“You sure?”
“I’m positive,” I reply, waiting for him to join me.
He swallows thickly, giving a slight nod before he joins me on the bed.I watch as he rests his guitar in his lap, running a hand over the scruff on his chiseled jaw.He lets out a hard sigh.
“Okay,” he says, but I can see the nervousness flare in his brown eyes, and I hate that something he loved so much has a connection to something so awful.
“There will never come a time that I don’t want to hear you play,” I tell him, the sincerity lacing my words so deeply that I hope he feels it inside him.
He closes his eyes, his fingers moving over the strings as if he can do it in his sleep, as if his body just knows what to do.
My eyes focus on where his fingers strum loosely, and it brings back so many memories.I remember listening to him play for hours, his fingers bleeding from playing so much.Blistered and then calloused, the feeling of them on my skin would send goosebumps dotting everywhere they touched.
But with each chord, each movement of his fingers, I know the song by heart, and it’s not one of his.It’s a cover, something he played for me over and over when we were younger.And while I love the song, letting the lyrics and the deep melodic timbre of his voice wash over me, I don’t want to hear something that isn’t his.
I reach over, covering his hand with mine, and the room goes quiet.Our eyes meet, and I wet my lips.There’s a connection between us that I only feel with him, and it passes between us, electric and unbreakable.
“I want to hear your songs,” I say, my heart hammering in my chest, and when I reach up and rest my hand on his chest, I feel the quick, steady rhythm of his.
Taking in a hard breath, he then pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, almost as if he’s weighing whether he should start playing or if it will drive a wedge between us.
Again, his eyes fall closed, and he begins to strum out the first few bars—chords I’ve never heard, something I don’t recognize as one of his songs.
But before I can tell him this, he says, “It’s new.If we were going to make a second album, it would have been on it.”
With that, he begins to sing, each word burying itself deep inside me.There is nothing more beautiful than his voice, deep and raspy, and despite the sadness to the lyrics, I find myself falling more in love with him.
I remember the night, under the moonlight,
I played that song, holding you so tight.
The guitar cried, like we both knew,
That love can fade, but it’s not through.
Now I’m strumming through the heartache,
Each note reminds me of our memories.
And every memory is your name.
But I swear, I’ll fight for what we had,
Because baby, love can hurt.
You left me standing at that old café,
With tears in my coffee, you just turned away.
I played our tune on a rainy street,
Thought I’d lost you, thought I’d admit defeat.
Now I’m strumming through the heartache,
Each note reminds me of our memories.
And every memory is your name.
