1989
Sara Ellis left me a note to meet her at Centennial Park.
The sun touched the sky, and I was out the door. I slipped down the hall, leaving David sleeping (snoring with his mouth open and drooling slightly onto his pillow) in bed. There was no sign of life from outside Patrick Rose’s room, so I slipped across the hall and knocked. I pressed my ear to the door when he didn’t answer. Nothing.
No one else was in the hallway at this time. I clasped my hands behind my back. The music waited for me outside. At the park. He’d have to meet me there.
I left the hotel and the man behind the counter (in a fox-printed vest this morning). Ducking through streets that danced with melodies, I crossed a city where I felt like Tori Rose belonged.
The whole way there, I studied everything I could. The signs. The brick. The people.
The second I made it to Centennial Park, I asked for directions to the Parthenon. The grass was green, and the sky was bright with the sun that caressed my shoulders.
Sara laid with her keyboard on her chest, looking at the clouds as she played a chromatic scale in C major. In jeans and a purple T-shirt, she looked ready for this. For the music. Next to her, Mateo and Edie played rock paper scissors.
Edie’s hair was in pigtails and a grin stretched across her purple-painted lips as she beat Mateo again.
He was in a denim jacket, brown eyes shining and angled toward Sara slightly. There was something there.
“Hi,” I said to them all.
Sara turned her head toward me, and she rolled her eyes at the others, but she didn’t get up. “Hey, sit down. We’re going to write a hit.”
“Yeah, sit down.” Edie echoed, and Sara shoved her lightly.
I did. I was never one for taking directions, but I listened to this girl promising the music to me. The last few nights, the band had sat in a writers round in the empty event room of the hotel and tried to come up with our own song. We had an open mic we’d managed to secure a spot at, coming up. But nothing sounded right. Patrick had been oddly silent through it all, slipping out early the last two nights.
Still no sign of him.
He’d be here soon.
As long as we had the music, we were doing what we were supposed to.
The other night, I’d asked Sara how she found her songs. I knew where I got my lyrics in Sunset Cove, but Sunset Cove wasn’t good enough for Music City. Now, she started us off. I loved that she lugged a keyboard to a quiet park. I loved that she thought to bring the music with her where she went. Linnea’s words from the Horizon came back to me. I wasn’t the only one anymore.
The music built. Sara didn’t sing. She truly was a masterclass pianist. The way the chords she played told a story was unlike anything I’d heard.
Her eyes opened for a second and her brows raised my way. In a dare.
I took it.
I found lyrics to go with her tune, and the notes she played swelled to meet them.
So I tell you to light the world on fire,
For this was a lesson I quickly learned.
I’ll sit here on my side of the world, you on yours,
And together we’ll watch it burn.
There was a melody in your fire, a reckoning in your truth.
Honey, I think that all the songs I sing were meant to capture you,
And on this starlit night, with the flame and with the sea,
You start a fire in your heart, and you make it burn for me.
Mateo pulled out his drumsticks. Made the beat against the grass. Edie joined him. She played her guitar.
Lyrics wound around us, tangling in our hair and hearts. When the song ran out, my gaze locked with Sara’s. Edie’s. Mateo’s.
Sara shook her head. “Still not right.”
I nodded.
We began again.
By the time the sun sank down in the sky, Edie got bored and Mateo had a shift at a nearby record store where he worked. Sara asked if I’d stay behind. And I said yes. I knew neither of us was leaving until we’d done what we came for.
“Why’d you join Fate’s Travelers?” I asked.
“You ask a lot of questions, Tori Rose.”
“I know.”
She sat up and pulled one knee to her chest, propping her elbow on it. “I like the rush of performing with someone’s eyes to meet across the stage. Mateo and I had already planned to work together, and I liked Edie’s energy. Something fit that night, and when I have a gut feeling, I’m not really one to question it. One day, I want to do this on my own, but right now I want to share the music. That’s what this is all about, no?” She shook her head. “I want to be part of something big. I want to make something big. I think Fate’s Travelers could be something if we try. I knew I could turn it into something great. I think you see it too.”
