should get her a T-shirt that says Future Problem.”
He smiled without looking at her, which felt more private than if he had.
They looped back to the farmhouse porch.Quinn’s carpentry made everything sit right with the world.The boards didn’t creak where you didn’t want them to creak.The railing felt solid under your palm.A pitcher of water and sliced lemons waited on a tray like somebody’s grandma had walked through and decided the day needed tending.
Jami poured two glasses and handed her one.He sat on the steps and braced his forearms on his knees.
“You ever stay,” he asked, “in any one place?”
“For work,” she said.“Sometimes a month.Sometimes two.Long enough to fix what needed fixing.”
“And then you leave.”
“And then I leave.”
He nodded like he’d expected that.“Do you like it that way?”
“It keeps things clean,” she said.“No bad endings if you never start.”
He rolled the glass between his palms.“You know that’s not how endings work.”
“I do,” she said quietly.
They let the quiet sit.A lizard did push-ups on the porch rail like it had something to prove.Somewhere in the grove, a bird argued with another bird about a branch.
Jami finished his water and set the glass down.“About Phase 3,” he said.“I don’t want to borrow trouble.But if it ever gets to where a picture would help, I want to be the one to say yes or no.Not the label.Not a blog.Me.”
“It’ll be you,” she said.“I won’t do it without your say.”
He looked at her, checked to see if she meant it, and then let his shoulders drop a fraction.“Okay.”
