Chapter 12 – Dylan
TWELVE
DYLAN
I play the same set of chords over and over, making minute adjustments with each strum to see which one works best with my lyrics.
“We drive into the dark.
Crash into the wall.
How do we find our way back from this endless free fall?”
I write down notes as I go on my three pads in front of me: one for the music, one for the lyrics, and one for anything else that comes into my mind that doesn’t work for this song but might work for another.
I move my fingers on the neck of the guitar and start to sing again. Just as the first line passes my lips, it dies off when I look up to see Grady standing and watching me from the doorway.
Did I forget to shut it?
“Hey.” His voice is quiet, his smile is soft, and there is sadness in his eyes when they meet mine. Or maybe it’s exhaustion. I can’t tell.
“Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were home or I would have shut the door. Did I wake you?”
“No, you’re fine. I got home a while ago. I had some stuff to take care of after my shift.” He takes a step into my room, and once he’s in the light, I can see how tired he is. It’s in his posture. His expression. He’s spent.
My mind whirls back to the little boy from the other day at the farmers’ market. Was that where he was? Why is he so secretive about it?
“He’s had a rough go of it lately.” I hear my brother’s words and bite my tongue to keep from outright asking him about the child and overstepping my boundaries.
“Did you have a good shift? Hopefully, it was uneventful.”
He shakes his head as if he’s mulling over the answer. “A house fire that burned itself out before we got there. Some medical assist calls. Nothing much.”
His words are simple enough, dismissive even, but there is something that has me taking note. “Everything okay?”
His expression—part confusion, part conflict, part uncertainty—tugs on every part of me that wants to fix whatever is wrong.
“Yeah. Just . . . I went to the gym for a while to deal with it. Came home. Fell asleep exhausted, but now I can’t sleep at all.
” He steps farther into the room, and I set the guitar down. “Don’t stop because of me.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something comforting about listening to you sing as you work through lyrics. I can’t really hear through the door, but I know you’re singing,” he explains, throwing me for a loop and making me suddenly self-conscious. “You have an incredible voice. Why aren’t you the one who sings?”
He moves to sit on the bed beside me, and for some reason, it causes the nerves to jitter inside me. “Because I don’t like the limelight. The attention.”
“Don’t like it or don’t want it?” He pokes my leg to prompt me to lift my head and meet his eyes.
“Aren’t they the same thing?”
“Not hardly. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it. It isn’t your thing. If you don’t want it, it’s because you know you’re good enough to sing but you don’t believe in yourself enough to take the chance.” He lifts his eyebrows as if to ask me which one I fit into.
I stare at him for a moment as I mull over my answer, hating that he’s probably right about all of it, and I don’t want to admit it. “I’ve always been a songwriter. Not a performer . . . so that’s all I know how to do.”
The thought of being on stage makes me want to break out in hives. The staring eyes. The criticism. The constant feelings of inadequacy.
“Hmm,” he says, making my back straighten. “I think you know how to do both quite well. Aren’t singer-songwriters all the rage these days?”
“If that’s your thing.” I try to be vague so he’ll drop the topic. Just the thought of throwing myself out there to be torn down by fans makes my stomach churn.
“Can I sit and watch you work for a while?” The rejection is on my tongue immediately. No one has ever watched me work, except for Jett, but the words die when I see the look in his eyes. It’s as if he doesn’t want to be alone right now.
“It isn’t very interesting to watch.”
“I’d like to, though.” He scoots over before I consent and rests his back against the headboard. “I’ll close my eyes if that makes it easier. That way, I’m not really watching you.”
“Semantics,” I say with a laugh.
“Semantics are important.”
Our gazes hold for a moment before he makes a show of closing his eyes and leaning back on my pillows as if he’s settling in for the long haul.
“What does two-in, two-out, mean?”
I told myself I wasn’t going to ask him and yet there it is. Out in the open. Me and my big mouth.
The hand he’s bringing to put behind his head jerks momentarily, but he never opens his eyes. “Where’d you hear that?” His voice lacks all emotion.
“You yelled it last night in your sleep.”
His sigh fills the silence and weighs it down. I study him. The fan of lashes against his cheeks and the way he purses his lips.
