Page 84 of Love Felt Like This

Griffin

“Daddy, play!”

I have my guitar on both knees and Ava sunk in my lap between them, reaching over the neck to pluck strings. She shifts the guitar into the sun, reflecting beams back in my eyes. I squint, pulling both her and the guitar into the porch awning’s shade.

It’s bitterly cold. We’re in multiple layers of long sleeves and coats. My bare hands are red against the chill as I strum. It’s too cold to be outside, but Ava was getting restless indoors and she kept eyeballing the Larks’ cat, Steak, out in the yard. After the fiftieth “Cat!” I put her in a balaclava and gloves, and we both went to pursue the thing.

Steak left a while ago, hurrying through the flapping cat door in irritation, so now I’m the entertainment, sitting on the porch rocking chair with Ava curled into my chest and a guitar in my stiff, frozen hands.

“What should I play?” I ask. “The E song?”

“Puh!”

“Puh?”

“P!”

“Oh, the P song,” I say, grumbling dramatically under my breath, “the one that isn’t finished, huh?”

“Play!” she demands again with a grin.

I’ve been playing for Ava a lot lately. We found that gentle guitar—the kind where I’m aimlessly searching for notes—is the only way Ava can sleep, and that realization has been a game changer. If Beverly hadn’t been there to make it happen, Ava and I would still be in sleepless limbo. Beverly’s done a lot for us.

I rest my chin on Ava’s head and play the chords for the P song I composed one hour before. I haven’t perfected the lyrics, but Ava helps me with “uppy!”—puppy—and “ano”—piano. The titular letter is still a work in progress.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a pulse in my fingers for music. Lately, it’s been erratic, thumping on surfaces and patting against Ava’s legs as she rests in my arms. It’s a beat thrumming down to my fingertips, itching for more, more, more.

Sometimes it’s songs about the alphabet.

But sometimes my lyrics linger on thoughts of a woman with feathered hair. A woman with cold fingers tracing over the rough ridges of my warm knuckles—two contrasting worlds combined into one.

I like holding hands with Beverly.

I think about it too much.

She’s gentle and careful with me, despite me being a foot taller and twice her size. She’s like that with everyone, though. Beverly is clear and patient when teaching Nana new technology, despite the frustration (—these phone upgrades are specifically to use against us old, wrinkly-ass—). She’s attentive when she helps her brother study for tests now that he’s back in school. She even takes that mouth-breathing dog of his on long walks when he’s trying to focus, even though Pudge is not really hers and he plops down on the wet grass halfway through the walk, demanding they turn back. She ends up carrying him.

Beverly has a softness that I don’t deserve because anytime Beau is brought up in conversation, I’ve gotten in the bad habit of saying, “Oh, that dipshit?” She always rolls her eyes with a smile, which is the only reason I keep doing it. If it bothered her, I would stop.

Reluctantly, though.

I dislike that dipshit more and more as the town slowly reveals the past.

“I remember that time you and Beau went dressed as the couple from The Shining for Halloween! He chased you with the axe too! It was so good.”

“Oh,” Beverly said. “Yeah, ha.”

The dick.

“He was so funny at prom. I swear he and Tori shut down that dance floor. I can’t remember—were you there that late?”

“No, I was in the theater. I was finishing up some set stuff,” Beverly said. “But that’s great! Prom king and queen had to dance together, so I’m glad they had fun.”

He was prom king without her? He danced all night with someone else?

“Play!” Ava demands, bringing me back and calming my blood pressure, which seems to skyrocket whenever I think of Beau.

“Sorry, munchkin.” I adjust my guitar and strum once more.