Page 73 of Falls From Grace
“I don’t know if I can do it,” she confessed quietly. It clearly wasn’t the fireworks her manager had been expecting because instead of arguing with her, he went quiet too.
“Well,” he said eventually. “You’re the best judge of that. Look, Brynn’s an untested performer, in that she’s never played a venue even a shadow the size of a stadium. She’s had a short tour as they work out exactly where they want to pitch her and she’s apparently been knocking it out of the park. Now they want to sign her up for the LA shows next week since it’s already her home turf and you’re in need of a starting act, but it’s a trial, nothing more.”
“I don’t know, Chester,” she said. “We…that is, I didn’t leave things well. I don’t see how this could possibly be good for the tour.”
“You know, you could actually just choose to forgive her?” Chester was rarely ever directive with her and she blinked. “But if you decide you want us to fight it, then we’ll fight it. The label won’t be happy, but of course you have the clout to say no if that’s what you really want to do. Just… let me know by tomorrow, because I’ll need to pedal as fast as I can to sort this out.”
They hung up the phone and Savannah flung herself, fully dressed, into the pool.
That evening, after she’d finally succeeded in getting Tucker to sleep in his own bed, she sat out on the second-floor balcony gazing out over the dark land. It was so quiet that when her phone pinged with a message tone, she jumped like a startled rabbit. The name on the screen made her jolt a second time, and she stared at her phone like it might bite. Brynn Marshall was texting her. She stabbed her finger at the screen and read the message.
I just got told the label wants me on your tour. If you’re not comfortable with me being there, just say the word and I will tell Jen I refuse the offer, no questions asked x
Savannah sat with her mouth hanging open for far too long. Brynn had been so scrupulous about not contacting her that it felt surreal to suddenly see her name on the screen, like she was just there, like Savannah could practically touch her.
She also knew Jennifer Landry well, and the idea of Brynn telling her anything made her want to laugh. It meant a lot that Brynn would consider refusing the tour; it was an enormous deal for an up-and-coming artist. But she found she wasn’t surprised. Of course Brynn would respect Savannah’s boundaries. Of course she would refuse to leave the burden of refusal all up to her. Savannah wasn’t sure if Brynn quite understood the shitstorm she would be bringing down on her own head if she defied the label on such a level, but she appreciated the offer more than she could say.
If she was honest, though, it was the x at the end of the text that made her decision for her.
She picked up the phone, ready to text back. Then she stopped. She knew if she let herself get into a text exchange with Brynn, she might not want to stop. Instead, she rang Chester and spoke without preamble.
“Tell Brynn she’s on for the LA shows.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brynn was in a head-spin. She’d been handed the biggest shot of a lifetime, playing stadiums across the whole country… if she could pull off the LA shows. The SoFi stadium held 70,000. Her biggest gig so far had been 3000 people, and that had felt intense. If she choked, her failure would be beyond epic.
And that was less than half of the noise that was happening in her head. It was Savannah’s tour. She would see Savannah, with her own eyeballs, literally next week, for the first time in almost a year. Savannah Grace herself had given it the green light. Brynn had no idea what to make of that. Was it forgiveness? Another shot? Or was it merely being professional? And not only that, but toward the end of Savannah’s set Brynn was scheduled to join her on stage to sing Longing together, for the first time since the day she’d blown it all up and kissed her. Was this what having a heart attack felt like?
She and the band were practicing their set day and night. She’d been sent the arrangement for the live version of the duet, and ran through that, over and over, Noah singing a somewhat less dulcet and distracting version of Savannah’s part. She’d scheduled two damn sessions with the therapist she’d started seeing on her return to LA to try to get her head in shape. It was so much pressure. Between her dreams of a serious career in the music industry and the woman her heart still beat like crazy over, it was all one big stress ball of a nightmare-slash-dream come true.
She’d hit the gym hard that morning, trying to get the nervous energy out of her body, then showered and walked back toward home, stopping at her favorite coffee shop on the way home, unsure if caffeine would help or make things worse. It was late fall in LA, but she was still pretty damn warm in her maroon zip-up hoodie, so she sat down at a little outdoor table to drink her coffee. She calculated the time it would be in Nashville and hit dial to FaceTime Lane.
The phone rang out for so long that she was about to hang up, when suddenly Tucker’s face filled the screen. He broke into a grin.
“Hey buddy!” she said. “Whatchu doing?”
“Am going swimming!” he exclaimed.
“Oh man, listen to you. I miss how you used to say ‘fwimming,’” she told him. “You’re growing up so fast! Are you tall? You look tall.”
“So tall,” he agreed.
“What’s Lane thinking, letting you swim this time of year, anyway? They trying to freeze your butt off or what?”
Lane predictably ignored her, still holding the phone so that only Tucker could be seen. Tucker giggled, “butt!” Then he started prattling lines from his current favorite story, like he was quoting great literature. Brynn had bought her own copy when he’d gotten obsessed with it to read him over the phone, so she knew the lines too and chanted them with him, making him jump up and down with glee.
“Everything okay, Lane?” she asked, her routine, every day, don’t-ask-for-details check in, but Lane ignored that too. “Are you avoiding my face?” she asked, fighting a grin. “Does that mean you stayed up late cutting your own hair again? Is it that dramatically bad?” Lane still refused to speak or appear in view, and Brynn sighed. “Tucker, don’t tell Lane I said they were a noodlehead, okay? Don’t tell them.”
Tucker giggled and chanted noodlehead, noodlehead.
“Okay, kid, I guess we’ll chat soon. Eat all the veggies. Be good for your mama and Lane. Bye!”
“Byeeee!” Tucker shouted. She was just about to hang up when the phone swiveled and suddenly she was face to face, not with Lane but Savannah, in a white bikini top, her blue eyes meeting Brynn’s in the screen. Her lips moved.
“Bye,” she said softly and disconnected the call. Brynn sat there like a gaping goldfish.
The days counted down to SoFi stadium. Time moved fast in a haze of activity and anxiety, but something had shifted inside of Brynn. The last time she’d been under anything like this kind of pressure, it had been the final weeks of med school. Only this time, older, sober, in therapy and chasing the right dreams, Brynn had made one very clear decision: she was going to stop thinking of failure and give it her all.
