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Brian opened his mouth, then closed it again. He gave me a small nod and ducked into the house. I’d never wanted to know what someone almost said more than I did in that moment.
CHAPTER FIVE
Brian
“I think maybe I needed it.”
How did he do that? Just say how he felt so easily? I never could have done something like that even if I felt it, or more accurately, even though I felt it too. I needed this, whatever we were doing tonight. To play music and drink beer and eat some food and just…be. I didn’t know why the thought of spending time with him excited me when it didn’t with most people. Maybe because Charles wasn’t from around here? He wasn’t connected to my life and my past; he didn’t know Phil or Nadine. But there was something more to it too, something about him that put me at ease in a way that was scary and had never happened before.
I wanted what he said. I wanted to be Charles’s friend, and that had my thoughts going crazy. The one thing that would help calm that was music.
I grabbed my case and went back to the deck. Charles had already pulled up a chair. Luckily, there was one without arms, which made it easier for him. He’d grabbed one for me too.
“I play a lot of Dylan,” I told him, “and Leonard Cohen, Pink Floyd, The Eagles…stuff like that. You?”
“I can do that. I love ‘Wish You Were Here.’ If we can mix it up with a little nineties music, I’ll love you forever,” he teased, but it made my stomach flip-flop unexpectedly. Not bad or good, just different and confusing.
“Okay,” I replied, hoping my voice didn’t sound strange to him. “We can start with ‘Wish You Were Here.’”
Charles did a search on his phone, I assumed for the music, before setting his cell on the rack. “I need to warm up a little.” I nodded, plucking strings while Charles ran through a few scales. He didn’t take long to say, “I’m ready. Do you sing?”
“Hell no,” I replied, and when he grinned, I said, “I reckon you do?”
“Yep, but you don’t get to hear that yet. Surprisingly, I’m a little protective of that.”
I couldn’t argue, considering I was protective with most things.
We started with “Wish You Were Here,” playing a few other Pink Floyd songs before moving on to Cohen and Queen, then The Eagles and Dylan. We were disjointed at first, but it didn’t take us long to get our groove together.
Charles played in this elegant way I could never do. My gaze was drawn to him, to the way his fingers danced along the keys, moving fluidly, and those moments he got lost in it, eyes closed, simply feeling the music.
It connected us on levels I hadn’t expected, hadn’t experienced. I played with Sutton all the time, with Jasper too, but it didn’t feel the same as playing with Charles. Each note became a thread wrapped around us, pulling us together in moments that felt naked and pure, bare-boned, and not to be shared with anyone else.
It didn’t make a lick of sense, made me feel a little dizzy and dazed, but then I would focus on Charles’s fingers, on the curve of his hands and how he became an extension of the keyboard, and that helped.
Next we played Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots. Played until my fingers ached and cramped, but I couldn’t stop, couldn’t keep them from dancing along the fret in unison with Charles’s digits along the keys.
We put the sun to sleep, performed it a lullaby as it dipped behind the horizon.
Charles didn’t say what we were playing next, but I recognized the beginning of “November Rain.”
I didn’t know it, so I’d have to look it up, but for now all I could do was watch him live and breathe what he was doing. He was graceful, his hands pretty, which was an odd thought, but it’s exactly what they were. His music made my eyes mist up and my chest tighten because everything in the world should be as easy as this moment, when my heart and my mind felt at peace, how I could usually only get close to when I was alone.
I wanted him to sing for me, wanted Charles to open his mouth and set the lyrics free, but I didn’t have it in me to ask. And when the song ended, Charles looked at me, this almost dazed expression in his eyes, like he’d gone somewhere but didn’t know how he’d done it, and damned if he hadn’t taken me with him.
“Sorry. I love that song,” he said.
Words stuck in my throat, trying to burst free, though I didn’t even know what they would be. Finally, when they came out, they were simply the truth. “Nothin’ to apologize for. It was beautiful.”
