Page 2 of All of You

@WhitGranthamOfficial: I have a question for you, but I’d like to ask over the phone. Could I have your number?

@TheRealBenHolder: You want my phone number?

@WhitGranthamOfficial: Yes.

@TheRealBenHolder: Should I be nervous?

@WhitGranthamOfficial: Why would you be nervous for me to call you?

@TheRealBenHolder: People don’t call each other anymore. This sounds serious.

@WhitGranthamOfficial: It’s nothing bad. Or, I don’t think you’ll think it’s bad.

@TheRealBenHolder: You sound uncertain.

@WhitGranthamOfficial: If you don’t want to give me your number, it’s ok. I don’t want you to feel pressured. We’ll just proceed as if I never asked.

And here it was. The newest message, which had popped up in the last twenty minutes as I’d done everything I could think of to avoid obsessively refreshing the app and stalking his username until he answered.

We’d been messaging back and forth for about two weeks. He’d liked one of the photos I’d taken on the tour he’d given me of Fort Campbell military base and had then started following me. I’d messaged him personally once certain it was, in fact, him, and we started chatting. We sent messages every day, and I wasn’t ashamed to admit I enjoyed every interaction we’d had.

So much so, in fact, that I wanted to see him again, and he was easygoing enough that he might be able to handle attending an event with me. He didn’t seem to take himself too seriously, and though he’d been shocked to meet me and had done the most adorable little stuttering, awkward introduction when we’d met at my cousin’s house, he hadn’t been tongue-tied at any point after that.

That was rare.

He’d been a different man than on our first interaction, and I suppose that was his right—it had been over a year, after all. The contrast had proven startling, and fascinating.

Even after two weeks, he hadn’t asked me for anything, nor had he tried to pry into my personal life or flirt with me. Maybe some of our exchanges were flirty, if you really wanted to call them that, but mostly, they were fun.

Very little fun existed in my life anymore.

Not that being a world-famous Country singer wasn’t fun. It is. It’s the dream. It made me abandon my parents’ plan for my life and finally succumb to the call of my passion—I couldn’t ignore it. It’d been my dream since I’d heard Patsy Cline’s Showcase at a friend’s house one afternoon around age eight.

I grew up a veritable musical prodigy, if only because my parents were determined I would be, and I got into Juilliard for college. And left after sixteen months, dropping out just before the end of my second year to audition for SouthernSound, a TV show that looked for the latest Country star. The producers kept my history of privilege and training a secret, partly at my request, and since then, I’d managed to stay separate from my family and my past by freezing out all questions about all that at every turn and requiring iron-clad non-disclosures from anyone I worked with.

Despite the secrecy and their own anonymity from my fame, if I could have done something more appalling to Cynthia and Stuart Grantham, something they would have disapproved of more, I can’t imagine what it would have been.

But my determination to achieve—though it won me a recording contract and had launched me into superstardom with two platinum records in just a little over four years, crazy successful tours, and fame so incessant that I was rarely left alone in a room—kept me reaching, working, striving.

Fun had never been natural to me—part of me suspected the Grantham ancestry had done its best to breed out any tendency toward fun centuries ago.

Ben Holder was fun—my opposite in about every way. He was tall—me? Vertically challenged. He was blond and golden—I had pale skin and dark hair. Seemingly laid back outwardly, I did suspect he still had a lot going on inside. Outwardly, I presented as stoic unless on stage or interviewing, and inside, a raging pile of insecurities and dissatisfaction fomented.

So, you know, fun.

I thought about what to say when I dialed him and wondered if he’d be awkward, or if I would. Like almost every one of my acquaintances other than my publicist, I hated talking on the phone. But for this, it felt necessary.

I tapped his number, and my phone dialed before I could second-guess the choice. One ring, two.

“Hello?”

Ben’s voice made my heart beat faster.

“Uh, hi. Ben?” If I hadn’t gotten nervous, I might have rolled my eyes.

“Yes?”

“Hey, this is Whit. Whit Grantham?” Why do I sound like I’m not sure of my own name?

---