His Melody (23 page)

Back in the truck, Melody set her paper bag full of squash, collard greens, and peppers between her feet. Austin set the cantaloupes they’d bought on the seat between them. She reached across the seat for his hand. He took hers and brought it to his lips, kissing it. She smiled as he started up the truck.

“Austin, what’s gonna happen between us when I go back?” She chose not to bring up the music again yet. She had to mention the showcase soon, though. She was running out of time.

He dropped her hand and gently patted it before pulling onto the road. “Melody, I’m grateful for what you did today. I want you to know that. But it’s best if you forget about me when you go. Leave me behind in Sweet Neck where I belong. Forgotten.” She could almost hear the, “by everybody” he left off the end of that statement.

“Why?”

“Haven’t you been listening? I’m poison to the things I love. I destroy everything I touch.”

Her heart pounded at his choice of words. Did that mean he loved her? Regardless of what he’d meant, he had no problem letting her walk out of his life. Ignoring her unsteady, sweaty palms, she said, “Is this about Kristen? Or Isadora?”

“Both. Everybody. Just—I’m done making a mess of things, okay?”

“So you plan to die old, shriveled up, and alone.”

He smiled and shrugged. “I dunno. I might get a dog.”

“Very funny, Austin. I’m trying to be serious here.”

“So am I.”

“You know you’re not responsible for what happened to Kristen, right? She made her own choices she has to live with just like you did. Like everybody does.” She reached across the seat and patted his knee. “What happened to Isadora isn’t your fault, either.”

He didn’t say anything, but he did put his hand over the hand she had resting on his knee.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Friday evening, Austin and Donnie went over to Regan’s after dinner to help her bale hay and make some repairs to her shelving and hooks in the tack room.

Donnie laid claim to the brand new John Deere as soon as they got there. Austin, ever the patient older brother—or at least he tried to be—walked alongside and kept watch over the baling.

Back in the barn, while they were putting away the bales, Donnie said, “You and Regan get along okay, huh?”

“Yep,” Austin said with a grunt as he hefted a bale of hay above his head. Donnie grabbed it and stuck it in its proper place in the loft. Austin climbed down so that he could go get another one.

“I guess if she can forgive you, I can, too.”

“Huh?” Austin almost dropped the bale of hay he was carrying.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what Melody said when we went fishing,” Donnie said.

“Yeah?” Austin tossed the bale up to his brother who grabbed it and stuck it up there with the rest of them.

“Yeah, well, I guess she’s right about a lot of things.” Donnie peered down at him from his perch in the loft. “You shouldn’t let her get away from you.”

Austin ran the back of his hand across his forehead, wiping sweat from it. “You’re just saying that because you want the shop.”

Donnie laughed. “All a part of my plan.” He sat so that his legs dangled over the edge of the loft. “Seriously, though, she’s good for you. Even I can see that. You’ve been happier—more peaceful or something—since she showed up than you have in a long time.”

“Yeah, well, she’s from a different world than I am.”
A fast-paced, public world.
One he had no desire to go back to. The part of him that wanted any of that—the Grayson part—was dead.
And good riddance.

“Not so different,” Donnie said.

“It’ll be better for everyone if she goes.” He carefully chose his words, avoiding the phrase,
If
I just let her go
.

“You’ll regret it,” Donnie said.

“How do you know?”

“Oh believe me. I know a lot about regret,” Donnie said with a small grimace. His eyes fell away from Austin’s. “There’s so much I didn’t say to Dad at the end.”

“I think he knew all the important things. Y’all were best friends.” Donnie had a much better relationship with their father than he ever had.

“He wanted so much for us to make up at the end. You and me,” Donnie said. “You know our last fight was about that? The last one before he had the—before he went to the hospital that last time.”

“Oh,” Austin said.

“Yeah.”

It was silent in the barn for a while, each brother lost in his own thoughts.

Then Donnie jumped to his knees and clapped his hands. “Let’s get a move on. These bales
ain’t
gonna walk themselves up the ladder and into this loft. And we haven’t even gotten to the repairs in the tack room yet.”

“Right,” Austin said. He climbed down the ladder and went to fetch another bale. His brother’s words stuck with him for the rest of the night. He made a mental note to re-read the last letter his father had written him when he got home.

#

There was an orchard behind the Holts’ house. Peaches had been grown there long ago, but nobody had planted anything there in years besides a couple of junk trucks. Leigh Anne and her mother and her mother’s mother had planted signs of magnolia trees back there over the years as well, and they were scattered throughout the land where peach trees used to grow. Leigh Anne wouldn’t tolerate the junk trucks anywhere near her yard, so her boys compromised by keeping them toward the back of the old orchard.

That was where Melody found Austin at dusk. He hadn’t come inside after he’d gotten home from baling hay. Apparently, he’d gone straight out to the truck.

Austin sat in a rusted out Ford Bronco that had been red at some point in its long life. It was up on cinder blocks. He was staring out into the reds and purples of the sky at the place where the sun had set earlier.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hey,” he said before swigging his beer.

“I didn’t hear you come in the house. How’d you get a beer?”

“Donnie and I stopped at the gas station on our way home,” Austin said.

Melody stared at the frame of the truck. It was missing its driver’s side door. “What happened to the door?”

Austin shrugged. “Was like this when we got it.”

“How do you keep the rain and,” she shuddered, “critters out?”

“Tarp.” Austin grinned and pointed at the tarp that he’d rolled up and flung over the roof of the truck.

“Oh.”

