Page 43 of Three Times the Swoon

“We’re here,” I said, trying not to allow my emotion to catch in my throat.

“Wow, this room is even more impressive now that it’s mine… or rather ours,” Connie said. “This is our room, our room where magic happens.”

“We’re doing this,” Josh announced, sounding determined to make it work this time.

“Damn right we are,” Rascal chimed in, as he grabbed one of the acoustic guitars and strummed his song.

Connie pulled out her phone and scrolled. “Let me just refresh my memory with the lyrics I just wrote on the drive over. They’re now pasted into an email I sent to myself. If there’s a printer somewhere, I can print them up for us.”

“Here,” Josh said, standing over a printer.

“Of course, there’s a printer in here. This room has everything.”

In the next few minutes, we each had a rough draft of Connie’s lyrics, and we were able to work on them as we matched them up to what Rascal had already composed.

Time seemed to slip by without us being aware of it. We were in the zone, and nothing short of several glasses of Mrs. Nash’s lemonade and iced tea, mixed with the occasional beer or two detracted us from our work. It was a give-and-take kind of thing, with each of us contributing, and by the time Mrs. Nash told us she’d prepared a dinner and left it in the fridge, and all we had to do was warm it up, we’d recorded a rough version of our very first song:Guts and Glitter.

There’s a cowboy named Rascal

Who grew up a rebel

And turned my sweet life into hell

I took on his dreams

And fell for his schemes

Til’ he left me abandoned

On a stage in New Orleans

But I’m here to tell you

I’m back on the stage tonight

This girl’s no quitter

I’ve got guts and glitter

Ready for battle

I’m back in the saddle

Tearing up this stage tonight

Luke is a charmer

A smile like armor

He stole my heart with a song

I believed in his stories

And all of his glories

Til’ he left me abandoned

On a stage in New Orleans

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