Page 40 of Falls From Grace
“There’s coffee on the bedside,” Savannah told her, “if that helps at all.” Brynn cracked open her right eye to see the other woman was watching them with a soft expression. Slowly, she disentangled herself from the squirming toddler and sat up, running her hand ineffectually through her bed hair. “Thought that might rouse you.” Savannah beamed, getting up off the bed. Her jeans were tight and Brynn wasn’t alert enough to avert her eyes from the sight just yet.
“How are you so cheerful?” Brynn reached for the coffee after a beat and settled back against the bedhead, taking a sip. “We got essentially no sleep last night.”
“Yes, but you were amazing.” Savannah threw a coy smile over her shoulder on her way out the door, happily exiting before she witnessed Brynn choke on her coffee. “At song-writing, I mean,” she called on her way down the hallway, and Brynn could envisage the pleased smirk on her face.
“Your mama,” she pointed at Tucker, “is trouble.”
Savannah had toasted bagels, orange juice, and more coffee on the way when Brynn padded into the kitchen. She was humming something.
“What’s that tune?” Brynn asked, snatching a bagel. Savannah looked up.
“Another song.” She met Brynn’s eyes. “It just came to me right now. We’ll work it out in the band room this morning.”
A strange pang hit her as she thought of Savannah taking her fledgling songs back to Noah. Her face must have fallen, because Savannah stepped closer to her.
“You know I mean with you, don’t you? You’re not getting out of it this lightly. Not now I know what you can do.”
“What about Tucker?” Brynn asked, trying not to show exactly how excited and nervous she was to keep trying to flex this new songwriting muscle in the light of day.
“It’s Take Your Kid to Work Day,” Savannah announced perkily. She was in the sunniest mood Brynn had ever witnessed, flitting around the kitchen, piling up their plates and refilling their coffee. Brynn had to force herself to stand stock still because she kept getting the urge to smack Savannah’s extremely tempting ass in those jeans, or press her back against the bench and kiss her, as if waking up in the same bed had somehow made them lovers.
They made it through breakfast without incident and all three of them tumbled into the band room where Noah was sitting on a stool, strumming a guitar and looking worried.
“Good morning,” he said, his tone loaded as he looked up at Brynn’s tired features and yesterday’s clothes.
“You,” announced Savannah in lieu of a greeting, “have no idea what’s coming for you this morning.” She shepherded Tucker over into a corner and set him up with a pile of toys, a children’s story playing on her phone. While she fussed around him, Brynn and Noah had a complicated conversation with their eyes. Noah’s eyebrows were raised, his stare hard, while Brynn shook her head and held up her hands.
Savannah extricated herself and joined them.
“I have no idea how to explain this,” she said, taking Brynn’s hand in her own and Noah’s eyebrows nearly shot off the top of his head, “so I think we’re just going to show you.”
She towed Brynn toward the piano in the corner and made her sit. Brynn had never felt more like a performing monkey in her life. She stared down at the keys, exhausted from the night before, and already worried she was going to embarrass herself and let everyone down. Then Savannah laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and made her look up.
“You okay?” she whispered.
Brynn searched her eyes. What she saw in them made her feel eight feet tall. She nodded and raised her hands to the keys. And then they both began to sing.
When the final notes faded out, Brynn turned to look at Noah. He was her best friend. He’d be sure to tell her if Savannah was simply deranged. Before she could glimpse his face, he spun on his heel, turning his back and walking away. Her heart sank. And then he turned around.
Chapter Fourteen
Noah seemed to have imploded. His face was doing all kinds of contortions. He kept turning around in circles like a broken spinning top. Savannah told him the story of walking in and hearing her, and thinking she’d lost her own mind. The two of them got so hyped up at the craziness and the potential of it all, they almost forgot Brynn existed.
Finally, she spoke up.
“So she’s not crazy?” she interrupted. “You think I have a good voice too?”
Noah looked at her for a long moment. Then he took a leaf out of Brynn’s own playbook and made a show of his legs giving way as he crumpled to the floor. Brynn snorted as he did a dying-man crawl to where she still sat at the piano bench and clutched at her ankles.
“You’re a fucking god,” he said and she laughed and kicked him away. He hauled himself up and hugged her to his chest tightly. “You’re out of this world,” he told her. “What,” he looked up at Savannah, who was watching him hold her with unreadable eyes, “are we going to do with her?”
“I mean, first of all, I guess I’m going to have to get a new nanny,” she said with an exasperated laugh.
The next few weeks passed in a strange kind of haze for Brynn. She’d never in her life been so immersed in something; music seemed to just pour through the three of them like a river. It took time, of course. For all Savannah’s hype and excitement, Brynn was not a professional musician. She had two patient and invested teachers though, coaxing her through both her lack of technical skills and confidence.
Noah and Savannah, for their part, never seemed to lose their unflagging enthusiasm towards her contributions. She’d catch them staring at her, at each other, in a way that filled her all the way up to the brim. Whatever had been sparking between Savannah and Noah or between Savannah and Brynn seemed to blaze into fire when all three of them were in the room, like a match to gasoline.
The three of them worked and wrote in all kinds of combinations: Noah and Savannah working out the knots of a riff, Brynn and Noah arguing over piano arrangements and verse, Savannah and Brynn squeezed next to each on the sofa so they could scrawl their own lines in the same notebook.
