I’m choked up, trying to breathe through it and failing. “Why, Rob? Why are you doing all this for me?” My voice breaks on the last word.

  He shakes his head, and his smile turns from encouraging and wise to compassionate. “Because I believe in music, honey. I believe that if someone has the kind of raw talent you have, they owe it to the world to use that talent, to share the music with the rest of us. The world deserves to hear the music you have inside you, Delta. I feel like it’s my duty to get that music out there.”

  “What if no one likes me? What if I fail? What if I get up on stage in front of a real crowd for the first time, and I bomb? What if . . . what if I’m nothin’ but a one-hit wonder?” Doubts pour out of me faster than I can verbalize them. “What if I just suck? What if I put out this EP and it doesn’t move any copies? What if Alex hates it on the road and I have to stop touring? He has to come first, Rob. I can’t and I won’t sacrifice his future for my stupid dreams.”

  Rob lets go of the button, leaves the production booth and comes in to stand in front of me. He takes my face in his hands with the gruff gentility of a loving grandfather. “That there is fear talkin’, honey-pie. Shut that shit down. People love your first single. They love your voice, they love your lyrics, they love the video . . . they love you. That song is rocketing up the charts, okay? The Highway picked it up for their On the Horizon program, and people went apeshit for it. Before you know, it’ll be charting on the top thirty. You’ve got it, Delta.

  “If you fuck up, you just smile and apologize and play your goddam guts out anyway.” He lets go and backs up a step, gesturing at Alex, visible through the window, absorbed in his show, oblivious to this conversation. “And if he hates touring, you figure something out. I don’t have all the answers, babe; I’m just your producer. All I know is I’m damn good at spotting talent and making it pop out there in the big ol’ world, and that’s what I’m gonna do with you. So stop overthinkin’ everything.” He squeezes my shoulder. “Now. Play me a song. Nothin’ too heart wrenching, but not too peppy either. Somethin’ catchy and commercial.”

  I blow out a shaky breath. “Okay. Okay. You’re right.” I strum an open chord, pick a few strings. “Catchy and commercial.”

  I find the right song, find the right chords, try to remember the melody and the lyrics. “This one is called ‘Just Need Tonight,’” I say.

  * * *

  “You got me like whiskey

  So baby just kiss me

  Tip me back and drink me down

  Pick me up, take off my gown

  I ain’t no Cinderella, no fancy glass shoes

  You ain’t no Hollywood fella, on a list of who’s who

  So just pay the tab

  Call us a cab

  I’ve had a few drinks, can you taste ’em

  Don’t have many hours, so don’t waste ’em

  You got me like whiskey

  All you gotta do is kiss me

  Tip me back and pour me down

  Pick me up and take off my gown

  * * *

  Don’t need a pick up line

  So don’t ask me the time

  I like whiskey, don’t drink wine

  Don’t need salt, don’t need lime

  This ain’t a date,

  So baby don’t wait

  Don’t mind the hangover,

  Won’t ask to stay over

  Don’t need a promise, don’t need a call

  All I want is this, baby that’s all

  Sweaty skin and whiskey lips

  Beat of your heart and hands on my hips

  Bodies in motion, shadows like oceans

  Touch like devotion, kiss like a potion

  You got me riled, so baby be wild

  No number to dial, just keep me a while

  * * *

  Don’t need tomorrow, just need tonight

  I ain’t no virgin, don’t wear white

  Take me out and show me around

  Pick me up, show me the town

  Butter me up, I might go down

  Don’t need my number, ain’t a booty call

  This ain’t love, and I won’t fall

  All I want is you and me naked

  Take me to bed, I won’t fake it

  Baby just get me screaming

  And then leave me dreaming

  Won’t hear me weeping

  This ain’t love, I don’t want keeping

  Here comes the sun

  Baby, it sure was fun

  * * *

  Don’t need a pick up line

  So don’t ask me the time

  I like whiskey, don’t drink wine

  Don’t need salt, don’t need lime

  This ain’t a date,

  So baby don’t wait

  Don’t mind the hangover,

  Won’t ask to stay over

  Don’t need a promise, don’t need a call

  All I want is this, baby that’s all

  Sweaty skin and whiskey lips

  Beat of your heart and hands on my hips

  Bodies in motion, shadows like oceans

  Touch like devotion, kiss like a potion

  You got me riled, so baby be wild

  No number to dial, just keep me a while.”

  * * *

  I end the song and glance at Rob to gauge his reaction. He nods, leans back in his chair and fiddles with dials and buttons for a while, lost in thought. After a minute or so, he leaves his side of the glass and comes over to mine, bringing a chair with him. He sits across from me with the chair reversed so he’s straddling it with his arms resting on the chair back.

  “Delta, can I be honest with you?”

  I nod. “I hope you always will be, Rob.”

  “A lot of your songs have a running theme to them, I’ve noticed.” He sighs, tapping the chair with a finger, hesitating. “You, just looking for a good time for the night.”

  I shrug, half-nod. “More or less. A lot of the songs guys write are about drinking and picking up girls, and I decided I wanted to write from the opposite perspective—that we girls like to have fun, too.”

