Page 79 of Touch the Sky
It’s fucking terrifying.
I go rigid. I don’t even breathe. I sit there and let Shel lean on me while my mind races to figure out what the hell is going on.
She’s not my kid. She’s not my responsibility. She hasn’t even been here that long, but in this moment, I can’t picture a version of this place without her.
Or her mom.
I don’t know what that means.
My head is still spinning when Shel straightens up a few minutes later. She stretches her arms above her head in a way that makes her look just like Tess.
My heart lurches, and so does my stomach.
This is way too much.
I’m not just crossing lines. I’m tearing through them like I’m stuck on a bolting horse with no reins in sight. I’m letting this all mean something I’ve got no business even thinking about.
I have to get back in control.
Shel swings her feet over the edge of the hay bale and stretches her toes out to point the tip of one of her sneakers at her guitar.
“I guess I should just throw this guitar out, huh?”
I shake my head, snapping myself out of the spiral and jumping on the change of topic.
“Quoi?” I demand. “What are you talking about, you goof? You are not throwing this away!”
She gives the instrument a dubious look and shakes her head. “I just learned it to make him like me.”
I push myself to my feet and then bend to grab the guitar by the neck.
“Doyoulike guitar?” I ask.
I hold the guitar out, the snapped string bobbing like a ribbon, and Shel takes it and settles it on her lap.
“I mean, it’s fun,” she says, tracing her finger along the frets. “I’m just not good at it.”
I plant my hands on my hips. “You don’t have to be good at everything you think is fun. You can just have fun. That is enough.”
She shrugs and then shifts the guitar higher up her lap to fidget with the end of the broken string.
“Listen. Don’t throw the guitar out. I have an extra set of strings in the house,” I tell her. “You can have them. If you like guitar, you should keep playing.”
She stretches the coils of the string out and then lets them snap back into place.
“I don’t know.”
“You wanna know why I learned guitar?” I ask.
She looks up at me. “Why?”
“To make a girl like me.”
Her eyes widen. “Did it work?”
I bark a laugh.
“Pas du tout. She told me I made the guitar sound like a dying cat. Then she told me she was going to prom with somebody else.”
