Later that afternoon, I stir sugar into my tea while Gabe waits for his latte at the counter. We’re in the Honeycomb Café, across the street from Crescendo Music. Nearby, a guy slouches over a muffin and a paperback. A gray-haired woman types on a laptop, her long-empty coffee mug pushed aside. Rain patters against the window beside me. The place oozes mellow vibes. I could do with some mellowing, after the way things went in the studio.
“I think we have totally earned this sucker.” Gabe arrives with a giant cinnamon bun on a plate. “Say you’ll help me eat it.”
“Just try to stop me.” I pull off a chunk and pop it in my mouth.
“Excellent.” He does the same. We both chew away like our bodies are starved for cinnamon and sugar.
Between mouthfuls, Gabe says, “I still can’t believe you let Harper take the melody in that song.”
I try to sound casual. “She’s a fantastic singer.”
“So are you. But you don’t try to make your bandmates sound bad so you get the lead vocal.”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
I want to stop worrying about the trio. I want to get to know Gabe. I point to the case sitting at his feet like a faithful dog. “Let’s talk about banjos.”
“Seriously?” His smile tells me he’d love to talk about banjos.
“Seriously. You’re the only banjo player I know. Guys usually go for guitars.”
“I started with the guitar. I still play. Jess rocks at it, by the way.”
“She does.” I suspect she’s better than Gabe, but I don’t say so. “Now, banjos. Go.”
Gabe grins and leans back, his long legs stretched out. They almost touch mine. I hold very still. “My dad took me to the Tall Grass festival a few summers ago and we saw this dude playing banjo there and, I don’t know, I just loved the sound.”
“The banjo sound.”
He nods. “I loved the whole day. People hanging out in the sun, happy and dancing. Being together. The banjo sounded exactly the way that day felt.”
Gabe gazes out the window, but I can tell he’s not seeing the view. I wish I was with him on that Tall Grass day. I let my foot shift so it touches his. He doesn’t move away.
“I taught myself at first, and then I found Darrell. I keep playing to hang on to the feeling of that day. To get myself back to Tall Grass. Onstage.” Gabe takes a drink and wipes his knuckles across his mouth. A thrum of warmth ripples through me.
“That’s so awesome.” I try to think of something deeper to say. A gurgly hiss from the espresso machine fills the silence.
Gabe taps the table and leans forward. “And except for my dad, no one else knows my nerdy banjo story. So now I’m going to have to kill you.”
I laugh. “Darn.”
“Price you pay for asking about banjos.”
I love the idea of knowing something about Gabe that no one else knows. I lean forward too. “I think you’re right about how banjos sound. I loved hearing you play today.”
“Thanks.” Gabe’s cheeks redden. He’s a blusher, same as me. “Okay, your turn.”
“My turn what?”
“Your turn to share some deep, dark, nerdy truth about yourself.”
“What if I don’t have a nerdy truth?” I sip some tea.
“Impossible. Every musician does. Tell me, or I get this last hunk of cinnamon bun.” He reaches for it.
“Hey!” I pull the plate to my side of the table. “Okay. I do have a nerdy truth. Brace yourself.”
Gabe cradles his latte. “Is it very nerdy?”
“Very.” I can’t believe I’m sharing this with a guy I’m crushing on. “I’m an excellent whistler. My grandpa taught me. He won contests.”
“Whistling?” Gabe rubs his hands together greedily. “I am so going to need a demonstration!”
I look around the café. Paperback guy is gone. Typing lady is still typing, ignoring everything, including the fresh espresso steaming beside her. The tattooed and well-pierced girl behind the counter is talking on her cell.
“Here goes. This was his favorite song.” I lick my lips and launch into “The Dock of the Bay,” complete with the fancy, birdlike trills Grandpa loved.
Gabe’s eyes go wide and he breaks into a huge smile.
I can’t help smiling back. Which kills the whistle.
“Hey! Don’t stop,” he says, reaching down to his banjo case.
