Freefall ✓

11 | melody

I hid my head behind the open laptop, which hopefully concealed my bulged-out eyes and the cerise blush forming at the apples of my cheeks.

* * *

One kind-of -a productive half-hour later I was stretching my arms out while satisfiedly staring at my nearly finished PowerPoint presentation. Cameron must have taken my "get comfortable" offer too seriously. I could deduce that from the way he hung from the hammock in an upside-down position while still swinging on it and managing to balance his laptop on his lap. Its screen displayed an open Google Translate tab.

"Here's a thought," he spoke up, "how about we swap for a change? You do my project and I do yours."

"You meant, I do yours while you do nothing?" I rephrased his suggestion blankly, "cause mine's practically done."

"You're done?" He seemed shocked, his parted lips reinforcing that idea. He adjusted his overly comfortable position slightly so that he could face me. "I'm on my second slide."

"Well, at least you've started. Knowing you, I could've easily thought you were just chilling for a solid 30 minutes. Which you sort of were." I added the last phrase in a low tone.

"You're beginning to sound like Madame Deschamps."

With a tight-lipped smile, I went on tapping the keys of my laptop deftly, working on its final touches. "What have you chosen French for anyway? Isn't your subject combination more like, mathematically inclined? Don't see how a foreign language fits there."

He looked to his left, pensive. "Mmm, cause it's interesting. And useful."

I tilted my head nonconsciously, considering his reply. Maybe there was more maturity in him than I thought.

He suddenly lifted his head up and his eyes twinkled in a surprised manner, as if just realising something. "How do you know what subjects I'm taking, you creep?" He teased in a lighthearted tone.

"I'm more observant than regular people," I replied, a knowing smile creeping onto my lips.

With a quirk of his head, his eyes aimed their attention at something behind and above me. I followed his gaze, twisting my head. 

"Is that guitar real?" He asked, pointing at the classical rosewood guitar hanging from the top left corner. 

"Yeah." I almost forgot about its existence. The poor abandoned thing.

"May I?" He hesitated, after standing up and reaching for it. He received a consenting nod from me and took it. "You play?"

"Not me, no. My sister used to. But she doesn't even live here anymore. Gosh, it's been ages since she played on this thing—I bet it's painfully out-of-tune," as I explained, my mind floated back to the memories that this guitar carried with itself. A wash of nostalgia plunged into my heart, making me realise how much I missed Hailey.

He began plucking its strings and twiddling its knobs thoroughly, in an attempt to tune it. Twangy notes came out as he tested. I recalled that the first time we met in the music shop he had been checking out their guitars. A thought, that surprisingly never did before, occurred to me: "You know how to play?"

"Uh, well, I used to. Doubt that I can remember much but let's hope." 

He struck a chord and started to play, a peaceful tune drifting out on us from under his long, nimble fingers. I swayed my body a trifle to the soothing melody.