His for Keeps

“Cool. Let’s meet up at my house around eight. Parents will be gone.”

That was the text that started it all. It was from Mike Lancer. My boyfriend. Well, sort of, but not really. We’d been hooking up all summer, and he only ever invited me over when his parents were out. But his parents were out a lot, so we’d settled into a routine: I was the girl he called when his parents weren’t around. And if I wasn’t due to perform with my mother that night, I was the girl who went over to his place.

He’d called me his “secret girlfriend” a few times while we were making out, before he stuck it in me. So I guess that made us… something.

This was his first text message though, because I’d just gotten a new phone the day before. My first cell phone, an early birthday present from my mom, bought because she was feeling optimistic.

She’d finally landed a gig for the following weekend at The Rusty Roof, one of Birmingham, Alabama’s oldest and most legendary country music venues, and she’d just gotten a call from the club’s manager that Lee Street, from Big Hill Records, was coming all the way down from Nashville to see her perform. Really, he was coming to see the band of twenty-year-olds slated to go on right before her—the club manager told her that straight up. But Valerie Goode had always been on the crazy side of confident about her career prospects.

She didn’t care who Lee Straight was really coming to see. He’d be in the room. And for a magical thinker like Valerie, that had been enough to make her buy the daughter she called her “right-hand guitar,” her first cell phone. Of course she did it with money she didn’t have, because she was banking on Lee Straight making her a big star after he saw her perform on stage—and/or in bed if need be. In Valerie’s mind, she was always just a performance and one really good fuck away from becoming the world’s first black female country music star.

As far as she was concerned, the only reason she hadn’t made it to fame and fortune before the age of thirty-five was because she’d gotten pregnant with me in her prime contract-signing years. According to her, my birth ruined everything: her relationship with my father, her ability to get the gigs she needed in order to be seen by the right people. Everything Valerie deserved but had never gotten was because of me.

We got along just fine for the most part, but whenever Valerie drank too much—which was often—she let me know just how far I’d set her back. I and I alone was responsible for where she was now: thirty-five and pinning every last hope she had on one gig at the The Rusty Roof.

In reality, this would end up being the gig that finally convinced Valerie she would never, ever make it in country music. The gig that would finally convince her to toss out her “right-hand guitar” and go to L.A. by herself to try to make it there.

But she didn’t know that the weekend before what happened happened, so she bought me a phone. And the first thing I did after I got my new cell phone was text the only other person I knew my age who also had a cell phone. Mike Lancer, the rich boy I’d met at the state fair. On purpose. I’d cornered him at the cotton candy booth after I’d seen him walking around with Beau Prescott, the quarterback of the Forest Brook Vikings. Beau was the boy I’d been secretly watching from afar for years now. The boy I’d never been able to bring myself to talk to.

So I’d gone after his friend, a beefy blond who was more than happy to hook up with me as long as I was okay with going straight to the servants entrance when I came over, because, “No offense, my parents would freak if they knew I was hanging out with a black girl.”

Which was why I was surprised to receive a text message right back from him, just a few seconds after I sent mine.

“Who’s that?” my mom asked, hearing the ding of my phone. “Somebody about a gig?”

She was on the couch, one shapely leg bent beneath her as she painted her toenails. Valerie might have been thirty-five, but she looked at least ten years younger thanks to an insane eating regimen, a wardrobe made up of Southern party girl staples, and her insistence on wearing toenail polish the color of candy. Today she was painting them neon pink.

Pretending to be her manager, so she looked like she’d already had one, was one of the duties my mother had given me, along with playing guitar for her sets and singing back-up when needed. Thanks to an extra serving of T&A that had come in over the past school year, I looked a lot older than fifteen years, especially when I wore stage make-up. Like Valerie, in reverse.

“No, it’s that boy I met at the fair back in June,” I answered her. “He wants me to come over, and we’re not performing tonight…”

My mom actually looked up, her heavily mascaraed eyes flicking over my outfit. Denim Bermuda cut-offs and an old Dick Tracy movie t-shirt I’d cut to hang off one shoulder.

“That’s what you’re wearing?” she asked me.

“Yeah, I don’t like to look like I’m trying too hard.” Especially with Mike Lancer, who was always more concerned with getting me out of my clothes than noticing what I was wearing.

But my mom, the queen of trying too hard, just sucked on her teeth.

“You been taking your pill? You know I’m not—”

“Taking care of no grandbabies. Yeah, I know,” I finished for her. “I’ve been taking it.”

Another disapproving up and down, and my mom went back to her candy toenails.

“Well, see you later, I guess.”

I knew I ought to be grateful to have a mom who didn’t care what I did or where I went at night, as long as it didn’t interfere with my ability to play guitar for her the next weekend. But I remember it grating on me as I left our apartment to wait for the first of the two buses it would take to get me all the way to Forest Brook, Mike Lancer’s neighborhood. Sometimes, I remembered thinking, it would be nice to have a mom who actually gave a shit. For that matter, it would be nice to have anybody who gave a shit.

