The psychic lifts a hand, wiggling her fingers at us like she’s casting a spell. “Found you.” She shifts her gaze to Griffin, her eyes narrowing in a way that’s far too knowing. “Hello, soulmate.”
I lean into him. “Do I need to lick you again to make my point, or do we have an understanding?”
He looks down at me with dark eyes, and it makes my pulse skip a beat.
“Please do,” he says, his voice like gravel.
I jab an elbow into his ribs.
Someone in the group is rolling something. The familiar herbal scent drifts over, and the guitar player extends it toward me. My stomach, still recovering from the morning’s hangover, does a slow roll.
“No thanks. I’m good.”
He shrugs.
No offense given, none taken.
He reaches for a case leaning against a fence post, flips the latches, and takes out a violin. He holds it out across the circle as a silent challenge.
“Come on, violin girl. Give us a tune.”
I blink. “You just carry a violin around?”
“We’re a band. We’re playing at a bar in town tonight. Thought you knew.”
I definitely did not know.
I take it anyway. The wood is warm from the sun. It’s the first moment since waking up that I feel completely steady.
“Something classical?” someone asks. There’s a trace of gentle teasing in it—the assumption that I’m a conservatory girl who only plays things people have to sit in velvet chairs to listen to.
I look at the strings, and I think of my mother.
I think of Sunday afternoons when she was all the way herself. She’d put something on the speakers and dance in the kitchen, telling us stories about the village where she grew up—the sessions in the pub, the music that didn’t need a stage or a hushed audience. Music that just needed people and a pulse.
I bring the violin up, but I don’t use the formal posture—no chin up, no elbow out, none of the rigid discipline I spent years perfecting. I drop it lower, tucking it against my chest the way you hold a fiddle, the way I was taught in my socks when I was seven.
I play the opening ofRed Haired Boy.
I go full speed from the first note. The reel opens in my fingers like a familiar road. It’s been there since childhood, buried under layers of formal training and the careful management of what my music wassupposedto be.
I notice the group’s expression change in my peripheral vision, but I keep playing.
Then there’s a click of a case. The guitar comes in underneath me, finding the key in four bars and joining as if it’s been waiting for the opportunity. The tambourine hits the offbeat. The drummer taps out a rhythm on a wooden box.
A small crowd begins to gather. People pause, turn around, and remain in place. Nearby, a kid starts bouncing.
I play the second part, then the third, rolling back to the start. I laugh while I play, which is a total violation of concert hall etiquette and the best thing about this entire thing.
When I finish, there’s a heartbeat of silence before the applause hits.
“Holy shit,” the guitar player says. “Where are you tonight?”
“Excuse me?”
“Tonight. After the festival. Where are you going?”
I glance at Griffin. His face is doing the quiet, warm, completely undone version that I’ve decided is my new favorite.
