Page 20 of Guitars and Mistakes
Right, I wasn’t going to ask. “So how did you practice?”
“I drew a picture of a guitar, strings and everything, and cut it out. Then I held it in front of me and practiced on it. There wasn’t any sound, but I learned the movements and the positions for my fingers. Then I’d go to the guitar store and pretend I was actually planning to buy a guitar.”
I almost laughed, but stopped myself right in time. “And they believed you?”
He leaned in and dropped his voice. “It was a small town. They didn’t get much traffic. They were desperate for a sale, and probably bored out of their minds.”
“So you literally learned how to play guitar by learning the finger positions on a piece of paper and then practicing those motions on guitars you pretended you were going to buy. Even though you didn’t have any money to buy them,” I interpreted, allowing myself to look incredulous. “How long did it take you?”
“About three months on the paper. Anther three in the store.”
I whistled softly. “Six months to teach yourself how to play the guitar in the most backward way possible. You actuallyarea phenom.”
He shrugged, looking partially humble and partially impressed with himself. “I mean, there’s a reason I have that reputation.”
“Yeah right. It would have been easy for your publicist to put that out there and make it a reputation. It didn’t have to be true for that to happen.”
“But it would have been hard to maintain if I then got on stage and didn’t play my own music,” he pointed out. “Even harder if I hadn’t been able to go on any show or to any live venue and make shit up without any warning.”
“Okay, that’s fair,” I allowed. “I mean I always believed you were a phenom. I wasn’t questioning it.”
“You were absolutely questioning it!” he said on a huff. “You just said it could have been my publicist making shit up!”
“I said itcouldhave!” I protested. “I didn’t say I believed that!”
He scoffed. “You basically said you didn’t believe I could actually play the guitar.”
“Okay, that’s an out-and-out lie,” I said.
“Whatever. Now I see what you actually think of me. So fair’s fair. Give me one ofyourchildhood stories. How did you learn to play guitar?”
I almost didn’t want to tell him. “My parents wanted us all to have hobbies. So when I decided my hobby was going to be guitar, and two of my sisters wanted to do the same, we got lessons.”
“That easy? Did you go to a school for it or something?”
“No. The teacher came to our house.”
He looked shocked. “Really? Right to your house? How often?”
“Three tines a week,” I said quietly, feeling somehow guilty for admitting it, like I had done something wrong by having the upbringing I had.
Now it was his turn to whistle, though his face had turned sort of wistful. “So that’s how it is to live in a house where the parents actually love you.”
Okay, what?
“Huh?”
His face shuttered as quickly as it had opened and the wry, sarcastic expression replaced the dreamy look he’d been wearing a moment earlier. “Nothing. Just interesting to hear how the other half lives.” His mouth turned up into a smirk. “So I guess that means I worked harder to learn guitar than you did.”
“Excuse me? I worked really hard to learn guitar!”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah right. You probably practiced for about two weeks before you could do anything you wanted on it.”
“Which would mean I’m probably better at it than you,” I shot back.
He swung his guitar between us and scooted so close to me I could feel the brush of his skin against mine, our hands on our instruments exact mirrors of each other. And then he leaned in, his face filling my vision until he was all I could see. His dark eyes. Those thick lashes. Incredibly lush lips.
I jerked my gaze up from his lips to his eyes and caught my breath. I hadn’t seem him smolder like this since the time we made out in the hallway. I’d been in my pajamas then, and desperately aware of how bare my legs were.
