Page 50 of The Wiener Across the Way

“Fine, fine. Carry me to the couch and I promise to, like, meditate for a few minutes or something.” I could definitely do some deep breathing just to let my lungs catch up to my heart beating out of my chest.

He settled me onto the couch, his presence enveloping me in a cocoon of safety and warmth.

I tried to muster a glare, but it melted away under his attentive gaze. I conceded, my body already sinking into the cushions.

Declan pulled me gently against him, and I had to admit, my head did fit very nicely in that spot on his chest just under his shoulder. “I’m not stopping you from working if you want to, so tell me about this song.”

I nestled against him, the comfort of his embrace lulling me. Friends could snuggle, right? “It’s about finding something real in a world of make-believe. About recognizing what’s genuine in a sea of facades.”

His hand stroked my hair, a tender gesture that undid the last of my defenses. “Mmm. I think we both know something about that.”

My thoughts floated around the idea of the song, of Declan, of us. His heartbeat was a steady rhythm beneath my ear, a promise of something steadfast and true.

In that moment, nestled in Declan’s arms, the world faded away, and I surrendered to the quiet embrace of sleep, safe and content in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.

When I woke up, it felt like a thousand years later, but by the smell of the food that had been delivered, it was probably only a few minutes. The song I’d been working on was still ringing around in my head, and the whole melody was there just waiting for me to pluck it down.

“Did you know you hum when you sleep?” His voice was soft and like that warm blanket you don’t want to crawl out from under.

“I do? I mean, I did when I was a kid. But I didn’t know I still did.” No one who’d been in my bed in the past few years had mentioned it.

“It’s cute.” He shifted a little so that we could look at each other but didn’t actually make me get up. I didn’t want to. “Do you remember the song you were dreaming about?”

“I do.” Oh. Ohh. I had a song. Like the whole damn song. I’d been grabbing at scraps of tunes, and fragments of lyrics for months, and now I had a whole-ass song running through my head as if it was on the radio and I’d heard it a hundred and twenty-seven times in a row. I popped up and scrambled for my notebook. What if I lost it? It was right there now, but it wouldn’t be the first time the music had slipped away from me before I could get it on paper. “Would you grab the food? I’m going to write a bit of it out really quick.”

After the food, a shower, and a quick change into a new, much more casual outfit than I would normally wear, I was ready for show number two of the day.

Saddle Creek only held a few hundred people, and it was mostly just me and my music to entertain them tonight. I hadn’t done a show like this in years. Not since that first year on the road after I’d wonThe Choicest Voice.

That year had been brutal. I wasn’t always sure I’d make it in this business back then. But I hadn’t quit. I sure wasn’t going to now, even if this tour didn’t have that same spark as before.

As I stepped onto the stage, the warmth of the old wooden and warn platform felt like a physical touch. The crowd was buzzing with a vastly different energy, a mix of mostly locals and a few lucky festival goers, all eager for a more personal performance.

I’d give them all that I had.

I spotted Declan right away, seated at a front table with, of all the Kingmans he could have invited, his dad. Declan’s eyes locked with mine, and for just that brief moment, it felt like we were the only two people in the room.

But once the lights went up, the faces faded away, and there was just me and my guitar. And the music.

I opened with a slower, more sensual song, one that allowed me to pour all the emotion I was feeling into the lyrics. It was something I’d written years ago, but that hadn’t ever made it onto an album. I’d considered it kind of locked away in a vault of songs that would never get to be heard. But it was good, and with each verse, I remembered why I’d written it in the first place.

It was about those giddy feelings when you’ve got a crush and realize you’re falling in love with someone for the first time.

The audience loved it, and that gave me the push to throw myself into the performance, feeding off their energy. I launched into the new song that had come to me today, and even though I’d never performed it even once before this, it poured out of me like sugar and starlight. At the bridge, a wave of dizziness hit me, and I closed my eyes, singing through it, letting the music carry me.

The song was good. It was going to be a hit, I could feel it in my bones.

I didn’t open my eyes again until the last long note faded. Why wasn’t the audience clapping? Or, wait, were they? I couldn’t hear over the whoosh, whoosh, whooshing in my ears. I reached for the earbud but lost my balance on the little stool I was propped on.

The guitar fell, and I should have been able to hear the awful crunch of the wood on wood and the discordant notes of the strings reverberating, but I couldn’t. My senses were failing me. I tried to push through, I swear I did. I needed to finish the set, but my body had other ideas.

In the haze, I saw Declan rising from his seat, his eyes the only thing I could see at the end of the tunnel, and they were... pissed. He was saying something, moving toward the stage, but his voice sounded so far away.

FIRST AND DOWN

DECLAN

I’d spent plenty of time in bars, but Saddle Creek was something else. This wasn’t a bar, it was the facade of one but for rich, entitled pricks. If it meant I got to watch Kelsey sing the song she’d been humming against my chest and see it bloom into something so fucking deep and meaningful that I wanted to goddamned cry, well then, I was going to be a rich, entitled prick. Who got to sit in the front row.

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