Open Road Summer(54)

He speaks so slow and sure that it almost sounds like a promise—not that I’d believe it. But I want to, fool that I am. I want to climb into his arms and just stay there until my life makes sense. Matt pushes my hair behind my ear, leaning toward me again, and I don’t care if it makes sense. This is my gut feeling, which I usually defy just for the thrill of it. I never knew the rush that comes with following your gut feeling exactly. So, closing my eyes, I stake the rest of the summer—the rest of everything I have—on the hope that he’s right.





Chapter Fourteen

Knoxville to NYC


“Well, well.” I hold up the open magazine like I’m reading a story to a group of children. My audience is only Matt and Dee, but I’m making a show of it all the same as we hurtle toward New York City. “Look at this beautiful couple.”

The glossy page shows a spread of celebrity fashion from the Dixie Music Awards two weeks ago. It feels like a lifetime ago—a bizarre, previous life, in which I had never kissed Matt Finch. On the left side of the magazine, a big picture of Matt and Dee takes up the whole page. Matt’s hand is wrapped loosely around her waist, and they’re poised, gorgeous, and beaming. It feels weird, looking at them the way the rest of the world sees them: as a couple. I should be jealous, but the impulse doesn’t come. They’re different guys to me—celebrity Matt and the Matt I kissed three nights ago. And every night since.

“Ugh,” Dee says, making a face at me from the couch across from mine. We’re rolling toward New York for a talk-show appearance, followed by a few East Coast tour stops. “It’s weird to see that picture now that you guys are . . . whatever.”

Matt laughs, apparently pleased at the idea that he and I are whatever. From his spot on the floor below me, he’s leaning against my leg and tuning the strings of his guitar.

“Let’s see what we have here,” I say, glancing over the magazine’s write-up of the awards show. “They say that you are ‘enchanting’ and ‘a natural-born performer.’ ”

“Well,” Dee says. “That’s sweet.”

“And you,” I say, glancing down at Matt, “are a ‘charming addition to the country music scene, complete with the boyish earnestness from his Finch Four days.’ ”

“Damn it,” he says, hanging his head. “That’s the second reporter to call me ‘boyish.’ ”

“Boyish is nice,” Dee offers.

He tips his head toward her. “I’m nineteen. I’m not boyish.”

“It’s your hair,” I tell him without glancing up from the magazine, and Dee laughs.


“My hair?” he asks, incredulous. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Nothing. But you had it that way when you were younger, right? During the Finch Four years?”

He frowns. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” Dee says. “You did. Same haircut. Kind of almost shaggy.”

“Shaggy?”

“Yeah.” I gesture near his ear. “It sort of starts to curl right here. The look is a little . . .”

Dee and I both study his face for a moment.

“. . . boyish,” Dee decides.

We both giggle, and Matt’s eyes widen as if we’ve betrayed him. “Girls are mean! I’m bailing out of this bus at the next rest stop.”

“Unlikely,” I tell him. He smiles, wrapping an arm around my leg. As soon as we kissed a few days ago, the barrier between us fell. Since then, Matt has had no hesitation being close to me. Any moment when we’re not in public, his arms go to my waist, my shoulder, my legs, anywhere. Though I’d never admit it out loud, I like this familiarity and how it feels like we’ve known each other for longer than we have.

Our eyes meet, and I smile at him. Smiling isn’t often involuntary for me, and the easy movement of my lips feels almost foreign.

Dee’s attention returns to her laptop, typing out responses to a reporter’s written interview questions. “Um. Uh-oh.”

“What?” Matt and I say it at the exact same time.

“Lissa just e-mailed me. She wants to do a conference call in five minutes . . . to talk about this picture.”

She turns the laptop toward us. The picture is of two smiling, college-aged girls, both of their faces a bit shiny from heat and the camera’s flash. They’re cute, dressed casually, in some kind of bar. And that’s when I see it. Behind them, on the left side, Matt Finch is talking to a brunette girl, who has her hand on his arm. The girl is Dee, in her wig, from the night she accidentally got drunk.

“This is not good,” Matt says.

“Lissa says in her e-mail that this photo is not bad—apparently the tabloid wanted confirmation that it’s me, but the story they’re running is about how cute it is, that I wanted to see your show so badly that I went in disguise.”

“But . . . if there are other pictures . . . ,” I trail off. She nods, unaffected. “Why are you not freaking out about this?”

She shrugs. “I mean, I hope there are no unflattering pictures. But that night already happened. I can’t undo it.”

I’m impressed but skeptical. We’re pulling off the exit ramp now, and I had planned to ride the rest of the way on Matt’s bus. Instead, I lock eyes with Matt as the bus pulls to a stop.