The night came and went, and by noon the next day Ari had enabled himself to forget some of the prior day's anxieties. Sleep deprivation helped.

Wyn hadn't texted him, and Ari wasn't about to disturb the universe by texting Wyn. Instead, he was back on Church Street playing songs he didn't write for people who wouldn't listen. 

Summer could be great for busking as long as it wasn’t too crowded. On days like that, like this, the clamoring drone of early bird tourists and locals rushing out to lap up the rare sunshine turned every sound to mud in the same pit.

Not that he needed the money. Eight thousand and change could get him on a plane at any moment, as far as he needed to go, wherever he was, and the remainder could pay for any and everything Mom might need in the space between the event and the insurance payout she'd be owed. If they didn't weasel out of paying it.

It’d be okay.

If Dad died tomorrow, he had enough socked away to make it okay.

Ari blew hot air through his nose. His hands worked themselves into shape to play one of the bluegrass festival standards he'd zeroed in on as crowd pleasers among Vermonters. His voice abandoned him and he let it go.

Just play and forget about it.

Just burrow into the song. Just play. Be a pair of hands.

He did, and he forgot the world until another voice joined his.

"I know that storms will gather 'round me,

I know the way is dark and steep,

But golden fields arise before me-“

“Where God's redeemed may ever sleep."

Ari’s automated hands kept on playing, however clumsily, in the seconds it took him to turn his head and register Wyn's presence at his side. Watching Wyn's mouth form the sounds, it wasn't any easier to accept that he was producing them. 

Or was it? Wyn's throat was smooth, a straight shot down into the collar of his shirt, and Ari had seen firsthand how elastic his voice could be. Was the sound he produced shocking because he sang in a high tenor range? No. It was shocking because, in Ari's estimation, he was obviously trained. He produced a sound so clean and so effortless that Ari’s throat closed itself. The fear of flubbing a line in his homespun voice was strong.

It wasn’t even the same version of the song that Ari knew.

"I'm going there to meet my fellows,

Who've gone before me one by one,

I'm only going over Jordan,

I'm only going over home."

Ari played him on to the end of the song, his attention split the whole time between the sight of Wyn and his awareness that people had finally started to stop and listen. The lips forming Wyn's accompaniment to his song had a faint color and sheen to them, and the fatigue around his eyes was smoothed out. His hair was neat and wavy without the rain around. He probably, Ari realized in that moment, wore makeup whenever he left the apartment.

Did the people stopping to listen, then, believe Ari was performing with a flat-chested girl singing at the depths of her alto range? 

The song came to its natural end. Ari’s fingers rested awkwardly on the strings, like he was awaiting direction. He’d truly become nothing but a pair of hands. And eyes.

Wyn noticed him staring. "What?"

Ari flinched and his guitar made an indignant clonk when his palm smacked it. "You- I didn't, uh, realize you could sing."

"I can, and rather well." At least he knew. It would have stung worse, somehow, if he wasn’t smug about it. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes? Where'd you learn to sing?" 

"Private instruction when I was a teenager." 

Right. Wyn was from a church family. The full face of makeup made that difficult to keep in mind.

"That takes money, though."

“It makes money, too, sometimes. People tithe very generously if you can trot out a teenage boy who sings without reservation.” A beat passed between them as Ari considered this. Then, accompaniment, Wyn to launched into a song Ari didn’t recognize. Songs that named faith so explicitly didn’t make it onto bluegrass sets, so it was no wonder.

"All to Jesus I surrender,

Humbly at His feet I bow,

Worldly pleasures all forsaken,

Take me, Jesus, take me now-“

He sang it with the clear, forward-facing expression of someone deeply practiced at swallowing the fear of crowds. His voice cut through the drilling roar of Church Street in summer, even without the mic in front of him.

“I surrender all! I surrender all!”

The sharp, clear edge of Wyn’s voice cut through tAri’s stupor. Ari gripped him by the arm and started breaking his setup down.

“Okay, that’s enough. You look like a crazy person.”

Wyn bit the song off with a grin he turned on Ari. “There are plenty of crazy people on Church Street. You’re one of them.”