Once we’ve checked in and been given access cards for our room, we head up to the third floor on an elevator that smells faintly of urine and stale beer. It’s not the nicest hotel, but it’s relatively affordable. Many of the musicians playing in the festival will likely be staying here as well.
As soon as we drop our bags in the small room with two beds and a cot, Dallas and Gavin begin unloading our belongings.
I lower myself onto the bed by the window and watch them.
Dallas frowns at the two beds and then moves the cot into the narrow space between them. “I’ll take the cot.”
Gavin stops drumming his sticks on the small table in the corner beside me. “I can take the cot. I’ve slept on worse.”
My hearts lurches forward, yanking my stomach along with it. Trying to blink back the image of little boy Gavin sleeping on a filthy floor God knows where, I see my brother give Gavin a meaningful look that ends the conversation abruptly.
Relief loosens some of the tension I’ve carried since learning we’d be sharing a room. The thought of sleeping—or attempting to sleep—in a bedroom with Gavin is daunting, and playing at one of the largest music festivals in the South on no sleep was nerve-racking, to say the least. But with Dallas between us as he’s always been, I’m probably less inclined to lie in bed wondering what it would be like to have Gavin in mine.
The truth is, while I don’t need the fame and bright lights that my brother chases relentlessly, my desire to see the band become legitimate is just as strong. The alternative is a fate I try not to think about. I don’t belong in an orchestra pit playing music that feels stifling and far too fancy for me. I belong here, with these two men I love in vastly different ways, playing the music I was raised on.
Once we’re settled into the room and Dallas has spoken with Levi about a rehearsal space we’ll be able to use during the week, I step outside to call Papa to let him know we’ve arrived safe and sound. He doesn’t answer so I leave a message.
When I step back into the room both of the boys are already asleep. Chewing a barely warm, slightly spongy waffle leftover from our drive-through breakfast, I think about Papa. Since his heart attack—which he only refers to as an “episode”—I haven’t been away from him for more than a night. He’ll turn seventy-six this year and his hearing is nearly gone but his voice is still strong in my head.
The first time I picked up his fiddle he chuckled and said if I could tame it, it was mine. For weeks I pissed off the neighbors and every animal in hearing distance. And then he began to show me the basics. Major one, major four, and major five. Where to stroke the strings to get a richer sound, how to make it sing. “Amazing Grace” was the first song I ever played on it from start to finish. It was wobbly and rough, but Papa declared it officially mine that day.
When my parents died, it felt like everything good inside of me had been scooped out and thrown away. Memories hurt, any ideas about what my future might contain hurt. The strange looks from the kids at my new school made me want to turn myself inside out and hide. But playing Papa’s fiddle filled me with something special, something magical. It gave me back something I’d lost with my mom and dad. Hope.
I ran home from school every day and woke up early in the mornings on weekends, itching to get my hands on Oz. Papa said I could name it, and I’d just seen The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy left behind her drab gray world and went somewhere magical and colorful and that’s what playing was for me. Which is why I don’t look over at Gavin’s chiseled, tattooed body sprawled across the other bed in the room even though I want to.
I fall asleep thinking about song lyrics and pushing out of my head thoughts of how it would feel to have his hands on me and his lips on mine.