Fanfare (Country Roads #2) - Chapter 34

We couldn’t go to the club right away, since I needed a shower and the girls declared they weren’t dressed to go out. I thought they looked fine. At the few parties I’d gone to everyone dressed pretty much like they were dressed now, so I didn’t know why they needed to change. Of course, I was dumb enough to voice that thought out loud, after which they took a good part of the ride home explaining how parties at home weren’t the same as going to an actual club. I tried to point out that I only brought t-shirts and blue jeans, but they didn’t think that was the same. Apparently, guys are under different rules. Not that it mattered. The only “nice” clothes I had was a single button-up shirt, which was only pulled out for special occasions.

Hanna’s aunt had two showers, and the girls both took both of them, regardless of the fact that only one of the three of us had done enough exercise to actually need a shower. Once again, I was informed I didn’t understand how things worked. So after setting out the clothes I was going to wear, which only differed from the ones I was wearing at the moment in that they were clean, I sat in the living room and listened to Sam explain whatever show he was watching while I waited for the girls. I liked Sam and wasn’t trying to ignore him, but I’m not sure how much of his explanation I understood beyond it involved some kind of giant robot and ninjas, which didn’t seem like a fair match-up. But what did I know?

We grabbed a quick bite out the door, because we didn’t know what the plan was for dinner, and headed out. The club was in downtown Raleigh, which none of us had been to before. Hanna found it quickly using her GPS, but parking was a complete mystery to us. In Wellsville, and everywhere I’d been in Asheville, places all had parking lots attached to them, or at least nearby, so it wasn’t that hard. Even the places we’d been to so far on our trip had parking. Raleigh wasn’t New York or L.A., but apparently, in downtown they just assumed everyone knew where to find parking.

There were some street-metered parking spots, but they were all taken up so we drove around for ten minutes until we finally found a cash lot three blocks away. It was still pretty cold out and the girls had dressed for style, but not particularly for warmth.

We hurried down the street to the club, which thankfully didn’t have a line because it was a Wednesday. They checked our IDs and put big black and white Xs on our hands that looked hard to see until we were inside. There must have been some kind of black-light or something, mixed in with the regular strobing lights, because it made parts of my shirt and the Xs on all our hands stand out. There were a fair number of people inside, and nearly every one of them had the same white x, which told us all we needed to know about the average age of the people here. Victor looked decidedly out of place, standing off to one side, looking both older than everyone else and with no shinning white X. To his credit, he looked both embarrassed and uncomfortable to be there.

“Hey guys,” he said, coming over as soon as he noticed us.

“This doesn’t really seem to be your crowd,” I said, pointing at all the people clearly younger than him.

“No. I haven’t been here before, but I’ve heard some guys at the studio talk about it, since it’s really the only underage place opened on weekdays and the only under eighteen place down here at all.”

“I’m surprised. Isn’t Raleigh a college town too? I’d think they’d cater to college kids.”

“They do, and there are some places that do over eighteen but under twenty-one. As far as I know, this is the only under eighteen place in town. Or at least the only one I know of.”

“You know people are looking over here like you’re a creeper.”

“Yeah, I know it. It’s fine though. I mostly wanted to show you guys a good time when you’re in my city. Hell, Charlie gave me a full-on concert when I was there last time.”

“Well, I was playing for a lot of people, but I’m glad you invited us out. We were just going to go back to her aunt’s house and hang out.”

“Speaking of a concert, you know Charlie and his new band are playing tomorrow at the Spring Break Bash if you want to come and listen,” Hanna said.

“Well, I’m not in school anymore, so this is just a work week for me, and getting off on a random Thursday can be kind of tough.”

“Ohh,” she said. “I forgot.”

I think how comfortable he was around us and how he treated all three of us just like equals made it hard to remember he was a good six years older than Hanna, and eight years older than me. That didn’t put him in our parents’ territory, but it did make things very different.

“Did you want to go dance?” Kat asked me.

“Uhh, I don’t really know how to dance. I mean, I danced with Rhonda at Homecoming, but that was kind of different.”

