“WHAT DID THE GAM people say when you told them you were going with Open Highway?” Shannon asks, clamping a capo on her guitar.

I shrug, slightly queasy about it. “I don’t know exactly. My dad called ’em.”

“Good,” she says with a nod. “That’s what managers are for. Now, why don’t we try it again in G,” she suggests, flicking her long black hair over her shoulder.

The first thing Dan Silver did after I signed with Open Highway was schedule a songwriting session so I could polish my songs with a seasoned professional. He’d noticed the chemistry I had with Shannon Crossley at the Bluebird and asked if I’d like to work with her professionally. I couldn’t say yes fast enough. I was a little intimidated when I first showed up at her apartment, but she’s so chill that I feel like I’ve known her forever.

“Okay, if you think that’ll work,” I say, changing my fingers and starting in on the first verse again. We’ve decided to start with the song about Adam that I sang at the Bluebird. She’s also going to help me write some new songs, but she really thinks this one could be gold.

I’ve never thought so hard about a song before. Usually the lyrics and melody come to me quickly, and then I move on to the next one, but today, we have worked and reworked this song to a point where I barely recognize it. With Shannon’s suggestions, it feels fuller, and I get more and more excited about it as we try new things. Some changes work, like simplifying the bridge, and others don’t, like changing the key.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Shannon says, waving her hand in the air and laughing. “So ‘G’ does not stand for ‘Good Idea.’ ”

I laugh, relieved, because I feel the same way.

Suddenly the front door opens, and a girl about my age walks in, talking on her cell phone loudly before noticing us in the living room. She instantly lowers her voice and waves, mouthing sorry to Shannon before dropping her backpack on the floor and hustling around the corner to the kitchen.

“That’s my daughter, Stella,” Shannon says, nodding toward the front door.

“Yeah, you guys look a lot alike,” I say. They both have strong jawlines and high cheekbones, and dress in a way that looks effortless and yet enviably stylish. They have the same dark, straight hair, too, although Stella wears hers with thick bangs.

“She’s a senior,” Shannon says.

“Cool,” I say. “Me too.”

“Oh? I thought you just turned sixteen.”

“Well, I skipped a grade,” I explain. “In homeschool. I’ve had the week off because my mom and brothers have been away, but they got back into town last night, so technically, I’m skipping class right now.”

Shannon laughs. “Ah, just your average teen rebel, huh?”

I smile, but we both know my life has been anything but average. Looking at Stella’s bag on the floor, lavender canvas that’s been doodled on with a Sharpie marker, I feel a twinge of envy. It’s just crazy to think about how different our days are. Like today for instance: she was at school, going from class to class, passing her friends in the hallways, and maybe holding hands with a boyfriend or something in the cafeteria—that’s how I imagine it at least—while I spent the morning sitting across from my brother at an RV kitchenette doing math problems from a workbook before borrowing my other brother’s guitar to work on an album for the record deal I signed last week.

“You sit tight,” Shannon says, setting her guitar down on its stand. “I’ll go grab us a couple of waters.”

As she joins her daughter in the kitchen, I marvel once more at their place, a truly incredible loft in East Nashville. Shannon said the building used to be a warehouse, but now the units have been renovated for housing, art galleries, and studios. It’s funky and fun, large and open, obviously decorated by a person with an artistic eye, and way more comfortable than Winnie. There is a Grammy statuette on one of the bookshelves and an entire room off the common living area chock-full of instruments and awards. I want to move in.

“Okay,” Shannon says, coming back into the room. She straightens the tiers of her dangly turquoise earrings before picking up her guitar again. “Now, I’m still not loving the chorus. I mean, I love the song and the feel, but we need a button, you know? Something to tack it down at the end.”

I frown, looking at my journal. The original lyrics were scrawled out like a poem, but now I’ve penciled in lots of notes and symbols in the margins and the spaces between the lines. What seemed like a simple song at first has become an intricate ballad. I like our version much better now, but right when I think we’ve nailed it, Shannon wants more.

“How do you know when a song is done?” I ask. I’m not frustrated; I just sincerely want to know. It feels ready to me.

She shrugs, strumming the opening notes. “When it feels whole.”

