“You’re seeing someone. He’s probably seeing someone because he’s a singer, and he lives in Nashville. There’s more cut-off denim shorts, titty shirts, and cowboy boots per capita than there are Starbucks. And let’s revisit that first statement. You. Are. Seeing. Someone.”?
I nodded into the phone, padding across my room and sitting on the edge of my bed.?
“And besides,” she added, her voice growing higher by the minute, “lookat your life! You’re a business owner. You have ahotboyfriend. You might still be sleeping in the same full-sized bed you had in high school, but you’ve got all these renovation plans!” She paused, a grin spreading across her face. “You little Joanna Gaines, you. And, not to mention,” she continued, leaning into her camera with a teasing tone, “you’re vice semi-quasi secretary of the Daughters of Savannah Civic Society. You’re basically Savannah royalty now.”
“They let me change out the sweet tea jugs last week, and I got to pass out the agendas. Shut up. Just listen.” My voice grew more animated. “Lee has a Grammy! Andhe’salso super hot. And yeah, I mean, did you see that girl he brought with him to the Country Music Awards? She was like twenty-one.” I rolled my eyes, feeling the frustration creep in as I kept yapping. “And then, oh Lord, have you been on his Instagram lately? He’s always got that stupid ass guitar andat leastfour blondes around him at all times.” I sighed, shaking my head. “And then the comments, oof. How pathetic do I sound right now?” I lunged myself back down on my pillows dramatically, disturbing Pickle in her spot of slumber, and she dug her claws back into my scalp and screeched like a banshee.?
“Listen. You don’t sound pathetic. Unhinged, maybe. A little obsessed? Yes. Girl, why are you tormenting yourself like this? He left. You’re here. Time and life don’t stop just because Leland Wilder went off to Nashville and never came home. This isn’t a dollhouse where you can walk away and expect everything to stay just as you left it. Life doesn’t work that way. When you come back, you have to be prepared for the pieces to have shifted, for nothing to be quite the same as it was before.”?
I rubbed my head and let my hands fall over my face, trying to fight mid-day bourbon-infused tears. I could feel the anxiety creeping through my bones, making my heart slam against my chest.?“What would I even say to him? After all this time, honestly, what could I possibly say?”?
“If I had to guess,” Sutton sighed, “an awful lot that was left unsaid.”?
I thought I felt better when Sutton and I hung up after she talked me off the ledge, but I was still sitting on a hot-bed of nerves. It had beenyearssince Lee came home. On one hand, he was due to show his face back in Savannah, but on the other, he was probably busy banging half of the state of Tennessee, wooing them with his guitar and his stupid, baby blue eyes.?
And she was right, Iwasseeing someone. But it was new, despite thefact that for the last few months everyone around us marveled about how “it was time” and “it just seems right” whenever we walked into a room together.?
But that was just the thing. It was something fresh. Full of all those awkward firsts every couple goes through. I wanted to trust again, but I couldn’t. I wanted to wear a relationship like an old, worn-out sweatshirt—full of holes but comfortable from years spent breaking it in. I wanted to feel secure, but it wasn’t happening.?
Because in the end, no matter how good it felt, it all ended up in a donation pile eventually.
Chapter four
LEE
“Brooooooo! We’re going to hit up every single one of these haunted tours. This one, dude, you can gointothe haunted house. Can you imagine the material we could get from this kind of shit? Unbelievable, my guy.”?
Ryan was sitting in a chair by the window of the airport, both of us nursing beers and scrolling through our phones. Only one of us was looking forward to the trip.?
I stopped my incessant stalking—it’s not likeshehad any personal social media of her own—to address the madness unfolding in front of me. “You want to write an album about a haunted house? Who would buy that?”?
He began belting out some lyrics, “This house is haunted… with the ghost of you and the ghost of me… I’ll eat some fried chicken and be happy… Man, I have to pee. Hey! That rhymed. Write that down.” He hopped up and jogged toward the bathroom, humming to himself along the way.
Savannah was haunted, alright. Ghosts of the town’s past floated through the squares and houses, but nothing haunted the city more than memories. And I had far too many to count.?
For the most part, I’d put the memories on shelves in my head and let them collect dust, but going home was going to kick that wreck right back up, and I knew it, which is why I stayed away for so long. I couldn’t imagine strolling through the squares, lazing by the river, seeing her face. It would undo ten years of work. All the girls, all the bars, all the booze and the songs.?
Ryan skipped back and slipped into his chair across from me in the Diamond Lounge. We weren’t celebrities by any means, but every now and again, our label treated us to some perks and flying in style was one of them.?
I’d been writing music forever, but nothing compared to the stuff Icranked out my first year in Nashville. My heart was shattered, and I channeled all that pain into my songs. It felt like I was just surviving from one day to the next, struggling to find a spark of hope while dealing with the loneliness of a new city and missing her.
I sent my demo tape to a bunch of studios, andHorizon Sound Studiosended up picking up my album,Fading Echoes of Us. Jesse Lynn Carter, one of country’s hottest stars, heard our single “Walking Away Slow” and reached out. Meeting him was a game changer; he helped me refine the song, blending his own magic with my raw emotion, turning it into something incredible.
Even though winning a Grammy with Ryan was amazing, the loneliness never really left. All the success and accolades felt bittersweet, especially when they didn’t fill the emptiness inside. It was like living a dream while still missing the reality of what I once had.
“So, are we going to see her?” Ryan asked, motioning for two more beers from the server and pulling me from my thoughts.
“My momma?” I quipped, playing dumb.?
“Magnolia, you idiot. You know, the inspiration behind about seventy-five of our songs? Does she know you have a framed picture of her in your writing space?”?
“That’s a picture of our friend group, you asshat. And she’s not the inspiration behind our music. She’s just another chapter in my life.” The server dropped our beers, and I gave her a sly smile to match her googly-eyed stare.?
“I just don’t get it, man. All the girls in Nashville fall at your feet every time you get on stage, and no one has been able to really land you. I know it’s because of her.”?
He wasn’t half-wrong there. I’d had my fair share of women, and they drew to me like flies on shit the second I picked up my guitar.
But despite all the women and all the attention, the moment I got in my car and left Savannah for Nashville, loneliness hit me like a freight train. That hollow ache never let up, and no matter what I did, nothing could fill that gaping void.
