Damp and loose, my hair fell down my back as I entered the lounge room to see Jay tuning a guitar on his lap. Seeing him with a guitar was far from an unfamiliar sight, sometimes it almost seemed like he was attached at the hip with one. Half of the time, he never even played it. He would either clean it off or be tuning it. The other half, he spent happily covering grunge songs, which was odd for him.
Jay didn't do grunge music on his albums, not even a single with that sound had been released. As gravelly as his voice was able to get, it had also been just as smooth. That contrast was part of what made him so successful vocally. The gravel in his voice was able to portray everything from anger to agony, while the smoother tones were able to hit a different side of his music, a side that painted vulnerability and sadness.
It was obvious when I watched him, though it took me a while to realize it. He wasn't happy unless he was creating something. He could carry a smile and look happy, but he wasn't truly happy inside unless he had a guitar in his hands, and the way his smile grew when he held a guitar made it pretty clear. Jay lived and breathed music, he was at his best when he was making music, he was at his happiest when those sounds left this diaphragm.
Just like I was happiest when she was smiling, just like I was at my best whenever I was around her. I was barely able to live and breathe without her, just like he would've been without music. Maybe it was weird of me to be so attached to someone that I couldn't live without them, but my home hadn't ever really felt like home without her there. If home was truly where the heart was, then it was with Grace. That was where my heart was. That was where it always would be, or so I wanted to think.
The worst part was that it took me so long to truly realize it. That everything I did was never for her. I used her and what she had done as an excuse to run away from the pain I felt, to run away from the demons that hunted me down, and to hide from the reality I wanted so badly to avoid. Grace had been my excuse to get numb, to get high. I claimed to love her so much, yet the most I could do for her was use her as an excuse to be something other than myself, to be somewhere other than reality.
I was miserable, but I was too high to see it. I was hollow, but I was too high to see it. I was slowly murdering myself, but I was too high to see it. I was too high to be anything other than high. I lived in a false utopia that was created in her name, pretending to be something that I truly wasn't without her, that I would never be without her - happy. It was just more of the same pretending I had always been so good at.
Jay looked up, a half-hearted smile rested on his face. "Finally. You and Joanna seriously take forever in the shower."
"So do you, pretty boy." my tongue freed itself from behind my lips. "What are you doing?"
"Waiting for you, actually." he leaned over the arm of the couch and reached to his right. "My manager dropped this off the other day when you were in your meeting. I was going to show you, but you weren't looking too hot, so I just decided to hold back. Well, either way, you won't playing it for at least another day."
Coming back up, I was first given the oddly pleasurable sight of a red-faced Jay and dark, matte black acoustic guitar. The entire thing had been black, inside and out, from the pegs to the bridge. It almost looked like someone had done a nice job spray painting the entire thing one color, including the strings. Just like an unknowing child, I stared at Jay curiously with no idea what he was talking about.
It took me a moment to remember that I was the one who asked him to teach me what Grace hadn't. If I was being honest, I never expected him to agree to do it, which had been the whole reason I said it. I knew I didn't have the same kind of talent that he or Grace had, no matter how much I tried and learned, I wouldn't have been in the same hemisphere as either of them. There was learned ability and then natural talent. And while they could get close, there would always be an insurmountable mountain that existed between the two.
"I've been writing this song for a close friend of mine, and I've been looking a feature, but I haven't liked anyone I've been shown. I want it to be as authentic as possible for her, you know?" Jay pulled out a piece of paper, unfolding it carefully. "I like the rawness in your voice, and I really think you might fit what I've been wanting. So, let kill two birds with one stone, a singing lesson and practice. I'll be doing the playing today, though."
I was honestly a bit shell-shocked as I watched his smiling face. The piece of paper he was holding out and the clarity in his eyes had said he was entirely serious, and the smile was just there for appearances. Grace had taught me the basics, starting with my diaphragm and warm ups, which eventually rolled into putting those into practice. She started with simple songs, and just like I had done with that Finch song, I taught myself what I could behind her back.
The problem was that I still wasn't any good, and definitely not good enough to be a featured singer for a song that was coming from Jay Ward. The Jay Ward. I was probably barely passable at a karaoke bar, so someone like me would get laughed at in the real world. What exactly had Jay heard during that Finch song? It almost seemed like he was just pitying me in some weird, unusual way.
"Me? I love Finch, but they aren't hard to sing. I'm really not that good." I took the page full of lyrics.
"Let's find out then, shall we?" I barely caught his smile as my eyes took to the piece of paper.
They were very personal lyrics, almost as though the though he had lived the life that was written in blue ink. Neglect and abuse, the thoughtlessness of adults and the harm they inflict on their own flesh, their own blood. It was way too personal for someone like me to sing. I hadn't experienced any of this, and that wasn't authentic, at least by my definition. There was no way I could imagine what she felt and what she saw. There was no way I could give authenticity to something I was clueless about.
