Tainted: Listening to the Silence (Book 1)

NINE

                I blushed at that. I didn’t hear the radio much, and this days I’d been listening to all the CDs Sal had been giving me to listen to. Every week he’d bring new CDs for me to listen to and I’d bring him the ones he’d given me the past week. There were people out there that played the piano really well and I hadn’t even known. I was currently working on the tabs for Diary of Jane by Breaking Benjamin. Meaning I had it almost completely perfected. I was working on the acoustic version, though, because I liked it more than the original version. It was a kind of a surprise for Sal because I knew he really liked the band.

                I was so lost in my thoughts while driving that I almost didn’t notice that I was about to miss the exit that led back to the mall. We parked and I again went around the car to open Sal’s door for him. He gave me a shy smile full of heated cheeks that I had never seen before and told me thanks. He grabbed his bass and lead me back to Adagio were Dev complimented him on the care he’d been taking of his bass. I could almost hear the snide remark about him taking care of his bass and not of his guitar in his tone of voice.

                Dev changed the strings and gave the instrument a quick look over. He checked the neck and the frets and the screws like he’d done with the electric guitar the last time we had been over but there wasn’t even a single speck of dust on it. Compared to the state his guitar had been in when he brought it to the store I had to admit Sal did have favoritism towards his bass. Dev finished checking the bass and gave it back to Sal, who put it back in its case and went to pay at the cashier. Additional to the cost of the check over he bought a new set of guitar strings and bass strings.

                To say I wasn’t a little dismayed with the amount of money and the care Sal’s instruments required would be a lie. I had only ever had my piano to take care of, and well, the violin before but I was talking about the present. Yet Sal had his electric guitar which required the strings to be changed at least every two months, and his bass which required him changing them every three months at least. Apart from that he had to bring them to the store at least once a year for a general check. It was a lot of work if you asked me. Me, I had my old upright piano, the one I’d begged to keep, and a dehumidifier my parents had bought me that I had begged to keep too. With just those two things that piano stayed tuned for years. In fact, the last time I had to tune it before I moved here was when I moved into the orphanage. When I moved here, the tuner in town had complimented me for the way I had taken care of piano. Though, he did advise me it would be best if I moved the piano to another room, a room where it was all on its own instead of in my room with me. I didn’t really like that idea.

“Hey Sal! Oliver!” I heard a familiar voice yell as we were making our way through the mall after having left the bass in my car.

                Both Sal and I turned and saw Kevin approaching us. Great. It was him. I really didn’t know -except that I did know- why I disliked this guy so much. It was something in the way he flirted with Sal and the familiarity in the way they treated each other, like they had known each other for a long time. And they probably had, far longer than Sal knew me at least.

“Hey Kev. How are you?”

“I’m good. What are you two doing here? Are you cheating on me with him, Sal?” Kevin asked in a mocking insulted tone.