“How about we chat now on the patio?”
Jamie smiled his award-winning smile and poured two glasses of iced peach tea from the pitcher on the counter.
He handed one to Brinton, who grasped it hesitantly, as if it might have been spiked with cyanide. His grin faltered. All right, this might be a smidge harder than he had hoped, but he was up for the challenge.
Brinton looked to Sammi for some kind of affirmation and seemed to have gotten it in her sharp nod of approval.
“Okay,” she mumbled.
Clearly, she was still getting her bearings. But he knew how to loosen her up.
LANDMARK.COM: TRACY CHAPMAN’S ‘FAST CAR’ WAS JUST THE START
By Brinton Shaw
“I had a feeling that I belonged. I had a feeling that I could be someone.”
That woman was pop-folk singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman. The song was her 1988 smash hit “Fast Car.” The Grammy winner has asserted that she originally wrote the track, which explores maintaining hope amid an often bleak, blue-collar life, as a teen growing up in Cleveland, Ohio.
Despite mainstream radio largely overlooking Chapman’s brilliance after her breakout success in the ’90s, as tastes shifted to bubblegum pop and bravado-laced hip hop, Chapman was absolutely right. She belonged. And she always has.
With every defiant guitar lick, and every smokey note she sings, Chapman’s music is not just to be heard, butexperienced.
After country music star Luke Combs covered “Fast Car” in 2023, Chapman has enjoyed a well-deserved resurgencein popularity. With his entry, Combs––crediting Chapman as one of his favorite artists––introduced a new audience to Chapman’s tender storytelling.
Both Chapman and Combs’s renditions of “Fast Car” capture the precariousness of an unknown future, knowing something good is just beyond the bend, if you’re brave enough to take the first step. Yet, Chapman’s version feels imbued with a certain ache resonant with being an outsider. Chapman has said that “Fast Car” wasn’t necessarily autobiographical, and yet its authenticity feels as fresh today as it did some forty years ago.
Through a contemporary lens, it’s hard not to consider how Chapman’s experiences as a Black female, in the largely white male-dominated folk genre, and as a Black woman in America, might have shaped her trajectory. However, to believe the best Chapman has to offer lies within the four minutes and fifty-seven seconds of “Fast Car,” or even her bluesy 1995 coffeehouse staple “Give Me One Reason,” is not just an understatement. It’s a devaluing of a career spanning ten studio albums, four Grammys, and more than thirty-two million albums sold worldwide.
Not to mention, the countless people she has inspired along the way.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Brinton cocked her head and studied the wooden contraption about twenty feet away. The slanted board sloped downward on one side and had a small hole at the top. Adding to her confusion, at Jamie’s behest, she was now barefoot in the lush lawn nestling the patio, soft blades of grass tickling her toes.
Behind her, two bubbling jacuzzis and enough teak loungers for a football squad flanked the enormous swimming pool. Dotting the perimeter, an army of shady sugar maple trees.
It was proof that, if you were rich enough, heaven on Earth did exist.
“What’s the point of this again?” Brinton asked.
Jamie, also barefoot, let out a playful, exaggerated groan, like this was the most natural thing in the world.
“The point of cornhole is to have fun. It’s a game.” He nodded to the small red and blue bean bags next to him, haphazardly piled beside their iced teas on a teakwood table. “You throw these bean bags into the hole in that board to score points. The first person to score twenty-one wins.”
Agamewas not what she needed. She needed atime machine. She’d planned to come off in control when seeing Jamie for the first time in months, but back in that kitchen, it was like no time had passed. She was stuck in Grammys purgatory, paralyzed by fear and shame all over again. A snarled bundle of nerves. Soon enough, Jamie would see her flawed emotions, like Eli always did. She’d screw up this interview, and she’d get fired. Because she didn’t belong here. Yet, there she was, barefoot with a still-shirtless Jamie Crawford Jr.
Jeez, did everyone walk around flashing their gilded pecs all willy-nilly?
He handed her a stack of four red bean bags. “I thought this could shake off the cobwebs. First interview and all.” His lips curved into a broad smile that steadied her like a long, deep breath, which she also didn’t need. She simply could not fall for his charms.
In fact, she’d spent days studying them from past interviews she had watched online. That smile wasn’t genuine; it was a destabilizing weapon. When he bit his bottom lip, he was flirting. Sometimes, he did this twitchy thing, where he spun the chunky gold ring on his left pinky. She didn’t know what it meant, but she would figure that out too.
Knowing all this, her pulse still raced. She needed to relax so she didn’t scream. Or worse, project from a different hole in her body. Brinton breathed in deeply through her nose, held it for four counts, then let it go, as her mother had taught her. Sweet wildflowers and freshly cut grass filled her nostrils.
Yes, she could do this.
Brinton took the bean bags from him and, to her horror, a spark danced between their fingers as they briefly touched, just like at the Grammys.
