“Prove it,” I say.
Wrong move. Because Sadie is not the type to back down from a challenge.
I'm expecting a song that matches the morning vibes. An energetic one, maybe, that fits the birdsong and the steaming coffee and the gold light on the deck.
A song of mine.
What I get is the opening guitar riff of Nirvana's In Bloom filling the air at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning.
This girl. Always keeping me on my toes.
“I would not have pegged you as a nineties grunge kind of girl,” I tell her.
Her eyes sparkle as she put a hand to her chest like Scarlett O’Hara. “You might have robbed me of my virtue last night, Mr. Rhodes, but there’s plenty you don’t know about me.”
I know a lot more than she thinks she lets on.
“Kurt Cobain is just so dreamy,” she sighs, and I narrow my eyes at her.
My competitive instincts have officially been roused.
“Wait right here,” I tell her.
I'm already moving before I've decided anything. Through the kitchen, down the hall, into the studio.
The Martin guitar is where it's always been. Where it's been for two years, propped in the corner like furniture, like something decorative.
I think about what Sadie said in the kitchen last night. Cracking your ribs wide open. Letting someone get a look at your raw beating heart.
I pick it up.
There's dust on it. I wipe it off, one slow pass, and stand there for just a second with the weight of it in my hands. Familiar and strange at once.
I go straight back outside.
Sadie’s eyes go from the guitar to my face and back to the guitar. But she doesn't say anything.
She just watches.
I go to the speaker and press pause. Nirvana cuts off mid-chord.
Then I sit down, prop the Martin on my knee, and drape my arm around the body of it. Settling into the familiar curve of it, the weight across my thigh. The calluses on my fingertips finding the strings like they never left.
I guess it’s like riding a bicycle. You just never forget.
I hold that guitar and my hands remember everything.
Sadie’s watching me with an expression I can't quite read. Careful. Like she's afraid if she makes a sound I'll put it back down.
I find the opening riff. Let it come slow at first, feeling my way back in, and then it's just there. The music, the instinct for rhythm and intonation.
I sing my own version of the song. Country where Cobain was grunge, open strings where he was distortion.
I like this song. Always have. But right now it's personal, because Sadie put it on with that gleam in her eye and dropped Kurt Cobain's name with entirely too much appreciation.
I’m a petty, competitive bastard.
If she's into this song, I'll give her a version she can't forget.
