you want.” He swiveled on the stool again. “Do you want to play guitar?”
“I don’t want to not play guitar,” I equivocated.
He snorted and pushed me toward the living room. “Go. Get your instrument.”
“Let me just clean up here first.” I stalled by rinsing the dishes and putting them into the dishwasher. “Did you feed Callie?”
“At the clinic.” He brought her water dish to the sink. “I’ll top this off, though.”
Finally, I had no excuses. I went to the living room, picked up my guitar, and carefully removed it from its case.
He held out a hand. “Give it here. I’ll tune it.”
“I tuned it yesterday.”
“The change in air pressure from the storm can ruin that.” He strummed and made minor adjustments. “Humidity plays havoc with guitars.”
“Now that you mention it, I’ve heard Cooper say that about his violin. But I’ll be honest, I can’t hear much difference.”
“You will eventually. It takes time to learn.” He handed the instrument back. “Show me the finger exercise I gave you.”
I kept my mutinous thoughts off my face while I “spidered” my fingers across the guitar’s neck and back.
“Faster,” he demanded
“I can’t.” I could move a little faster but not accurately. Beck’s spiders were an exercise in frustration and impatience. He told me to be accurate.
“Try.” I did so as Beck watched. “Good.” He nodded. “I see some improvement. How does it feel?”
“Pretty ridiculous,” I admitted. “Can’t you just teach me to fake something at parties?”
“Fake something?” His appalled expression made me laugh.
“Okay, okay.”
“You want to fake something?”
“I said okay.” I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of calling him a brat. Not then, anyway.
He stood over me. “Play the music I gave you.”
Dutifully, I played “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” It did not survive.
As I haltingly changed finger positions for the fourth try, he shot out of his chair.
“Okay. No. Relax. Here.” He took the guitar from me and sat in my lap, facing away. “Give me your hands.”
“I’m supposed to relax like this?”
“Mmhmm.” He positioned my left hand on the neck of the guitar, and I brought my right hand around him to rest on the strings. He was slim enough that it was actually easy to reach.
“You need to eat more.” He felt light as air in my lap, and it was very distracting. Especially when he squirmed up my thighs to rest his buttocks snug against my belly.
Predictably, my cock tried to punch a hole in my sweats.
“Sorry about the—
“It’s fine.” He shifted around to torture me. “Now, position your hand like this. Tips of your fingers centered between the frets. Make each note as crisp as you can. Reposition as slowly as you need to for accuracy.”
I strummed.
“Wait. Remember positioning.”
I cleared my throat. “Believe me, positioning is all I can think about right now.”
He turned his head and kissed my cheek. “Focus.”
My spine melted. “What were we doing again?”
He tried unsuccessfully to hide his smile while I played and played. I’m sure actual stars went supernova during the length of time it took to get marginally better, but eventually I earned his approval.
“That was…adequate.” He seemed pleased, though.
He wrested the guitar from my cramped, nerveless fingers and leaned back against me to play a bluesy chord progression. Not a song, specifically—he played the feeling of sitting with a beautiful boy in my arms, listening to rain on the roof. He played the wind in the evergreens. The sound of our breaths. Our hearts beating in time.
His head dropped onto my shoulder, and I automatically lifted my hand to stroke the wild mop of hair off his forehead. It felt softer than I expected. When he lived on the beach with Tug, his hair had always looked salt-stiffened and a little dirty.
As he nuzzled into my neck now, it felt soft and smelled like coconuts. I’d never smell coconuts again without thinking of this perfect moment with him.
“Are you comfortable?” I asked.
“Perfectly.” He pressed a kiss against my neck. “You?”
“Never better.”
He finished by playing the seventh chord he’d tried to teach me. It hung in the air like a question. Do you want me? Are we going to do this? Is this real or are we dreaming?
I already had my answer, but it turned out I had some questions of my own. I didn’t know how to ask. What if this is all we have? What if I’m not enough, or too much, or wrong?
How will I ever let you go?
He rose and put my guitar back in its case.