"Just sing it with pain that you've felt. Your pain doesn't have to stay a bad thing, it can become the thing that drives you forward, too." Jay strummed the guitar. "People can and will feel that pain in your voice. It transcends speakers and headphones, pain and agony make people feel things. Those feelings become more than just music, they become a connection."
Thudding. The slight pound in my chest made me lower the paper and look at Jay after what he had just said. He had just told me to embrace the pain I spent so long running away from, spending every day hiding from. What he had been asking me to do was so much easier said than done that it was almost funny. Facing my pain felt as monumentally hard as trying to kill a bear with a kids pocket knife. Could I even do something like that without her around? Could I even do something like that, period?
". . .I can try, I guess." I sat next to him.
"Great. I'll be starting with the first verse and chorus, you'll do the second verse, and then we'll start together at the bridge where the lyrics repeat. I'll leave the "Ohhhhh's" to you, do whatever you think might sound good." Jay explained. "It's not like we're recording, so we can just keep doing it over and over."
Nodding, Jay's large smile had disappeared and his eyes closed as he began to strum. Soon, his knowledge of a guitar was made evident with the smoothness in which he had traveled down the neck as he made something I could only dream of playing look easy. His whole atmosphere changed as soon as the first strum passed through the guitar, and that atmosphere was seriousness. It was the love for what he did coming to life around him. It was Jay spreading his wings.
Then he opened his eyes, revealing a solemness I hadn't believed would ever come from him
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Ending with a single strum, Jay's eyes closed once more while I had been left speechless for more than one reason. I was surprised that I had even finished the song, honestly. The lyrics were brutal enough as they were, and pronunciation became hard with the speed he decided to play his guitar at. Even if he noticed that I was having a hard time keeping up, he hadn't stopped or slowed down at all. I, myself, wasn't sure how badly I had done, but I knew it wasn't great.
"I like it." he nodded, giving me the same smile he always wore. "You're a bit pitchy, but I really do like it. I want you on this song, that little crack in your voice is so damn natural."
How was someone like Jay able to smile so confidently after what he had been through in his life? He had witnessed his own mother being beaten and overdosing on the very drug she was being beaten for, yet he somehow still carried all of those smiles. He was essentially homeless at a certain point, and yet he could still stand with a smile. The world treated him like dirt, so why did he still look like he enjoyed it? How could he still enjoy it?
Where did he find the strength to keep on standing and smiling? I wanted to know.
Looking up, I was met with a pair of eyes that forced me to stop - eyes that stopped me right in my tracks. "That isn. . ."
Glistening, his eyes flickered like the sun in a flawless summer sky. They weren't narrowed like they normally were, and they weren't the icy tint I always thought them to be. Jay carried this cold aura around him a lot of the time, and I had just thought that was who he was, but the Jay in front of me right at that second looked like a different person. At that moment, he wasn't a drug addict that loved music. He was just a regular teenage boy who loved music.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
My chest seemed to be in agreement. The longer I looked at those blue eyes, the faster my heart seemed to beat. The longer I looked at those eyes, the more my stomach seemed to flutter. The more I looked, the closer I got. In that moment of silence, Jay felt like a magnet pulling me closer to him with an unstoppable force. Closer and closer, the futility became more obvious by the second. I wasn't stopping, but that begged another question. Had I wanted to stop?
His palm met my mouth. "You don't wanna fall down this rabbit hole."
"Sorry." my forearm covered my mouth as I pulled away from him. "I don't know why I did that."
"Don't get me wrong. You're hot, like really hot, but we bo-"
Before I realized what I was doing, and before he had even finished his sentence, I found myself on top of him. With wide eyes and attached lips, a familiar sensation coursed through my mind and veins, a sensation that I had felt so strongly before. I knew it so well, and I knew exactly what the feeling was. It wasn't love. Hell, I wasn't even sure if I had feelings for him. What I was feeling was attraction, and I'm pretty sure it was the same attraction I had towards Grace.
Then it hit me. What I was doing and who I was doing it to.
I did to Jay exactly what Lucas had done to me - I forced a kiss on him. It didn't matter if I was a girl doing it to a guy, it was still forced and it still wasn't right. There was no difference between the two. "Seriously, I'm really sorry. . ."
Jay laughed, sitting forward as I got off of him and his guitar. "I'd be all over you if we met anywhere but here." he set his guitar down and stretched as she stood up, still looking at me in the eye every bit of the way. "It's just that we aren't good for each other at all. We both still have people we're hung up on and we're both fucked up to hell and back. We're toxic."
Even I was able to catch just how awkward the air had become, and it was annoying. It felt like that fly that wouldn't leave me alone on a Saturday morning where I was trying to sleep in. Deciding to put an end to that awkwardness, I sat back down and pointed at his guitar. "Where wer-"
"Lynn." Rebecca interrupted as she came into the room and studied Jay before setting her eyes on me.
"They're here."
ns 15.158.61.23da2
