in the ribs, and I roll my eyes.
I put the car in gear. “We have to get going. How about you sing them for me on the way?”
“Okay.”
She sings the one she showed me, both her parts and mine. I ask her to sing it a second time and then once more. This time I sing my part, then we join in on the chorus, only I do it differently.
“That’s brilliant,” she says. “I like it your way much better. Can we try it again from the top?”
We sing it two more times, and I’m smiling ear to ear. I haven’t had this much fun singing in a car since—fuck. I briefly close my eyes, remembering whose car I’m driving, and guilt washes over me.
“Crew!”
I slam on the brakes; traffic has stopped because of an accident.
“Damn.” I crane my neck, looking ahead. “Looks like we might be stuck here a while.”
She opens her notebook. “Want to try another to pass the time?”
Ten minutes later, we’ve mastered another one of her songs. She wrote my parts better than I ever could. She’s a better lyricist than I am—hell, she’s becoming a better me than I am. And suddenly, I question the need for Chris Rewey in Reckless Alibi.
“You look sad,” she says.
“Just questioning my existence.” I say it like a joke, but I think she sees through my bullshit.
“None of this would work if it was just me or just you. You guys were good before me, and I was good before you, but together it just …”
“Works,” I say.
She nods. “Yeah. It does.”
I stretch back and retrieve my notebook from the backseat. I open it to a page near the front. “Tell me what you think of this one.” I give her a pointed look. “But only this one.”
“Got it,” she says, laughing. She mimes the sign of the cross. “May lightning strike me dead if I turn the page.”
I’m beginning to appreciate Bria’s strange sense of humor.
She reads the lyrics. No, she studies them. She scrutinizes them. “Why did you name this song ‘Viaje de Tortuga?’ That’s Spanish, right?”
“It is. It means ‘turtle’s journey.’ We wrote it … er, I wrote it when I was helping a turtle get to a pond.”
She laughs.
“What?”
She looks at me and laughs harder.
“What’s so funny about the song? It’s not supposed to be funny.”
She wipes her eyes. “No. I know it’s not. It’s just, the coincidence.”
“What coincidence?”
She flips through her notebook, then shoves it at me. “Read,” she says, covering the top of the page with her thumb. “I wrote this when I was thirteen.”
I read her lyrics, but I don’t get why that has anything to do with me or my turtle song. Her song is about somebody always in a hurry. It’s childlike and nonsensical. “I have no idea what I’m reading. And I’m not sure how to say this, but it’s really bad.”
She laughs again. “I know. Like I said, I wrote it when I was a kid.”
“What’s so funny then?”
She finally moves her thumb and shows me the title: ‘The Race of the Cottontail.’
I skim the lyrics again, and it makes a little more sense. “You wrote a song about a rabbit?”
She looks at me like she’s waiting for me to get it.
“What?” I ask again.
“Don’t you get it? It’s the tortoise and the hare.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“You and me—we’re the tortoise and the hare. You know, in the old story.”
I shake my head, confused.
“You are fast, overconfident, and distracted,” she says, amused.
“What does that make you?”
“Slow but relentless.”
I chuckle. “Relentless. I’d agree with that. But the tortoise won the race. Are you saying I’m a loser?”
“It’s true the tortoise won, but only because they didn’t work together. You and me, we’re working together, and that makes us unstoppable, just like when we’re up onstage.”
She’s right. We’re amazing when we’re together. “What does that have to do with the story of the tortoise and the hare?”
She shrugs. “I don’t exactly know, but I’m sure there’s something there we could make into a song.”
She closes her eyes tightly and bites her lip. She’s thinking hard. Then a luminous smile lights up her face and she belts out a lyric.
Holy shit, is she for real? Damn it if she doesn’t inspire me. The traffic is still not moving, and as I stare out the window, it comes to me. I recite the next line.
She’s quick to come up with the next one, then it’s my turn again. It’s like we’re in each