“Nah, I saw you then. It’s fine. Just kind of hop around with the sound, I mean, you’re a musician; you can keep a beat. They won’t play slow songs here, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“I guess,” I said.

I followed Kat out to the dance floor and I’m pretty sure made a complete fool of myself. She was doing specific things and looked very cool and I felt like I was just jumping around, kind of moving with the beat. If you asked me later, I couldn’t even tell you what I’d been trying to do. Still, Kat seemed to have fun and wanted to keep going when the song ended.

Hanna and Victor joined us, and they both seemed to know what they were doing. I tried to copy him, but it was hard to tell if what I was trying to do was anywhere close to what he was doing. We’d all dance for a while and then switch and Victor would dance with Kat and I’d dance with Hanna. A few times these two skeezy-looking guys that might have been in college tried to break in and dance with Hanna and Kat.

Actually, saying they tried to break in was a stretch. They more kind of put themselves between the girls and us, and kind of pushed and pulled the girls away from us, until Hanna told them to get lost. They made a few choice comments, but none of us felt like trying to make anything out of it, and they never came back, so we kind of brushed it off and kept having fun.

We danced for a few hours, or at least the girls did. I’d dance for one or two songs and then try to sneak off, since I still felt like a fool every time, despite having fun. They’d let me get away with it for one or two songs and then come retrieve me and make me dance some more. It went back and forth like that until about ten-thirty when we had to call it a night. Victor had already called it a night since he had to be at work at seven, and I think he felt a little out of place with us the whole time. I’d appreciated him spending several hours dancing with the girls and I think he’d had a good time, despite feeling like he stood out. I think the girls could have probably kept going, but Hanna’s aunt had asked us to be home before eleven-thirty.

She’d explained it as not wanting to come back too late and disturb Sam or her sleep. Except for the day we took him to Trianglecon, where he was with us during the day, he was spending the daytime hours at a friend’s house where the mom didn’t work. Sam had been torn, because he wanted to hang out with his cousin but he also wanted to go to his friend’s house and play video games all day. In the end, we’d convinced him that, except for Trianglecon, he’d have been bored hanging out with us while we looked at colleges and stuff. His mom still dropped him off on the way to work, so they were both up by seven in the morning and I don’t think Hanna’s aunt planned to sleep until she knew we were home, which was also part of the reason she’d asked us to be home at a decent hour.

“Do we have to?” Kat whined when Hanna said it was time.

She’d been having so much fun and I think this was one of the things she’d missed since she’d stopped being one of the “cool kids” as part of Aaron’s group and had started spending all of her time with Hanna and me. We might treat her better, but we basically just kept to working and going to school, which meant she hadn’t been to a party or anything else like that in months. This was probably the closest she’d gotten to being out in a long while.

“Yeah,” Hanna said, but she could see the disappointment on Kat’s face. “How about this. I’ll go get the car and call you when I’m driving up and you can all come out and jump in. You’ll probably be able to get one more song in.”

“Are you sure you don’t want us to walk with you?” I asked.

“No, I’ll be fine. It’s well lit, there are still people out, and it’s early.”

“Come on, let’s dance one more,” Kat said, pulling on my sleeve.

“Okay,” I said to Hanna as I let Kat pull me away. “Just be careful.”

Hanna waved me off and headed for the door while I went dancing with Kat. We finished off the song that had been playing when she left and the next song and were halfway through the third when I started to get worried.

“Let’s go check on her,” I told Kat, pulling her to follow me.

“She’s fine,” Kat said, still dancing.

I could tell how much fun she was having by the fact that she’d just directly contradicted me. That was a rarity for her, and she normally did so very sheepishly, which made it even harder to not let her have that moment.

“I know you’re having a good time and I wish we could stay, but we can’t. Let’s go.”

“Okay,” she said, I think suddenly realizing what she’d said a moment ago.

I grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze so she’d know I wasn’t mad at her, and pulled her out with me. Her anxiety was suddenly gone again as we left holding hands, a grin on her face. I knew I was manipulating her emotions, but I could feel something was wrong in the pit of my stomach and didn’t have time to argue with her.

