Page 32 of Hero on the Road
I hadn’t thought it possible but the bartender’s face got even brighter. “We have plenty of food and open rooms, so you’ve got a deal. What do you need? We don’t have much, but we do have a stage.”
He stuck his hand out and I took it, shaking firmly.
“Give us the stage, bring us some dinner, and we’ll take care of the rest.”
I couldn’t believe our good luck. I’d had hopes for a meal but this reception was more than I’d anticipated. And suddenly I couldn’t wait to play in this tiny, gorgeous bar in the middle of nowhere.
* * *
The show was better than anything we’d played so far, mostly because the crowd already knew our songs. Olivia and I had rushed through dinner and then hopped on stage with our tiny amp, hooking it up to an extension cord that ran to, I assumed, an outlet behind the bar. We didn’t have microphones. We had barstools pulled from the bar.
And we sang our hearts out anyhow, in the way we’d been learning on street corners and in parks. The thing was, we’d started out thinking that we needed amps and speakers and microphones. And then they’d been taken away from us and we’d had to figure out what to do without them.
It turned out we were even better without all that electric stuff. Particularly Olivia, who sounded somehow even more pure without a microphone in her face. She let her voice crack when she sang the emotional parts and got louder and throatier during the chorus of every song. And she looked so gorgeous doing it that it made my heart nearly break every single time.
Which, of course, made my own voice crack when I started singing again.
But the audience always went crazy for it, and given what the bartender had said, I was starting to understand why. I hadn’t read anything more than the one blog from Colin—we didn’t have a lot of time for that—but evidently he was calling us the working man and woman of country. Out here earning our own keep and connecting with the people in the country.
I didn’t think that was what Atomic had in mind when they sent us up here. They might not have planned a big, flashy tour for us, but they’d definitely wanted it to be a label-endorsed situation. Instead, we were van tripping our way through the country, stopping at any park that looked like it might have a crowd that liked music.
Yeah, now that I was thinking about it, I could see why people were cheering for us.
And the crowd in tonight’s bar knew our lyrics. They were shouting them out as we sang, dancing and shouting and telling Olivia how much they loved her voice. They were having a better time than any audience I’d ever seen before, and it was rubbing off on Olivia. She always had a good time during shows but she also managed to keep a part of herself distant from it, like she was afraid of completely losing control.
Tonight, she was losing control.
And it was beautiful.
At the end of it, with the crowd cheering, she turned and ran toward me, jumping into my arms and laughing maniacally in my ear as she hugged me.
I held her to me and breathed her in, using every trick I had in my possession to try to freeze time in that moment, when she was touching me on purpose and had lost the reserve that had been closing her off. I wanted to stand here and hold her forever. Listen to her laughter for the rest of my life and be able to feel her warmth against me.
This right here. This was heaven. A shouting crowd, my guitar on my back, and Olivia Johns in my arms. It didn’t get any better than this.
Then she was gone, jumping away from me and rushing off to talk to the crowd, and I watched her go, deflating like a balloon that had just been popped. And I remembered that she wasn’t for me. The crowd and the music? Yes.
Olivia Johns?
Never.
* * *
Of course realizing that I couldn’t have her was nothing new, and it didn’t stop me from celebrating the hell out of the night. We ran up the stairs toward the rooms upstairs laughing and excited, and I felt like we were actually flying.
“Our first sold-out show!” she gasped. “Can you believe it?”
“We have to come back here next year,” I agreed. “This is the place where it all came together. Like our home away from home.”
She giggled excitedly at that. “I never thought I’d be so excited about playing in a bar. But I’d play here again in a hot second.”
I noticed that she hadn’t said we weren’t going to be on tour again together next year, and a part of me shivered in excitement. I told that part not to get its hopes up though, and carried on.
“We’re going to have to settle down if we’re going to take advantage of having beds for the night,” I muttered. “Though I feel like I won’t sleep a wink.”
I used the key to unlock the first room on the right, which the bartender had said was mine, and looked at Olivia, confused. “Aren’t you going to go to your room?” Did she think we were going to keep hanging out all night or something?
Would I stop her if she did?