I scooted closer to her, and our shoulders brushed. She smiled and it was a wicked expression that made my stomach flutter. “I do.”
Sara stretched. “Why’d you join?”
“I needed people who would carry a keyboard to a park for no reason. Who would sing at nothing. Everything. I needed to not be the only one with a song to share. The second I walked into that party, I felt like the music came alive in meeting all of you.”
“That blond boy who walks you to practice, is he a musician?”
“No, my best friend.”
“I see.” The chords we’d strung together dissipated for a minute. Something else formed. “How did you meet Patrick?” She began to play some notes again in a way that seemed like she didn’t even realize she was doing it. In a way that made music a habit.
She asked about Patrick, who never showed up.
I sighed. “He came to my town, sang at prom, and I joined him. I couldn’t help it. There was something in his voice. He made the story his own. How’d you meet Mateo?”
“I used to busk on Music Row. This one boy always came. He left me notes in my keyboard case, and it went from there. I guess some songs lead us to who we’re destined to find. Some are a beginning, and some are an end.”
Her last words pause the moment and my train of thought at once. “That’s it. You’re brilliant.”
“I know, but why?” She studied me.
I reached for one of the many loose papers around us. She began to play as I scrawled across the page. I whisper-sang and she changed the tempo. She tweaked the beat in such a perfect way (a little bit of pop mixed into country). A dancing song. A performance song.
She nodded along. “This is it.”
Around 2 a.m., the sky opened. Sara and I packed up in a rush, racing under weeping leaves and trees with our coats shielding our hair. She ran off, barely saying goodbye, but the song we’d written said it for us. I watched her slip down the street, through blinking headlights.
“Hey, you cold?” A voice came from behind me, and I spun around. David stood with a black umbrella sporting Dolly Parton’s enlarged face across it. His yellow raincoat matched the cheer of his grin.
“What are you doing?” I’d left him a note saying where I went so he wouldn’t worry (or call my moms), but I didn’t expect him to join me.
He shrugged. “Thought you might need someone to remind you to look up from whatever you were working on. You left a long time ago. You know it’s tomorrow, right?”
“Technically, it’s today.”
He shook his head, extending the umbrella. I stepped under it with him.
“Where’s Rose Boy?” he asked, and I linked my arm through his, stealing his warmth as we speed-walked.
“I . . .” He never came.
David’s gaze was steady on my face in the way that tried to pry for everything. He didn’t even mean to.
I took the umbrella from him, and I closed it. The rain pounded down on us, and I laughed, staring up at the crying sky. The tune Sara and I had just written flowed through me as David smiled.
“Dance with me,” I said. “It’s the perfect weather.”
He shook his head, took a bow, and extended a hand. I looped my arms around his neck. I let the song Sara and I wrote spin through my head and tried not to wonder too hard why the boy with the rose tattoo couldn’t be bothered to show up for a song, locking my blue eyes on David’s green ones.
His loose waves plastered his tanned forehead. “So . . . you write a hit?”
Spinning away from him, I opened the umbrella again. “What do you think?”
I knocked on Patrick Rose’s door when David returned to our room. After three times, he finally opened it. He wore disappointingly plain pajama pants that made me think of the many themed pairs David owned, and he leaned against the door jam.
His gaze was sheepish, and that was all the proof I needed. He’d chosen to miss today.
I shook my head and met his blue eyes with mine. “I don’t know you.”
He laughed. “You’re just realizing this?” His eyes held that same carefree nature. But the excitement of a strange boy in a familiar town had faded. Everything was new here, and I needed him to be with me in this.
“You show up at my prom. You promise the music. And then you don’t show? What were you doing today?”
“I . . . do you want to go for a walk?”
“I want to know why you broke your promise.”
His brows furrowed. “My promise?”
“You said you were here for the music. You said we were following it together.”
“Tori . . .”
“Yes?”
I waited, a breath passed, then another. A million possibilities filled the quiet. He could’ve not known what to say. Been replaying our practices in his head. Thinking. Wondering.
“I . . .” He shook his head.
I was prepared for any of those possibilities, but I wasn’t prepared for the boy with the rose tattoo to shut the door.