We walked out and I looked either way down the street and sidewalk. I didn’t see her either way, or her car. I turned us towards the parking lot we’d left the car in, since she’d had time to get there and it was the only place I could think of to find her. Inside I was hoping for some kind of car trouble making her run behind, since that would be better than the alternative.

We were about halfway there, passing a big catholic church set back off the road with a nicely manicured front walkway with bushes and things leading up to it, when I heard a noise from around the side of the church. I stopped for a second, listening, because at first, I wasn’t sure what I was hearing. There were still cars and things on the street, which made enough noise that I could have just been misinterpreting what I’d heard.

Once it came again, I was sure though. From the right side of the church, behind a row of bushes, I definitely heard a muffled squealing sound accompanied by thrashing. Now that I was paying attention, I also noticed the bushes shaking a bit.

I dropped Kat’s hand and ran towards the bushes, crashing through them more than jumping over them, ignoring the stinging pain from their branches digging into my arms and cutting through my shirt.

My fears were realized when I found Hanna and the two jack-asses that had been harassing her and Kat earlier. Actually, I should say it was almost as bad as I feared. She was back here and the two guys were trying to assault her, but they picked the wrong girl to mess with. Hanna’s a fighter and she still has an angry streak a mile long that she barely manages to keep under the surface.

She was pissed, and she wasn’t trying to keep it under wraps anymore. One of the guys was on the ground, clutching at his crotch, rolling around, blood coming out of his nose. The other guy had apparently knocked her over and gotten on top of her, but now it was all he could do to keep her hands from clawing at his face or her knees and feet from finding the target they were aiming at. He’d caught her and was now desperately trying to find a way to get out of it.

I was more than happy to help. I stepped over his friend who was still rolling around in pain and kicked out with the flat of my foot as hard as I could, catching him right in the side. He’d been so distracted trying to fend off Hanna that he hadn’t even noticed my wild charge through the bushes. The first time he realized there was anyone else with him was when my foot impacted his side. He went sailing off of her, catching several feet of air before slamming into the ground. It’s hard to say if anything broke when I kicked him, but he wasn’t getting up.

Hanna scrambled off the ground and looked ready to murder him. I only just managed to grab her by the arms before she got to him, her hands outstretched.

“I’m going to rip his fucking eyes out,” she said, practically foaming at the mouth.

“No,” I said, pulling her back more. “Let’s just call the cops.”

“What’s the fucking point,” she said, now turning her unleashed anger on me. “I’d rather just teach these fuckers a lesson they won’t soon forget.”

“Look at them,” I said, pointing at the two guys still on the ground. “I think they’ve learned it. Right now, you’ve only defended yourself. Let’s not make this into something else?”

I hadn’t heard the entire story yet, but I know she was sexually assaulted by Aaron during a party early last year. She’d tried to go to the police, but Aaron’s father being who he was, everything got swept under the rug. She had a serious issue with guys like Aaron, which these two douchebags definitely were, and with the police, ever since.

“Fuck it,” she said, kicking the guy she’d hit in the nuts hard, her foot smashing into his right shoulder. “Let’s go.”

Neither guy looked to be getting up nor planning on doing anything but be in pain for a little bit, so we stepped over them and left, although Hanna used a much more reasonable path around the bushes than straight through them. Kat was on the other side of the bushes looking terrified. She’d heard a lot of scuffling but had no way to know what was happening till we reemerged. A look of relief washed over her face for a moment, before she saw a rip in Hanna’s blouse.

“Are you okay?” she asked, grabbing Hanna’s arm.

“I’m fine,” Hanna said, pulling away angrily.

She didn’t mean to take it out on Kat and was just angry, probably having flashbacks to her assault, and lashing out at anyone who came nearby. I grabbed Kat’s hand and gave it a squeeze as we walked a few paces behind her back to her car.

