Just a Girl (11 page)

There was only one thing I could think of that could take this mood to the next level. But I’d have to wait until he was done with his show.

June 9

Me

Thank you for your yes. You were right.

Liv

Always. xoxoxoxoxoxox

That single performance released something inside of me, and suddenly I found myself singing all the time. Not publicly, not loudly, but constantly. As I had always done before. Singing softly under my breath as I moved through the store, finding the melody in whatever scrap of music I heard as I passed the lesson rooms. Humming along with the radio in my mom’s car in the morning as we drove to work. I didn’t tell her I’d performed on Saturday night, and she didn’t keep her theories to herself on the origin of my mood shift. Hint: It involved the phrases “I told you so” and “Get laid.” I didn’t offer up any confirmation one way or another, although the fact that I’d spent the night with Paul on Friday was probably all the proof she needed.

As I’d promised Paul, however, my parents were both completely cool with him. He came in on Monday afternoon looking decidedly nervous, but my dad was behind the counter and all he did was give him a nod and an easy, “Afternoon, Paul.”

“Hey, Rick,” Paul said, nodding back as he carried his guitars to the classrooms. He walked quickly, but managed not to run, which I had to give him credit for. He didn’t see me until he practically bumped into me.

“Oh jeez!” he gasped, clearly rattled.

A grin burst onto my face before I could smother it. “You sure scare easy,” I said.

“You keep appearing from nowhere,” he retorted.

“It’s a gift.”

He didn’t respond, instead focusing on me for a moment. “How are you?”

“I’m good.” I was, though I would have given him that answer regardless. This was the first time we’d seen each other since Saturday night, and I couldn’t deny the small doubts that were creeping in. Now that we’d slept together, was he still interested?

“The guys haven’t stopped talking about you,” he said. “You were amazing up there.”

To say that I was used to getting compliments on my voice sounds egotistical, but it was true. I’d been singing my whole life, and I’d had to learn early on to accept people’s praise without embarrassment or pride. But there were still those people whose words meant more to me than others’. The ones I knew wouldn’t bullshit me. And maybe it was too early in my knowing Paul, but he didn’t feel like someone who would blow smoke up my ass. At any rate, he sounded genuine, and I couldn’t stop heat from rushing up into my face as a result. “Thank you.”

We stared awkwardly at each other for a moment before Paul cleared his throat. “I should get set up in there.” He nodded toward the classrooms. “I’ve got a student in fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, sorry. Go ahead.”

He smiled and moved to the classroom hallway, but he paused at the entrance and looked back at me. “You wanna hang out after work sometime this week?”

My heart soared. “Yeah, that sounds great.”

So we settled into something resembling a routine. It wasn’t a bad thing at all. But working together at the store definitely forced us into a pattern. Paul had his students and I had jobs throughout the store, so it wasn’t like we saw each other every minute of the day, but it was impossible to ignore each other’s presence. We often ate dinner together, sitting in the tiny employee break room or in one of my parents’ offices.

After work most nights, we’d either go for a drink or back to Paul’s place for a while. I stayed over a few times, but he often drove me home late at night. There were even a couple of times we never left the store. Those were always an accident. They happened when I stayed after closing to finish a job or two. Paul would keep me company, and we’d tap into my dad’s whiskey stash to relax while I did whatever it was I needed to do.

It was on one of those nights that I showed Paul how the sound system worked in the back room where the small stage was. We were alone in the store. Even my parents had gone home, knowing I either had a ride or a place to stay. I’d long ago killed the lights for the marquee and the front of the store. The entire place was in darkness—a little on the spooky side, with the irregular shapes of instruments casting nearly human shadows. The only place I left lit was the back room. It was large, with all the guitars on display there, as well as the drum kits. There were small areas off to the sides, like the humidity-controlled acoustic room and a supply room, but we were focused on the stage.

“Play something for me, Paul,” I said into the microphone, my voice booming through the empty space.

“I don’t think so.” He stood on the carpeted floor in front of the stage, but with no one else around, his voice carried as easily as if we were on the same plane.