An hour later, as I walked through Forest Brook, one of Alabama’s richest suburbs, I recalled my grandparents in Tennessee who I used to stay with during the summers. That was before I learned how to play the guitar and Valerie decided she needed me down here in Alabama more. My grandparents gave a shit, and I felt a tug of guilt knowing how much they would disapprove of what I’d been doing with Mike Lancer all summer.

And as I walked past the Tudor mansion Beau Prescott lived in with his parents, I remember wondering to myself why I was doing this. Taking two buses to hook up with a boy I’d met at the fair, just because he was friends with Beau.

But I kept walking. Keeping my head down, so it would be easy for folks to assume I was either one of the many black live-in servants who worked in Forest Brook or one of their daughters. It wasn’t that hard of a role to pull off. My mom used to be one of those servants. So really, I was just acting like what I would have been if she hadn’t decided to pursue her country music career full time after having me.

Still, I remember feeling a little stupid as I slipped around the side of Mike’s large colonial house and scuttled to the servants entrance in back, like a cockroach who did booty calls.

However, this time when I got to the back stairs, I didn’t find them empty like I usually did. There was a boy there, sitting at the bottom of the steps. Like he was guarding the staircase.

This boy, from what I could tell, looked to be around my age, but he was very long. It took five steps to accommodate his bent legs. I’d sat on these steps before to wait for Mike and knew it only took two or three drops before my feet found a place to rest.

I stopped short, not quite knowing how to handle this. I’d never run into anybody back here before. Hell, sometimes Mike wasn’t even there to greet me, which is why I knew how many steps my legs took up. From waiting, since I wasn’t allowed to knock or do anything else that might draw attention to me.

This boy on the steps was blond, too. But he didn’t look like Mike. While Mike’s hair was combed back in lacquered waves, this boy’s hair fell past his ears in stringy locks that made my hands itch for a bottle of shampoo to throw at him. The rest of him wasn’t too much better. He was sporting what looked like a huge black eye behind a pair of thick, square glasses. And his clothes were worn. Not in a cool way, but like they’d originally been bought at a deep discount store, given away to the Salvation Army, then bought out of the dollar box by him. High-water corduroys and a dingy t-shirt.

The boy was also “skinnier than a pile of sticks” as my grandmother might say, with long knobby arms hanging out of his t-shirt. Even before I spotted the violin case, sitting at his feet, the word “nerd” ran through my mind. Maybe he was Mike’s younger brother. A sibling who’d inherited even more height, but not any of Mike’s wide receiver beefiness.

But somehow I didn’t think so.

This kid had a different energy than Mike. A kind of feral presence I recognized well after nearly a lifetime spent in honkytonk bars. Even with the glasses and the violin and the fact that he was here, he looked like what he probably was: poor white trash. Especially with that black eye.

To me, he looked hungry in ways that had nothing to do with food, and I didn’t know who he was or why he was here but I recognized him for what he was from the minute I laid eyes on him: a coyote in human clothing.

“Hi,” I said tentatively. Just like I would have if I had run into an actual coyote in the woods behind my grandparents’ house.

He gave me a lazy coyote up and down look, before asking, “You one of Mike’s girls?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer his question, seeing as how I wasn’t supposed to be claiming Mike out in public. Also, I didn’t love hearing myself called “one of Mike’s girls.” So I didn’t say anything.

Which was answer enough for him. He leaned back, resting his knobby elbows on the steps behind him.

“Figures. He likes them from the wrong side of tracks—as long as mommy and daddy don’t find out.”

His voice was deeper than I would have expected it to be, coming from such a skinny body, and it rang with authority. Like he didn’t need me to confirm nothing, because he already knew everything he needed to know about me.

This time when he looked me up and down, I could see judgment in his eyes as they tracked over my dusty brown hair, my cut up clothes, and most of all, my light brown skin.

“So which wrong side of the tracks are you from?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Where did you get that black eye?”

The corners of his lips tugged up. “Alright, so you don’t want to tell me where you’re from. What do you think we should talk about while you’re pretending not to be waiting for Mike to get here then?”

“We don’t have to talk,” I pointed out.

“No, we don’t,” he agreed.

That got me a whole minute of silence. But eventually it became so uncomfortable, I had ask, “Is there a reason you’re sitting out here as opposed to going inside?”

He shrugged, his thin shoulders going up and down like two knobs underneath his thin t-shirt. “Putting together some thoughts, I guess.”

“Trying to figure out how you’re going to explain that black eye?” I asked him.

A sad smiled passed over his face. “Nobody in there’s going to ask, so I don’t have anything I’ve got to explain. Especially if I lay low until it fades.”

“Laying low ain’t too bad a deal,” I said after thinking on it for a few seconds. “At least you’ve got air conditioning.”

He let out a sound between a bark and a laugh. “Yeah, I guess that’s how I should look at it. I’m not hiding. I’m staying in the air conditioning.”

My eyes wandered to the violin case at his feet. Wondering about it. Wondering about him. Even as I said, “Well, you should probably go on and see about that A/C.”

“Yeah, I probably should,” he agreed. But he didn’t move. Instead, he followed my gaze to his violin.

Leaving me to grow more and more curious in the second silence, until I just had to ask, “So you play violin?”

