Mayfly Melodies

Twenty-Eight

Bailey

Country music busts the wall between performer and audience. There's a connection because there's a vulnerability, a confessional quality, to so much of the song writing. Those lyrics take you in—Hunter Hayes

She woke before dawn feeling unsettled. Bailey wasn't sure why she felt so...off but there was no denying the emotion. Something was amiss in her home. She just didn't know what it was.

Bailey didn't lift her head from her pillow or make any real attempt to get out of bed. She kept perfectly still, hoping that the odd feeling would dissipate. She could hear quiet murmurings coming from the kitchen but this wasn't particularly odd even given the early hour. People were always rising early in her house. That was nothing to be alarmed about.

It was just something in the air that seemed to raise the hairs on the back of her neck before she'd even really awoken. Like there was some kind of foreign energy giving off very odd signals to Bailey's brain. For several long moments, she considered staying in bed, just letting the unsettling feeling run its course before actually getting ready for the day, but decided that she would not be able to sleep again until she figured just what it was that was making her feel so strange.

She threw on a pair of jean shorts and an old faded blue and white t-shirt before piling her strawberry-blonde curls up in a bun on the top of her head. She dashed into the bathroom to brush her teeth and secure a few loose strands of hair which had fallen loose from her bun before she wandered out towards the kitchen.

Nothing could have prepared Bailey for the sight that awaited her.

The moment she stepped barefoot onto the cool tiled floor, she stopped dead in her tracks and her mouth fell open as she caught a flash of very familiar light brown hair. At her approach, the girl seated at Bailey's kitchen table chatting with Maryse Grant turned around, a broad smile stretching across her pale pink lips. The doe-blue eyes brightened and she lurched to her feet.

"Bailey!" Mae Laferty launched herself at her ex-bandmate and Bailey, still in a state of shock, almost let her fall to the floor.

"Mae! Oh, my god! What are you doing here?" Bailey's arms were working again and she hugged the shorter woman back. She caught a whiff of Mae's perfume, something that smelled of jasmine and lavender, and was instantly transported back to their days on the road performing together. It seemed like years but Bailey knew it had only been weeks since the band had split and she'd come home.

Mae pulled away and regarded Bailey with an expression that was all-warmth. There was no trace of hostility or pain or anger as there had been on the day they and Kyra had met with their lawyers to discuss the end of Chasing Mayflies.

Bailey didn't know why Mae had come but she couldn't deny that it was nice to see her. She and Mae had always been closer than she'd been with Kyra. There was no way to sugarcoat that statement. It was just fact. Bailey supposed that she might not even care much if she never spoke to Kyra again. The weeks that felt like years had only made that feeling more prominent.

But Mae...Bailey had missed her. She hadn't realized how much until just now. She'd been keeping busy around the ranch and between her meetings with Caroline and seeing Noah, Bailey hardly had the time to spare her ex-bandmates a single thought. Suddenly, Bailey wished that she'd reached out earlier but knew that she could not change her past actions. All she could do was strive to be better in the future and in this case that meant pursing a more active involvement in her friends' lives.

"I just wanted to see how you were doing," Mae said to her but Bailey caught something odd flicker in the other girl's and got the impression that there was more but that it was a conversation which could wait until Bailey's mother was not sitting on the other side of the table.