“It’s impossible to whistle and smile at the same time!” I say, laughing.
He straightens, banjo at the ready. “Okay, I’ll be serious.” He shifts his chair so we’re facing each other, no table in the way. “Go ahead.”
I start again and Gabe joins in with the banjo. He does look serious, his green eyes focused on mine as if he’s reading the notes there. When we get to the end, he makes the last chord vibrate until my whistling dies away. Our eyes stay locked together.
There’s clapping. “Omigod, you guys are the cutest!” It’s the girl behind the counter. “You should be at, like, the Tall Grass festival. Have you heard of it?”
“Oh yeah,” Gabe answers. He turns back to me.
We stare some more.
“We’d make a good duo,” he says, his voice low.
It’s my turn to blush, cheeks warm as a sunburn. “I don’t know how popular a whistler-banjo act would be.”
“Your lips are pretty when you whistle.”
I look at Gabe’s lips.
He leans across his banjo. I lean to meet him. And we kiss.
* * *
Two days later, Jess, Harper and I sit around a low table with the contest entry form. I hold our shiny, perfect CD in one hand, an uncapped permanent marker in the other. “The name of our trio is…”
Jess shakes her head, blank-faced.
“I don’t know!” Harper moans. “My brain’s too tired from yesterday.”
“Slayed With Chops still doesn’t do it for you?” I joke.
“No!” Jess and Harper say together.
“Listen to you two, agreeing.” Unlike my bandmates, I’m feeling perky.
Two days ago I kissed the cutest banjo player west of anywhere. Yesterday the trio recorded two songs with only minor arguments. And we sounded good. So good I didn’t care if Harper sang the lead on both songs.
Today is the deadline to submit our CD. We’re in the Tall Grass festival office, which turns out to be in the same building as Crescendo Music, two floors up. Harper knew that, of course.
A man with dreadlocks, red-framed glasses and a Hawaiian shirt watches patiently from a nearby desk. “Don’t overthink it, ladies. Your talent is what counts, not your name.”
“Someone should have told that to the Goo Goo Dolls,” Harper says. “Hey, are those the other entries?” She points to a cardboard box beside his desk. It’s stuffed to the brim with white envelopes like the one we’re supposed to put our CD and entry form into.
“They are.” He smiles and leans over to pat the pile carefully, like it’s a sleeping tiger.
Harper and Jess and I exchange grim looks. That pile is what we’re up against.
“I don’t even want to know how many entries are in there,” Harper says.
“One hundred and fourteen,” the desk man answers, not helpfully. His phone rings, and before he picks up he adds, “For thirty-five spots.”
I do the math. “Add our entry and that’s one-fifteen. That means eighty groups who won’t get in. Eighty.”
Harper looks worried for the first time since Darrell told us about the contest.
“And the deadline’s still three hours away. Even more acts could enter,” Jess says.
Harper grits her teeth. “Thanks for clarifying that, Miss Hopeless.”
“Okay, just call us the Harper Neale Trio.” Jess gestures at the CD. “That’ll make you more hopeful about our chances.”
“Whoa!” Harper puts her hands up. “I know you guys think I’m pushy, but I’m not that big of an ego-case. Plus, that’s too close to my dad’s band’s name.”
“Argh!” Jess gets up and stalks out to the hallway.
“There she goes again,” Harper says.
I hand her the CD and marker. “Hang on a second.”
I find Jess looking out a tall window. Her right hand, resting on the window ledge, is wrapped in a wrist guard, sore from the last two days of nonstop guitar.
“You look weird without your guitar,” I say, keeping my tone light.
“I feel weird. Gotta take a little break, I guess.” She holds up her wrist. “Or a big break, if we don’t get into Tall Grass.” She gives me a sideways, almost embarrassed look. “I had no idea so many groups would be trying for this.”
“Neither did I.” We both look out the window. The day’s getting darker. Across the street, the lights are on in the Honeycomb Café. “But don’t you think we sounded great yesterday?” I’m trying to convince myself as well as Jess.
