Page 106 of Goodbye Days

“Dude, whatever. I’m always listening to you practice and I love your music that you played me.”

“I mean we’ll turn you on to some musicians who aren’t me.”

“Okay, but we’re going to turn you on to more books.”

“Deal.”

Then the lights dim again. Jesmyn bounces up and down and makes a little eep sound. She grabs my wrist, her fingers warm and smooth as sun-soaked driftwood, her rings cold on my skin.

It’s physically painful when she lets go and joins the uproarious applause for Dearly.

He strides onstage, tall, sleek, and lean, in black jeans, black boots, and a black denim jacket with a plaid western shirt underneath. The members of his band, cool and sharp like razors, follow close behind him and take their positions on the stage, illuminated by pinpricks of white light, so it appears they’re playing in a starlit sky. Dearly heads to center stage, slings on his guitar, and steps to the mic, his shaggy dark hair framing his unshaven face.

The band starts in like a tsunami. Dearly begins to sing. Jesmyn shivers next to me. She’s transfixed. I understand why. The music is stirring something deep inside me, too.

A couple of minutes into his second song, Jesmyn puts her hand on my shoulder, pulling me to her. “This show would have converted Eli.”

Not that I’d thought about it in advance, but that’s literally the last thing I wanted her to speak into my ear.

He finishes the third song, picks up a towel, wipes off his face, and takes a sip of water. “Hey, Nashville, it’s good to be home, sort of.” Everyone goes apeshit. He surveys the crowd. “Thank y’all so much for coming tonight. I see friends out there. I see people who are pretty much family. It’s such an honor to be standing on this stage.”

Jesmyn pulls me down again. “He’s from Tennessee. Right near Fall Creek Falls, in fact.”

My belly roils and creaks, turning in on itself. I try to unknot it. Jealousy is ugly. Especially when it’s directed at—and the truth is that I don’t know at whom it’s directed. Dearly? Eli? All the people experiencing normalcy around me, enjoying a concert without fear that it might be the last one they see before going to prison? Jesmyn, for being able to enjoy something so unreservedly?

As Dearly thunders, soars, and bleeds through his set, Jesmyn has the same expression she had when watching the storm. When watching the waterfall. Like a symphony of colors is cascading over her. She focuses alternately on Dearly and on the impossibly hip and gorgeous blonde playing keyboards in his band.

Please just have fun. Please let her lend you her excitement, the beauty she’s seeing.

Even more than I want her, I want to not want her.

My thoughts descend in a spiral—blood washing down a drain. Where is your ability to create something so powerful? What about you could enthrall her this way? Your writing has only the power to kill, not the power to make her see vibrant color. The music is sublime. I’m furious with myself for allowing it to evoke such malignant emotion in me. It’s like being mad at a sunset.

Isn’t this what you deserve? Pierce asks me with his vacant eyes, hard and dark as gunmetal. Enjoy my dead son’s ticket. Enjoy my dead son’s show. Have fun sitting beside my dead son’s girlfriend in my dead son’s seat.

I watch her. Her face; her shimmering eyes that become glassy and distant during the quietest moments; her lips silently mouthing the lyrics; her movement in rhythm with the music. It’s like I don’t exist beside her. Some gossamer veil separates us.

Dearly finishes a song and his band exits the stage. He stands alone with his acoustic guitar. “This next song I dedicate to a friend I lost in high school.”

“Oh,” Jesmyn murmurs. She tenses up palpably, bracing herself.

Tears cascade down her face as he sings. I touch her back and she moves slightly toward me. The song is pulling long, scarlet threads from my heart too, making it unravel in a blue twilight. I’m able to lose myself in it until it ends. For those few minutes, my mind rests.

Jesmyn wipes her eyes through Dearly’s next two songs, for which his band rejoins him. When he bids the crowd good night and walks offstage, she alternates wiping her eyes and clapping. The crowd chants for more. Dearly and the band return for an encore.

When they start playing, the crowd goes bananas. Jesmyn squeals and pulls me down to her. “They’re covering a Joy Division song called ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart.’ ”

I nod as if I’m familiar.

Even though I’ve spent the last hour and a half in turmoil, I’m not ready for it to end. I want to keep watching her bathe in the colors that she sees sound.

And I’m uncertain what to say to her when the world falls silent again and we have to fill it with our speaking.

The signing line is a mile long, but it’s clear we aren’t leaving until Jesmyn has a signed poster.

We finally make it to the front of the line, where Dearly sits behind a table, signing T-shirts, posters, records, and the occasional body part.

Jesmyn buys a poster and hands it to Dearly with trembling hands. He exudes easy confidence. I guess I would too if I’d done what he did in front of throngs of fans screaming my name.