As was his habit, Bryan had called earlier, looking for something to do. As it was too rainy and cold for hiking, he planned to come over later to just hang out. She twisted around on the sofa, trying to position her toes so that she could paint them more easily. Just when she was adjusted perfectly, the doorbell downstairs rang. Wondering exasperatedly who would dare disturb her idyll, Callie sighed and called out to Tonya to answer the door. After a brief interval, Tonya came back up the stairs with Bryan in tow, then returned to the kitchen, where she had been putting on the kettle for tea. Glancing over her shoulder to ascertain who their unexpected guest was, Callie immediately repositioned herself on the sofa into a more dignified posture. She was also embarrassed by the extremely casual clothes she was wearing: a pair of blue plaid flannel pajama bottoms and a coordinating baby tee-shirt. Resisting the urge to rush into her bedroom to change, she forced herself to sit still. Changing clothes would mean she was trying look nice for him, something she was determined not to do. His presence also made her self-conscious about her bra-less state and she rounded her shoulders slightly to conceal the fact, then thought better of it when she realized that given the minute size of her breasts, he probably wouldn’t know the difference. Despite her anxiety, she smiled slightly as she studied Bryan’s attire. Not for the first time, she speculated about his proclivity for dark clothing and wondered how many pairs of black jeans one man could possibly own. On any other celebrity, she would assume it was some type of affectation, but Bryan didn’t strike her as the type to bother with something like that. He wore the same pair of disreputable boots he always wore, and had a case containing what Callie assumed to be an acoustic guitar slung across his back.
Callie capped the nail polish and hastily placed her feet on the chilly hardwood floor. “Bryan, I thought you weren’t coming over until later today,” she said, her mild irritation evident in her tone.
Bryan joined her on the sofa, sliding his guitar onto the floor. “I know, but I really wasn’t doing anything, so I came on over. I hope you don’t mind.” He quickly changed the subject, knowing full well that she probably did mind. “Were you painting your toenails when I came in?” He looked down at her feet. Callie nodded. “You want me to finish them for you?”
An image of Bryan sucking her toes flashed through her mind, exacerbating the ache between her legs that started whenever she came within fifty feet of this man. Her feet had always been an erogenous zone, and she couldn’t imagine anything more dangerous than letting him get anywhere near them. She’d probably melt into a puddle of lust-filled ooze at his feet. “Uh, no. I’ll do them later. Is that your guitar?” She asked the obvious question just to change the subject.
“Yeah, I’ve been doing some writing for the past couple of days, and thought I might play some of it for you and Tonya.”
Tonya’s cough could be heard from the kitchen. “Sure, he wants to play his guitar for me,” she muttered under her breath. “Y’all don’t mind me. I’m just going back to my room to continue plotting grisly murder.”
Bryan took his guitar out of its case. “Is it all right if I play a little bit?” he asked casually.
Callie nodded. She had heard some of the band’s songs, but she’d been curious to hear Bryan sing.
As he adjusted his guitar, Bryan thought back to the conversation he’d had with B.T. the previous evening. He’d known that a tribute concert for Brodie was in the offing, but B.T. hadn’t told him that Storm Crow was expected to play. He had to get back to L.A. right away so that they could begin rehearsals for the concert. But as he’d told B.T., he wasn’t sure he wanted to do it. He’d never played without Brodie before, and didn’t know if he could. At least not right now. He also had to consider the situation with Jon and Twist. The other band members were undoubtedly pissed about the way he’d left L.A. They’d had to deal with the press and paparazzi by themselves, a position they weren’t accustomed to. He’d be lucky if they only wanted to kick him out. He supposed they probably had legal grounds to sue him. Did he even still have a band? Finding out would at the very least be emotionally if not physically painful.