***

We were up very early the next day, since we were the first band to go on and I wanted us to have enough time to figure out where to go and stuff. The band had made it in the night before, although they’d gotten a cheap motel not far from the fairgrounds where the event was being held, so we’d agreed to meet them there.

I’d told them we’d be by at seven, since our gig started at nine. They’d grumbled but I pointed out these guys did other festivals and stuff and bands playing more prime time slots were getting a lot more than us, so I wanted to make sure we didn’t screw this up. They’d agreed, although I didn’t realize how grudgingly until I was banging on their door for the fourth time, waiting for someone to answer. I’d started getting worried I might have the wrong room when the door opened with Seth both holding it and leaning on it simultaneously.

“Jesus Christ, what time is it.”

“Seven.”

“I thought you were kidding.”

“Turn off the fucking light,” Marco shouted from one of the beds.

I pushed past Seth and went inside. There were two double beds in the room, with Marco in one and Lyla in the other. The pillow and blanket on the floor suggested that was where Seth slept, which is also probably why he was the first one up, since he couldn’t have been comfortable enough to really get good sleep.

“Guys, it’s seven AM. Get up. We gotta get moving.”

“Whose idea was this?” Marco wined, pulling a pillow over his head.

I grabbed Seth’s pillow off the floor and chucked it at him.

“Come on, man. This is our best-paying gig yet. We can’t blow it.”

He hugged the pillow to himself harder for a second and then threw it off.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. I’m up.”

Despite all the commotion we were making, Lyla hadn’t even moved yet.

I started to take a step towards that bed and stopped, not being quite sure of the etiquette for shaking a girl awake, since I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable or anything. I looked over to Hanna who rolled her eyes but walked around the bed and me to stand facing the side Lyla was facing. Leaning down, Hanna grabbed her shoulder and shook.

“Get up. Hey, wake up.”

Lyla’s reaction was interesting. Instead of complaining, or mumbling, or throwing a pillow, she reached up and hooked an arm around Hanna’s neck, pulling her forward like she was going to kiss Hanna. Hanna must have had the same impression, because she pulled back hard, forcing Lyla to release.

“She’s up,” Hanna said, walking away as Lyla propped herself up.

“Were you asleep or were you faking it to make a move?” I asked.

It was really hard to tell, because the timing on that was great, but she seemed almost asleep still when she’d grabbed Hanna. Lyla just shrugged and gave a sly smile, which really didn’t answer the question. It didn’t take long for the three of them to pack up and we were standing by the cars in under ten minutes, which wasn’t bad considering they’d been asleep until a few minutes before.

“Your names should be on the list and I sent Seth a map that shows where we’re supposed to go for parking and to get to backstage.”

“Are they in the audience or coming with us,” Seth asked, pointing at Hanna and Kat?

He wasn’t asking it maliciously or anything and mostly just sounded curious.

“Backstage with us,” Lyla said. “We wouldn’t want to go on without our manager with us.”

“I’m not your …”

“Well I can’t tell them you’re my groupies, can I?” Lyla said, grinning.

Hanna just glowered but Kat continued to find Lyla funny and let out a laugh. Lyla was getting worse and I couldn’t tell if it was because she kept getting a reaction out of Hanna or if Kat laughing every time was egging her on.

“They said we could bring a few people if we needed them, so I’m just going to tell them they’re part of our group. It should be fine. We’re the first band up and they said we could use all of our own equipment if we wanted, and I told them we would. That still okay?”

“Yep,” Seth said. “I brought my kit and Marco is set.”

“And we’re all set on the setlist, right? If things aren’t feeling right, I might switch it up, so just watch for it, okay?”

“We’ll do fine, Charlie,” Seth said.

“Yeah, sorry. This is the biggest thing I’ve done so far, so I’m just a little nervous, I guess. Let’s get going.”

“It’s kind of jammed in Seth’s car with all the equipment. Do you mind if I ride with you?” Lyla asked Hanna.

“Yes. But keep your hands to yourself,” Hanna said, rolling her eyes and getting into the driver’s seat.