“Wanna sit with me a minute?” He set down his beer between his legs on the floorboard and held out his hands. She put her hands in his, and he pulled her across his lap and into the truck. He tucked her next to his side and picked up his beer again.

“Hm.” She picked at the cracked vinyl on the dashboard. “Talk about vintage.”

“Dad and I were fixing this thing up when I was in high school,” Austin said, shocking her with information about his past that she didn’t have to pull out of him. When I ran off…he just parked it out here in the old orchard and forgot about it. Gave up on it.” He gulped some of his beer.

Melody put her arms around him and hugged him to her. They sat there for a while, holding each other. The only sounds were the chirps of crickets and the calls of bullfrogs from a nearby pond. She closed her eyes and breathed in the cool yet heavy evening air.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what all you’ve said.” Austin rested the side of his face against hers. “And all you’ve done for us since you’ve been here.”

“And?” She pulled back a little and looked at him.

“Thanks.” He kissed the tip of her nose, and she inhaled the beer on his breath. Then he kissed her mouth. Beer had never tasted so good. When he pulled back, she put a hand on his thigh and leaned across his lap. Resting her back across his thighs, and propping herself up slightly on her elbows, she looked up at him. He stared down at her. She tried to memorize his face.
The strong, angular jaw.
Long, slightly crooked nose.

She missed home, but she couldn’t imagine being in a place where Austin wasn’t.

“You didn’t have to do any of that,” he said.

“But I wanted to.”

“One of the many great things about you.” He searched her face with his perfect green eyes. It seemed like he was looking for something he couldn’t quite find.

“What?” she asked, nestling her head against the thick, muscled wall of his chest. She felt his hand move to her hip. His fingers slipped under her shirt and inside her jeans to caress the skin just under the waistband.

“I had a good talk with my brother while we were baling hay for Regan.” He pulled her closer. “I think Donnie and I are going to be okay now. Thanks to you.” He said, “I’ve spilled my guts and all my family drama to you, but you haven’t done the same.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Tell me about your parents,” he said, his thumb moving back and forth over the skin at the base of her spine. “You don’t talk about them much.”

They listened to the bullfrogs chirp as she tried to get her thoughts together, decide what she wanted to say. She smiled. “My dad was a saxophone player. He was really good, too. He played with his band in this jazz band in the late seventies and early eighties. That’s how he met my mom. She was in the audience one night and…they couldn’t keep their eyes off each other. He asked her out afterwards. They dated for a few months before getting married.” She wondered briefly if her mom had felt the same thing she felt when she looked at Austin. Funny, she’d never felt this with her ex. She’d thought she loved him at the beginning, but maybe she was wrong about that. She certainly hadn’t loved him at the end.

Wait. Did that mean she loved Austin?

“So they knew right away, huh?” Austin said.

“Yeah.” She snuggled closer to him. “Dad was great. He used to play for me almost every night when he was home and not out on the road touring. He let me sit in on the band’s practices even though mom fussed because it was past my bedtime.” She tried to laugh, but the sound got stuck in her throat. “I was a Daddy’s girl. That’s for sure.” That was enough. It was still painful to go back into those memories even though years had passed. Her dad died when she was a senior in high school, but talking about it made it seem like it’d happened yesterday.

He kissed the top of her head and rubbed her shoulder. “So he had his own band, huh? What was the name?”

“Rapture,” she said faintly.

“Oh yeah. I heard of them.”

“Well, not too many people did,” she said bitterly. “Dad got angry that the band wasn’t taking off the way he wanted it to. The way they deserved to. They were really good. The angrier he got, the more he drank.” She took a deep breath. “Another group started copying their style and sound. A group that already had a recording contract with a major label. Dad wanted to fight them in court, but the rest of the guys didn’t think it was worth it. So the band started to fall apart, and so did my parents’ marriage.”

“I’m sorry.” He pulled her close her and stroked the center of her back.

“They got divorced when I was twelve. By the time I was seventeen, he’d drunk himself to death. Mom never really got over it. She loved him even if she couldn’t stand the way he acted. She told me to never fall in love with a dreamer and that becoming a dreamer was even worse.” She sighed and looked up at him. “She wanted me to be safe. To her, that meant practical. Do something that’s going to bring you a sure paycheck, she says. Find a man who can provide you with security. That’s who she thought my ex was. She was devastated about the divorce. Her number one favorite thing to remind me of is
,
dreams don’t pay bills.”

“That’s why you’re afraid to go into business for yourself as a music manager.”

“No, it’s not,” she said, resenting the fact that he sounded like he had her all figured out. “I told you. I’m just not prepared for that financially.”

“It’s funny.” He chuckled. “You keep telling me how it’s a waste if I don’t follow my dreams. But fear paralyzes you from following your own.”

“You’re a sure thing,” she said. “Bianca saw it. You’re sexy, talented. You have everything it takes to become a star. Anybody who knows anything about music would be able to see it. It’s not the same thing.”

“Hm,” was all he
said.

She was about to let him have it for sitting over there all smug, acting like he had all the answers, when he kissed her again. With his lips moving over hers, she forgot to be angry
at
him. He pulled back, and they sat there smiling at each other in what was left of the day’s light as twilight faded into dusk. He was all she wanted in so many ways. After the past few days, she couldn’t understand how he couldn’t see things the way she did. She could barely force herself to think the most horrible thought—that maybe the days they’d spent together hadn’t had the effect on him they’d had on her.

“I don’t want to go back without you.” She put her hand low on his jaw. He pulled her to a sitting position on his lap.

He covered her mouth with his, and soon she couldn’t think of anything besides him and how good it felt to be in his arms.