After Liddie’s uncles left, Tobias took the girls for a walk on the riverbank while he pondered what to do about their current situation. He’d replayed Ace’s words over and over in his mind, and the more he did, the more he became convinced that waiting for Liddie was not something he needed to do. Not that he was going to bully her into something—after all, the last thing he wanted to do was spook her by being overly demanding, and Lord knew that giving someone a relationship ultimatum never turned out well. No, he needed to cool his jets and maybe touch base with the uncles to see how she reacted to them telling her that Tobias said “Hey.”
He was actually tempted to hop in the car and go stake out her house like a creeper. But he wouldn’t. That would be the polar opposite of cooling his jets, which might have adverse effects on his relationship with Liddie.
This dating stuff sucked serious ass, and not even in a fun way. Not that he and Liddie were dating. How could they be dating when they hadn’t seen each other in a month, which really was a pretty big feat considering how small Owltown and Hemlock Creek were? For heaven’s sake, there was only one grocery store unless you drove almost an hour down the mountain.
Frankie and Winnie came running back to him, soaking wet and covered in mud, each carrying the opposite end of a tree branch. Tobias groaned. They were going to need a serious hosing off before they went back into the house. He whistled and started back to the house, the dogs trotting behind him, still carrying the branch.
By the time he got them—and subsequently himself—cleaned up, the sun had almost set and there was a distinct nip in the air. Still, it was a beautiful night, so Tobias retrieved his resonator guitar from the basement studio, flipped on the patio heaters, and settled in to see if his muse might come out to play. He suspected she might, as when he was walking beside Fightingtown Creek, tiny shoots of a melody appeared. He needed to foster these beginnings, to charm his muse into hanging around again. The last month marked the longest time he’d been without music of some sort since he was fifteen years old, and he didn’t like the feeling at all. As a matter of fact, the comparative silence in his head scared the crap out of him, especially considering he’d had his most prolific songwriting and recording sessions of the past ten years during the short time between seeing Liddie at the Hemlock Creek Tavern’s opening and the morning after he’d returned from Nashville, when Candy had dropped her little bomb.
He pulled the guitar into his lap, put on his finger picks, and palmed the tone bar. Frankie and Winnie, who had assumed their usual places in the wicker peacock chair, pricked up their ears when he plucked a few notes.
“Y’all like that?” Tobias asked. Winnie answered affirmatively with her goofy, lispy yowl, while Frankie yipped in agreement.
He played a few more notes, the melody sprouting from his fingertips, growing as he nurtured the notes even as he bent and sustained them with the tone bar. Soon, he had the foundation of a new song, and he wished he’d brought either a recorder or some blank staff paper upstairs when he’d retrieved the guitar. He played a few more licks, trying out some variations, and then returned to the base melody. He drew out the last note, closed his eyes, and made a wish. He breathed in deeply and then went downstairs to get a portable recorder and blank paper.
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It wasn’t all that late, but the sun had gone down, and because the area was so remote, the darkness seemed to swallow up the illumination from the headlights of Liddie’s car. She pulled onto the dirt road that led to the dock. Their dock. Tobias’s house sat off to the left, up the embankment, and to her surprise, the basement and screened-in porch were lit up bright.
Then she saw him, walking up the stairs that led to the porch. He was carrying something in his hands, and curiously enough, he was only wearing underwear. Huh. His head disappeared from view as he sat down, or bent down, and then she heard the music. Her breath caught in her throat. This was new, something she’d never heard before. Something . . . bright, hopeful, not like Tobias’s usual pieces, which were often moody, if not outright dark, even for a bluesy type of song. This was closer to the bluegrass he’d grown up playing and abandoned when he broke with Chet.
She stood there and listened until she was sure he was finished, and then she made her way across his backyard.
She heard a surprised “What the hell?” escape him as she came into view, and then suddenly, Winnie and Frankie were down the stairs and barking excitedly at her. Liddie bent down to pet the dogs, giving each one some individual attention before patting them on their heads and standing up.
“Liddie?” She heard him huff a laugh as he stood with his guitar in front of him, hiding his near nakedness behind it.
“I, uh, decided I wanted to come say ‘hey’ back, in person.” She smiled at him, but he was still looking at her as if she had two heads. “So, hey, Toby.”
“Hey.”
Okay. Not going exactly how she’d planned, but then again, she really didn’t have a plan. It was more like a general feeling of what she wanted to achieve.
He scratched at a thatch of hair on his chest and seemed to remember that he didn’t have much on.
“The girls got snout to tail in the mud, and I had to hose them off. In the process, they transferred all the mud to me, so I just stripped down so I wouldn’t track it into the house. I turned on the heat lamps, and then I started to play and just . . .” His voice trailed off and he shrugged.
“I know. I mean, I didn’t know about the mud, but I heard you playing.”
“I missed you, Liddie.”
“I missed you, too, Toby.”
He blinked hard and then snorted. “Yeah, so since I’m standing here in my underwear, looking like some sort of deviant, why don’t you come up and I’ll put some pants on, and we can talk.”
Liddie laughed and headed up the stairs.
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They sat perpendicular to each other, Tobias in a club chair, Liddie on the sofa. They each had a drink—two fingers of whiskey—that neither of them touched.
“So, I saw Em Brennan today,” Liddie began. “We talked. She said you’d been having some issues.”
“Yeah, I basically got fired, but it’s okay. I was playing for shit. He’d have to re-record everything.”
“I heard you playing tonight, and, Toby, that was far from shit.” Liddie swallowed hard. “It was beautiful. I haven’t heard you play like that in a long time.” She finally took a sip from her glass. “Em said something important today. She told me that I needed to not be afraid to accept help while I was working on my own stuff. I mean, I’m not going to lie to you—I’m still a mess. I’ll probably always be, at some level.”
He chuckled quietly. “Same. Hell, you know that.”
“Yeah, I do. But I would like to try this again.”
“I would love that.” Liddie saw his Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he swallowed hard. “I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through, but I know we wouldn’t be the same people we are now if we both hadn’t gone through what we have. I happen to think you’re pretty wonderful, hot mess and all.”
“Tobias Harper, I did not say I was a hot mess. I just said I was a mess.” Her comment got a laugh out of him.
“Okay, excuse me. But I’m serious, and I mean it. I . . . I never stopped loving you, Liddie. And I know that when you’re fifteen or eighteen and hormones are raging, what you think is love might just be lust, but lust doesn’t last thirty years unless there’s something else with it.”
“I agree.”
“So what do you say, Liddie Hopewell? You wanna try this again?”
Liddie smiled shyly at the man sitting across from her. “Yeah, Toby Harper, I do.”
“Can I come over there and kiss you?”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”
Tobias was next to her in a flash. He curled one hand around the curve of her neck and stroked her cheek with his thumb. Bending his head to hers, he pressed his lips to her mouth, and then he did it again. His lips curled into a smile as he kissed her, and he felt her return the smile. And he knew then, without a doubt, that everything would be okay.