“Sometimes. Come fall, I’ll be back performing the classical stuff with the Alabama Youth Symphony. But it’s been a long day.” A thin smile crosses his face. “Got in an argument with my dad in Tennessee, and decided to take the bus home. So tonight, it’s probably going to be a fiddle.”

That was a joke I sort of got. Violins and fiddles were basically the same instrument. You could call either the other, as long as you were playing the right song.

I also got that the part about the argument with his father was his way of explaining the black eye, which made my heart constrict with sympathy for him. But he didn’t seem like the kind of boy who would take well to sympathy, so I kept my voice casual as I said, “I should have brought my guitar. We could have played something sad and depressing together.”

Now his face lit with curiosity, and he tilted his head to reassess me, which put his eyes directly in line with the overhead light. I could now see they were an incredible blue, a blue so pretty, they caused my breath to unexpectedly catch. The boy might not have been much to look at, but his eyes packed one hell of a punch. That’s another thing I clearly remember thinking That Night.

“What kind of music do you like to play?” he asked.

“This is and that. Mostly stuff I make up,” I answered. A sip of my story, not the whole glass. I’d learned a long time ago that admitting I was basically a unicorn—a black girl who played and wrote country music—brought up more questions than it answered.

“Do you sing?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

The boy raised his eyebrows, like he didn’t quite know whether to believe me. “Alright then, let me hear you.”

This was before what happened happened, before I stopped singing in front of people ever. But even back then, I can remember thinking there was no way in hell I was going to get up the nerve to sing in front of this weird teenager with the intense blue eyes on Mike Lancer’s back steps.

The boy wasn’t nearly as cute as Mike, but he made me nervous all the same. Maybe because of the way he was looking at me now. Like I’d suddenly gone from being a simple math problem to a complicated one.

“No, I don’t think so,” I answered, my stomach fluttering with butterflies at just the thought of singing one of the songs I’d written.

“Why not?” His voice sounded different now. Even deeper and huskier, like we were involved in some kind of secret conversation.

“Because…” I started, searching for a plausible excuse.

“What are you doing here, Fairgood?”

I turned to see Mike coming towards us in a tux, face screwed up with irritation, glare aimed at the boy sitting on the steps.

“Decided to come home early from Tennessee,” the boy answered Mike. “Was out here fixing to put in some fiddlin’ time before I went to sleep. How about you? Wasn’t tonight was your parent’s big charity ball? Surprised you’re not still there.”

Mike huffed. “They don’t let me drink at those things, so I put in an hour and left out since they weren’t letting me have any fun.”

The boy Mike had referred to as Fairgood lifted his eyebrows, probably thinking what I was thinking. Mike’s explanation for leaving his parents’ charity ball early made him sound like the worst kind of spoiled rich kid cliché.

But Mike didn’t seem to care what the boy on the steps thought of him. He turned to me and said, “I thought I told you eight.”

“I can’t control when the bus gets here,” I answered him, a wave of irritation rolling over me. “I got here early and came back here to wait for you. I wasn’t expecting to meet…”

“Colin,” the boy finished for me. To my surprise, he actually stood like a true Southern gentleman, and took my hand in his with a charming smile. “Colin Fairgood, and it’s real nice to meet you, sweetheart.”

That smile, combined with his words and blue gaze, caused my heart to backflip inside my chest. What the hell, I thought to myself. Is he flirting with me?

Mike must have been thinking the same thing, because he said, “It’s going to be nice to beat you if you don’t get out of the way.”

With that threat, he grabbed me by the arm and said, “C’mon. I’ve got beer in my room. Some pot, too.”

“You go to school around here?” Colin asked me, like Mike hadn’t even said anything.

“No, she’s over in Beaumont,” Mike answered.

My cheeks heated with Mike’s confirmation that I was indeed from the wrong side of the tracks. Beaumont was a small neighborhood in Birmingham that managed to earn a spot on the news for violent outbreaks at least once a week. But the rent was cheap, and living there gave my mother more to spend after the monthly check came in from my father.

“How about you?” I asked Colin, rushing away from the subject. “Do you go to school with Mike?”

“Yes, Mike and I attend the same school,” Colin answered, as if he and Mike were little more than far flung associates, even though they apparently lived in the same house.

“He’s our housekeeper’s son, so technically, he’s in the district.” Mike all but sneered.

The way Mike referred to him as “our housekeeper’s son,” as if that made him too low to attend the same school as him, made my blood crawl. Another feeling I remember clearly from That Night.

And it must have done something to Colin’s inside, too, because his fist bunched at his sides, even as he flashed another charming smile my way.

“You should come back with your guitar sometime,” he said to me, like Mike wasn’t even there. “We could try our hand at some Mark O’Connor.”

“You play guitar?” Mike asked me. Like this was some kind of state secret I’d kept from him on purpose, as opposed to one of the many things we’d never gotten around to talking about since he never seemed all that interested in actually talking to me.

“I do,” I admitted to Mike. “But I’ve never heard of Mark O’Connor,” I confessed to Colin.

“You should look him up. He’s mostly known for his fiddle work, but he plays guitar, too—”

In a sudden burst of violence Mike yanked the violin case off the ground and flipped open its latches.

