Her voice was a rich alto with a texture in the lower register that she almost certainly had no idea was there. It settled underneath mine and held, not fighting for space, not hiding from it, just dropping into the pocket where a good harmony lives when two voices actually fit. The sound filled the empty Saloon and I felt it in my chest, a physical resonance you cannot manufacture or teach. Either two voices lock together or they don't, and ours locked on the third try.
I played on. She sang on. Her shoulders dropped an inch, then another. Her fingers found the chord changes on the Martin and by the second chorus her whole body had begunto sway with the rhythm, a slight unconscious movement she probably would have stopped cold if she'd caught herself doing it — and every time she swayed forward, the neckline of her blouse shifted and I missed a beat. The woman who had come in ready to bolt was gone. In her place was a singer with her head tipped back and her eyes still closed, her voice rising through the chorus with a sweetness and a certainty that landed well above what I'd been expecting when Lucinda volunteered her yesterday.
My fingers nearly fumbled the chord change. The voice coming out of this woman — this woman who'd come in shaking — had just rewritten everything I thought I knew about what we could do on that stage Wednesday night. And nobody had ever bothered to tell her.
We ran through four more songs. By the last one she was watching me instead of the chord chart, and the corners of her mouth kept threatening a smile she wouldn't fully commit to.
"Same time tomorrow?" I said.
She nodded. The almost-smile won. "Same time tomorrow."
She packed up her Martin and walked out, and I stayed on my stool in the Saloon and let out a slow breath.
My blood was still running hot from the last hour. Sixty minutes across from her — her voice in my chest, her body moving against that guitar, and my hands wanting to be everywhere her voice was. Every time she'd leaned forward, I'd lost my place. When the flush on her throat had started climbing, I'd wanted to follow it with my mouth. When she'd closed her eyes and tipped her head back and sung, a pull behind my ribs had gone sideways in a way I hadn't felt in years.
She didn't seem to have the first clue what she did to me. I was going to need a cold shower before dinner. Possibly two.
I grabbed my guitar and tore through something fast and loud until the situation in my jeans settled enough to stand up without embarrassing myself.
Milo found me outside the Saloon twenty minutes later, right on cue.
"So," he said, falling into step beside me on the path toward the cabins. "The photographer."
"What about the photographer."
"Nothing. Just that you were in there for an hour and a half with the door shut and you came out looking like you'd been rear-ended by a truck you'd like to see again."
"We ran the setlist. She picks up harmony fast."
"Uh-huh." Milo shoved his dark curls off his forehead and hit me with the grin he'd been perfecting since we were playing for tips at a Fort Worth bar with a broken AC unit and a crowd of nine people who were mostly there for the dollar wings. "How's her voice?"
"Good. Really good. She'll hold the bridge sets."
"How's the rest of her?"
"Milo."
"I'm asking as your lead guitarist. Ensemble chemistry. Very professional concern."
Russ appeared from the direction of the cabins with his ball cap pulled low and fell into step on my other side. He'd been restringing his bass on the porch and had probably heard every note through the open Saloon windows. "Sounded good in there," he said. "She's going to work."
"That's what I said."
Milo leaned forward to look around me at Russ. "He watched the door for a solid minute after she left."
"I was thinking about the setlist."
"For a minute. At a closed door."
"Setlist is complicated."
Russ adjusted his ball cap and said nothing, which was how Russ said most of the things that mattered.
I ate dinner at the Lodge with the band. Grilled chicken, cornbread, and sweet tea that tasted the way sweet tea was supposed to taste, which was how it tasted in Texas and nowhere else. Then I headed back to the Saloon alone because the acoustics were good and I had two empty hours and a melody I'd been chasing since San Antonio. The room was better at night. String lights on, the old wood glowing amber in the low light, the bar polished and hushed. I sat on the edge of the stage with my guitar and played the new song from the top, humming through the places where the lyrics hadn't arrived yet, letting the melody find its own shape in a room that did not have opinions about streaming numbers or radio formatting.
I was deep in the second verse when I heard the latch.
Layla stopped just inside the entrance. "I'm sorry, I left my camera bag after rehearsal, I didn't think anyone would be—"