“There’s no one here but me. And I promise I’ll be impressed.” I took the mic away from my mouth and informed him confidentially, “I can even fake it if you’re worried about that.”

“Very funny.”

I grinned. “Come on! You have your pick of any instrument in the store. What do you want to play for me?”

“Do I have to do it up there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you’d have control of a whole stage and no one in the audience to worry about. It would be good for you.”

“This sounds an awful lot like therapy.”

“Don’t think of it like that.” I went back to the mic and boomed, “Think of it as performance art!”

“You are a menace with a microphone.”

“You’re the one who made me sing at your show.”

He propped one fist on his hip, a sign I’d learned to recognize as a frustration tell. He knew I was right.

“You first,” he said.

“All right.” I jumped off the front of the stage and caught him by the hand.

“What about the stage?” he asked as I dragged him back through the dark store.

“The piano doesn’t fit on the stage.” I didn’t bother finding the light switches for the rest of the store—there was enough light from the plate glass windows in front to show me where I needed to go. I probably could have gotten there blindfolded; this place was more my childhood home than the house I nominally lived in.

There was a lovely grand piano in the middle of the store. I didn’t know if it was officially for sale, since it always seemed to be there. Mostly people wanted to play it in the store, but no one seemed to want to buy it.

I slid the bench out to take a seat, letting my right hand run over the keys in a crude tuning check. It would do. Taking a seat, I tried a few starting chords and hummed along to find the key I wanted. Once I found it, I did an elaborate stretching and prepping routine for Paul’s benefit.

As soon as I started banging out the familiar chords, he burst out laughing.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Shut up—don’t question my art,” I said, then launched into the nearly incomprehensible lyrics to Elton John’s “Bennie and the Jets.”

Paul laughed through the first verse and chorus, but by the time I got to the second B-B-B-B part, he was singing along. I grinned like an idiot as I approached the bridge. My piano skills were acceptable, but I was no Elton John. Still, though I had to cheat the solo a bit, I think I got through. Then again, it was hard to be sure how much Paul was hearing through his laughter.

His falsetto cracked as he tried for the high notes near the end of the song, but he didn’t seem to care. And my voice was more than up to the challenge. That was one advantage of being a girl singing a man’s song. The high notes were never a problem.

When I finished, Paul clapped appreciatively. “That was…unreal,” he said.

“Your turn,” I said.

He sighed. “Really? Don’t you want to do another? Got any Ziggy Stardust up your sleeve?”

“I want to hear you play,” I said, trilling the piano keys in a sweet melody.

“If you get to be offstage, so do I.”

“Boo.” I played a sour chord.

“Come on, Presley, be fair.”

I leaned on the piano with both forearms, creating a terrific noise. “Fine.”

“Wait here.” He left me sitting at the piano to retrieve his guitar from the back room.

When he came back, he had the acoustic hung over his shoulders. “Scoot,” he said.

I slid to the edge of the bench, giving him enough room to perch on the other side. He had to face backward to fit the guitar, but we were still hip to hip.

“See if you can spot this one,” he said, then started to strum. I recognized the opening notes of Eric Clapton’s “Layla” immediately. His long fingers picked out the solo perfectly.

After a moment of listening, I picked out the root notes on the piano and was able to turn that into comping chords along with him. I was startled when he began to sing the lyrics; I had expected him to just play the guitar for me. His voice was surprisingly good now that he wasn’t laughing and doing a bad Elton John impression. He had a pleasant tenor with a little gravel in it that gave the song a nice bluesy grit.

I gave him a backup harmony on the chorus, keeping my tone soft. He looked over in surprise the first time I opened my mouth, but he didn’t falter, just gave me a smile.

The final chord was still humming through the piano’s body when he leaned close to kiss me. My toes curled inside my boots as I pressed into him. When at last we parted, I whispered, “You can sing.”

He shrugged. “Enough.”

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Playing. Even though you didn’t want to.”

“It’s not hard offstage.” He played a minor chord and followed it down the fingerboard in a scale. Then came the unmistakable twang of a string breaking. He groaned. “Really?”