“No!” I yelled, instinctively knowing what he planned to do.

But Mike already had the violin case open. I only got a small glimpse of the frail instrument, its smooth wood gleaming underneath the back stairs light, before Mike took it by the neck and flung it with all his might against the side of the house.

The next thing I heard was it hitting the house with a sickening crack.

“Oops,” Mike said to Colin, his face shining with smug triumph. “I guess you should have gotten out of my way when I told you to the first time, huh, Fairgood?”

“You son of a bitch!” Colin ran over to where the violin had fallen to the ground.

“How could you do that?” I asked Mike.

Mike sneered again and shook his head. “That kid’s gotten uppity lately, forgetting about who employs who around here. Now he knows not to cross me.”

I had no idea how to answer that seriously fucked up explanation for ruining somebody’s instrument. So I didn’t. Instead I went over to Colin and bent down next to him over his broken violin. Colin was looking it over like a doctor trying to decide what to do next. But even I with my limited knowledge of violins could tell it was too late. The instrument was lying there in two pieces, its stringed neck hanging at a crooked angle from the rest of its wooden body.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my heart breaking for both Colin and the beautiful instrument.

Colin didn’t answer. But I could actually see his thin chest heaving in and out with rage and sorrow as he looked over his poor, broken instrument. And when he got to his feet, I knew what he was fixing to do even before he started toward Mike.

“Colin, don’t!” I yelled, getting to my own feet in order to run after him.

But it was too late. By the time I caught up with Colin, he and Mike were full out brawling. Their fighting styles were almost comically different. Mike, bulky football player that he was, threw punch after punch while Colin feinted and dodged, using his elbows and knees to occasionally land a good blow on Mike.

For a few moments, I watched them go at it in horror-struck fascination. Colin looked exactly like what he was. A violinist/fiddler who knew he couldn’t hurt his hands, but was determined to take on the asshole who’d destroyed his instrument.

I thought of what Colin had said before about having a spot in the Youth Symphony, and what would happen if he lost his ability to play because of this fight, and my heart seized with panic for him.

“Stop!” I yelled at them as loudly as I could without attracting attention.

They didn’t even pause.

So I did my best impression of the small boxing referees I’d seen on TV and got between them, shoving them apart as I did.

Colin stopped fighting immediately. But then he yelled, “Get out the way!” at me.

“No!”

“I’d listen to him if I were you, girl,” Mike growled on the other side of me.

He took several menacing steps forward, and I knew I only had a matter of seconds before he mowed me down in order to get to Colin. Both the guys didn’t just look angry—they looked murderous. Whatever this was between them, it wasn’t about me, or even the violin, really. It was about class, privilege, and entitlement, and it went deep.

But I stood my ground against Mike anyway.

“Well, you’re not me, boy,” I let him know. “And if you don’t want me screamin’ so everybody comes running, then I suggest you turn your butt around and head on up to your room. Otherwise, a whole bunch of folks are about to find out you’ve been clocking time with a black girl.”

The way Mike’s face blanched told me nearly more than anything proceeding that moment that I’d been nothing less than a stone cold idiot to ever let this boy touch me.

“Go’on, Mike,” I said. “Just go’on now.” I could barely stand to look at him.

For a moment, Mike looked cowed. But only for a moment.

Eventually he straightened up, a nasty smile coming over his face, as he looked around me at Colin.

“What is it with you and the black girls?” he asked. “You know what? I think I’m going to go over to Beau’s now and tell him I just discovered your special wimp power. Getting black girls to save you from ass kickings.”

I had no idea what Mike was talking about, but my entire chest split open at the mention of Beau. Beautiful Beau Prescott, who I’d never had the guts to talk to myself. The boy whose football buddy I’d settled for. Thinking of Beau, I watched Mike walk away, out of the yard, and through the white picket gate. All casual, as if leaving was exactly what he’d been fixing to do all along.

When he was out of eyeshot, I relaxed and turned to Colin. “You alright?” I asked him.

“You’re an idiot.”

Not quite the answer I’d been expecting after saving his bacon, and I stared at him, blinking, I was so taken aback.

Another thing I remember clearly about that night: the way his eyes glittered in the moonlight as he snarled, “You shouldn’t have interfered.”

I took a step back, but just like with Mike, I stood my ground. “I was only trying to help.”

“What makes you think I needed some idiot girl’s help?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I guess you being maybe a buck forty soaking wet up against a state champion football player made me think that?”

“I weigh a lot more than that,” Colin shot back as he went to pick his Urkel glasses up out of the grass. They were, like the violin, bent at an awkward angle, but he jammed them back on his face anyway.

And that made me feel sorry for him all over again.

Because the truth was, if I hadn’t intervened, Mike would have kicked his ass. Probably would have broken a few fingers, too, just because.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said, letting some apology creep into my voice. “I thought I was helping.”

“You didn’t help me,” Colin spat out. “You just gave him something else to lord over me. So thank you for that, Beaumont girl.”

“Colin, I was only trying to—”

“Get out of here,” he said, voice vicious as a thunderstorm. “I’m sick of looking at your idiot face.”

