“I’ll be careful,” I said.
“Please do. We’re still recovering as a community.”
She held out her hand across the table.
“Ellie Parker. Dive instructor, local menace, emotional owner of this table.”
Savannah Brooks was the name on the posters, the album covers, the awards, and the side of three buses currently sitting in storage outside Nashville. Savannah was the woman people dressed as for Halloween in denim, rhinestones, and boots no actual farm would allow near livestock.
Annie Miller was the name on my birth certificate.
The one my mother used when she was worried.
The one my grandmother still shouted across the kitchen whether I was six feet away or six hundred miles.
Annie was not exactly a secret.
She was simply buried beneath better lighting.
I took Ellie’s hand.
“Annie.”
Just Annie.
The name landed between us like something I had set down years ago and had only now remembered belonged to me.
Ellie’s palm was warm and slightly damp from the coffee cup.
“Nice to meet you, Just Annie.”
“That’s a terrible last name.”
“I’ve heard worse.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“You should be.”
She released my hand, but the warmth of it stayed behind.
A burst of music crackled through the café speakers.
For one peaceful second, I did not recognize it.
The intro was all fiddle, handclaps, and a guitar line I had played badly in the studio before my guitarist gently suggested I focus on singing.
Then my own voice rolled across the sand.
I went still.
Not dramatically.
I had too much practice for that.
My fingers tightened around my coffee, but my face stayed relaxed. The song had been everywhere last summer. Grocery stores. Bars. Airports. Wedding receptions. One deeply confusing video of a goat wearing sunglasses.
I had performed it so many times that my muscles probably knew the chorus better than my mind did.
