Page 22 of Guitars and Mistakes
It took me several long, tense moments to understand what the hell he was even talking about. Then it snapped back into place. Oh. The song we’d been working on before he jumped at me.
Right.
“The song? Yes, sure,” I breathed. “We just have to finish it first.”
He nodded and rose up, sliding back into his jeans and then sitting down and scribbling on the sheets of paper like nothing had happened between us. I watched him… and tried to get my feet back under me.
So I’d just let him have me on the couch of his bedroom, and now we’d be performing this song tonight.
Sure. Terrific. I mean I’d agreed to it.
And I’d known when I did it that I was agreeing to a whole lot more than just the song. This whole afternoon had been about more than that, and yet here I was going along for the ride. It was a no good, very bad idea. I’d already seen where this road led, and when it came to Rivers Shine, it would be straight to heartbreak. He took me flying up into the clouds and then dumped me the moment he started to feel too much.
I knew it. I’d experienced it too many times to pretend he didn’t.
And yet I was making that same mistake again. I wasn’t even trying to hide it from myself.
But I was hoping that this time, it might be different.
This time, I might be able to keep him around long enough to actually reach him. Because I’d seen how much he wanted me when he kissed me. I’d felt the tension in his muscles and the need vibrating through him.
He wasn’t as finished with me as he’d been pretending.
I just had to figure out how to reach him.
RIVERS
God, Lila’s voice was heartbreaking. Haunting. Beautiful.
I’d only heard her do upbeat songs before. I mean yeah, she’d also performed my love song, but even that had a relatively quick tempo. It hadn’t given her time to really stretch into the notes or show her range.
This song that we’d written did all that. It gave her all the notes she wanted and then some, and her voice was cracking with the emotion it brought out in her.
My heart was fracturing.
The story was one that I hadn’t even known we had in us. A girl and boy fall in love, break it off because things aren’t working. But they’re miserable on their own and miss their other halves like they’ve cut off limbs. But the time the song is halfway through they’re trying to find their way back to each other, each of them desperate for the connection they once had. The people around them are telling them they’re better off on their own, that they have to learn to be their own people, but they know they’re dying without the other and that life isn’t going to be worth it if they can’t find each other again.
By the climax they’ve done that.
By the end of the song they’re in love and getting their happily ever after, and the final crescendo takes Lila’s voice up and up and up into the end of the song.
And me? I did harmony on the chorus and in some of the lines and provided the lead guitar. I had a bitching solo halfway through the song. But the lyrics were all her. I’d known as we were writing it that they had to be, not only because they matched her voice but because at the end of the day, the story was hers. Or at least... well, the ending was hers.
All the breaking? That was what I’d put in there.
The happy ending? That was something Lila had insisted on, because that was who she was. She believed in love saving everything and being enough. She absolutely thought that if two people loved each other enough that could keep them together. Put them on the same team and make sure they were facing the world as an unbeatable duo. She’d probably never even considered the idea that love might not be enough.
Or that one person might have more love in their heart than another.
She’d never had anyone pretend to love her and then walk out on her when she needed them most. Or at least not that I knew of. I couldn’t image that she had. Her outlook was too sunny for that to have happened to her.
But me? Yeah, I’d seen it.
I’d lived it.
Lila’s voice rose higher and higher now as she rode the song toward the finish and I cut in with the harmony on a few words, playing it by ear. The guitars were humming and crescendoing and her voice was sailing through the air while the band behind us did their best to keep up. We hadn’t given them much time to learn the song but they’d done their best and the whole thing was like a tidal wave of sound and emotion and heartbreak.
And the audience was eating it up. They were staring at Lila like she was a freaking goddess telling them the secret of life, their mouths open and their eyes glassy. She held them in the palm of her hand, in the pocket of her song, and they were willing to do anything she asked of them.
