Page 48 of Secondhand Smoke
Barrett stepped aside and gestured for her to enter. “You know you don’t need to apologize. But cookies are always welcome.”
Inside the living room, the guitar was in the same place as last time, leaning next to the chair. Nell felt her throat compress, but when she averted her eyes to Barrett it relaxed.
He took a bite of one of the cookies and moaned with his eyes closed. “These are amazing,” he gushed.
“They’re my mom’s specialty.”
“Tell your mom to throw in more next time.” He winked, and Nell’s heart skipped. “Oh, right. I need to grab a couple of things. I’ll be right back.”
He set the cookies down on the coffee table and left down the hallway into his bedroom. Nell took a seat in the chair and avoided looking at the guitar.
When he came out a minute later, he held two things. In his right hand was the wrinkled beginner’s guitar book. But there, right in his left, was a familiar folded-up piece of paper.
Nell’s breath caught and tensed. The blood disappeared from her body.
While she couldn’t see the lyrics and notes written on the outside, she knew by heart what they looked like on the inside.
Barrett said something, but she couldn’t hear him over the ocean in her ears.
A tingling sparked her legs to life, and she stood from her chair, her heart in her throat. Relieved tears pricked the back of her eyes. “It was here the whole time?” Her voice cracked.
Barrett’s brow furrowed as he took in her expression, then he followed her attention to KC’s song and his mouth circled. He spoke, but it was muffled in her mind. “Oh, yeah. I totally forgot to tell you. You left it here last time.”
He held it out, and Nell reached out slowly, unfolding it to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. She sagged, her legs nearly giving out in relief.
It was the same. Same creases, same scratches from pencils. Exactly how it was supposed to be. Down to the unfinished lines of lyrics.
“Don’t worry, I took good care of it. I even know how to play half of it now.”
Nell’s focus pieced together. She looked back at him, eyes wide. “You do?”
Barrett nodded and walked to his guitar, picking it up. “You want to hear?”
Barrett had spent time learning KC’s song.
Now that Nell had seen him play, she knew he would do it justice.
Nell stared at the guitar, tempted. Shedidwant to hear. She always wanted to hear that song again. Sometimes she could play it in her head, and other times she wracked her brain to remember what it sounded like.
Almost losing it had made it more distant in her memory than ever.
But then the thought of hearing the real thing festered into a gut-rolling anxiety, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to handleit. It wouldn’t be the same on Barrett’s guitar rather than KC’s. It wouldn’t be the same voice.
She wasn’t ready to hear it.
Not yet.
She swallowed hard. “Maybe later.”
Barrett didn’t put up a fight, accepting without question. “All right. How about we pick up where we left off then?”
* * *
Nell didn’t have the passion or talent that Barrett or KC had for playing guitar, but she enjoyed it enough.
It was nice to have something to focus her mind on. Strumming chords, finger placement, tempo, and all that was soothing to her in the same way a bubble bath was. She could relax back into the sounds and movement. The nice thing about this that a bubble bath didn’t have was that she had to think enough that it kept her brain from wandering off into dangerous territories.
Plus, there was Barrett.