“All the other acts probably think they sound great too. But eighty of us are wrong.”
“Let’s not think about that right now.”
“We have to.” Jess’s voice is flat, defeated. “We have to face the fact that we might not be good enough.”
I look at her full-on. “You sound like my mom. Only exceptional people succeed, so you might as well give up.”
Jess pulls back. “She said that?”
“Close enough. It’s what she thought. Is it what you think?”
Jess shrugs.
I’m suddenly angry. “I can’t believe you still don’t want to try for Tall Grass after all the work we’ve put into this. There’s competition, so we shouldn’t bother entering?”
“How good do you really think we are?”
“Fine.” I call out, “Harper, we’re pulling out.”
“Nat! That’s not what I said.”
Harper charges out of the office. “What’s with you two? I was getting the hairy eyeball in there.” She doesn’t seem to have heard what I said. She makes for the stairs. “He’s asked us to go somewhere else until we get this name thing sorted out.”
“We don’t need a name if we’re not entering the contest,” I say.
“What?” Harper pivots at the top of the stairs. She jabs a finger toward Jess, her bracelets jangling. “No. You are not pulling this again. You are not wrecking our chance at Tall Grass.”
“I know. I’m not. You two need to shut up for a minute.”
We do. Jess telling us to shut up is even weirder than Jess without a guitar.
“Sorry. But you got off track with that thing your mom said. Or I got you off track. I don’t know.” Jess puts her good hand up to her forehead, then lets it drop. “I suck at this. Talking about stuff.”
“You said we have to realize we might not be good enough,” I prompt her.
“We do.”
“Oh, great.” Harper flings her hands up.
Jess’s eyes stay on mine. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want us to enter the contest. I do. More than that, I want us to win one of those spots. It hit me yesterday. The way we worked. The way we sounded. We’re good. All three of us.” She looks at Harper. “We’re good separately and we’re good together.”
I want to grab my best friend and hug her hard. But that would drive her crazy. I simply say, “We’re better together.”
Jess points toward the office door. “But you saw all those entries. We might not get in. We have to face that.”
“Whoa!” Harper says. “As far as I’m concerned, A, we’ll get in—”
“But—”
“Uh-uh!” Harper makes a chopping motion. “And B, if we don’t get in…actually, I won’t even think about that.”
“We can still be a trio,” I declare.
The dreadlocks-and-glasses guy leans out of the Tall Grass doorway. “Ladies. There is a café across the street where they would be delighted to serve you all the caffeine you need to fuel your debate. It’s called Honeycomb. I suggest you go.”
Honeycomb.
I already love the word because of what happened there with Gabe. But something in the way the guy says it—his warm, musical voice—nudges at me.
“Thanks, Robert. We’ll do that.” Harper waves the white envelope.
“I shall be here, anxiously awaiting the outcome.” Robert waves back and disappears.
Honeycomb.
“Robert? I suppose you know him?” Jess asks Harper.
“I do now. I like to get to know people. You should try it.”
“I wonder if he’s one of the judges.”
“If so, I’ve just improved our chances with my charming ways. You’re welcome.” Harper heads down the stairs.
“Wait,” I say.
Harper stops. “What now?”
“Honeycomb.” I sweep my hands out like a magician unveiling a surprise.
Harper and Jess stare, waiting for more.
“Yes, Nat.” Harper speaks slowly. “That is where we’re going.”
“We don’t need to go. Honeycomb. Say it.”
“Are you having a seizure or something?”
“Honeycomb.” Jess breaks into a smile. She gets it. I knew she would.
“Our band name,” I say. “Sweet, smooth, natural.”
“Perfectly structured,” Jess adds.
It dawns on Harper. “Like our harmonies! Honeycomb. It’s good.”
I take the white envelope and our CD from Harper. “Come on, Honeycomb,” I say. “We’ve got an entry to submit.”