Page 38 of The Devil's Tattoo
Give him a chance. I hoped Dee was rightabouthim.
Will stared at me, unsure, and I rolled my eyes. “Well, are you coming or not? Hurry up before I changemymind.”
We were silent all the way upstairs until I unlocked the door to my room and flicked on thelight.
“Wow,” Will said. “Who’s themessyone?”
“Dee,” I replied with a smallgroan.
“Thoughtasmuch.”
In the corner, Dee had a beat-up acoustic guitar that he’d left in our room. It was covered in various tattoo-art stickers and was trashed, but it had an amazing tone because of the imperfections. Flawed but beautiful. It was like some kind ofmetaphor.
I’d left my notebook on my bed with a pencil sticking out of its tattered pages. It was the same one Dee had given me at our first rehearsal. The very first thing I had written in it were the lyrics to ‘Walls.’ Now it was dog-eared and tired, the pages full of scribbles andmarks.
“What are you working on?” Will asked, sitting on my bed cross-legged and tapping on thecover.
“It’s an acoustic song,” I replied, perching on the opposite edge. “I don’t know the words yet, but I’ve been trying to get down thechords.”
“Let’shearit.”
I suddenly felt shy about playing in front of him, which was totally stupid. I’d played on stage a billion times by now and even on the street busking with Dee, but somehow, playing in front of Will behind closed doors was different. It wasn’t just playing. It was something else…something almost intimate. I cared about what he thought, and the realization scared the hell outofme.
I sighed, running my fingers over the strings, and thankfully, it was in tune. The way I was sitting, I could angle my face away from him, but I was still overly aware of his gaze on me. Trying to shut him out, I focused on the melody in my head and began to play it how I thought it might go. When I got to the bridge, itsoundedoff.
“See,” I said, my guard dropping. “I can’t getthatbit.”
When I was greeted with silence, my stomach dropped, and I glanced up expecting to see anything but the look that was plastered onhisface.
“That’s…Wow.”
“Shit, huh?” Igrimaced.
“No,” he backpedaled. “I didn’t mean it like that. I meant it was beautiful.Soulful.”
My face reddened. I glanced down and noticed he had opened my notebook and had written the music as I’d played. I got madder than a bee in a jar when Dee wrote things in there. I had personal stuff written in those pages, stuff that I’d tried to work out into songs, but seeing the marks Will had made…He could write in it all hewanted.
“Here.” He held out his hand for the guitar. “I have an idea ifthat’sokay?”
With a small nod, I pulled the strap over my head, and he took it, nestling the guitar on his knees. “When you get to the bridge, it’s natural to want to go the way you did. I would’ve.” He played it again, and it sounded weird coming from his hands. He hit the offending chord, and I could see what he meant. “But,” he continued, looking up at me, “maybe you could try something like this.” He played it again, but this time, he chose a difficult chord, one I wouldn’t have even considered, and to my surprise, it worked. Better than worked.It wasgenius.
A smile tugged at my lips, and I glanced into his smiling face. “Writeitdown.”
“Have you thought about lyrics?” he asked, picking up the pencil, obviously pleased with myreaction.
“No, not yet. I have a few ideas, but I’m still thinkingonthem.”
We sat there talking through the song and working out another guitar part for what seemed like five minutes. I didn’t know when I’d let my guard down, but I was beginning to feel comfortable around him. Whatever anger I had toward him had just melted away into nothing. I may have started to let go a little, but I was still very aware of everything he did. The way he wrote, the way he played the guitar, and the way he sat on my bed. Every time I looked up, he was smiling at me, his stormy gray eyes sparkling, and I wondered if this was what it was like. Being happy withsomeone.
“Shit,” he exclaimed suddenly, looking at the alarm clock on the bedside table. “It’stwoa.m.”
“What?” I sat up, rubbing my eyes. We’d been mucking around with this song for almost threehours.
“I had better go in aminute.”
“Sure.”
We fell silent for a minute as I put the guitar down on the floor. It hadn’t taken much for us to fall back into an awkwardsilence.
