Tenney Shares the Stage

Duet for One

At lunch, Tenney tells Jaya and Holliday that Logan quit the band yesterday. Jaya’s eyes go wide, and Holliday guesses he’ll change his mind. Portia, Mom, and Dad all urge patience, waiting to hear from Zane. Aubrey nearly cries, and Mason’s face darkens into an angry storm cloud before he hugs her, insisting it’s Logan’s loss and she doesn’t need him anyway. Tenney isn’t sure she believes that.

Tenney adds that even if Logan wasn’t serious, the way he acted means she never wants to perform with him again. Jaya wraps a protective arm around her, but Holliday takes a gentler view. She says that sometimes, getting upset makes people say things they regret, as she once did to Tenney before they were friends. She isn’t excusing Logan, but thinks some distance might change how Tenney sees it. “Maybe,” Tenney says doubtfully.

After school, Mom and Dad drive Tenney downtown to Mockingbird Records to find out if she still has a future there. The whole ride, she feels jittery, like she’s sitting on a carpet of pins, unable to stop hearing Zane’s voice ending her contract. By the time they settle onto his office’s wide leather couches, she’s a fragile bubble of emotion.

Zane confirms it gently, rubbing the back of his neck: Logan is done, for good. The last flicker of hope Tenney had been holding snuffs out, leaving her dazed, her brain wrapped in bubble wrap, and her heart raw. She isn’t even sure the label still wants her.

Zane grins and assures her it does. She’s talented enough to carry a set alone, maybe with a small band, and the lawyers are already drafting a solo contract that will end the old one with Logan once everyone signs. There’s still Riff’s, where she and Logan were supposed to open for Belle Starr next weekend, but there isn’t enough time to build a solo set, so Ellie offers their regrets instead.

Zane advises her to work back through the old set, deciding what’s worth keeping. Logan, he mentions, called “The Nerve” one of their best songs and said she could keep performing it, with revised lyrics. A sour feeling rises in her stomach at the idea. Walking out, she admits to Dad that she isn’t sure how it will feel to play their songs alone. Dad says gently that it will probably feel uncomfortable, at least for a while, but she’ll have to face it sometime.

That night and the next day, Tenney can’t stop turning it over in her head. At Dad’s shop after school, she does homework and scrolls the internet instead of practicing, until Dad asks if she plans to at all. Reluctantly, she carries her guitar and journal into the listening room, where the memory of playing “The Nerve” with Logan for the first time flashes through her mind, the two of them standing across from each other, sure they could do anything, even fly. She settles onto a stool, leans back against the wood paneling, and opens her journal to the set list from their Cumberland Park show.

“Reach the Sky” goes fine, since Tenney wrote it as a solo to begin with. The songs Logan helped arrange fight her harder. Listening to herself play, she can hear his absence in every fragile melody, a drab emptiness worse than silence. She pushes through “Where You Are” without much joy, the music never quite matching how it sounded when they played together.

Then comes “The Nerve,” equal parts Tenney’s and his. Three measures in, she stops. She doesn’t know how to play it without Logan, and worse, she doesn’t want to. She can’t bring herself to sing his lines or the chorus where they boast how great they sound together. Getting through it alone only proves how much better it sounds as a pair. She sets down her guitar, wraps her arms around her knees, and lets a tear slide down her cheek.

Tenney should be thrilled. A solo deal with a real producer is exactly the break she’s dreamed about. Instead, the duet feels broken without Logan, and so does she.

Then it hits Tenney: she isn’t ready to give up on him or their music, even though her last attempt to talk to him ended horribly. A lyric surfaces in her mind, achingly familiar and new all at once. She grabs her pen and jots the words down before a melody floats in behind them. She picks up her guitar and chases the tune until she can’t keep it inside any longer. By the time Dad says it’s time to head home, she has most of a rough new song on paper. The lyrics still need work, but putting into words what she wants to tell Logan leaves her feeling steadier. That will have to be enough for now.