PRESENT DAY
In what may be hopelessly tragic Romeo and Juliet fashion—even more so than climbing the vine-patterned trellis outside Britt’s house as I’ve done for years—I throw pebbles at her window under the glow of the blue motion detector. My guitar is still across my back after my song to the graveyard. My hopes are in my back pockets.
After the fourth pebble, the window slides open and she leans all the way out, already annoyed. “What do you want, Mia? I’m trying to sleep.”
It’s nine at night, and the last time she went to bed this early was after she pulled an all-nighter waiting for an album to drop.
“I need to talk to you. I’ll go after this. You don’t have to say anything. I just need to tell you how wrong I was. You were right.”
“I always am.” There’s an assuredness in her eyes, and I think it’s the reason I fell in love with her in the first place—why I still am and will always be. I don’t want to be in my fifties and crying in a theater because I let love slip away. I want it now, and I want it with her, and I need to have not ruined the best thing to ever happen to me.
“I was scared,” I say. “You’re used to that, and I don’t blame you for being sick of it because it’s not fair to you. It’s not fair to ask you to wait for me, to keep you waiting.” She stays silent, head in her hand, and lips pursed as she watches me from the window. She hasn’t told me to fuck off yet, so I take that as a good sign. “I wanted the music and you so badly, but I got scared and I panicked, and I worried we’d end up with more regrets than happy endings.”
She meets this revelation with a continuation of her silence.
I keep going. I take this opening to prove to her that there will never be a day I don’t miss her, don’t love her, don’t sing for her. “I was wrong about my mom too. Again, you were right. I finished the hunt. She told me to chase my dreams.”
“Mia,” Britt cuts in, and my heart leaps. “I’m happy you figured things out, but I don’t want an apology because someone else told you to follow your dreams. If you’re here to tell me something real, say it. If you’re here to tell me what she told you, you should go. I want you to want it. I’m not taking excuses.”
She wants me to want it—does that mean she still wants me?
And I said I was sure last time, but I need to give her more than words, more than claims. I need to give her something real too.
I start pulling things from my pockets, and instead of envelopes containing my family’s past, they’re the building blocks of my own story—of the story I hope for with her. I hold them up one at a time. “I want to show you I mean it. I’m here in whatever way I can be. This is a list of sixteen suites in Nashville that would be affordable. This is a list of places in the heart of Nashville that are hiring right now so we can pay rent. This one is a list of the places where celebrities and country stars found their big breaks. These are recording studios and record labels as big goals for the future to keep us driving for something.”
I continue pulling papers from my jeans, coat, purse, unraveling more and more threads of this promise and saying, “These are the songs I’ve written, most about you, most today, missing you. And . . .” I pull the last thing out. “I called in a favor. I reached out to the Bluebird Café as her daughter, and you have a gig there too. People go there for the music, people go there for discovery. It’s under your name, not mine. It’s for you and your songs, wherever we end up. I want you to have it. I want you to have your dream even if it doesn’t include me. I want you to have everything.” And I do. If she tells me after all this to leave, I will. I’ll have to let her go.
She’s watching me, studying me, staring at me, and not saying a word.
I say, “I have one last thing. A last promise to you to show you how sure I am about Music City, this dream, everything if you still want me. I learned recently that everyone gets a last love song, and, Britt Garcia, my last love song will always be to you.”
With that, I sit down beneath the weeping willow, and I sing up to her window and hope the tune and the apologies reach her.
Most people don’t find forever at eighteen,
‘Till death do we part’ too much a cage,
For loosely tied strings and young, wild hearts,
But for her I would toss ‘for now’ to the wind,
Forever becoming my epiphany, my long-lost dream,
The pillars of my heart built on the grounds of this timeless word,
Anything to make it true.
Because I met a girl, in a nowhere town,
Where the ocean stretches far and dreams come to drown,
I met a girl who taught me to rise when the sun goes down,
I met a girl who was every constellation in the endless sky,
I met a girl who resurrected my hopes when I’d sent them to die,
I met a girl who showed me the other side of the horizon,
I met a girl who taught me that maybe love could be relied on,
And I was young, I was broken, I was fragmented and scared,
But I met a girl and she taught me forever comes when you dare,
So, yes, my vows of forever come at only eighteen,
But for her I would promise any damn thing.
I would repaint the sky, make the stars spell her name,
Gamble with the moon to beg her to stay,
I would slay mysteries and dragons and the lies that tore us apart,
Just to never hurt her, never break her star-woven heart.
And in this forever at only eighteen,
I want to follow the music with her, want to follow this dream.
I collect my breath, and the last stars wink out with those notes, loveless as I made them, but when I look up, some of the coldness has faded from her eyes.
“What’s it called?” she asks, completely unreadable.
“ ‘Britt Garcia, I’m Sorry and You Will Always Be Right’?”
She almost laughs, almost smiles, but she’s still watching, waiting. “No, really, what’s it called?”
“ Forever 18. ”
“I think we found the missing song of Lost Girls’s set when we go to Nashville together. Don’t you agree?”
My heart jumps over the music and into her hands. “Wait, are you serious? Britt, I don’t have to be part of that. I know I didn’t show up and Amy and Sophie probably hate me. I let you down. All of—”
“Oh, I have conditions.” She leans forward through the window.
That sounds about right. “Whatever they are, you’ve got it.” I set my mother’s guitar—now mine—down between the weeds and wildflowers growing in her lawn.
“You might want to hear them first.”
“I agree to them all. Anything for you. I meant what I said in the song.”
She raises all five fingers, and I smile a little. “First, I get to be right for our next five fights. No questions asked.”
“I’m in.”
“Second, you get the afternoon shifts driving to Nashville because it’s hot and I like to drive when the stars are out.”
“No problem.”
“Third, we are leaving tomorrow and you have to make a packing list and submit it to me tonight because you’re forgetful and I’m not sharing my food or my toothbrush.” Her smile is starting.
“All right.” I laugh.
“Fourth, you sing that song whenever you apologize. It’s the only apology I will accept from now on.” The first real emotion shows, and we both choke up.
I take a step closer to the window, closer to her. She’s the only person I am fully able to recklessly believe in because she’s the only one who comes through time and time again. “I can do that.”
“Fifth, you never back out on me, on us, on any band I get you into or song you promise me again. You need to be real sure this time. You will never make me walk away from you again. It was hard, Mia. Let’s not lose each other.”
“I never want to lose you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.”
“Lastly—”
I smile at her, and now she’s smiling back and I can breathe. “I thought there were five conditions?”
“I made one more.”
“And that is?”
She leans a little closer. “Lastly, you come up here and kiss me.”
“I can do that,” I say, and I climb the trellis to her one last time. I grin beneath the starlight, and I have never made so many discoveries and loved so many people in a way I know could break me, but I’m willing to risk it. It’s terrifying, but I angle forward, and I kiss her in this night of promises.
She kisses me back, and we fall inside through her window.
“I love you,” I whisper. “I love you.” When I say it, it’s all I feel, and I’m no longer running from it.
“I love you too,” she says, and I kiss her harder, and she kisses me right back again.
As we become this eternity, this song, this melody, whatever burns between us is brighter than the fear, and the loveless stars that tore me apart no longer stand a chance.