  He nods. “I get that, I do. I just . . . I’m not sure that’s the image you necessarily want to go for.”

  “What image, Rob? The slutty one?” I talk over his protests. “It’s who I am, and I’m not going to apologize for it. I lived my life hard and fast until I had Alex, and a lot of my material came out of that. Trying to accept who I was, trying to figure it out, come to terms with it. My image won’t ever be squeaky clean and shiny, because there ain’t a single thing about me that’s squeaky clean and shiny.”

  Rob holds up his hands to slow my tirade. “And sweetheart, I get all that. I ain’t asking you to change, or to apologize, or to be anything you’re not.”

  “Then what are you asking, Rob?”

  “I’m asking you to dig deeper. As a songwriter, as a musician, dig deeper. Find me the song that tells a story, tells me as the listener something I can identify with, something that makes me feel.”

  “You said catchy and commercial, and that song felt catchy to me.”

  He nods. “It is. It’s a damn good song, and I plan on fine-tuning it for later. But to end this EP, you need something that captures a part of who you are.”

  I blow out a breath and nod.

  I’ve had something rumbling around my head for a while, and I play the chords as they come to me. I grab the notebook and pen on the floor by my feet and work out the lyrics. Rob is patient, willing to chat with Alex and wait me out. It doesn’t take me long to fall into the spell of song writing, strumming a few chords, testing transitions, playing with tempo and phrasing and melody until I feel the song fall into the groove.

  After ten or fifteen minutes, I feel confident that I have it down, and I play the melody through a few times, thinking through the lyrics. I feel it, now. Whenever I write a song, I have to work through it and figure it out, and then suddenly I feel something just . . . click. The moment when the song becomes a complete entity, no longer only an idea in my head but a real physical thing, there’s this mental, emotional, physical click, when I know it’s complete. It’s not always fast, sometimes I have to work on a song for hours or days or even weeks before the click comes, and sometimes, like with this one . . . it’s a matter of minutes, of letting the song pour out of me into what it’s meant to be.

  “I think I’m gonna call this one ‘Faking This,’” I say, as I play a short music intro, and then start in on the lyrics. As I start singing, I let myself really feel it, let the emotions take over, let myself really miss Jonny, and I put all that into the way I sing, giving myself over to it completely.

  * * *

  “If I take this moment, will there be any more?

  If I let you go, can I watch you walk out the door?

  If I take this moment and own it,

  It’ll be the end of us, won’t it?

  There’s a million reasons why written in the sky

  They gleam like the moon

  They tell of you leavin’ me soon

  A million reasons you can’t stay

  A million reasons you’re walking away

  * * *

  If I just lie here in the dark maybe I’ll dream of you

  If I pretend my hand is your hand, maybe I’ll scream for you

  If I close my eyes and wish, maybe I’ll remember your kiss

  But I’m not all right, baby I’m just faking this

  * * *

  This won’t be the end of me

  So baby don’t pretend for me

  But did you have to look back?

  The kisses, the whispers, was it an act?

  The way you held me from night till the morning,

  The way you took my heart without warning

  Were they just lines, was it a game?

  I said it’s all too much, and you felt the same,

  Your touch is more than a memory,

  Your kiss, what it meant for me

  Your words, what they did to me

  Getting lost in the stars, it felt like a dream

  You left and you’re gone, was it what it seemed?

  Did you love me, or were we just sex

  Do you love me, or am I an ex?

  * * *

  If I just lie here in the dark maybe I’ll dream of you

  If I pretend my hand is your hand, maybe I’ll scream for you

  If I close my eyes and wish, maybe I can remember your kiss

  But I’m not all right, baby I’m just faking this

  I’m just faking this, faking this, faking this . . .”

  * * *

  The last note quavers in the booth, and I feel it echoing inside me. I look up, and Rob is grinning ear to ear, pointing at me through the glass and then slow clapping.

  He leans forward and hits the button. “That! Honey, that is it!” he hollers. “That’s the one, babe.”

  “Okay, so should we go through it again?” I ask. “I feel like I could improve it in a few places.”

  Rob shakes his head. “Nope, that’s it, just like it is. I’m not doing a damn thing to it. You and your guitar, your raw vocals and the feeling you put into it, that’s all you need.”

  “Rob, you’re crazy. You can’t put that on the EP like that. It’s the first time I even played it through. I literally just wrote it!”

  He laughs. “And that’s why it’s perfect. I’ve been saying we need this to be raw and real. You don’t need to be produced, babe, you just need to be recorded.”

  “Can’t we go over it once more?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. You’ll lose the edge of the passion if you do it again. It’s gotta hit with that ragged edge you gave it. It wasn’t perfect, and that’s why it is perfect. Your voice shook in a couple places, and I swear to God I felt how deeply you feel about that guy, whoever he was.”

  I sigh and try to put aside the feelings I unearthed. “You’re the expert.”

  Rob’s eyes pierce a little too deeply. “I’ve been tryin’ to keep you locked in on the music the last few weeks, ’cause I thought maybe that was what you needed. But, babe, it’s been damn near a month since we left Florida, and you’re still digging some pretty ragged hurt out of that situation you left down there.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  With a glance at Alex, who is now playing a game of some sort, his tongue sticking out of the corner of this mouth, Rob once again joins me in the recording booth, straddling the chair. “Sure it does.”