“Come on,” I laughed. “I’m sure there are strings in the back.” I led him to the rear of the store, behind the glass display counter in the guitar section. Of course there were several brands of strings for sale, but I knew Todd kept a box filled with partial packages back here. When I found it, I put it on the counter for Paul to peruse. “What’s your poison?”

His eyebrows lifted. “What do you have in a medium bronze phosphor?”

“Mmm, a man of discerning taste. I like it.” I flicked through the box and pulled out a couple packs. “I can’t promise which strings will actually be in here. You never know what Todd’s used.”

He swung his guitar around to his back to peek into each envelope. “Of course they’re all missing the B. Ah, wait, here’s one.”

“Come on.” I took the packet from him and led him around the stage to the smaller room behind it. This was the showcase room, where we kept the expensive guitars. It was only about the size of a small bedroom, but the merchandise in here was worth more than my life, as Todd liked to say. In other words, not a room I was encouraged to enter as a child, not until I could be trusted not to break shit.

Inside, there was a large oriental rug spread on the wood floor, and a pair of leather couches; the kind of customers who could afford these guitars were treated well. It also acted as a small studio, with soundproofed walls and enough room to set up a couple microphones. There was no sound booth associated with it, but most people who’d used it to record were just doing rough demos.

“I love this room,” Paul confessed as I flicked on the lights.

“Me, too.”

Absently, he lifted his guitar off and propped it against the side of a couch, totally distracted by the guitars hanging on the walls. He walked the perimeter of the room, gazing at each like a work of art, and hesitantly reached out a fingertip to trace the body of one.

“You can play it,” I told him.

“Really?”

“Of course.” I bent over to turn on the amp in the corner that was meant for just such test-drives. There was a cable already attached. All it wanted was a guitar to plug into. “Go for it.”

Paul gently lifted the guitar from its pegs and took a seat on the edge of a couch with it. None of these guitars had straps, so you had to sit to play. I brought him the end of the cable and he sank it home with something like reverence. The amp was set on a low volume, but the first strum still made me jump. He checked the tuning, giving a couple of pegs a twist to bring the guitar into perfect tune.

After taking a moment to consider his options, he started to play. I immediately recognized the White Stripes. Even without a distortion pedal, it was unmistakable as the dirty blues riff of “Ball and Biscuit.” Paul ground through the verse, not singing this time, then skipped ahead to the first solo.

Goddamn he was good. I stood in front of him, to not miss a single movement of his fingers. Without even touching me, he was igniting that same fire inside of me he always did.

He deviated from the usual progression of the song, just putting the guitar through its paces with a Jack White–inspired solo that made me weak in the knees. Had he deliberately chosen something so bluesy? I licked my lips in anticipation.

All his focus was on the guitar, so he was oblivious to what he was doing to me: I was turning into a puddle. When at last he looked up at me, I held eye contact as I crossed my arms to grab the hem of my shirt and pull it over my head.

His fingers faltered, playing a sour chord. “Pres…” he breathed.

“You can stop now,” I said, stepping closer so I could take the guitar from him. He let it go without protest and I set it in the stand beside the couch. Returning to him, I knelt on the couch over his lap, tilting his head up with my hands to reach his mouth.

His fingertips were hot with the friction of the guitar strings as he touched my bare waist. I squirmed closer, pressing my chest into his. He grabbed my hips tightly and half-stood, turning to lay us out on the couch.

The fresh tattoo on his side was finally healed enough that I could pull at his shirt without fear. Soon we had a pile of clothing on the floor and nothing between us but underwear. The couch was frustratingly narrow, and my skin began to stick to the leather as the heat of our bodies built.

“I can’t move.” I gasped into his neck as I fought to widen my knees around his.

“Hold on.” Wrapping his arms around me, Paul swept me off the couch and onto the oriental rug in a single movement that left me slightly dizzy. “Better?”

There was nothing restricting me now, and I hooked my ankles together behind him in demonstration. “Yes.”

The sound-deadening panels on the walls made the quiet profound. Every sound we made—uneven breaths, the soft noise of lips on skin, and the shift of fabric as Paul stripped away my bra and panties—was heightened in my ears. Even the gentle scuff of the rug when I dug my toes in made its way to me. It was intense.