Write Your Own Song

Chapter 23

The guitar wasn't his – it belonged to a middle aged woman with big hair and an even bigger hat who made him swear six ways to Sunday that he wouldn't hurt it. Any other day, he would have refused, argued he needed his own guitar and that was that. But he was beginning to realize the pushy chick who had sidled up to him at the bar was a force of nature and wouldn't take no for an answer. Resigned, he grabbed a chair near the stage and sat down, figuring he should at least tune the thing before he made a fool out of himself on stage.

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He was concentrating so hard his teeth were biting into his bottom lip. He had a guitar lesson book propped open on his desk – Evelyn bought it for him at a used bookstore that afternoon and he'd run upstairs the second they got home to try it out. The song was supposed to be easy – a piece of cake – shit, there was a girl on the front of the book and she probably wasn't on the verge of tears because the chords were a mess.

Frustrated, he wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. He was stupid. He didn't know what made him think he could do it – he couldn't do anything – he was dumb and nothing was ever going to change that.

"Jack," Evelyn said softly and he looked up. She was standing in the doorway, he wasn't sure how long she'd been there and he felt his cheeks grow hot at the thought of her seeing him screw up so badly.

She came into the room and knelt down next to him. Reaching out, she rubbed his knee and for a minute everything was silent and he just focused on the feeling of her touching him and how he didn't feel like running away or throwing up or any of the dozen other things he usually felt when an adult touched him. He hadn't realized that had stopped – that feeling that twisted up his insides until he couldn't breathe.

"Honey," she said finally and he pulled his legs up underneath him so he was sitting Indian style, making her drop her hand from his knee. He may not feel like running away anymore, but he still hated confrontation, still hated to talk about stuff. "Jackie," she said and he took a breath. She always called him that when she wanted him to listen and feel safe and calm. He wanted to tell her he was fine – that he was just going to admit he sucked and quit trying to learn. He wasn't fooling anyone, anyway.

"When I was thirteen, I baked my mom a cake. It was her birthday and it was a surprise. My father wanted to just pick up one from the bakery, but I insisted. It was crooked and the icing slid off one side and I think I forgot to add the sugar to the flour because it tasted like sawdust. Do you know what happened?"

Well, that was certainly not what he was expecting. Cake and icing didn't have much to do with butchering the hell out of a Beatles song, but he shook his head anyway, kind of hoping this was leading to her offering him a piece of cake.

She grinned and he wondered if she could hear his thoughts – she got creepy like that sometimes, like she could hear the weird shit that tumbled around in his brain. "We each took one bite and then spit it out."

"Um … okay," he said, absentmindedly running his fingers over the guitar strings, pretty sure she'd just admitted he sucked.

"Then I went back into the kitchen the next day and tried it again and …"

"It came out perfect?"

She shook her head. "Nope, but I remembered the sugar that time. Eventually I made my own version, experimented a little, until it came out the way I wanted – not perfect, but better. Does that make sense?"

He shrugged and she took the guitar from him and propped it on her hip, placing her fingers like she was about to play. "Music is like that – the mistakes are what make it beautiful. You can't worry about being perfect. Perfect is boring."