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Isabelle snorted. “Cause I’m awesome, special, and a genius,” she paused. “And horny, but that might be something I’m taking care of soon.”
Sage laughed again. “Oh so Michael—“
“Anywayyyy” Isabelle interrupted her clearly not wanting to discuss her love life, or the lack there of. “I’m calling because this is our last night before we head back to New York and I want all of us to go to the Hollow. It's the bar that Annie worked at when she was young. I refuse to leave Montana without one more good night with my sisters. Annie’s already in. Mary Sue’s in if we help her close the diner, which we can do.”
Sage’s eyes brightened. “Of course! That sounds awesome.”
“Good! Hold on…Ethan. Stop shooting your sister with a nerf gun!”
Sage heard Annie’s kids giggling in the background.
“Izzy…are you babysitting?”
Isabelle paused and said defensively, “So what? I love these kids. Plus they call me Auntie Izzy.”
“Oh, Izzy,” Sage sighed as she felt her friend’s longing.
Izzy paused and Sage thought she heard a sniffle. “Yeah well…anyway. We’ll meet you at the diner at seven, okay?”
“Yeah babe…see you then.”
“Good! And sis?” Izzy paused.
“Bring your guitar.”
Sage blinked as she stuttered. “Wait, what?”
But Izzy had already hung up.
Sage had stared at the phone for a full ten seconds before she said out loud, “No. Fucking. Way”
She was not going to bring her guitar. She was not going to play at a bar. She was definitely not going to play in front of Cal. Not yet. No way.
“I’m not!” She said, slapping her hands on the art table.
She brought the guitar.
You don’t have to do this, You can just sit down. Nobody asked you to. Nobody would even be disappointed.
Yeah, another part of her answered — quieter, older, fiercer. But you would.
Sage still stood in the shadowed alcove, guitar heavy on her shoulder, and looked at Cal.
She thought about the first time she’d seen him — across a vinyl booth, those enormous hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate, his eyes never once dropping to her body. He’d called her his friend. He’d prayed for her. He nursed her throughout that first night when she lay feverish and lost. So lost.
You saved me, baby. You saved me.
She thought about the cabin. Brutus snoring by the fire. Mary Sue’s warm hands cupping her face on Christmas, whispering, You let people love you, Baby girl. She thought about Felicity, who would’ve been screaming encouragement from a corner table right now with a glass of cheap red wine, already crying twice and telling strangers, That’s my baby.
She thought about the girl who used to count ceiling tiles at twelve. The girl on a Phoenix bathroom floor with a razor in her hand. The girl in a Wyoming rest-stop stall with nothing left but silence.
That girl had not survived for nothing.
That girl had survived for this.
For a loud Montana bar on a December night before the new year. For the man she loved sitting at the head of a table full of family she never thought she’d be allowed to have. For one song. For one room. For one moment of standing up in the body that had always been hers and singing the truth she’d fought so hard to own.
She was going to sing for him. Her man.