As soon as Hanna turned to get into the car Lyla made eye contact with Kat and me and wiggled her eyebrows, causing Kat to laugh again.

“What?” Hanna looked out with the door half opened at Kat and Lyla.

“Nothing,” Lyla said trying, and failing, to put on an innocent face.

Hanna rolled her eyes again and closed the door while the rest of us piled in.

The venue wasn’t as hard to find as I thought, since they were using the state fairgrounds, which was both permanent and had lots of signage leading up to it pointing drivers where to go.

We drove past a big entrance that both announced this as the state fairgrounds and had banners up letting everyone know it was the Spring Break Bash and drive down and around the large rectangular area to a separate smaller entrance that just said ‘employees’ with no other signage. A woman was standing there with a clipboard that had our names and she didn’t seem to care if there were other people in the car. Apparently, if one person in the car was on the list, that’s all that mattered.

Since we were first up, we got to unload straight to the stage, instead of to a holding area backstage, waiting for when the equipment was switched out. Although I helped haul stuff, most of the work was being done by Marco and Seth, who had a system for quickly getting his kit set up and taken down. While I was sure eventually we’d have a way for all of us to do it, for right now Lyla and I were more in the way than helping, and this wasn’t the place to try something new.

“I’m surprised we need to use our own set. I’d have thought festivals just had a drum kit up here that everyone used.”

“That sometimes happens,” Lyla said. “It’s not ideal. Not all kits are the same and some bands have stuff added into theirs for some of their songs that they wouldn’t have using someone else’s kit. Besides, some guys will just wail on it if it isn’t theirs, and I’ve seen a few damaged. What sucks is when you’re first up and they ask to just use yours for the following bands. I’ve seen people get their kits seriously ruined doing that, and the festival never pays to replace anything.”

“That sucks.”

“No kidding.”

I looked out at the large field in front of the stage. They hadn’t opened the gates yet and it was pretty early, so what I could see of the gate didn’t have that many people. We wouldn’t have that big of a crowd, but since we’d only been playing together for a few months, no one out of our area had ever heard of us, and this was our first performance to anything larger than a bar that could fit a max of a hundred or so people, it made sense.

We did get one novel thing. They asked us if we had our own audio equipment and when we said no they brought out a case of earpieces that connected to a small pack we could clip to the back of our pants, or somewhere, and hear specific mixes instead of the whole stage. There was some kind of covering over them, I guess so they could be changed out and musicians didn’t have to stick something that had been in someone else’s ear in their own.

The guy who gave them to us didn’t really explain them, but Seth and Lyla had used them before and explained how to set up the mix properly. Apparently, big stages like this with the huge speakers not that far away from us could make it all but impossible to hear ourselves, which didn’t work well for either singing or playing instruments. Everything was being run through a sound system and mixed before being pumped into the speakers, so we could select specific parts of the mix turned up, so we could hear one thing over the other. Lyla said that, once we had some experience with it, we’d find a setting we liked, although that would really only help when we had our own equipment. Apparently, you could put each part of the mix at different levels, say if you wanted the singing highest, for harmonies, the guitar a little lower, so I could hear what I was doing, and the drum a little louder than the leftover, for the rhythm.

Right now, I just went with what Lyla suggested, since I didn’t know. I did end up taking out one earpiece as soon as we started our soundcheck, when I realized I couldn’t really hear anything not in the mix. I really liked to hear crowds, since I based a lot of what I was doing on stage based on their reaction, and found I kind of needed it to really do well. I saw Lyla did the same thing, but Seth and Marco kept both in. I guess to each their own.

We got set up and were going through the soundcheck with the tech people, since we were first up when the gates opened and people started making their way in. I hadn’t actually been told, but the field in front of the stage was large and could hold a ton of people, but we only got a little bit right in front of the stage, with the rest kind of walking slowly forward or milling about. There were already food, drink, and merch tents set up along the back of the open area where people could buy stuff throughout the day, and some of the people in the back had already started forming lines by them. The people at the front weren’t paying any attention to us and were either talking to each other or on their phones. Safe money was they were making sure they had good spots for someone coming on later.

