Page 97 of Run Away With Me

Liam’s bar was, helpfully, called Liam’s Bar. Brooke did a little shimmy and smacked a kiss on my cheek before walking in and working her charm on Liam like she had on Damien. After her breakdown in Illinois, it seemed like she was purposefully working toward being more like the old Brooke: bold and sassy and fun.

Liam had a space behind his stage that could generously be called a recording studio … if I was beingverygenerous. The room was wood-paneled and had a drum kit set up in one corner, a piano squashed in next to the door and a selection of guitars on the wall. It also had miles of cables, microphones and a tiny, tiny recording desk.

‘This is amazing,’ Brooke said, turning in a tight circle in the crowded room.

It smelled like wood and sweat and guitar strings and had no natural light.

I thought it was pretty amazing, too.

‘My church has a recording room like this. It’s a little bigger, though.’

‘Really? What do they record?’

‘Christian rock, mostly. The pastor’s in a band. It’s notgood, but that doesn’t stop him collecting donations to make CDs.’

Brooke snorted and walked over to the piano. She pulled up the stool and ran a series of chords, her fingers dancing over the keys.

‘I didn’t know you played piano,’ I said, unable to tear my eyes away from her hands.

‘One of my many extracurricular activities,’ she said. ‘What can you sing?’

‘Very little.’

‘Oh, comeon, Jessie,’ she huffed. ‘You can sing. I’ve heard you. We’ve been singing all the way down here.’

‘I can’t sing inpublic.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘You have far more confidence in me than I have in myself,’ I said, aware that Brooke saw me in a way no one ever had before.

She played another series of chords. ‘“Piano Man”?’

‘Too cliché.’

‘True.’

‘“Jolene”?’ I suggested.

Since she was playing the piano, I went to the wall and picked a Fender acoustic guitar and took a seat on one of the low stools to check its tuning. I didn’t know how to play much, but picking up an instrument in the church youth band had been a good excuse to get out of the house and away from my mom’s awful choice of boyfriends over the years.

‘And that’s not cliché?’

‘We could do it as a call and response. A duet.’ I took out my phone and pulled up the sheet music, then handed it to Brooke so she could scroll through it.

‘Huh.’ Brooke picked out the tune on the piano. ‘That could work. A two-part harmony.’

‘Yes. Exactly,’ I said, relieved she got where I was going.

We ran ‘Jolene’ – Brooke taking the alto line with me filling in the soprano over the top – and it worked. I couldn’t qualify exactly how, it just worked. Brooke had a richness to her voice that I’d never be able to copy, something sexy and a little husky that worked for this song. She was the narrator, and I, to my utter surprise, was playing Jolene.

‘This sounds ah-mazing.’ Brooke did a little dance on her seat, and I laughed.

‘Next?’

‘What about …’ Brooke said, and played an introduction I recognized.

‘“Candle in the Wind”?’

---