I stroke the strings of Dylan’s guitar and nod. I don’t really get it, but I trust her. She’s the one with the Grammy, after all. We play the song about Adam again, but at the end of the chorus, Shannon stops. “What do you want from this guy?” she asks bluntly.

My hand slaps the strings quiet, and my mouth hangs open. When she puts it that way, I’m kind of at a loss for words. “I—I just—”

“She wants him to notice her,” Stella interrupts, leaning against a thick wooden column with her bag over her shoulder and a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in hand. Shannon and I both look up at her, surprised. I didn’t even hear her come into the room. “Sorry.” She shrugs, although she doesn’t appear to be. “Just speaking from experience.”

“No, you’re totally right,” I say, turning to face her. “It’s like, I know him pretty well. He’s really good friends with my brother.” I chew on my lip and look out the window toward the Cumberland River. “But I don’t know if he sees me as just a friend or as something more.”

“Do you flirt?” Stella asks directly before taking another giant bite of her sandwich.

I blush. “I think so,” I answer, thinking about our Coke game. But then I also think about how Jacob calls it lame, and I wonder if Adam does it just to humor me or if it really is our “thing.”

“He gave me flowers,” I say, perking up and thinking back to that amazing night at the Station Inn.

“He gave you flowers?” Stella asks enthusiastically, plopping down on the couch next to me. “Oh yeah, then he totally likes you.”

“You really think so?” I ask eagerly. I’m so freaking pumped to finally have a girl’s perspective.

Then I glance over at Shannon, worried that maybe she’s annoyed that we’ve interrupted our songwriting session for girl talk, but she seems as engrossed in my Adam crush as her daughter. “What kind of flowers? Roses?” Shannon asks.

I grin, remembering. “It was a little bouquet.”

“If a guy buys you flowers, he likes you,” Stella says.

“If a guy opens his wallet for anything, he likes you,” Shannon says dryly. “That’s been my experience.”

Stella rolls her eyes. “Yeah, because the guys you date are cheapskates.”

I stare at her, unable to imagine talking to my own mother like that, but Shannon just chuckles. “True, but they make for good songs.”

“Well, he didn’t actually buy them,” I admit. “He must have picked them. They were wildflowers.”

“Oh,” Stella says, drawing that one word out in a monotone way that makes me think she has more to say but won’t out of politeness.

There is an awkward moment. I look down and start to strum, thinking back to the flowers and how mad I was when Dylan tossed them out. Dad’s sneezing his head off as it is, he’d said. Those weeds aren’t helping.

“Like in the song,” Shannon says. “If you ask me, wildflowers are nice. Stella used to pick dandelions for me, and I cherished them more than a dozen roses from any man.”

“I guess,” I say quietly. I was excited to get flowers for the first time, but now I’m embarrassed talking to Stella and Shannon about it. It had seemed so romantic, like Adam had gone out of his way to do something sweet for me, but maybe he’d just picked them from the cracks of the parking lot as an afterthought. Maybe it wasn’t romantic at all, just nice. Just like Adam.

I sigh heavily, feeling exactly the way I felt the night I originally wrote this song, months ago. Adam had said he’d loved our set and even mentioned hanging around after, but then he and my brothers just up and went bowling without me—they said it was a “guys’ night”—and I was left at home with my parents and my journal.

“I just want him to see me, you know? Like really see me, deep down.” I look up at Stella, then Shannon. “Does that make sense?”

“You want him to perceive the real you,” Stella says, before shoving the last of her sandwich into her mouth.

I nod. “Exactly.”

Shannon takes a sip from her water bottle and then shoos her daughter out of the room. “Go do your homework, missy. We’ve got to figure out this song or Dan’s going to kill me.”

Stella rolls her eyes and picks up her backpack. “Party pooper.” Shannon returns the gesture, and I smile. Although I’m close with my mom, too, Shannon and Stella seem more like friends than mother and daughter.

As Stella slowly plods up the spiral staircase to her loft bedroom, she calls out, “Bye-bye, Birdie.”

I look up and smile. “Bye, Stella.”

“So…” Shannon says, reaching over and grabbing a pen. She scribbles in her own notebook and then suggests, “How about we end the chorus with ‘notice me’?”

I look at my own journal, and it’s like a lightbulb goes off. “It’s perfect.”

And just like that, the master has taught the student how a writer knows when a song is finally finished.