Page 121 of Levi

He was mine for one night and a morning.

Now, the world is taking him back.

I pull up to the house. His hand is on the door before I’ve stopped the car.

“Levi. Look at me.” He stops and turns with his hand on the latch. “This isn’t the last morning for us.”

I get one second of his eyes.

Then the face closes over them, and he’s out.

Chapter 47: Levi

The woman from the country station has a warm on-air voice that sells trucks during the commercial breaks. She opens with a softball question, the one they all open with.

“Let’s start with the new record,” she says. “What do you want people to feel when they hear it?”

“Man, that’s the whole question right there, isn’t it?” I lean in and give her the smile that photographs better than my real one. “I’ll be straight with you. This is the most myself I’ve ever sounded. I quit chasing the radio on this one and wrote the honest stuff. The songs I’d play for nobody but me, driving home at two in the morning. Closest I’ve ever let anybody get to the real me.”

She smiles and writes it down like I’m telling the truth.

There’s no me on the new record. There’s no me anywhere they can stream. But it’s the cheap kind of lie, the kind that doesn’t hurt anybody. She thanks me. A kid with a clipboard rotates her out and the next one in.

They’ve built me a press room inside a hotel room for the press interviews. Top floor of one of the beach towers. The Gulf going on forever out a window they keep at my back. Two chairs. The tour logo angled just off-side so it sits in every shot without looking like it wants to. Lights on poles. A girl who steps between reporters and fixes my face with a brush. And Freddie against the back wall, arms folded, not watching the reporters. Watching me. He’s the only thing in here that isn’t a prop.

They come at me in shifts and I hit every one clean, because the stage is the only place I’ve ever been let to live.

“Two more performances at the Bash,” a kid from a Panama City Beach station says. “What are we in for Saturday night?”

“Everything we’ve got left,” I say. “This coast’s been too good to us to shortchange it now.”

“There’s a duet rumor making the rounds,” the next one tries. “Anything you want to tell us?”

“Now, you know I can’t say.” I tip the hat brim an inch, which tells them everything, and they love it.

I’m charming. I’m natural. I’m, God help me, good at this.

And the entire time there’s a line I’m trying not to think about, because Freddie wrote it himself, an hour ago, before they let anybody up to see me.

He sat me down in the green room with two waters, one for each of us, like we were about to do something reasonable together.

“Here’s the situation,” he said in his kind voice. “The video is everywhere. We can’t kill it, so we own it. Here’s the story. You were drunk. You misread a situation at a bar. You stepped in where you had no business, you’re embarrassed about it, you squared it with the guy, and everyone’s friends now.” He turned his phone face-down on the table between us, which is what Freddie does instead of rolling up his sleeves. “You were drunk, Levi. Whatever you actually were, drunk is the version that survives. Drunk is forgivable for you. Drunk is practically a genre of country music. The other thing” — he let two seconds go by — “is not on the menu. Now say it back to me.”

“I’d had a few too many—”

“Not to me. To the camera that’s going to be behind me. Warm it up.”

I put the grin on. “I’d had a few too many, and I got it in my head I was gonna ride in and fix it.”

“Again.”

He made me say it again and again. Somewhere around the fourth pass it quit being a sentence I was saying and started sounding true. Freddie nodded along like a producer getting his take.

“Good,” he said. “That’s the one right there. Keep it.” He stood, buttoned his jacket, and collected his water on his way out. “Twenty minutes. Drink something.”

Before they turned a single camera on me, I sat in a chair and rehearsed sanding down the one night that was mine down to a lie. Out loud. Take after take, till it came smooth as warm butter.

The guy from the entertainment site leans in with his nice-guy face. “Alright, I gotta go there,” he says, like it pains him. “The video. Last night, the bar. It’s all over the place this morning. What actually happened?”