As insults went, it wasn’t the worst I’d had flung at me. I had been playing guitar in mostly white establishments since the age of eight, after all. But something about his dismissal cut me deep, digging into old wounds that had never properly healed. At that point, I’d been getting dismissed all my life. By my father, by club owners, by my mother, by school teachers who’d told me I’d never amount to anything because I was more interested in coming up with new song lyrics than learning what they had to teach. Hell, this whole summer with Mike had felt like a dismissal.

But at that moment, I just couldn’t take getting dismissed by Colin, too.

“I’m not your servant,” I informed him. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“Get out of here,” he said, advancing on me.

I tried to shove him back, and was shocked to find he’d been telling the truth. He wasn’t nearly as skinny as he appeared. He didn’t even stumble.

He, on the other hand, had no problem getting me to move. He pushed me toward the white picket fence. “Get out of here!”

I stumbled, but came back with a “No!” and stood strong.

Another push toward the fence. “I said get out of here, Beaumont girl!”

The insult of him referring to me once again by the name of my neighborhood made me erupt like a volcano. The next thing I knew, I was kicking at him and shoving him away from me, yelling, “No! No! Get your hands off of me!”

My endgame? I had no idea. Still don’t. In that moment, I just knew I wasn’t going to let him push me away or throw me off the Lancers’ property like a bag of trash.

At first he just kept on trying to corral me toward the gate. But for every little push he gave me, I shoved him, as hard as I could. Putting all my body weight into it, and swiping at him like a cat when he tried to advance on me again.

“I said git, Beaumont!” he yelled at me.

“And I said no!” I yelled right back.

He let out a low growl, and the next thing I knew, my back slammed into the wall beside the stairs, a hand manacling around my wrists, pinning them above my head before I could fight back, much less shove him away.

I tried to move, but he was stronger than he looked. He easily kept me pinned against the side of the Lancers’ mansion, his thin chest pressed into my soft one… and something else that wasn’t so thin pressed into my stomach.

That was when things got weird.

We’d just fought. Like, physically fought. And now he had my back to the wall, with what felt like a raging hard on inside his jeans.

I was scared. I’d only really gone through puberty that year, and despite what my newly big chest and wide hips might have led others to believe, I didn’t have much experience with boys yet. Mostly with Mike, I’d just lain there and taken it.

But there was no mistaking what was happening to me in this position. I could feel heat pooling between my legs as my breasts became incredibly tight, their nipples pebbling behind my thin cotton bra.

“It’s time for you to go.” His voice was barely above a feral whisper at that point.

He was right. I should go. I should run. But something inside of me still couldn’t give in.

“No!” I practically spat back at him. “You can’t make me.”

Something flashed across his face then, a look so mean, it made my heart go into free fall, and my mouth open to take back what I’d just said.

But then he kissed me. And the kiss was somehow scarier than him pinning me against the wall or the mean look that came before it.

It felt like I’d been unexpectedly pushed into a boiling kettle, and my whole body was instantly consumed by heat. I could feel him. Not just his lips, and hands, and thin body, but the stuff on the inside, too. All his rage and anger. All his sadness, as he dragged his lips over mine.

I could also feel his long length pulsating at my core, despite the layers separating our actual flesh. Feel it and want it like I’d never wanted any other boy’s thing inside of me before.

I suddenly found myself wishing my hands were free. I wanted to feel it for real. Wanted to feel him for real. I rolled my hips underneath his kiss, trying to get to the part of him I wanted inside of me. My new body had gotten so hot, so fast I couldn’t even remember to play it cool like you’re supposed to when it comes to boys.

I just wanted to. I just wanted him. I just wanted to with him…

“Dammit, Beaumont,” Colin said, his hand squeezing my wrists where he still had them pinned above my head. “This is crazy. We’ve got to stop.”

I tried to ignore him. Tried to catch his lips again. He wanted me. I knew he did, knew this couldn’t possibly be a one-sided thing.

But he ripped his lips away from mine.

“You’re one of Mike’s girls,” he reminded me. “And you’re from Beaumont. You don’t have any business being here, doing what you’ve been doing with Mike—what you almost did with me.”

“My mom needs this job, so this house is my prison.” He shook his head, and it was hard to tell if he was still talking to me or himself when he said, “But I’ve only got a year left on my sentence before I can go away to college. It ain’t worth it.”

Colin released my hands and drew back, looking at me like I was a pile of trash that had just walked out of a dumpster and tried to convince him to do it with her.

“You ain’t worth it.”

Those words, more than any he’d said before, cut me bad. So bad, I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t think of anything to say in my defense.

Then he drove the knife in even deeper, pointing at me, as he said, “You need to git.”

This time, he didn’t wait for me to say no again. Just wiped his hands on his threadbare jeans and headed up the stairs. Leaving me to stand there on that wall, still shaken to my very core by our kiss, still cut raw by his words, as I watched his stork-like body disappear.

The sound of his receding footsteps was soon followed by the slam of the back door. And I was left with no doubt whatsoever in my mind that I wouldn’t ever see the housekeeper’s son again.

But I was wrong about that.

I did see him again. Just a couple of years later, on my grandma’s 35” TV.

