Page 62 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
And that part broke my heart. Mostly because I could see how much it was breaking Rivers.
In the end, though, the lyrics had the couple finding each other again. Scuffed up and bruised from having been forced into the world on their own and not quite the same people they had been when they’d known each other before, but undeniably drawn together like magnets. Two people that life couldn’t keep apart.
Two people who had fought to find their ways back to each other, because they knew in their hearts that was where they belonged.
It was a redemption story made song, and I thought it was probably the most dramatic thing I’d ever written. Not that it had been all me; it had Rivers’ fingerprints all over it. And I wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to him to give him so much depth. Who had he been before he broke into the music business? What had helped to build him into the person he was?
Who had hurt him so much that he didn’t know how to believe in his own value?
Or was I just imagining that part of him?
“Give me a story from your childhood,” I said suddenly, letting my thoughts become words without bothering to think about it. “Something no one else knows.”
His mouth quirked, but the smile didn’t touch his eyes. “Something no one else knows? So that would mean something only I know?”
I returned the small smile. “I guess that would fit the definition, yeah. Though I’m not stuck on those parameters.”
He thought about it for a moment, his face going completely blank and then even darker. Whatever he was remembering, he didn’t like it much, and for a moment I thought maybe this had been a bad idea. But then he found something he did like and gave me a quick flash of a smile.
“I learned how to play guitar by studying books,” he said. “I didn’t have anyone to give me lessons, but I was convinced that I needed to know it. So I went to the library every day, found books on music instruction, and practiced.”
Okay, that hadn’t been what I was expecting. “Did you have a guitar?”
“No way. No one to buy me one.”
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. Another 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 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.”
