Page 14 of Sounds Like Love

I rolled my eyes. “Like—I dunno—bergamot and oakwood.”

She put her hands to her mouth in a gasp. “You got close enough tosmellhim.”

And that was the exact moment I decided not to tell her that I’d also kissed him. No, she would never let me live that down. She most certainly wouldn’t be cool about it. Though, Renegade was a decent chunk of her life, so I understood it. I wasn’t sure I would benormalif I met Roman Fell, either, honestly. “Willa invited me to a private balcony at the theater and he was there,” I said instead.

“You livesucha storied life,” she moaned. “The coolest person I’ve ever met was an Elvis impersonator named Elvistoo.”

“He was kinda an asshole, really,” I admitted.

She rolled her eyes. “You think that every guy is an asshole.”

I gasped. “That’s not true!”

She pulled her arm through mine again and tugged me along toward the Revelry. “I love you, but you’re just alittleprickly.”

I could see the glow of the marquee over the buildings, like a beacon calling me.And then when I turned the corner—there it was.

The Revelry.

It sat like a husk of itself, squeezed between a new jewelry store and a dry cleaner. It had weathered more hurricanes than years I’d been alive, and it was finally showing its age, like vinyl spun on a player for a little too long.

The building used to be an auto parts warehouse once upon a time, before my grandparents bought it in the fifties and turned it into a music hall. The exterior was this old orangish-red brick, with a sign out front that stated the name in big, looping neon-blue letters, and just underneath it a marquee with the night’s entertainment.

It was a landmark in Vienna Shores, and one of the last remaining concert halls where legends once dropped by for impromptu performances and a free beer.

They hadn’t in years, though.

Times changed, musicians retired.

The marquee spelled out the show tonight, though I couldn’t make out who it was. A few of the letters had blown away in the wind, so the sign looked a little like an afterthought. Dad was usually very on top of the marquee, so it was a little surprising. I guessed theywereunderstaffed tonight, if Dad let the sign fall by the wayside.

But still it was good to be home.

Just as I got to the edge of the sidewalk, about to cross the road, a familiar figure came to the front door. Gigi must’ve texted her that we’d arrived. She popped up and down on her toes excitedly, her hands clasped together. Her hair was a little shorter, a little grayer, but she still wore her tried-and-true black T-shirt, worn stretchy jeans,and crocs. There were sunspots on her tanned white skin, from years of baking in baby oil in the eighties, and her nails were pristine French tips. She caught sight of us as we crossed the street, and her brown eyes met mine. They were the same color, same soft round shape.

Then she smiled. There was a gap between her front teeth that, if her life had been different, would have been calleden vogue.

As she stepped out onto the sidewalk, the light turned red at the intersection, and I ran across, dodging between tourists heading to dinner and surf shops and the beach. I stumbled on the curb, and she opened her arms, and I fell into my mom’s hug.

Chapter5Dream (to Me)

MY FIRST MEMORYwas of a concert.

Mom and Dad had taken the weekend off so we could go to a festival in the mountains. It was late summer, and the August wind shook the trees and carried with it the sound of classic rock to the thousands of people there. At the time, I didn’t know that the man singing had been Roman Fell or that, once upon a time before I was born, Mom had sung onstage with him. I just knew that a rainstorm came up during his set, though it’d been cloudy all day, and while half the people on the lawn raced for cover, my parents stayed. The rain was cool and welcoming, the grass soft and green, and during a folksy rendition of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” Mom pulled Mitch up from the ground and spun him around on the grass, and Dad put me on his feet, and we danced. But as soon as Mom started to sing, I couldn’t take my eyes away. I knew she could, but that was the first time I really heard her voice. Reallylistened.

As she sang, her voice mixed with the rain, as if she summoned the storm. The wind picked up and pulled through her long hair, and though chaos swirled around us, she looked so happy, her eyes shimmering with the far-off stage lights. She sang through a smile as wide and bright as a summer dawn, and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

My first memory was a concert, but I didn’t remember Roman Fell and the Boulevard at all. I just remembered the wet green grass, and spinning in the puddles, and singing with that wild, reckless abandon of people who didn’t care who watched. It was the first time I reallyexperiencedmusic. The first time I understood it—what it was, what it meant.

And what it meant tome.

In that moment, I realized that music could be everything. It was the feeling of existing, dancing, reveling in the pouring rain.

It wasmagic.

The kind of magic that whispered,You have a hundred years to live, in that joyous infinite yelp that tricked you, for a moment, into believing that you could be infinite, too.

And what an enchanted thing music was, to persist long after its performers.

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