We got the wave that it was showtime, so I got up to the mic, pushed down any anxiety I was feeling, and went into it.

“Good morning, Spring Brake Bash. I know it’s early and a lot of you are still coming in, but for those of you here, we’re glad to have you.”

I looked down at the people not paying attention to me and said, “You’ve got your spots all staked out, don’t you?”

They let up a weak cheer, most still not looking away from their phones.

“How are you going to get your beer without giving up your spots?”

“That’s what girlfriends are for,” one of the guys yelled up.

Sure enough, a good portion of the line out by the beer booth was made up of girls. They couldn’t have heard that, so I decided to help them out.

“You hear that ladies? Apparently, beer runs are what girlfriends are for.”

“Come on, man,” the guy who’d given me the line said, throwing up his arms.

I gave him a shrug and decided to change up our setlist with song one.

“Gotta treat ’em right if you want them to stay,” I said to him and then took a small step back and got my guitar ready. “I’m Charlie Nelson and this is the Wild Cats and we have a song for you ladies back there in the beer line, for when your guy doesn’t treat you right.”

I turned away from the mic and said, “We’re starting with Hush on your count, Seth.”

He gave the nod and started the count. We’d originally planned on starting with Backstage, since it went harder, but this seemed like a better opening. Besides, this wasn’t a rock festival and half the bands playing were pop, so this would work for the audience just as well. We could step things up with Backstage next and then get back to the planned setlist.

Once the music started, some of the people near the tables started to move into the open field towards the music, and a few of the people up front put away their phones. I wasn’t getting the energy I normally did off the small crowd, but at least they weren’t being as apathetic as before.

The rest of the set went really well. We interspersed our songs in with covers of popular stuff, although we’d checked who else was playing and tried to make sure we didn’t play any of their songs, since who wanted to be compared to the original artists? As we made it through our forty-five-minute set, the crowd slowly filled in. The open field in front of the stage never got more than half-filled, but that was still hundreds of people listening to us play, which was by far the most people I’d ever played for. I closed up with Country Roads.

We finished up, I did a bit more stage patter and we started packing up. They made it clear we had five minutes to get our stuff off the stage so the next band could set up. We’d tested it out a few times at our last practice, just so we didn’t screw up, and had a system down. This time Lyla and I could help, since it took less than a minute for us to unhook and pack our instruments. We made it off the stage in four and a half minutes, although we’d have to repack stuff when we got it back to Seth’s car for it to travel safely.

“Man, you guys break down fast,” a voice said as I manhandled the last cases off the stage.

I turned and lost all sense of what I was going to say next. Standing in front of me was Linda Chapman, the lead singer of House of Grace. I would have been surprised to see her on the list of bands playing, considering how big they were, let alone playing this early in the lineup.

“Uhh,” I said, desperately trying to get my brain to work. “Thanks. We practiced.”

“See, she said, turning to a guy behind her I recognized from their album art. “That’s the shit we don’t think of anymore.”

“That’s cause we have roadies now,” the guy said, taking an instrument case from what I would assume was one of their roadies.

“Are you up next?” I asked, trying to be casual and fight my instinct to run away so my brain could work again.

“No, we’re up third. I wanted to go first, so I could get back to my family, but these bums said ten-thirty was the earliest they could still play an instrument. I swear, a bunch of primadonnas.”

I chuckled, partly out of nervousness and partly from the joke. I stepped out of the way of the steps up to the stage to get out of the way of the people who looked like they might actually be the next band, and I half expected her to turn and walk away. Instead, she stepped with me, like we were having a real conversation or something and she was planning on continuing to talk to me.

“So I guess your family being in the area is why you’re playing this show?”

“Yeah. Normally we play one of the big ones in LA or down in Miami, but my little sister started college this year and I didn’t get to go home at Christmas, so I talked the guys into doing this smaller festival so I could have an excuse to spend the week here with them.”

