Peanut Butter Pancakes

You wake up to the smell of peanut butter, and for one confused second you're twenty-one.

Then you remember the camera, the porch, the texts, and you lie very still and stare at the pale circle on your ceiling.

You don't know exactly what you expected from last night. Not that. Not his one-line texts coming through in the dark, careful and dry and so completely him that you had to put the phone face down on the blanket twice. You remember the shape of the conversation better than the words. The porch light. The rules. The way he didn't push.

You also remember that he stayed out there all night. You checked at three, and at four, and at five.

You pull on a sweatshirt and go downstairs.

He's at your stove with his sleeves pushed up, flipping pancakes with a butter knife because you don't own a spatula. A jar of peanut butter sits open beside the pan. He's stirring it right into the batter, the way he used to in Bo's trailer kitchen on Sunday mornings, when there was nothing else in the cupboard.

You stop in the doorway.

"You remember that," you say.

"I remember a lot of things." He slides two pancakes onto a plate and sets it at the counter without looking at you. "Eat. We leave at nine forty."

"I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten since the show. You get mean when you skip meals."

"I'm always mean to you."

"Meaner," he says.

You sit. You eat. They taste exactly the same and you hate him for it.

When you're done he puts a small black phone on the counter beside your plate. Cheap, scuffed, the kind people buy at gas stations.

"What's this?"

"Backup. Prepaid, not in your name, not on any account. Your real phone's been in that house for a month with a camera. I don't trust it yet." He taps the screen awake. One contact. J. "Keep it charged. Keep it on you. Somewhere nobody would look."

"And if I need you?"

"Call."

"And if I can't?"

He's quiet for a moment.

"Then text one word," he says. "Sparrow. I'll know."

You look at the phone, then at him. He's already turned back to the sink.

You put it in the inside pocket of your guitar case, under the strings, and you don't say thank you. But you don't give it back, either.

Low Road Studios sits on a quiet block off Music Row, a converted brick church with stained-glass windows and the best vocal booth in Nashville. You've cut two albums here. It's the one place in the city that has always felt like yours.

Today Callan Danforth is sitting on the lobby couch with his boots on the coffee table.

Of course he is.

Callan is thirty-seven and handsome in the way of men who know exactly how much. Long hair, silver rings, a voice like warm whiskey and a temper like cheap whiskey. He produced your first record. You lived with him for two years. When you signed with a bigger label and took your songs with you, he told a magazine you couldn't write a chorus without him.

"Well," he says, uncrossing his ankles. "If it isn't the gold record."

"What are you doing here, Callan?"

"Mixing a project in B. Free country." His eyes slide past you to Jax and sharpen. "Who's this?"

"Security."

"Security." Callan stands up, and he takes his time doing it. "Heard you had a little scare. Cops came by my place yesterday asking where I was Saturday night. Funny thing. I told them I was home alone thinking about all the songs you stole from me."

"I didn't steal anything. They're my songs."

"Gravel Road was a ballad when you brought it in. I made it a hit." He steps closer. "You know what it was before me? A sad girl with a guitar and a story about some redneck who skipped town. Nobody cared about that boy till I put a kick drum under him."

The lobby goes quiet.

You feel Jax beside you, a half step back, the way he's been all morning. You feel the exact moment Callan's words reach him, because he goes completely still.

Callan doesn't notice. Callan never notices anything that isn't Callan.

"You should be grateful," Callan says, and reaches for your arm.

He doesn't get there.

Jax doesn't grab him. Doesn't shove. He simply moves, one clean step, and suddenly he's between you, close enough that Callan's outstretched hand stops an inch from Jax's chest.

"Mr. Danforth," Jax says. His voice is low and almost friendly. "She's going into that booth now. You're going to sit back down."

Callan looks up at him. Callan is six foot. Jax is taller, and wider, and has the face of a man who has done things in places Callan can't spell.

Callan sits back down.

In the booth you put on your headphones and stare at the lyric sheet and can't read a word.

Some redneck who skipped town.

Through the glass you can see Jax in the control room, arms folded, leaning against the back wall beside your engineer, Pete. He isn't looking at the board. He's looking at the door. Then, for one second, he's looking at you.

You look away first.

"Whenever you're ready, Ava," Pete says in your ear.

You're not ready. You sing anyway. Your voice comes out rough and too honest and on the third take Pete takes his hands off the faders and says, quietly, "Damn," and you have to pretend you need water so nobody sees your face.

At two o'clock, the receptionist knocks on the control room door with a padded envelope.

"This came for you," she says. "Courier. He didn't wait for a signature."

Your name is printed on the front in block capitals. No return address. No stamp.

Jax is across the room before you can reach for it.

"Don't," he says. He takes it by the corners, turns it over, presses it lightly between his fingers. "Paper. No wires." He looks at you. "Your call."

"Open it."

He slits the flap with a pocketknife and tips it.

A single photograph slides out onto the mixing desk.

It's old. The colors have gone warm and soft the way prints do. A girl sits on the catwalk of a water tower, legs dangling over the edge, laughing so hard her eyes are shut. She's wearing a man's flannel shirt three sizes too big, sleeves rolled to the elbows. Behind her the sky is going orange over a town you know by heart. You can read half the painted letters on the tank: HARLOW CR.

You're twenty-one in that picture. You remember the shirt. You remember who was holding the camera: his daddy's old film camera, the click of it, the way he said don't move, Sparrow, the light's perfect.

You've never seen this photo. He took the roll to get developed the week before he left, and you never saw a single print.

Jax picks it up. His hand isn't steady.

He turns it over. On the back, in faded blue ink, in handwriting you know better than your own, are four words.

So you don't forget.

And under them, fresh and black and new:

I never did, Ava. Did he?