Page 51 of All of You

Writing music

Eating grilled cheese sandwiches

If someone made a similar list today, that list would be

Performing my own music

Kissing Ben Holder

Talking with and being near Ben Holder

That’s right. Kissing and talking to and being near Ben Holder had handily supplanted both writing music and grilled cheese.

I know.

This was big, making me not entirely sure what to do with myself. I was pretty sure he wanted to be with me as much as I did him, but he’d tried not to come on too strong. And I appreciated that. My life was one long series of people coming on too strong—for autographs, for connections, for what I could do for them.

Funny enough, I wanted to do whatever I could for Ben, but he didn’t seem to want anything from me. We’d gotten word I wouldn’t be doing the football half-time show—they’d had a Country act two out of the last three years and wanted to go pop. Ben had been sorry for me, but when I’d made it clear I wasn’t upset, neither was he. He hadn’t pouted at the loss of something I’d dangled in front of him as an incentive like I thought he might have.

He wasn’t concerned. He just wanted to celebrate me when I succeeded, or let me feel however I felt when I didn’t. It was the strangest thing.

My parents had never celebrated anything. Birthdays had been a nice dinner with dessert, usually a flourless dark chocolate cake too decadent for a child to enjoy. Even when I met their expectations and got into Juilliard, I received little more than a well done.

When I won the contract at the end of SouthernStar, I was fairly certain there’d been wailing and gnashing of teeth, the neighbors (if the people living miles down the stately country road could be called neighbors) calling in the professionals to deal with the great Grantham disappointment. The show was vulgar and beneath me, and certainly beneath them. We simply didn’t speak of it.

And that was one of many reasons why I had auditioned under a fake name and had kept it since. Not entirely fake, but different enough that my parents didn’t have to acknowledge me, nor did I them.

So Ben turning to me and saying “I’m so proud of you,” or demanding to toast me after the Grammy nominations—those things were catnip for me. It was pathetic, on one hand, that his applause and congratulations meant so much to me when I was constantly surrounded by people who lauded my ability, awarding and celebrating and marking the milestones of my career. On the other hand, he didn’t do it because he’d been hired to.

False, said my inner voice of reason. And it was false, on one hand.

Technically, he’d agreed to be Team Whit for a few months. And he was getting travel and hotel rooms and concerts and access.

But anytime I was with him, I could tell those were simply not why he was there. He was there for me, for some reason, and that both excited me and unnerved me. It proved confusing, his insistence on choosing to support me and show up when so few people did that without holding out a hand and asking what was in it for them.

Maybe I was trying to make something into nothing.

I probably am.

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