When we first meet, I’m living in a very beige upstairs apartment off Belmont Boulevard in Nashville. It’s within throwing distance of a sushi restaurant that serves bright green martinis and a university music school. The area is populated almost exclusively by its students, someday songwriters and budding rock stars whose parents insisted they get an education. I live with a girl named Caroline whom I met freshman year at LSU. She works as a lobbyist; outside of wearing lots of pantsuits and talking about “the Capitol,” I have no idea what a lobbyist actually does. Living with Caroline automatically gifts me a million new built-in friendships, and even though Katie and Leslie have both ended up in Nashville, too, the whole point of living in a big city is to meet as many people as possible, so I lap it up. Caroline also comes with a musician boyfriend named Griffin, who lives with us when they’re getting along. He writes songs like an old man from coal country but he’s from Ohio and he’s only twenty-three.
It’s a Friday afternoon in September. I’m sitting on our doughy couch, which is just a few shades of beige darker than the walls, and three-year-old Kate Dortch is painting my nails with a green apple–scented marker. I make almost as much money babysitting on Friday nights as I do assisting the youth minister on Sunday mornings, so I keep my weekends booked solid with toddler manicures and dress-up games. Little Kate is my favorite. She’s allowed to get dirty and wear whatever she wants to because her mom is open-minded and loves for her to play. Today, she has chosen two different shoes, pajama bottoms, and a backward pirate costume. Griffin and Caroline love her too; they pop their heads out of the bedroom, where they have been having a serious discussion about their relationship, to admire the latest questionable outfit choice. We all agree that she has outdone herself and she lights up like a Christmas star.
“My Roosie,” she says, exasperated, shoving a yellow marker at me and sticking out her hand. Her fingernails are the size of the buttons on our television remote. I pop off the lid, draw a heart on her palm that she oooooohs over. I imagine my own future kids in moments like these and I know that I’ll be a good mom someday.
Just as I’m about to begin on her nails, the door rattles in its frame and somebody knocks on it. I can tell it’s a man from the deep sound his throat makes when he nervously clears it; I can tell he’s a young man by the fact that he needs to clear it at all. Kate looks at me, hand stretched out, begging me not to get up, but the knock comes again so I leave her devastated in the tan cushions.
He says his name is Jack, and in those first wonderful seconds, I have never heard a more perfect word or seen a more perfect person. He’s Griffin’s drummer, and as I hear his thunder-boom voice I sink another inch deeper into loving him. I just stare for a second and don’t say anything. It’s all I can manage to do.
“Roosie!” Kate calls impatiently from the couch.
She is standing up with her hands on her hips, forgotten and deeply offended. Jack smiles at her and she stares at her feet.
“I’m Ruthie, I live here.”
It’s a bad introduction, but it just pops out.
I force my hand into his and it gets hot right away. The feeling of him travels down my legs and buzzes in the arches of my feet.
Griffin emerges from the bedroom and embraces Jack with one of those hollow thumps to his back that boys give to each other and they tuck themselves into the kitchen nook to discuss something urgent about music. I hand Kate three uncapped markers to play with so that I can watch Jack’s dark eyebrows rise and fall as he talks. She squeals, an oblivious bundle of pink smiley fat rolls coloring all over herself, relieved to have her “Roosie” back from the strange man. Jack’s eyes drift over to mine every few seconds. I can feel them on me and I wish Kate was fifteen years older so that we could quietly gossip about what was happening.
He stuffs a CD of Griffin’s newest music into his backpack and they say goodbye with another thump. When he rounds the corner of the nook, our eyes lock. Neither of us knows what we’re supposed to do next.
“It was nice to meet you, Ruthie.”
“Nice to meet you, Jack.”
He leaves but I know I’ll see him again. My heart is sure.
Only about fifty-two hours pass until I find myself by his side. The bowling alley is a still, heavy cloud of flat beer and Odor-Eaters, but to me, it could be Paris. Jack is here. He and Griffin are leaving in the morning for a monthlong tour and all their friends have gathered to send them off with plastic jugs of Bud Light and rented shoes. Griffin and Caroline were supposed to come with me but they decided to stay home to argue, make up, and argue again.
Jack stands up from his plastic seat when he sees me and begins walking toward me as I walk toward him. I weave between groups of kids eating cheese fries, he dodges the line for the bathroom; I slip a little where the carpet turns to tile, he ducks under a low-hanging SNACK BAR sign. Finally, we meet under a giant television screen illuminated with other people’s bowling scores. He puts his arms around me the way we both wanted him to at the apartment and his chest feels exactly the way I’ve been hoping it would, like such a safe place. The crowd thins for us a bit as he leads me to his lane with a hand against the small of my back. I have seen boyfriends do this to girlfriends before and I can hardly believe it is happening to me.
The noise of the night is constant, giant marbles rolling and smashing and being swallowed into black shadow. We tell our stories, a formality of falling in love with someone, shifting in our uncomfortable plastic bucket seats and wishing they weren’t bolted to the floor. He’s from Houston, he has two brothers, and he’s a little bit younger than I am. His mom’s name is Sandra and she worries too much, she wants him to meet a nice girl (I decide, without hesitation, that this is directed at me). He laughs when I tell him about living on a farm, about driving the old truck down the road at twelve years old, and about my daddy plowing the garden with Amos the mule. It’s work to make our legs touch but we do it because we have to, because there is simply too much space between us. I can see my pulse throbbing through my jeans at the knee and the sight of our thighs next to each other is so overwhelming and exciting I almost need to get up and leave. We miss our turns, every turn, and the others give up on us. At the end of the night, Jack walks me to my car across the big empty dark of the parking lot and I lay my cheek on his shoulder. We say goodbye.
“Good to see you, Ruthie.”
“Good to see you, Jack.”
I don’t sleep at all when I get home. I think about what it will be like to kiss him and wonder how in the world I’ll be able to wait an entire month to do it. I do wait, though, sitting out on the roof and mapping out our future. When he does get back, he doesn’t call. I’m surprised and I’m sad but I keep waiting. My heart is so sure of him.
* * *
It’s just before Thanksgiving and Jack is onstage. He is surrounded by an actual halo of flash-bright stage lights, fiddling with his drum kit. We’re at a club called 3rd and Lindsley. It’s in an industrial area of town, stuck right in the glow of the freeway lights and a giant fluorescent strip club sign. It’s one of the best places in the city for a young band to play, and in just a few minutes, Griffin will be on. Leslie is with me, I made her come, and together, we stare at Jack from behind a basket of fried pickles and wonder if he’s noticed me.