Page 63 of All of You

Strumming guitar traveled down the hall and into my mind, right to the place where I felt joy and pleasure. Knowing I might get to glimpse Whit in the act of practice or creating had my feet moving faster. Kendra had let me in, mentioning Whit was upstairs practicing in her room.

I kept moving to her doorway, feeling that same sense of the forbidden while approaching the entrance to her space. I’d been in there before in the whirlwind of the first month of our dating but hadn’t been back since—hadn’t been back to her house, in fact, since we actually started dating.

I hadn’t stopped thinking about Flint’s concerns for me and his cousin. He seemed so sure she would hurt me, but I hadn’t felt that. My own doubt over why she’d want me was real, but I didn’t know if I could broach that subject with her without sounding weak and whiney. I’d just climbed out of the hole where I felt weak and sad and scared so often, so not exactly chomping at the bit to get back there, especially in front of Whit.

I stopped in the doorway, leaning against the frame to enjoy the view. Whit sat on her sofa in jeans and a T-shirt, looking out the window at the wintry blue-gold light of the afternoon, her fingers strumming the guitar. I could hear faint hums, but she wasn’t singing words. The sounds she made, the focus, the cant of her head to one side—all of it had me feeling a hopeless kind of drop.

When the last chord sounded, she let it resound, then gently laid her fingers atop the strings to quiet them.

“That’s beautiful,” I said, meaning everything about the moment.

She set aside the guitar and jogged across the room to me. She pulled me into her arms and hugged me—warm, solid, sweet. How I’d missed her.

“Hey, you. How long’ve you been here?” she asked, but before I could answer, she pecked my jaw, my cheek, but regrettably stopped before she reached my lips.

I smoothed a hand over her hair, which was still a little wet underneath. “A few minutes.”

“You should have said something,” she said, pulling me after her back to the couch.

“Never.”

Just as she bent to grab the neck of her guitar, I swooped a hand around her waist and pulled her back to me, twisting her around and pressing her against me. She wasted no time cooperating—she rose to her toes, wrapped her arms around my neck, and met my lips with hers.

She pulled away and looked at me, my pulse thrumming in my ears just standing next to her.

“You’re so pretty,” she said, her voice breathless.

A loud laugh escaped me.

“Thank you. So are you,” I said, letting my eyes sweep over her in appreciation.

Her smile was bright.

“Was that a new song you’re working on?” The notebook with unintelligible scrawl on it lay next to her mechanical pencil, close to the guitar.

“It was. Just a melody so far. The words are just out of reach,” she said, a little frown on her face.

“Is that how you see them? Something you have to grab for?”

She flopped down on the couch and pulled me down next to her. “Sometimes. Some songs are right there, all at once—just… the whole thing practically unraveling itself for me as I write it. But others are more elusive. This one’s doing that to me. I’ve had the melody, and I keep thinking if I play it, the words will come, but they’re stuck.”

“That sounds frustrating. Any of your Grammy nominees the easy kind, or are those all the blood, sweat, and tears kinds?”

It was a fascinating process, and the fact that she really did do the majority of her writing was one of so many things I liked about her.

She looked up from her guitar, her fingers moving over it easily, picking out some tune I didn’t know, until I did. The melody of “Stolen Moment” came through.

“This one. This one hit me like a bullet train.”

She kept strumming, and I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted to hear her sing that song for me, right this moment. “Will you sing it for me?”

Her head had been ducked, but she looked up at me and gave me a sweet, relaxed smile. Then, her playing intensified, a fuller sound vibrating out of the instrument of which she was clearly a master.

The words floated over us, all sense and meaning feeling new, stronger, more personal as she sang the words to me. Every part of me wanted it to be for me, wanted her to feel that way for me, even if I’d dispatched the brutalized part of me months ago.

She held the last note in a pure tone, then let the guitar finish the song. She dampened the strings and took a deep breath, not looking at me for a few minutes. When she finally did, the look on her face made something in my chest twist and sigh.

“I’ve sung that song probably a thousand times in the last year, and that was definitely the most intense.” She wiped her mouth and set the guitar on the stand.

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