He thought about Twist, his short-tempered drummer. It would be a miracle if they managed to get through the rest of the tour without an out-and-out brawl. God knows they’d come close plenty of times. Almost from the very beginning, he and Twist had had a very strange and symbiotic relationship. The age difference probably contributed to the hero-worship Twist felt for him and Brodie. Twist, using his brother’s ID, had lied about his age and joined the band when he was only fourteen. He had been big for his age, and it had been years before they discovered the deception. By the time they did, he was well past his eighteenth birthday, and there was no point in booting him out. The six-year age gap was most telling at times like this. Twist held him to an impossibly high standard and was the first to lose it if Bryan didn’t live up to his expectations. Though this was the first time he’d fouled up, he had to acknowledge he had done so in grand style. Jon, the quiet low-key bassist, would not express his feelings as openly as Twist, but Bryan had learned long ago that his emotions ran just as deeply. If nothing else, his stay in the South had taught him the hazards of stirring up a fire ant mound, and he didn’t look forward to the painful results. What would he do if they did kick him out? Where would he be without music, without his band? Would he still be that pathetic gutter rat B.T. had found years ago? Would he still be living hand to mouth, squatting wherever he could to keep a roof over his head? Would he even be alive? What would he do? No, better to put the confrontation off as long as possible. That way he could hold onto the illusion that at least part of his life was still okay.
As he had expected, when he expressed his reluctance to come home, B.T. had blown his stack and reminded him of his contractual obligation to finish the tour. Playing at the tribute concert would be an ideal way to jump-start that, as they were expected to be back on the road by January. That gave them less than two months to hire a new lead guitarist, give him time to learn their songs, and head out to begin the last half of the tour.
Of course, Bryan had known all this before B.T. reminded him. He still wanted to have a band; that had never been in question for him, though B.T. doubted his sincerity. But it just didn’t feel right without Brodie. As he strummed the melody that had been going through his mind for weeks now, he realized that he also didn’t want to be away from Callie. He supposed he could ask her to come with him…Yeah, right, like she’s just going to pick up and follow you back to California…Hell, she acts as if she doesn’t want to go anywhere with you in Alabama. As the thought occurred to him, he looked up and watched as Callie twisted her legs under herself in one of those fluid, boneless movements that only women seem capable of. The motion of those long, graceful legs sent a bolt of heat straight to his groin. He could feel his testicles tighten as he got an instant erection. He shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, moving the guitar to conceal his response to her sensuality. Come hell or high water, he was not leaving this woman behind when he left Alabama.
Callie watched Bryan’s hands as he played his guitar. She’d never thought of the guitar as a sensuous instrument, but he stroked it like a lover. He was left-handed, and the fingers on that hand were callused and marked with tiny scars from years of playing. He’d told her that a music writer referred to him, Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix as the ass-backwards club, as they were all southpaws. She remembered the feel of those long, artistic fingers on her skin. It seemed that the calluses at the ends of those fingers had found and stimulated every nerve ending in her body the day they’d kissed at her parents’ house. She’d asked him about the condition of his hands and had been surprised to learn that most of the scars came from playing acoustic guitar, not the electric one as she’d assumed. Bryan had explained that since the acoustic guitar doesn’t have amplifiers, a guitarist has to play harder, resulting in scars and calluses. He told her that for as long as he could remember, he had played his acoustic guitar every day, sometimes for hours.
Bryan finished one song and began another, a slow ballad. When he began to sing, the raspy quality of his voice only added to the aching that had begun with the images of toe sucking. His voice was legendary for its raw, gravely timbre, but hearing it at such close quarters was incredibly arousing.
To distract herself from those dangerous emotions, Callie waited until he finished the song and then asked, “Bryan, doesn’t all that screaming and stuff you do on your songs give you throat problems? I mean, you always sound as if you’ve got a bad cold.”
Bryan didn’t look up from his guitar. “No, not really. The only time it gives me problems is when I’m stupid enough to write songs in the wrong key. My range is decent, but there are some keys that just hammer my throat.”
“Why do you write in the wrong key then?” That made little sense to Callie. It would seem reasonable that a singer/songwriter would write songs he could sing easily.
