Falling into You (Falling #1)(46)

Finally, I sit forward and start working on the song I’ve been learning: “This Girl” by City & Colour. I regret it immediately, because the lyrics remind me of what I don’t deserve with Nell. But it’s an intoxicating song, so I get lost in it nonetheless and it barely registers when I hear her on the stairs.

“You are so talented, Colton,” she says, when I’m done.

I roll my eyes. “Thanks.”

She’s got her jeans back on, and one of my spare guitars in her hand. There’s a battered orange loveseat perpendicular to the Lay-Z-Boy, and she settles cross-legged onto it, cradling her guitar on her lap.

“Play something for me,” I say.

She shrugs self-consciously. “I suck. I only know a couple songs.”

I frown at her. “You sing like a fucking angel. Seriously. You have the sweetest, clearest voice I’ve ever heard.”

“I can’t play the guitar for crap, though.” She’s strumming, though, even as she says this.

“No,” I agree. “But that doesn’t matter once you start singing. ‘Sides, keep playing, keep practicing, you’ll get better.”

She rolls her eyes, much like I did, and starts hitting chords. I don’t recognize the tune at first. It takes me into the first chorus to figure out what song it is. It’s a low, haunting tune, a rolling, sad melody. The lyrics are…archaic, but I understand them. They’re sweet and longing. She’s singing “My Funny Valentine” by Ella Fitzgerald. At least, that’s the version I know. I’ve heard a dozen versions of it, but I think she was the one who made it famous.

The way Nell sings it…her voice is a little high for how low the song is written, but the strain to hit the lower notes only makes it full of that much more longing. As if the desire was a palpable thing, so thick inside her she couldn’t hit the notes right.

She trails off at the end of the song, but I roll my hand in a circle, so she plucks a few strings, thinking, silent, then strikes another slow, bluesy rhythm. Oh, god, so perfect. She sings “Dream a Little Dream of Me”. Louis Armstrong and Ella. God I love that song. I doubt she realizes this. I surprise the shit out of her by coming in right on cue with Louis’s part. She smiles broad and happy and keeps singing, and holy shit we sound good together.

I would never have thought of covering jazz numbers in a folksy style. It’s so hot, so fresh. I know the song, so I can weave in some fancy picking, over and around her strumming.

We finish the song, and I never want to stop making music with her. I take a risk and start up “Stormy Blues” by Billie Holiday. It’s a slow song, and Nell’s crystalline voice and my gravelly one make it into a ballad. I can hear Billie’s voice as I’m singing, though. I hear it coming out of the open window from the building next to the shop, back when I first bought it. Mrs. Henkel had a thing for jazz. She was old and lonely, and jazz made her think of long-dead Mr. Henkel, so she’d crack all the windows and play Billie and Ella and Count Basie and Benny, and she’d dance and remember. I’d help her bring her groceries up, and she’d pinch my ass and threaten me with sex, if only she was half a century younger. She’d make me tea and spike it with whiskey, and we’d listen to jazz.

I found her in her bed, eyes closed, a photo of Mr. Henkel on her ample chest, a smile on her face. I went to her funeral, which shocked the shit out of her rich, asshole grandson.

My eyes must give away some of my thoughts, because Nell asks me what I’m thinking. So I tell her about Mrs. Henkel. About the long conversations I’d have with her, slowly getting drunk on spiked Earl Grey. How she was always clucking about my tats and my baggy pants. When I went straight and stopped thugging it up, she was over the moon at my tighter jeans.

What I don’t say is that my spending time with Mrs. Henkel was typical selfish Colt. I was lonely. I’d walked away from all my boys from the hood, all of them except Split, and I was lonely. Mrs. Henkel was a friend, a chance to be around someone who was good influence on me. She’d probably have shit her Depends if she knew half the shit I’d done, and I think she knew that, since she never asked.

Finally, I go silent, the subject of dead Mrs. Henkel exhausted.

“Explain what you meant,” she says.

“About what?” I know exactly what she meant, but I couldn’t let on.

“Why aren’t you any good? Why would it be taking advantage of me?”

I set the guitar on its side and take a pull off the bottle, hand it to her. “I’m…fucked up, Nell.”

“So am I.”

“But it’s different. I’m not good. I mean, I’m not evil, I have some redeeming qualities, but…” I shake my head, unable to put it into the right words. “I’ve done bad things. I’m trying to stay out of trouble these days, but that doesn’t erase what I’ve done.”

“I think you’re a good person.” She says it quietly, not looking at me.

“You saw what I did to dickhead Dan.”

She snorts. “Dickhead Dan. Fitting. Yeah, I saw, and yeah, it scared me. But you were protecting me. Defending me. And you stopped.”

“Didn’t want to, though.”

“But you did.” She yawns behind her hand. “You’re selling yourself short, Colton. And you’re not giving me enough credit to know what I want.”