“That’s really sweet. I’ll bet getting to stay somewhere familiar instead of some random city is a nice bonus, too.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Instead of room service, which is really hit or miss, I got to swing by Alan and Brothers BBQ last night. Do you know how hard it is to get real North Carolina Barbeque in fucking LA?”

“I imagine pretty tough.”

“You ain’t kidding. Hey, that last song was yours, right?”

“Yeah, I wrote it for my best friend earlier this year.”

“It’s really good. I particularly liked how you flipped the chorus at the end. Have you been at this long?”

“I played my first gig in October, but that was just as backup guitar for a local blues band in Asheville. Country Roads was the first thing I wrote, just before Christmas.”

“You’re kidding. You’ve only been playing for a year? Shut up.”

“Not playing. My dad played and I traveled with him when I was younger to clubs and bars and stuff. He taught me to play when I was little and I’ve been playing guitar my whole life. It’s just the songwriting and playing for other people part that’s new.”

“Still, that’s pretty good. You go a few more years and you’ll be knocking the rest of us off the charts.”

“I seriously doubt that, but it’s nice of you to say.”

“Hey, Charlie,” Hanna said walking over, her eyes down on a schedule of some kind, “do you think … Holy shit! You’re Linda Chapman.”

Hanna had frozen stock still the second she saw Chapman. House of Grace was by far her favorite band. When I was riding with her, two-thirds of the time one of their CDs would be playing in the car.

I’m sure Linda got this reaction all the time, because she handled it in stride, giving Hanna a slight smile.

“Yes, I am.”

“Ohh my God. You’re my favorite band ever. I have all of your music and I swear we listen to it every day. Don’t I, Charlie? I just … you are the best ever. Nevermore, holy cow, I can’t even tell you. I cry every time I hear it. Is it true that was about an old boyfriend? It sounds like it is. When I was having trouble last year I swear I listened to it on a loop all day long. It really got me through some tough times. Man, I can’t believe you’re in front of me right now.”

Hanna managed to get all of that out in what seemed like a single breath.

“You’ll have to forgive Hanna, she’s pretty shy. It takes her a while to come out of her shell.”

Linda laughed and asked, “Girlfriend?”

“No. Best friend.”

“Ohh, this is who that last song was about?”

“Could you sign this for me?”

Hanna hadn’t even noticed what we were saying. She’d been fishing around in her purse, which apparently had the CD case for their album, because she was now holding it out to be signed.

“I’d be happy to,” Linda said, putting her hand back and, as if by magic, an assistant or something set a sharpie into it. She signed the inside and handed it back.

“We’ve got to start getting ready, but it was really nice meeting you, Charlie. You keep doing what you’re doing and I think we might be bumping into each other at shows again.”

“I sure hope so. Have a good set.”

She shook my hand and went back over to her band. Since I’d been the last off, the rest of the guys, including Kat who was helping lug instruments to the car, missed the entire reaction.

“Ohh, my God. Read this,” Hanna said, shoving the CD case into my hands.

In a really legible cursive, she’d written ‘Hanna, Keep inspiring beautiful music’ and then signed her name in a really flowing style. It was actually a very touching and personal message, not that Hanna would ever sell it in a million years.

“Wow,” I said.

“I know. She was so nice.”

“Yeah. And it’s great how well you kept your cool.”

“Shut up,” Hanna said, hitting me on the shoulder, although her blushing kind of gave away her fake anger. “I got the money. They asked if we had any merch to sell. I know it was late notice, but we should think about it, especially when you’re playing places that aren’t the Blue Ridge.”

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“I’ll look into it. We should be good to go.”

“Great. Let’s get the rest of the stuff loaded up.”

A lot had happened in our little vacation so far, but today was by far one of the best I’d had, not just on the trip, but in a long while. I still wasn’t sure the count on the audience, and it was a lot less than they’d see the rest of the day, but I’d guess we played for between four and five hundred people, and they’d all had a really good time. Even the people up front waiting on other bands had put up their phones and started listening. Plus, we got paid a fair amount of money and got to meet Linda Chapman on top of it.

As days go, it doesn’t get much better.