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“Ah.” Alwin puts on a terrible Southern drawl. “Everything’s bigger in Texas.”
Sara laughs. “That’s actually pretty good,” she fibs, and there we go. Alwin has charmed her, and I’m just sitting here hoping that he won’t try to take her from me. She’s not even mine, I think, and then mentally slap myself because I sound like a possessive idiot when in reality, I’m a one-hit wonder.
Because if Alwin’s not here to tell me bad news, then he’s undoubtedly here to check on my work.
“Have you been to Texas?” Sara asks, and she might take the glint in his eye as flirting—which it is, of course—but it’s also Alwin finding this whole thing hilarious.
“I have,” he says. “For work.”
The work was a sold-out concert in Houston, but Alwin doesn’t say that. They do talk about his visit, though, as short as it was, and then about Baden-Baden and the touring around Sara’s done, which, she admits, isn’t much.
“Listen, I’m going to let you two get to work, or whatever. I’ll be in the front room if you need me.” She stands up and then pauses, like she’s got something to say but changes her mind.
When she disappears into the hallway, Alwin and I both watch her go. He whips his head toward me and switches back to German. “What the hell is going on here?”
I run a hand down my face because any words I put together in my head sound a little crazy. “I met her in town, she needed a place to stay, and I have a shit ton of rooms.”
“And she doesn’t know who you are?”
“No.”
“You bumbled upon the one person in the world who doesn’t know who you are and offered her a place to live?”
“To be fair, most Americans don’t know who I am,” I point out. “They may have heard of the band but not of me. And that is true for a lot of Europeans too.”
Alwin leans closer. “What do you get out of this arrangement?”
“I told you.”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Don’t tell me she needed a place to stay because while I’m sure it’s true, there’s more to it than that. What are you getting out of this?”
“I’m not sleeping with her.”
“I didn’t say you were, but thanks for the heads up.” He grins, and I throw my spoon at him, and it clatters against the wall when he ducks.
“She’s not for you either.”
He fixes me with a look. It’s a look that reminds me of when he convinced me to join the band. He was at me for months trying to get me busking with him, and I know that Alwin is stubborn as a mule.
“Fine.” I sigh. “This place is big and lonely and empty, and I thought that having someone around might unlock some secret deep inside my brain.”
He laughs, the fucker. “Aw, you missed us. Is she your muse?”
“No.”
I don’t tell him that, lately, it’s kind of felt like she is. I’ve written a few things that aren’t total crap, but I know I can do better. I have to do better. How could I follow up the hit single that won us Eurovision with something that is mediocre? Despite Marcus telling me there’s nothing wrong with hiring an outside songwriter, I worry that our band isspecialandno one would do us justice.
It's not fucking rational, okay?
“Come on,” I tell him. “Let’s go make some noise.”
Back in our early days, “make some noise” was literal. Now, at least today, anyway, it means let’s read each other's lyrics over and over again, playing with intonations and cadences until we’re exhausted.
“This one’s not bad,” Alwin says for the third time today. It makes me want to fucking smack him.
“What’s this one?” he asks and holds a slip of paper toward me.
I lean into it and squint, reading the two lines. “Ah, Ram got drunk and called me with that suggestion.”
