A Fine Line [N.H]

Chapter Ten: Carefree - Guitars

Ivy's POV

We're hanging out at home on our day off on Sunday because apparently, that's the only time we get to do so anymore. We're in the middle of August, so there's lots of events to see, lots of people visiting, parties and shows to go to. Most of our time has been divided between his friends, my friends, sometimes together and sometimes apart. But we were getting exhausted, not getting enough sleep. So we needed to take a day off from the whole world and just stay in. It's very hot, so we're in the backyard by the pool. We had a swim early this morning and now we're just relaxing.

'Come here for a second.' Niall asks me, with the guitar on his lap.

I sit next to him and then he gently places the guitar in my lap. I held a guitar before, years ago, when I was trying to learn on YouTube but I didn't like this technique of self-learning so I quit.

'Do you know anything about playing the guitar?' He asks me.

'Any specifics I knew, I forgot. So we have to start from scratch.'

He places the fingers of my left hand in a specific way.

'This is an acoustic right?' I ask.

'Yeah.'

'The one I used to learn on was a classic one. This is very different.'

'Yeah, I prefer acoustic ones, to be honest.'

He walks me through some chords and shows me how to strum since there are different patterns. It was difficult to switch from a chord to the other as quickly as needed, but with several tries, I got there. Luckily, I'm a fast learner. within an hour, I was able to do the chorus to the song he's teaching me.

'This is nice! A few hours of training every day, and by the time you have to start touring I'd be able to be your backup guitarist.'

'Backup guitarist?' He chuckles.

'Yeah, you know, if something happened to your guitarist like he's sick or something, and you need a replacement for the night, boom you have me!'

He laughs and says, 'That's not really a thing! But if that means that you'd have to stick around for the entire tour, yeah why not!'

'I do have a job here though, one that I like!'

'But you'll be travelling the world, and you'll be with me all the time. We won't have to miss each other!'

'But missing each other is nice, it's healthy!'

'Really? Why?' He asks.

'Because, when you're always here, when we're always around each other, we'll forget what it would be like to be without each other and we'll start taking everything for granted. But if once in a while, if we're away from each other for more than 24 hours and we miss each other, we'll see how much being without each other is horrible and we'll love each other more for that.'

'But I don't need to be away from you to know that living without you is horrible.' He argues.

'Yeah, I know. But knowing that something is true and, actually feeling it and experiencing it, is different.'

'Maybe...'

'Hey, baby?'

'Yeah?'

'Why don't you go get the guitar I got for you and play something on it? You always use this one.'

'It needs tuning.'

'Not this again! Tune it. It literally won't take more than 10 minutes.'

'Fine...' He huffs.