My voice dipped to a hush. “Still haven’t answered my question, Erika.”
Her eyes were wild and her expression anxious, like she worried her answer was signing the song rights over to me alone and for all time. I opened my mouth to tell her that wasn’t true. She hadn’t even finished—
“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s for you.”
I kissed her, because how could I not? I’d only heard part of the song, but I’d wanted it so badly, it felt like an enormous gift. No, not felt—it was a gift.
Our kiss wasn’t like the ones we’d had before.
Until this moment, kissing her had been foreplay. Part of something larger, working toward a goal of getting us naked and sweaty. But this slow, deep kiss wasn’t about that at all. It echoed what she’d sung about, how she was scared but didn’t want to be released. Our mouths moved together, silently singing how we both wanted more.
The intense kiss faded until she ended it. If I had any doubt it hadn’t gotten to her, it disappeared when she touched her fingertips to her lips, like my kiss lingered there.
My voice was full of gravel. “What’s my song called?”
“I was thinking of calling it ‘Power.’”
I nodded, liking that. “Will you play it again?”
She did, and when she finished, she then began to teach it to me.
I wasn’t sure where the best place would be to throw up in the green room of the Grand Ole Opry House. It was called a green room, but the dressing room had cream-colored walls and furniture decorated in purple velvet. It was fancy as fuck, and basically wallpapered with framed photos and show posters of all the legends who had performed here. Willie Nelson stared down at me.
No pressure.
There was a bathroom attached that I could use, but it was shared with another dressing room, and I wasn’t quiet when I hurled. Whoever was waiting in the other room was my competition, and I didn’t want them to hear me being a pussy.
Hopefully, it didn’t come to me using the trashcan in the corner. My stomach was bubbling and acidic, but it usually went away when I stepped on stage. This waiting was fucking killing me though, and why the hell hadn’t I taken more time to distract myself while tuning my guitar?
I checked my phone again to see if I had any new text messages from Erika, but there was only the one from thirty minutes ago.
Erika: We’re behind schedule, so sit tight. Probably another 20 minutes.
I’d warmed up my voice, so now I paced the room to stay loose. It was weird to be alone right now, but there was nothing I could do about it. Preston had work, so I didn’t bother asking him to come, and if I had, he might have flaked anyway. Erika was the only one who knew I was here, and she couldn’t be back in the green room with me. She was sitting in the audience with Ardy and the rest of Stella’s crew, judging.
Plus, I wasn’t her only client auditioning today.
I didn’t have a clue how many acts were auditioning in total, but she’d told me to block off the entire day. It was a bare minimum of fifteen performers, but probably more. My call time had been eleven a.m., and while I’d been escorted to my room to prepare, I’d heard music coming from the main stage. The auditions were already happening.
Pacing was making my cold sweat worse, and I glanced in the lighted mirror to make sure I still looked okay. I wore the same thing I usually wore when I performed. Jeans, a blue plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled back to the elbows, and my leather cuff. My hair looked decent and my face wasn’t shiny yet, so that was good.
A knock at the dressing room door made me flinch. “Osbourne?”
“Yeah,” I answered.
“It’s time,” the production assistant announced.
Fuck. I should have thrown up and gotten it out of the way. Now that window had closed. I grabbed my guitar, pulled open the door, and followed the guy wearing a headset down the hall.
I’d been backstage in the famed theatre before, but that had been years ago during a middle school class tour. It was really hitting me what was about to happen. If this was it—as far as I ever made it as a singer—I couldn’t complain, could I? I was getting to perform on the same stage as Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and Dolly Parton. Last week, Dierks Bentley had sold this place out.
We wound through the hall, passing other production people and what I assumed was the band that had gone on before me, because they were carrying instruments. My brain could barely register it over the noise that played as nervous static in my head.
The guy I’d been following wasn’t much older than I was, but he looked serious and was dressed head-to-toe in black, so he reminded me of an executioner. Maybe he was. It kind of felt like I was walking toward my doom.
What if I bombed?
What if I let Erika down?
Pressure mounted at the base of my spine and crawled up my back. Over the last week, I’d spent every available moment either practicing or thinking about the audition. Erika had gotten me a gig at a bar on the far side of town this past Thursday. It was dark and cramped, a total dive. The crowd had been more interested in their drinks than me when I’d started my set, but I’d been able to convince most of them to come around by the end.
I was as prepared as I could be, she’d told me last night, and she believed in me. She’d invited me over to her house to talk business, but after hearing that, it’d been impossible to keep my hands off her. It led to a quick fuck, both of us needing to let off some steam, before she sent me packing. I needed my rest, she told me.
“Hold here. Don’t go out until I tell you to,” the assistant said when we reached the curtains at the side of the stage. “When I say so, you’ll walk to the mic, someone will get you plugged in, and there will be a quick sound check.”
There was a lump the size of a baseball in my throat as I peered ahead. The stage was brightly lit and empty, other than a microphone stand in the center. It was placed on top of a six-foot circle of yellow hardwood, while the rest of the stage was made of darker planks of wood, lightly scratched and scuffed from years of performances. The ring in the center was made from the original stage at the Ryman Auditorium, where the Grand Ole Opry Show was born nearly a hundred years ago. It even miraculously survived the catastrophic Nashville flood in 2010, while the rest of the stage couldn’t be salvaged.
The assistant nodded to whatever was said to him through the headset and put his focus on me. “Okay, we’re all set. Good luck.”
My heart thudded in my chest and my guitar weighed a million pounds, but luckily my feet still seemed to work. I rolled my shoulders back, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the stage.
The lights were so powerful I had to blink against them, but I forced an easy smile onto my face. I’d fake it until I made it in the confidence department, because who’d want to watch some nervous kid as the opening act for a superstar?
The stage was huge as I crossed it. Overhead, red curtains were draped as scallops, and the lights from beneath the balcony tier winked back at me. When I approached the legendary circle of oak, my anxiety vanished. Yeah, this wasn’t the same as performing a show at the Grand Ole Opry, and the red seats of the large theatre were mostly empty, but—
This was a moment I’d remember the rest of my life.