Chapter Sixteen
Nat stepped onto the porch, knocked on the front door, and waited, shifting from foot to foot, bizarrely nervous. Maybe it was because Linnea had never allowed him to pick her up in the past. It was like stepping onto forbidden territory. Would her dad open the door and invite Nat in for the intimidating man-to-man chat they had never had the opportunity to have?
He shifted again as the seconds ticked by. Nat took a step back, unzipping his jacket a little more despite the chill of a Montana December night.
Maybe she hadn’t heard him. The sensible thing would be to knock again, not loiter outside like some kind of stalker from an eighties teen film. Mind made up, Nat stepped forward once again, only to come to a stop as the door opened and Linnea stood framed in the doorway, a shy smile on her lips. She was dressed casually in jeans, her puffy black jacket already zipped up against the cold, a cream hat covering her head.
She was breathtaking and Nat swallowed, his mouth dry. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Biscuit says hi.”
Her smile widened. “I missed seeing him today. How’s he doing?”
“Good.” Nat waited until she closed the door and joined him on the porch steps. “We had yet another visit to the vet today, things are mending well. He’s a real trooper.”
“He’s a great dog.” She slid him a glance from under long-lashed eyes. “And he adores you.”
“He’d adore anyone who gave him a home and a good meal every day.” But Nat warmed under the approval in her dark eyes. He helped Linnea into the truck then swung himself in beside her. “How’s Elsie? She seemed a little subdued at rehearsal.”
“Poor kid. She’s hurting. Every time I think she’s settled she flares up again. I really hoped the concert would do the trick, but now she’s fixated on wanting to head back to Milchester for Christmas.”
“But you’re not going to?”
“Not this year. Her counselor has said that we need to carry on as normal, not allow her to hold me back. It isn’t fair on either of us, not healthy to give her that kind of responsibility.”
“That sounds reasonable if not easy.”
“It isn’t,” she admitted. “But I’ve wrapped myself and the girls up in cotton wool for long enough. We needed it, for a time, but we have to move on. We have to start living, experience new things no matter how hard it seems sometimes. So where are we going?”
“Have you been to the Flintworks? Lacey tells me I’ll like it—and an old train depot, good food, and a microbrewery does sounds pretty perfect to me. It’s amazing isn’t it how in some ways Marietta is exactly the same? The same quirky town with the same quirky traditions and the same families running most everything—the Sheehans and the Brambles and the Scotts still everywhere I turn. But I like how new blood has moved into town, new ideas, new places, new innovation.”
“That’s how I feel. Marietta has changed. I wondered what it would be like coming back, if it would feel like a backward step, but actually enough has changed to make living here a new start.”
It didn’t take long for Nat to park up close to the Flintworks. The old train depot had been turned into a welcoming and vibrant space and tonight, on a Friday, it was buzzing with a mixture of locals and tourists. The large room was a trendy mixture of steel and glass, decorated with huge abstract paintings which added color to the room and softened what could otherwise be a stark look. Big steel vats behind the bar housed the microbrewery’s famous beers.
“This is definitely new,” Linnea said looking around. “Back when I was a kid it was always the diner or Rocco’s for meals out, both of which are great, but it’s nice to try somewhere new. This is lovely. It’s funny, I’ve been talking to them about apple-based beer, but this is the first time I’ve been inside. I don’t think it will be the last!”
Nat had reserved a table on the small, airy balcony overlooking the rest of the bar and a cheery waitress handed them small chalkboards with the short but comprehensive menu written on. “Menus changes depending what’s fresh,” she informed them. “Everything is cooked to order, so let me know if you have any allergies or extra requirements. Can I get you folk drinks?”
Linnea ordered a small beer, one of the ones brewed on the premises, flavored with grapefruit and Nat went for a golden ale. It didn’t take them long to agree to share a platter of Mediterranean-inspired antipasto and, once the waitress delivered their drinks, they sat back and soaked up the ambience.
“Thanks again for the shoes and the little presents,” Linnea said. “Betsy loves her little doll, and Elsie adores the bracelet. She’s hardly taken it off.”
“Mrs. Hoffmann told me exactly what to get, I can’t take any credit for it, but I’m glad they liked them.”
“It did cheer Elsie up a little so I’m still hopeful my plans to introduce some more new customs will help her adjust. Next week is St. Lucia’s Day, which is a Swedish celebration and we’ll also have a proper Swedish Christmas Eve as well as a good old-fashioned all-American Christmas day. If I keep her busy maybe she’ll forget to brood.”
“And the concert of course.”
“How could I forget? I really think it’s going to be great, Nat. You’re good with the kids, inspirational.”
