I've been making calculated decisions my whole career. Measured moves, managed risks, everything run through a team of people whose job is to tell me when I'm about to do something stupid.
Last night I didn't consult a single one of them. I just looked at Sadie across the bar and pulled her up on that stage with me because she’s the one who got me back up there.
I kissed her in front of two hundred people and put my hat on her and showed everyone who was watching that she’s mine.
“Everyone who was watching” turns out to be a lot more than two hundred people when you bring phones into the picture.
Damn if I didn't just set off a firestorm.
It's all over the internet. Every platform, every gossip site, every country music fan account with a following. Our kiss. Sadie’s name. Who she is. Where she came from. Videos of last night being dissected from every angle. Self-proclaimedprofessional lip-readers confidently assessing what I murmured in her ear. Getting it wrong, of course.
My phone has been ringing since seven this morning. Publicist, agent, manager, the label, two journalists who somehow got my personal number, and my sister Josie three times in a row which means she's either thrilled or furious. I'm not ready to find out which.
I ignore all of it. The only text I answer is from my dad, who sends me a video of Jonah riding his pony and executing a flawless mid-canter gait change, to which I text back:
Tell him daddy says, Fuck yeah!!
Sadie is sitting at the kitchen table in my t-shirt with her coffee and our shared notebook, writing something in the margin of the third song. Copper hair loose, feet tucked up under her on the chair. She looks like she slept well. She looks dewy and unbothered. Utterly serene.
Her phone has been going off too. Or it was, until she changed a setting and went back to her coffee like nothing happened.
“You're handling all this crazy like you're bombproof,” I tell her.
She looks up. “I decided this summer I'm not gonna live my life caring what people have to say about me. Most liberating thing I’ve ever done for myself.” A smile. “Let them talk. Doesn't change anything about our lives. Doesn't change what we have.”
I come around to where she's sitting and take her face in both hands and kiss her slow and thorough, the way I've been kissing her all morning and plan to keep kissing her until someone makes me stop.
Nobody's made me stop yet.
No one trying to reach me on the phone.
Not Sadie.
I’m sure as hell not stopping myself.
“Backbone of steel,” I murmur against her mouth. “I think it's the first thing that made me…”
Made me fall in love with you.
I swallow it back down.
“Made me crazy about you,” I finish.
My hands slide under the hem of the t-shirt. Cup her full breasts. I’m just getting somewhere interesting when my phone buzzes with a call on the counter.
I ignore it. Close my thumb and forefinger around her nipple and pinch a little, enjoying her gasp of surprise.
The phone stops. Starts again.
I pull back and look at the screen. Carter Caldwell. Record company president, sort-of friend. Fifth call in the last hour.
Why didn’t I block him already?
Sadie raises an eyebrow.
“He might quit bugging you if you actually answer,” she says.
“Or he'll just get worse.”
