flowers that bloom once a year for only a few moments.
“Why don’t you two educate me on Taylor Swift? Make your case. Convince me that I need to like her.”
Ella moves back to her seat, and she and Zoey exchange glances, both leaning in closer across the back seat so their shoulders are almost touching, as they do exactly as I ask.
Normally, few things would be more torturous to me than listening to Taylor Swift while simultaneously getting a lecture on her musical and creative prowess. But it’s Ella and Zoey talking. I find myself grinning more than once as I weigh the significance of this unexpected moment. My chest aches with a phantom pain, as though I’m already imagining losing them both, being back in this truck, alone again. It’s the last thing I want. And if Taylor Swift is the cost, then so be it.
I have a sudden vision of me, Ella, and Zoey in a stadium with a bunch of screaming girls, music blasting through giant speakers, lights brilliant up on a stage. We’re wearing concert T-shirts that I paid for even though they were too much, and Ella is jumping up and down, screaming, looking like the little girl she should be.
Oddly, it’s an image I could get behind. When’s the last time I went to a concert or to see live music anyway? It’s hard to miss music in Austin, which means that I’ve essentially been living under a rock. But it’s not the idea of going to a concert that has me feeling excited. It’s the mental picture of Ella and Zoey, beside me, grinning like idiots. Grinning at me.
I suck in a breath, holding it for a moment until the tsunami of emotion stops threatening to crash over the island of my heart.
The album and lecture finally end, and Zoey pulls out her phone. “My turn,” she says.
Ella sighs heavily, but even I can tell it’s all show. “Fine.”
I brace myself for another reminder in musical form that Zoey is from a totally different generation, but instead, Dolly Parton fills the speakers. This time both Ella and I groan.
Zoey shakes her head. “Oh no. The two of you cannot find fault with Dolly.”
“She sounds like a baby goat on crack,” Ella says.
A shocked laugh barks out of me, and I can’t stop laughing, even as I feel Zoey and Ella watching me in the mirror.
“See? He agrees,” Ella says.
My laughter dies with that pronoun. He. Not Gavin. Not her father. I’m just … he. So unfamiliar. Impersonal. Like I’m nothing to her. Just a tiny, two-letter word.
You aren’t anything to her. Just a DNA sample, the cruel but honest voice in my head reminds me.
But I want to be more. I will be more.
If she’s mine.
No matter what Eleanor said, I won’t fully believe it without a test. One that I’ll get sometime soon. I didn’t exactly want to start out my relationship with Ella asking for a cheek swab.
“Fine, fine,” Zoey finally concedes when Ella makes a choking noise. “Dolly is an acquired taste. Like coffee.”
“Coffee is gross,” Ella says.
“I used to think so too. But it grew on me. Like Dolly. She’s a classic. And just as good a songwriter as Taylor, if not better. I’d argue better, but she’s older, so we’d have to go back and look at their earliest songs to make an educated decision. How about this?”
Zoey scrolls around her phone until Dolly disappears, replaced by a more moody and stripped-down song led by an acoustic guitar. I don’t recognize the voice, but at first, I’m simply thankful that it’s finally someone who doesn’t sound like a barnyard animal. The song is haunting, to the point that the little hairs stand up on my arms. I quickly realize that the woman is singing a different arrangement of Dolly’s classic, “Jolene.”
“This is Mindy Smith,” Zoey says. “She was my gateway to liking Dolly.”
Ella and I are silent, and I wish I could properly see her to measure her reaction. Does she like this as much as me? It’s a lot less poppy, a lot more folksy-Americana, the kind of music I like when I’m not listening to my favorite bands from the ’90s. I guess now it’s considered classic rock, a fact that makes me want to vomit, but Nirvana and Pearl Jam will never go out of style.
“That’s Dolly doing harmony?” Ella asks, and I realize she’s right. On the final choruses, that unmistakable voice joins in