Page 60 of Open Water
"Oh, hell yes,"he'd said."This is one of the greatest songs ever recorded."
Ethan glanced at me. "You good?"
"Liam loves this song."
Ethan looked at the radio, then looked at me and turned it up.
The bass filled the car. Mick Jagger's voice tearing through the speakers. Ethan drummed on the steering wheel — completely off beat, not even close — and then he started singing.
"Oh, a storm is threat'ning—"
"Ethan. No."
"My very life today—"
"You don't know the words."
"I know enough of the words." He cranked it louder. "If I don't get some SHELTER—"
"You're butchering it."
"Then help me." He looked at me. Grinning. "Come on. This is your Liam's song."
"I'm not singing."
"Alex. You are in a car in Vermont and nobody from your entire life can see you right now. Sing the song."
The guitar solo was building. The road was empty. Ethan was looking at me with one eye on the highway and one eye daring me.
I opened my mouth. The chorus came around.
"Gimme shelter—"
"THERE HE IS."
"Yeah I'm gonna fade away—"
"LOUDER."
Somewhere between the second chorus and the bridge, the thing let go. The composure. The performance. The careful modulation of every sound that left my body. It just released.
I was singing. Badly. Loudly. Ethan was worse. Two twenty-year-olds screaming Rolling Stones in a BMW on a two-lane highway with the bass rattling everything that wasn't bolted down.
Ethan pounded the steering wheel. I was hitting the dashboard. Neither of us could carry a tune. Neither of us cared.
The song hit the final stretch — the guitar climbing, Mick Jagger howling — and I was laughing.
The song ended. The DJ came on. And all that was left was both of us breathing hard and Ethan wiping his eyes.
I turned the radio down.
"It's going to be fine," Ethan said. Not looking at me. "You both are."
"You don't know that."
"I know that you just lit up like a Christmas tree because a Rolling Stones song came on the radio. That's not a guy whose life is over. That's a guy who's in deep." He started eating the last donut.
Then the town appeared around a bend. Hartwick. Brick buildings on a main street. A bookstore. A coffee shop with a chalkboard sign. And the theater — the marquee with plastic letters.