“It’s just a saying I used to say to someone.” His eyes remain closed as I debate whether I should speak or let it go. “Technically it means that when two firefighters go into a building, two more remain outside to initiate a rescue just in case shit goes south. Two-inside, two-outside.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“But my old partner and I . . . we would say it to each other before we entered a fire. We used it to mean that the two of us were going in together, and the two of us were going to come out together, safe and sound. It was our way of saying we had each other’s back no matter the cost.” He pauses and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.
“The rest of the crew used to razz us over it and say we sounded like an old married couple when we said it. That’s all. There’s nothing else to it.”
But the emotion swelling in his voice and the fact that he hasn’t opened his eyes at all says there’s so much more to the story.
“Grady . . .” Thanks for sharing. Who was your old partner? Is he the one your nightmares are about?
He clears his throat but doesn’t speak. As the silence stretches I battle my need to ask more, but figure I’ll leave it be. So I turn my focus to my work. To my notes and my guitar. And the moment I strum my fingers over its strings, the tension in Grady’s shoulders eases some.
Music is my therapy, so I offer the same to him.
I look at him often as I work through the lyrics. Words about love and loss pass over my lips, run through my head, and are jotted down, and yet, he’s the one I keep looking for a reaction from. His fingers thrumming to an imaginary beat he hears in my work the only response he gives.
I’m self-conscious at first, worried he’s judging me or laughing to himself as I repeatedly work through verses and chords. Then, after a while, I almost forget he is there—if you can forget a six-foot-plus man sitting on your queen-size bed as you work.
And who knows how much time passes before I look up from my guitar, lyrics on my lips, and find Grady’s eyes open and watching me. My words falter, but he shakes his head and tells me to continue. And so I sing and play and keep my gaze locked on his.
“Your tongue on my skin,
My head begins to spin.
Your heart in my hand,
Falling like endless quicksand.
Words are spun and lies are told,
But in the end it’s you I hold.”
The connection causes that ache in my lower belly to simmer to life. It’s sensual. It’s intimate. It’s as if he’s hearing the very inner workings of my mind and heart and soul, and as much as I tell myself I need to look away, I can’t.
“That one,” he murmurs when I finish. “I like that verse better.”
My pulse pounds in my ears. How can he hear anything when my heart is beating so loudly I can’t even hear myself?
“Why?”
“Because love is rarely pretty. It’s messy. It’s complicated. It’s often ugly, but that’s how you know when it’s right. Pretty doesn’t always last. It’s the things you have to work at that make the reward that much sweeter.”
“And you’ve been in love and know this firsthand?”
He falls silent but never averts his gaze. “I’ve loved a lot of things in my life. A lot of people. But I can’t say I’ve ever been so head over heels in love with someone that I’d want to stay with them no matter the cost.”
“No matter the cost?” There’s that phrase again. “That’s your criteria?”
“No matter the cost.” He nods, and our eyes hold across the dimly lit room as seconds tick by. “Unfortunately, when it comes to me, the cost is too great to ask someone to pay to be with me.”
“What do you mean by that?”
The muscle in his jaw pulses as he chews over the answer I can sense he knows but isn’t going to verbalize. Then, without warning, he shifts and sits beside me. “Show me how you do it, will you?”
And once again, he changes the topic.
“Show you how to do what?” I ask to buy time and make my heart settle since it has decided to use my ribs as a bounce house.
“Play. Write. I don’t know. Just show me how you work. I’m interested.”
I laugh nervously as his arm brushes against mine and he takes my guitar from my hands. “It takes an awful lot more than me telling you where to press the strings to make a song.”
“I’m good at manipulating things to make them sing my praises, Dylan.”
My breath shutters. I hope he doesn’t notice, because I think he just made an innuendo I really don’t want to touch, given how close we are and how much closer we’re about to be.
“So . . . hold it like this,” I say as I avoid responding and show him how to hold the guitar. After a few attempts, I realize it’s impossible to teach Grady without being more hands on. I shift behind him so my arms can shadow his and my fingers can help him press the correct strings when needed.
He laughs as he messes the chords up over and over, but I just keep my hands where they are and guide his.
“You need to be patient,” I tease.
“Patience is not something I’m good at.” He groans in frustration as the notes fall flat again. “You need to sing.”
“Is that the problem?” I laugh.
“Yes, if you sing, it will mask my horrible guitar playing skills.”