  I shake my head. “No, it really doesn’t. He’s gone and I’m here. It was never going to be anything, and we both knew it.”

  “Don’t make it hurt any less.”

  “No, that’s for sure.” I try to smile at him and only partially succeed. “It is what it is.”

  Rob growls. “That’s a load of bullshit.”

  I frown at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Folks say ‘it is what it is’ when they feel like there ain’t shit they can do about something, but that don’t mean you can shove the way you feel under the rug like it doesn’t matter.” He taps my guitar. “You can put your hurt into a song and sing your way to a number one hit, but that doesn’t count as dealing with it, Delta.”

  “I don’t want to deal with it. Dealing with it means thinking about it, and I’m doing a pretty damn good job of living in denial.”

  Rob shakes his head. “That’s no good, Delta. It won’t work.”

  “Yeah, well, it has so far.” I pluck a string and adjust the tuning a touch. “It’s worked my whole life.”

  “Just because it’s what you’ve been doing don’t mean it’s working, honey.” He tugs on his beard. “Listen, I know what I’m talking about, okay? I’m successful, and I’ve never been told I’m ugly, but I’m single, and why you think that is? Because I’ve always done the same thing you’re doing. Ignore the hurt and hope it goes away. Shove it all under the rug and don’t talk about it, don’t deal with it, and it stops hurting so much, eventually. Pretend I’m fine, keep on going, act like all the shit I’ve been shoving deeper and deeper ain’t eating a hole inside me. That shit ferments on you, Delta. Turns to acid, and burns a hole inside you.”

  “Rob, I can’t just—”

  “I ain’t sayin’ you gotta unload it all on me. I’m just a retired producer, what do I know? But I also hope we’re friends.” I start to protest again, and he holds up his hand to stop me. “I won’t bore you with the whole story, but here’s the short version. I was married for near on twenty years. Met her back in Texas, when I was a hungry young buck working the honkey tonks down that way, trying to bust out of the local scene. She was a stone cold fox, and I fell in love faster than fire burns paper. We had things good for a spell. I pushed out of Texas and got the attention of some folks here in Nashville, and we got married, moved here. Kept writing and eventually got into producing and realized that was where my real talent was, more than writing or performing.

  “For me and Lisa, though, it wasn’t so golden. I got caught up in the excitement, made some mistakes, did some stupid shit that hurt her. And she retaliated in kind. Turned into this escalating thing we never acknowledged or talked about, just kept piling hurt on hurt until we forgot what our love looked like. We tried to fix it, tried therapy and all that shit, but it had soured until there wasn’t anything left but old hurt. And the thing about old hurt you ain’t dealt with, Delta? Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s lost its potency. More often that not, just like whiskey, old hurt stings all the harder because it’s old and all knotted up inside you.”

  I shake my head. “Rob, it’s not the same. I met a guy, we had a fling, and it ended. That’s it. Not worth dwelling on.”

  “Aw, now you’re just talkin’ out your ass and whistlin’ Dixie, Delta.” He stares hard at me, and I know he sees through me. “That lie don’t sell, babe.”

  “Rob, goddammit.” I rub the strings and set the guitar into the stand and put my face in my hands, sighing and scrubbing.

  “It ain’t just the boy, is it?” He jerks thumb at Alex. “And by boy, I don’t mean that one. I mean the one who was watching you from outside the fire like he was fixin’ to leave behind half his heart.”

  “It’s . . . it’s everything!”

  “Well now, when you say it’s everything, that can cover a whole lot of everything. Maybe try to narrow it down a mite?” He holds up a finger. “Hold on a second. I think we need some liquid honesty for this.” He vanishes, comes back with a bottle of whiskey. “Looks like your little soldier there is getting sleepy, so why don’t we take this conversation back to your place?”

  So we end up in Rob’s fancy little car, Alex in the tiny back seat, yawning and trying to act like he isn’t. Rob did indeed find me a really nice apartment in Nashville, ground floor with a patio and good schools if we end up staying.

  I had a little bit of money saved up, and I used it to pay a couple months of rent up front so I can focus on recording. If this gamble doesn’t pay off, I’ll be screwed, but I’ll hate myself if I don’t try, so I’m putting it all on the line and hoping.

  Rob wanted to help with rent, but I drew the line there, because that was starting to feel a bit too much like charity, and even though I get the feeling Rob is a genuine person with genuine motives, I’m far too jaded to let myself be in any kind of financial debt to him. I’m not sugar-baby material, but a lonely older guy with money and a younger woman in a desperate situation? Yeah, I wasn’t about to let him start paying my way in life. A guitar, sure. Some studio time, sure. He’s part owner of the studio, so he’s not losing money on this, as we’re working around the schedules of other artists, wedging in time when the booth is free.

  Thus, we end up at my apartment, Alex in bed, snoring before I get the blankets up to his chin. Rob has whiskey poured out in juice glasses and is sitting on my patio with one glass on the ground under his chair, feet kicked out, picking a slow, sweet melody on Gloria.