The bar is packed, with nearly wall to wall patrons waiting for me to take the stage. This show was a last-minute decision, but I’m excited to get to perform in such an intimate setting. There is nothing quite like performing for a sold-out stadium with thousands of screaming fans chanting your lyrics, but there’s something to be said about the dive bars that only hold a couple hundred people who are shoulder to shoulder. The intimacy of it all. I love it.
Checking my watch, there’s still fifteen minutes until we go on. Enough time for a shot and another smoke.
Spinning around, my eyes find Voss sitting on the couch scrolling through his phone. He’s in a short-sleeve olive green Henley, dark Levi jeans, and a pair of black and chrome boots. His dark brown curly hair comes down to about his shoulders, and he never goes anywhere without either a ball cap or a cowboy hat on. He’s originally from some small town in Wyoming. Copper Lake, I believe he said the name was.
Voss is only a few years younger than me, and moved to Nashville to pursue music about a year before I came here. He’s been my guitarist from the very beginning, with us both having worked at Neon Dreams Saloon at the same time. It seems Chesney has a way of recruiting future successful musicians.
“Yo, Voss,” I chirp, stealing his attention from whatever he’s gaping at on his phone. His eyes lift, meeting mine questioningly. “Let’s go outside for a smoke before we go on.”
He nods, raising off the couch and shoving his phone into the pocket of his jeans. Stepping outside, the night is clear but warm. There’s a light breeze that counteracts the thick mugginess that always seems to be present.
Reaching into my pocket, I grab my white and red Marlboro pack, plucking one out and placing it between my lips. Using my favorite purple lighter, I bring it to the end of the cigarette until it’s glowing orange and its toxins are filling my lungs. The smoke flows up my nose, dancing through my parted lips until it’s nothing more than an off-white cloud in front of me.
I’ve been smoking for as long as I can remember. I couldn’t even say how many times I told myself I’d quit, and then just never did. It’s a comfort more than it is a habit at this point. Nervous, angry, anxious, I can smoke a cigarette and calm the fuck down. After my failed suicide attempt, and after I made the decision to leave Utah, I quit almost everything I was doing. The pills, the coke, I was done with it. I even cut down on my drinking for a few years while I got myself healthy again. Marijuana and tobacco were never things I was willing to give up, though, so I didn’t. Medicinal properties aside, when it comes to weed, I’ve never felt it was aproblemfor me. I don’t need it; I just enjoy it. Same with cigarettes, but people could definitely argue that it’s unhealthy.
“How you doing, man?” Voss pulls me from my thoughts with his question. He’s always been able to read me better than anyone. He’s intuitive as fuck, and I love it as much as I hate it.
I’m naturally a private person, despite living in the spotlight. Even after all the years I’ve been here, and all the time spent with Voss, and the other members of my band, they still don’t know much about who I was before moving to Nashville. They know Lana died, and Voss knowshowshe died, but that’s it.
None of them know about Josiah or my suicide attempt. Part of me has always felt guilty that I’m so closed off from them. They’re some of my closest friends, and they don’t know this huge chunk of my history. But at the end of the day, leaving Utah was permanently closing that chapter of my life, and I don’t see the point of reminiscing about it. They know everything about me that matters.
Nodding as I inhale another hit off my smoke, I mutter, “Fine.”
“You sure?” he asks. “You’ve been… off for the last few days.”
Glancing over at him, the concern in his eyes is evident. “I’m sure. Ran into a ghost from my past the other day, and it just shook me a little more than I thought. That’s all, but I’m fine. I promise.”
That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one. Running into Josiah at the coffee shop rocked my shithard. A heavy, bitter pit has made itself home in my gut since walking out on him, and my anxiety has been steadily rising since. Nothing is helping to minimize it—not weed, whiskey, writing music, nothing—and I’m not sleeping either. I gotmaybea solid two hours last night, and that’s being generous. Every single emotion I’ve tried so hard to bury over the last seven years has reemerged with a vengeance, and I don’t know what to do with it all.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Nah, I’m good,” I reply before taking another drag. “But thanks, man.”
Once we finish up, it’s time to take the stage. The neon lights in this place are bright, but not so overwhelming that I can’t see into the crowd. Another reason I love dive bar shows so much.
I reach for my guitar sitting on stage before taking a seat on the tall, dark wood bar stool behind the microphone. The crowd claps and roars, the room practically vibrating with excitement. A wide smile splits my lips as I glance over at Voss, then back at Wade on the drums. With a nod of my head, they start playing, music filling the packed space as the crowd silences.
I love this shit so much.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again a million more times. There is nothing like being on stage, all eyes on you. Knowing your words touch the souls of other people is surreal. It’s everything I ever dreamed of and never thought I’d get.
My heart pounds in my chest to the beat of Wade’s drums behind me as I begin the first song. It’s an older one. One I wrote during a dark period in my life, shortly after leaving Utah. So much of my heart and soul bled onto the pages, drenching each lyric in painful memories and unsaid feelings.
A song about stolen glances and lingering touches. About hot breath skating across my neck in the dark and goosebumps caressing my flesh. It’s about finding euphoria in someone you shouldn’t, and the regret that blankets your being after it’s all said and done.
The highs. The rush.
Followed by the devastating lows.
The slow beat of the song, paired with the raw emotion lacing every lyric sung, always makes for a chest-aching experience.
My eyes scan the crowd slowly as I sing. Some people sway by themselves, others stand wrapped up tightly with someone else. The space is filled to the brim with bodies, all the way back to the bar, where I spot Nick watching too.
Movement to the left of him snags my attention, my eyes jerking in that direction. I stumble over the lyrics for a single beat, the blood roaring in my ears, as my gaze collides with a familiar pair of gray eyes.
The air is sucked from my lungs once again, and it’s an effort to keep singing, to remember the lyrics, to not fumble the chords on the guitar in my hands. Suddenly, this extremely personal song just got a lot more real.
Flashbacks flip through my mind like a slideshow, one right after another. Josiah’s eyes on me, his lips brushing along my skin, our heated bodies pressed together.
