stuck his head out, and she asked, “Has she seen it?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because you live with her!” Jo jumped up with a shimmy. “Oh, my Lord. She hasn’t seen it.”
“Seen what?” I seemed to be the only one who didn’t know.
Jo came back with a tablet and began typing. Then she set it down in front of me, out of the glare. “Watch.” She had YouTube pulled up.
The title of the video: To Layla.
The image opened shaky, blurry with blobs of light broken by blobs of shadow that occasionally coalesced into people on the stage. The sound was loud, and the speakers sounded blown out. Jo hit stop. “Let me find a better one.”
She minimized the video and returned to the search results. The entire page had the same video. Or the same title anyway. Every single one said, To Layla, but the thumbnails were different. The next video Jo clicked on was clearer and from a different angle. Micah stood on stage, talking. The camera zoomed in on him. Jo made sure the volume was up and the screen maximized.
Micah was already talking.
“Come on, everyone. Cameras out. We encourage you to record this and share it far and wide. This is a brand-new song. Never performed anywhere. Hell—” he chuckled “—we’ve barely practiced it.”
The video panned around. Phones were out everywhere. Little iPhone Micahs floated above the crowd below the real Micah, who announced. “Now, this is important. When you upload this, please give it the title To Layla. This message is for her.”
I hit the screen to pause it. “When was this recorded?”
Jo frowned. “Uh.”
Eden said, “Tuesday.”
Tuesday? That was the day Ash came to town. This concert would have coincided approximately to the time she and I were moving over to Zion’s, posting on the forum, and getting ready to hit the detonator on the site. If the site had been up all week, this video would have been posted there, and I would have seen it. But I’d been avoiding all the fan sites all week.
Then I remembered the messages.
The emails.
I took a shaky breath and blinked back tears.
“You guys should put it on the TV,” Adam yelled from the yard. Ash was no longer beside him, and I noticed she’d snuck up behind us to watch over Jo’s shoulder.
Eden said, “Ooh, good idea! Go!”
We all raced into the house, and within minutes, she had the video on a widescreen TV. My curiosity was killing me.
“Everybody comfy?” she asked, settling into a leather love seat, next to Jo, who now hugged a pillow.
Ash and I shared a sofa directly in line with the screen. I nodded. “Play it.”
Micah lifted the guitar strap up and over his head, then said into the mic, “This requires a change in personnel.”
For the first time, I could see Shane as he stood and came around the drumkit. He wrapped his hand around the neck of Micah’s guitar, and as he ducked his head under the strap, Micah took his place at the drums. Ash said, “I didn’t know Micah played drums.”
Jo laughed. “Not really.”
He must have known enough because he began to tap a simple four count rhythm. Shane stepped into the spotlight. Someone had brought out a stool, and he hooked it with his ankle, sitting before the microphone. As he adjusted it, he said, “This is going to be interesting. I’ve never played in front of more than one person at a time before.” The crowd cheered. “I might be about to make a total fool of myself here, but it’s worth it. I need to apologize to a girl in a pretty big way. Do you think this will work?” The roar brought the speakers to their limit, and they started to crackle.
Ash took my hand. “This is for you?”
I nodded, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Shane. I hadn’t seen him in over a week, and my soul hurt from wanting him. I’d missed his face, his ever-changing expressions, his manic energy, and mostly, the way he’d looked at me before he’d lost all faith in me.
I prayed he’d found it again.
He lifted his knee and rested his foot on the bar, and then he began to play. First a C, then an E, an F, then a C.
“I know this song.”
Sure enough, he began with the same first verse he’d sung to me before.