He pulled a wry face. “I’m so far out of my comfort zone. This only ever happens around you—remember when you got me to play Glenn Miller in the old folks’ home? And the time you made me dress up for the kids’ ward?”
“I didn’t make you do any of those things! Okay, maybe the Glenn Miller. But you wanted to dress up in that teddy bear costume!”
“You told me I was going to be a superhero. I thought I was going to be living the spandex dream, not dressing up in a hundred pound furry costume. Between you and Lacey, it’s no wonder I try never to get involved in community projects. I was scarred for life at an impressionable age. But if I am involved then I am going to make sure it’s the best it can be, even if that means taking dozens of kids through every song line by line.”
“And then what? You have a new album out next year, does that mean a tour?”
“Yes, not on the same scale as the last one, I’ll be headlining this time and I’m not quite at Madison Square Garden level yet. But I’d rather play smaller venues and have my name above the door, the crowd there to see me. Actually, I got this today, what do you think?” He fished his phone out of his pocket and found the email. “The cover of my new album.”
Truth was he was a little unsure. Had been when it was taken, but understood the rationale behind it. That rationale just didn’t make quite the same sense here in Marietta.
Linnea took the phone and studied the photo, her eyebrows high. “Wow.” She glanced over at him. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you seem to have forgotten to do your shirt up.”
“You hate it?”
“No, believe me, no red-blooded woman will hate it.” She examined it again.
Nat didn’t need to. He knew every detail. The low slung jeans, his face in profile, cowboy hat low on his forehead, checked shirt open.
“They’re making a very definite statement, aren’t they? Is it what you want?
“Lowly artists like me don’t get much of a say. They’re creating a brand.”
“And you’re happy to go along with that?” She didn’t sound judgmental and Nat felt compelled to be more honest than he had been with anyone else—even maybe himself.
“I was. At first, it was a novelty, you know? After laying down tracks by myself, funding myself, playing on other people’s records and tours, it was pretty fun. But I found the interest in my friendship with Piper a little intrusive, a little degrading in a way and that’s the look, the publicity they want. They’re keen for me to head back onto the party scene and back into the gossip blogs sooner rather than later.”
“The publicity has focused on your looks rather than your music.” Linnea caught his eye and blushed. “I saw some of the headlines.”
“They wanted more of the same for the second album and it was easy to do but, since I’ve been back, I’ve been writing something different. And it’s made me wonder what I’m doing, what the right path is. I’ve never written anything this intense before, this personal. It makes everything that much more real—before, if people didn’t like a song or a lyric then it didn’t affect me. But this? It feels a little like I’ll be singing a piece of my heart and I really don’t know how I feel about that.”
Her forehead crinkled as she listened. “I thought all song writing was like that?”
“Some is, but writing commercially is the same as any other kind of creative work—all you need to do is feel the emotion for as long as you need it to get the notes, the lyrics down. It doesn’t have to be authentic. It’s easier if it isn’t.”
“What’s happened to make you change the way you write?”
“Being back here. The memories. The ties. You.”
Linnea set her glass down, her hand shaking a little, slopping the beer over the side.
She grabbed a napkin, all her focus on the liquid. “Me?”
Sometimes honesty wasn’t always the best policy. What on earth had made him admit that?
“You, being back here. Here I am and here you are and it’s as if senior year is so close, that if I turned around a corner I’d be back there, it’s almost tangible. That’s what I’m writing about. Youth and desire and dreams and hope and what-ifs.” He exhaled. “I’ve never really looked back on that time before. There was a lot of emotion there.”
Linnea looked down at her glass. “I owe you an apology.”
“What for?”
“For shutting you down when you suggested staying in touch, suggested seeing what happened if we didn’t split up. It’s a hideous cliché, but it wasn’t you, not at all. It was all me. I was scared. No, more, terrified. Terrified by how much I had fallen for you, by how much I wanted to set all my plans aside for you, follow you anywhere.”
“You don’t have to apologize, I understood.” But he hadn’t.
He’d taken her adamant refusal to even discuss staying together as confirmation of all he’d believed about himself. Had he been wrong all that time?
“I do. I know you left before prom because of what I said. When I first went to college, I wondered what would have happened if I’d been braver. If I hadn’t insisted that we keep our relationship secret, hadn’t put an end date on it, asked you to wait until prom before you left. Told you how I felt? But then what would have changed? I was early admittance to Yale. You were meeting your parents in Europe. It was what it was. I guess it just wasn’t our time.”
“No. And yet, here we are, ten years later. Funny how life goes.”
“And this isn’t our time either.” She didn’t look up, her focus on her drink.
“No,” he said again as time seemed to slow and all he could see was her. “Maybe it isn’t. But maybe that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be our time forever, but can’t it be our time for now?”