Turned on CMT one day, and there he was. At least, I was halfway sure it was him. The guy singing on my grandma’s TV looked like a suped up version of the one who’d kissed me on that hot Alabama summer night. His hair was no longer stringy, but fell in gorgeous waves that shone like spun gold underneath the studio lights. He’d put on quite a bit of muscle. I mean, he wasn’t muscle bound like Beau Prescott, but he definitely wasn’t a bag of sticks anymore either. I could see how well defined his body was under the long-sleeved Charlie Daniels Band varsity t-shirt he wore. He also still had those pretty blue eyes, and that good ol’ southern boy smile, both of which he unleashed on the audience as he sang.

Colin, the housekeeper’s son, was, I realized as I watched him singing on my grandma’s TV, drop dead gorgeous. The nerdy air he’d carried with him had completely disappeared, right along with his glasses.

And the song he was singing wasn’t bad either.

His voice, I figured, was just a little better than okay, but I had to give it to him for his lyrics. They were excellent. And for somebody who used to be in the Alabama Youth Symphony, he knew how to play one hell of a country guitar. But apparently he hadn’t completely abandoned his violin. Halfway through the song, he put down the guitar and performed the fiddle solo himself, which was not something a lot of country singers did. In fact, that’s what made Charlie Daniels a legend.

But Colin did it, and I watched him do it, my mouth hanging open because I could barely believe it was really him. Really Colin Fairgood. Maybe I was mistaken…?

But no, after he was finished, the host confirmed we’d just heard the first song off of Colin Fairgood’s debut album. Then he chatted with Colin for a little bit before inviting him to play another tune, which he did—though he didn’t bother with the fiddle on the next one. Guess he didn’t want the world to think he was a one-trick pony.

But fiddle or no fiddle, it was definitely him.

I watched him play and I knew… true as if God had come down and told me himself: Colin Fairgood was no longer the Housekeeper’s Son. He’d done his time and gotten out of Alabama. And now he’d never have to worry about rich white boys like Mike Lancer again.

Strangely, I was less surprised to see him on television than I was the next time I saw him….a few years later, and in real life.

I can’t help but think about Colin Fairgood a whole lot of years later as I’m driving to my new job. Not just because it’s in Brentwood, an affluent suburb of Nashville, the country music capital of the world. But also because his song comes on the radio, just as my BMW’s nav system tells me I’ve reached my destination… right in front of a gas station.

I curse, knowing I’m going to be late on my first day, working for my new client, a multiple stroke victim in her late sixties. Which is stupid because I’ve been wanting a job in Nashville for a good long while now. Even going so far as to turn down live-in gigs in Memphis so I could leave myself available in case something opened up near where I really wanted to live—Nashville, a city where I’d finally have a chance to make my songwriting dream come true.

But Nashville isn’t Memphis. I know Memphis like the back of my hand, which means I’d never really have to depend on the nav system, which I’m sure was considered top-of-the-line back in 2001 when the car was first made. But now it’s telling me this gas station is for sure the place I want to be, while Colin Fairgood and the now-retired pop singer, Roxxy RoxX, sing about a kid who goes to bed hungry, with “a ghost in his belly” every night.

That song was supposed to be a country charity single, but it went on to become Colin’s first number one mainstream song, rocketing up the pop charts and introducing him to a much larger group of fans—all of who seemed just fine to roll along with him when he made the switch from thoughtful singer-songwriter songs that won music industry awards, to raucous country club thumpers that actually moved albums. I preferred his thoughtful singer-songwriter period a little better, but the last thing I needed to hear on my first day at the new job I was already late for was a song about not having enough to eat. I switch off the radio, cursing myself for agreeing to share a phone plan with my grandma.

Working as a home health aide worker doesn’t require a college degree, but it also doesn’t pay much. Which is why I went with the cheapest data plan after my grandma used her entire Social Security check to buy us matching smartphones last Christmas. But that had been before I’d known what a data hog my grandmother would become, with her constant posting to social media sites, and her crack-like addiction to the Family Feud & Friends mobile game app. There’s never enough data left over at the end of the month to do simple stuff, like use the map app on my smartphone to figure out how to get to my new job. Not unless I want to pay some serious overage charges—which I don’t.

I end up going into the gas station and poring over a hand-drawn map with a very helpful but hard to understand Pakistani gas station attendant for nearly fifteen more minutes.

As it turns out, Rose Gaither, my newest client, lives in a recently constructed gated neighborhood with its own golf complex.

“It is very nice place. Very nice,” the attendant tells me. “I do not know how to play the golf, but I hope to play it there maybe someday. This is my dream.”

We all have dreams, I think as I leave the gas station. Plus, who am I to judge anybody else for having a crazy dream. I actually consider this job a dream come true. Working as Rose Gaither’s live-in aide will mean a steady paycheck and enough time to work on putting together some songs for a demo. Of course, I’ll have to save every extra penny in order to pay to record those songs to a demo, which I can then pass on to labels and producers looking for new songwriting talent. And before that, I’ll have to figure out how to get over my crippling fear of singing in front of people. But hey, one out of three ain’t bad. And at least I’ll finally be living in Nashville, the place where country music dreams come true.