He tilted his head to the side. “I have to write it the way I hear it. The music just comes to me, I don’t create it.” He paused to mull over the question. “I guess really I’m just a really famous and ridiculously well-paid transcriptionist.”
Callie waved her hand. “I remember my pathetic attempts to write poetry in high school. I can’t imagine writing a whole album, or in your case, seven whole albums. I think you’re seriously selling yourself short.”
Bryan began playing again.
“How do you write a song anyway? I mean, does the melody come and then the lyrics, or is it the other way around?” Callie asked curiously.
Bryan paused. He’d never been asked that question before, and it struck him as prescient that she would ask that now when he had a new song on his mind. “I guess it really depends. For me, mostly it’s the lyrics first. To be really specific, the title comes first. Sometimes I’ll hear something on the news or read a story and it just sounds lyrical to me.” He continued, “Brodie almost always started with the melody. Sometimes I’d come up with a lyric and he’d write a really cool melody for it, but otherwise it was all about the music for him.” Bryan reflected on the lengthy collaborative sessions he and Brodie had enjoyed over their career. There had been times when they would work for days without sleep, not even realizing the time had passed. As always when he thought about Brodie, painful emotions surfaced, so he resumed playing.
Callie, unsure what had caused the change of mood, decided to continue asking questions. “Have you always sounded that way?”
Bryan smiled. Such was the question of a thousand interviews. “Pretty much since puberty. B.T. says my vocal chords must have gotten stuck somewhere when my voice changed and never returned to normal. It’s distinctive, though. They tell me a lot of guys in cover bands have shredded their vocal chords trying to imitate me.” Bryan had never told anyone about the horror of the night his voice had broken. As if it were yesterday, he remembered screaming for hours the first time his mother locked him in the closet more than twenty years before. The next morning he’d been hoarse, and his voice had remained that way, only growing deeper and raspier when he reached puberty. Obviously he couldn’t tell interviewers that little tidbit, so he’d developed a more palatable story. Bryan hadn’t missed the irony of the situation. The voice that had launched his success and made him the envy of many, had been gestated in unspeakable cruelty. He wondered if he’d ever share the story with Callie. In all likelihood he probably would. For the first time in his life he wanted someone to know everything about him, dark roots and all.
He was playing a slower song she’d never heard before. Most of Storm Crow’s songs were of the raw, gritty, hard-rock variety. She hadn’t thought there were any ballads on any of their CDs, and she wondered if this was a new direction for the band. She looked down and saw a battered spiral notebook lying on top of his guitar case. Presumably this was his songbook.
“Bryan, are you working on new stuff for your next album?”
Bryan nodded. “None of these are Storm Crow songs, though. It’s not our sound. But maybe somebody else will be interested.” He had discovered early in his career that his band couldn’t possibly record all of his prodigious output so he had begun writing for other musicians. His fans would be amazed were they to discover that Bryan had written in genres ranging from pop to country, and had even collaborated on a few hip-hop tunes. Those efforts were an additional outlet for his creativity, and writing for other artists seemed to enhance his writing ability. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t write songs, and was gratified that so many people clamored to record them. It was an economic bonanza also. Publishing rights were the financial backbone of the industry, and he had a considerable catalog. He reflected on the haunting melody that he had just been playing. He’d not written any words to it yet, but he already thought of it as “Callie’s Song.” He laughed inwardly at what the critics would make of him writing love songs, for God’s sake. Some conspiracy theorists would probably point it out as proof of alien abduction.
Callie gestured toward his songbook. “Do you mind if I look at it?” He agreed, and she flipped through the tattered pages, intrigued by the raw emotions evident in most of the songs. She came across one song simply entitled “Johnny” and asked Bryan about it.
Bryan blushed furiously and reached out to take the book from her. Obviously he didn’t want to discuss it, but Callie’s curiosity was piqued. “Come on, Bryan, you’ve got to tell me about it. Who’s Johnny? You had a line in there that went “Dreams of possible connections denied by the light of day…” What’s that all about?”