Page 44 of Betsy
“You’re looking for excuses.”
The way he laid the accusation at my feet spoke of assurance. There wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in his mind that he’d nailed my motivation on the head.
I lifted my chin. “An excuse for what, might I ask?”
“To keep fighting the chemistry between you and Asher.”
I sputtered, denial salty on my lips.
“You can say I’m wrong, but anyone with eyes who observes the two of you for half a second can see it. Scratch that. They don’t even have to see it. They can feel the electric charge in the air when you guys are in the same vicinity.” He stopped and considered me again. “Why are you scared?”
I scoffed, a rebuttal of words pouring down from my brain to my mouth in a waterfall to drown Jimmy in, but before I could form even one, he held up a palm.
“Never mind. I can see you’re not ready to face your feelings yet.” He turned to go, stopping after opening the door rather than walking through it. “Asher is a really great guy. If you can’t see that or don’twantto see it for whatever reason, then…” He shook his head and walked away.
I blinked at the empty doorway, my fingers tingling and a ringing in my ears. Black and white had mixed together to form gray, and I couldn’t seem to separate them anymore. Things had been easier, less confusing, when I’d been able to put Asher in a box and close the lid on him. Stick a label on him, give myself a rule, and keep my distance.
But he kept erasing the boundaries I’d set. Relabeling himself. He was a musician, but he didn’t only think about himself—he put others first. He performed in front of audiences, but he didn’t seek fame above all else. He had talent and gifts but still managed to stay humble and self-effacing.
I let my head fall forward, the muscles in the back of my neck pulling taut. Most of my life, I’d been aware of prejudices, of stereotypes. They weren’t always directed straight at me, because my skin was lighter and I spoke without an accent. But I heard what people said. Immigrants were criminals. Immigrants took away jobs and hurt the economy. We were lazy or dirty or any other number of hurtful adjectives. All because of bias, rhetoric, and misinformation.
But what had I done? I’d turned around and done the same thing. Not to a race or a culture, but to Asher. To everyone who wanted to make music a career. I was guilty of the very thing I hated, and I owed him an apology.
Dave walked the hall and came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the doorway. “There you are. We’re ready for the sound check.”
“Coming.” I followed him out to the hall and shut the door behind me.
We’d already set up the instruments and equipment earlier in the day but had taken a break. I needed to make sure everything sounded perfect with each section and then all together as a whole.
We entered the side vestibule where my soundboard had been unpacked and assembled. Dave continued on to the stage while I stopped at what essentially was my own instrument of knobs, dials, and connections. My gaze snagged on a to-go cup of coffee sitting beside what looked to be a folded shirt.
My first reaction was annoyance. Who thought leaving spillable liquid by electronic equipment was a good idea? I moved the still-warm cup to the floor, where it couldn’t potentially cause a lot of damage. I went to move the shirt as well but didn’t get my hand under all the layers, and it unfolded, the hem falling toward the floor. A laugh bubbled its way up my chest. Beneath the crew neckline it read,I run on coffee, sarcasm, and Jesus.
How perfectly fitting for me.
I looked up, my gaze colliding with Asher’s. He had his guitar strap slung over his shoulder and the instrument poised in front of him. He gave me a two-finger salute along with his lopsided grin.
And I swayed.
Me. Grumpy, impenetrable, hard-as-a-rock Betsy Vargas, swayed toward Asher North, guitarist and lead singer. I could fool myself. Say it was only the trick of gravity or a momentary feeling of unbalance, but that would just be me still looking for excuses like Jimmy accused.
Was I ready to admit the truth, though? That Asher had slowly been pulling me toward him since the moment we met, like the moon coaxing the tide higher onto the shore?
I cleared my throat and turned on the console, processor, speakers, then monitors. After a few quick checks for each speaker and monitor, I sent the mic signal to the stage right wedge and turned up the gain until it started to feedback, then identified the offending frequency and attenuated it until the feedback stopped. When all the wedges were rung out, I tuned the room by putting on a mixed song I’d made that represented all the frequency ranges, then focusing on how it sounded in the Connect Church sanctuary and on this system. A few adjustments on the EQ and everything sounded right.
I brought the fader to unity. “Okay, Dave. Give me some beats on your kick.”
We went through each of Dave’s channels—kick, snare, toms, cymbal mics, and overheads, then moved on to Marcus on bass, Asher’s guitar, Jimmy on keyboard, then finally Tricia’s mic and Asher’s, checking gain, fader, gate, EQ, compression, and FX sends.
“Let’s run through a song to see how you sound all together.”
I made some adjustments—mostly unburying the vocals—before I was satisfied and finally gave a thumbs-up. True North was ready for their first big show, which would start in—I glanced at my wristwatch—less than an hour.
The guys headed to their room while I followed Tricia to ours, the coffee cup held in one hand and the shirt slung over that same arm. I helped Tricia curl her hair and changed into the tee Asher had left me. My signature look—snarky T-shirt and faded jeans. For some reason, the shirt made me feel warm. Not hot and sticky like during summer heat, but cozy and contented, like a comforting spread of affection from the inside out.
It was just a shirt—some cotton-blend material with a few words screen-printed on it—so I shouldn’t have been feeling like there was something overflowing inside of me. Like I had a cup somewhere in the middle of my chest that, unbeknownst to me, Asher had been sneaking to and slowly filling up by pouring himself into it until it had finally become so full it spilled over.
Just a shirt. But instead of sayingI run on coffee, sarcasm, and Jesus, it said, I see you, Betsy, and I like what I see. I don’t want to change you even a little.