However those dreams soon start feeling like they’re slipping away when I finally make it into the gated community, filled with rolling hills, huge mansions, and as promised, an idyll golf course with lush green grass, sand pits, and even a sparkling lake. As pretty as the place is, it’s a total nightmare to navigate, and even with the little map the gas station attendant drew for me, I keep on getting turned around on roads that turn out to be unmarked cul-de-sacs or just don’t go through, because forget you, hapless home aide, we’re a gated community, we don’t have to make sense.

I have to ask three different gardeners, in broken Spanish, how to get to Telescope Road before I finally pull up to the place I’m supposed to be living until further notice—over half an hour after I was supposed to arrive. I’m cursing that dang Family Feud & Friends game for real as I get out of the car.

Compared to the rest of the neighborhood’s showy mega-mansions, Rose Gaither’s house is cute as a button. A large, blue Cape cod with a covered porch and neat brick steps. I run up them and push on the doorbell, my heart still beating erratically in my chest from the Dora the Explorer episode that just getting here put me through.

I wait, but no answer. I look at my watch. Now it’s thirty-two minutes past when I was supposed to be here.

I curse again and lean on the doorbell. Still no answer, though. And the scar that runs down the entire left side of my face feels like it’s pulsing under the heavy makeup I’ve put on to cover it up. A sure sign I’m more stressed than I need to be at a first meeting with a new client.

Where’s the night nurse? I wonder. She was supposed to meet me and take me through my duties before I started my first shift.

Not knowing what else to do, I try the doorbell a third time.

But still no answer.

Okay, obviously I’m going to have to call the agency. But first I decide to try the doorknob, just in case…

The handle depresses easily and the door swings open with barely a creak.

Weird, I think, wondering if I should look for the client or go get my bags out of my car. I decide to look for the client, because the last thing a multiple stroke victim needs is to be shocked to death by the presence of a stranger in her house.

I check downstairs first. The house is a little grander on the inside. Gleaming hardwood floors and a sweeping staircase are the first things I see when I walk in through the door. But I pass the stairs and search for the downstairs bedroom first. I don’t care how fancy you are. Nobody’s going to want to climb a marble staircase after going through a stroke.

Turns out I’m right, and I find a post-it note from the absent night nurse on one of the first closed doors I come to.

“Sorry, family emergency. Will try to call you later in the day with instructions.”

I give the note some serious stank face. Maybe the night nurse really did have a family emergency, or maybe she just didn’t feel like sticking around to train the new home aide who was putting her out of a job. Either way, it’s not the best way to start off with a new client.

Shake it off, I think, stuffing the post-it into the front pocket of my scrubs. I take a deep breath and give a little knock before pushing through the door with a bright smile on my face—

—only to find Rose Gaither prone on the bed. Her eyes wide. One hand at her chest, wrapped fist tight around something I can only assume is a cross.

She’s in distress, I realize right away. Another stroke—no a heart attack, I quickly correct myself, running over to the bed.

I pull out my phone and call 9-1-1. Calmly I tell the answering operator what’s going on, then I give her the address, hoping like hell the ambulance has an easier time finding this place than I did. But I try not to worry too much about that. Ms. Gaither lives in a rich neighborhood. Ambulances, I know from experience, have a way of finding their way extra quick to the homes of the rich.

“I’m fixing to begin life saving procedures now,” I inform the operator.

This isn’t my first rodeo, and I’ve become good at attending to clients while talking on the phone with 9-1-1 at the same time. It’s one of those skills you wish you didn’t have, but of course get before too long as a home health aide. And I’ve been doing this job in some way or another ever since high school.

But when I go to put my hands on her chest, the little old lady knocks them away with her bent arm, still clinging to her necklace. At first I think it’s involuntary, but then she frantically shakes her head at me and I remember…

The short history file I’d received a few days ago on her. And the five words I’d been a little surprised to see. “Has a DNR on file.”

I raise my hands and whisper, “I forgot you have a DNR.”

Rose nods, her milky blue eyes somewhat terrified… but more determined than fearful, even as her heart gives out.

“Did you say she has a DNR?” the operator asks over the line.

My hands hover over her frail body, not sure what to do.

I’ll admit most of my patients have been God-fearing black folks—not a crowd that has a lot of truck with DNRs. I’ve always known this could happen, but did I ever believe it would?

No, I guess I didn’t. I think about ignoring the order. I could always say later that I didn’t notice the sentence in her case letter, blame the night nurse who hadn’t stuck around to train me. I am my mama’s daughter after all, and I know how to lie.

But then I look down at Rose. She’s still shaking her head, her lips kissed into a silent “Noooo!” She doesn’t want this. This life in this big fancy house of hers. It’s not enough. Not enough to make her want to stay here in her broken body…

“Hello? Are you still there?” the operator asks on the other side of my phone.

I sit back on my knees and release the breath I’d been holding.

“Yeah, I’m still here,” I answer. “I can’t begin life saving procedures. She has a DNR on file.”

“Oh,” the operator says.

We share a tiny moment of quiet over that piece of information, then she goes right back into efficiency mode. Telling me to stay with Rose, and try to make her comfortable. An ambulance is still on the way.

“Okay,” I say to the operator, but I’m looking at Rose. I’m holding her limp hand, the one that doesn’t work anymore because of the strokes.

“I’m here with you,” I tell her. “You’re not alone. I’m here with you until the end.”

It’s stupid, because I’m not her family. I’m not even anybody she’s ever met before. In fact, from what I recall of her paperwork, we only have one thing in common, her and me. We’re both from Alabama, and somehow we both ended up in Tennessee.

But that’s all. She’s white. I’m black. A few minutes ago, I was feeling like my life was finally getting started. But hers… it’s coming to an end.

I hold her hand anyway. I hold her hand and watch the last light of life leave her eyes as the ambulance sirens sound in the distance. Eventually, her right hand unclenches and I see I was right. It was an old, silver cross necklace she’d been clinging to, until the very end.

SO… NO, NOT THE BEST FIRST DAY I’ve ever had on a job. But better than some last days, I suppose, as I sit on the sweeping staircase, strumming my guitar.

At least it hadn’t involved a client with dementia, accusing me of stealing the jewelry that had obviously been taken by her junkie son. There was no asshole male family member who’d come to visit his ailing mother, or aunt, or grandmother, but somehow decided it’d be a great idea to corner her home aide with a pick up line like, “Hey redbone, you wanna come out with me or what?”—then have the nerve to get upset and convince his relative to fire you when you say no.

No, not as bad as being accused of stealing or getting sexually harassed while you’ve got a bedpan in your hands. But way up there on that list, for sure.

It took a while to get everything sorted out. The paramedics called in more people, including a medical examiner to make pronouncements and fill out paperwork. More calls had been made, and I’d been told to stay with the body until the funeral home arrived, which they did. In record time, I thought.

My only experience with an in-home death happened a long time ago. My grandfather died in his sleep while I was still in my training program to become a home aide. All I really remember about that sad morning was sitting with my grandmother, waiting for the church’s funeral home to come get him. It felt like it took them forever.

But I guess I’ve been lucky up until now. None of my other clients ever died while I was on the job. But Rose had died, had silently commanded me to let her go on. And now I was stuck here in the place where she’d done it, waiting here for her son who’d been out of town, but is flying back from wherever. I’m supposed to give him the agency’s condolences, and the keys, and some paperwork, but you know, don’t talk to him too much about what happened.

“If he asks you about it, have him call me directly,” the director at the agency told me. “I’ve been on the phone with his assistant all morning, but this is a VIP client, so I want him sent straight to the top if he has any questions.”

The top being the director, who hadn’t even been there. I had a feeling if the agency’s headquarters weren’t all the way over in Memphis, she would have come out here to handle things herself.

Actually it’s more like a wish than a feeling, because talking to your dead client’s only son is not exactly a job I would have necessarily signed up for. But it is what it is, I guess. So I sit on the staircase with my guitar and wait.

Then wait some more.

The sun sets and eventually the lights click off as the house grows cold—it’s probably on one of those timers, designed to turn off all the lights and stop cranking the heat so hard when everybody is under the covers. Real good for the environment, but my old peacoat isn’t doing much to keep me warm.

I’m grateful to have my guitar. The nice thing about music is if you’re playing it right, it can distract you from a lot of life’s problems. Like cold houses. And promising jobs that end the morning they start. And the memory of life’s light fading from milky blue eyes.

Thinking about Rose, I start playing a song that’s been bugging me off and on for the last few months. A hook and some chords, always slipping away when I tried to chase down the full song. But this time when I start playing it, the song doesn’t turn tail and run. Instead it unfurls, slow and sad, until I get to the last verse, when I know it’s okay. It’s not happy, but it’s okay. Because she’s finally at peace. She’s okay to leave and… become my country song.

I stop when I finish. Barely able to believe what just happened. A song. A full song unfolded in its entirety in less than five minutes. I fumble for the journal I keep inside my guitar case with a pen tucked inside, and I write it down. Every single word. I write it down, even though it’s not the kind of song a soul would or could ever forget.

Then just in case I misunderstood what just happened, I play it again in its entirety. This time with a little more passion, taking what I’ve inherited, the drama from my mama and the grit from my grandma, and pouring all of it into my performance in the empty room, until I find myself once again arriving at the last three words, “…my country song.”

“That your song?” a voice asks after the last guitar note fades.

I nearly drop my guitar out of my lap. A man is standing in the foyer. I hadn’t heard him come in, but obviously he must have arrived sometime while I was singing, because the front door is still open, the streetlight casting him in shadows.

I squint, trying to get a better read on him. Sensing who he is, even though I can’t quite see his face.

He’s tall, and covered from head to toe in casual clothes, so perfectly suited to him that I’m sure someone spent a grip of his money picking them out. A white Stetson sits on top his head, like a crown.

He doesn’t look the same. He doesn’t even sound the same. But I recognize him immediately, even before he steps into the light and reveals his crystal blue gaze.

It’s Colin. Colin Fairgood.

And now I’m the housekeeper’s kid, sitting on the stairs, my mind locked in the past. My body once again tingling with the memory of his kiss, as if it had just happened moments, not years ago.

“That your song?” he asks me again.