Don't Kiss the Messenger (Edgelake High School, #1)(16)

“Me, too.”

“I’m leaning toward science,” she said.

I pulled over to the curb outside the coffee shop. I pushed the car into park and let the engine idle.

“But if you think about it, science and music are pretty similar,” she said.

“I don’t see it,” I said.

She shrugged. “They’re both just mixing different elements together, hoping to make a new discovery. Something fresh. Something inspiring. Or maybe it’s just an answer to a question.”

She looked back at me. Her hand clasped around the door handle but I didn’t want her to leave yet. I felt like I needed to hear this. The rain was pounding, drowning the car in a liquid curtain.

“So by that logic, a song is an experiment,” I said.

“Sure. I mean you go in with these questions and expectations. You make your best predictions. You usually end up wrong, and then you start all over again,” she said. “But once in a while, you get it right. And it’s like magic, that moment when it all connects.” CeCe smiled, a knowing smile, like she was hinting at more.

She jumped out of the car and I watched her run inside the coffee shop. I thought about her words, how I could incorporate that idea into my own song. I realized who I needed to write about.

It’s strange how you can have a hundred conversations in a day that never go anywhere, that hardly amount to anything. And then one day, in a two minute conversation, you hear words that are pivotal. Words that make you do more than listen. They steer you in a new direction.

Inspired, I turned into the parking lot of the Edgelake Music Store. The rain was lightening up, and I could make out a digital marquee stretched over the theater entrance, advertising a quartet performing tonight.

Before I could hesitate, I grabbed my dad’s old guitar case from the backseat and headed to the entrance. A bell chimed against the door when I walked in. I inhaled the welcomed scent of music instruments—polished wood and metal and leather. I headed to the back counter, where Josh was sitting, reading a magazine. He was the store manager, always wearing vintage concert Tshirts and jeans. His brown hair had the scruffy, unkempt look of a musician. I guessed he was in his early thirties.

I set the guitar down on the counter.

“I need a tune up,” I said. Josh glanced up at me.

“Brady, right?” he asked. I nodded. I had been in the store a few times to use the practice studios.

He pounded twice on the wood-paneled wall next to his stool. “Frank?” he shouted to the wall. “Tune up.”

I raised my eyebrows at the primitive communication style. I heard a door open and close a few times down the hall and a guy turned the corner. He was tall, as tall as me. Probably the same weight, but what I packed on in muscle this guy appeared to pack on in donuts. He walked around the counter and stood next to Josh.

Frank looked down and scrutinized my dad’s guitar case and that’s when I noticed he was wearing thin, black gloves, as shiny as silk.

“You coming to the show tonight?” Josh asked, and pointed behind him to the advertisement.

I shook my head. “I have to watch game tape.”

“What the hell is that?” Frank asked.

I looked over at him. “Game tape?” I repeated.

“He’s the new quarterback,” Josh said and pointed a thumb at me.

Frank blinked, unimpressed.

“For Edgelake?” I added.

“You know, where we work?” Josh said.

Frank looked me up and down like he could size up my entire personality in less than two seconds. “Football, huh?”

“You don’t like football?” I assumed.

“Frank has a problem with anything mainstream,” Josh quipped. “If the majority of people like it, he—”

“Questions it,” I figured.

“More like condemns it to hell,” Josh corrected me.

I looked at Frank and he shrugged. “Sports are so linear,” he said. “There’s one goal. Win.” He opened his arms with mocking excitement.

Despite his attitude, I couldn’t help but smile. You had to respect someone who could be so brutally honest to someone’s face.

“I don’t think about it that way,” I said. “I like reading the other team. They’re set up like strings on an instrument. Once you figure out how they’re tuned, you can guess their movements. There are only so many plays. There are only so many notes.”

He eyed me curiously and nodded at the guitar case.

“This is what you play?” he asked.

“Piano’s my first choice,” I admitted.

He raised his eyebrows with surprise.

Josh shook his head. “Here we go…” he mumbled.

Frank studied me like he was critiquing a painting. “Let me guess, you think out your music on a guitar and then you rework it to a piano?”

I nodded. Guitar was always my first draft. It was my thinking instrument. It was a strange way to write, I admit. I had always been an unconventional musician, probably because I never had the kind of free time I wanted to invest in it.

Frank nodded to himself.

“What?” I asked.

“You’re chickening out. You’re hesitating. You’re afraid to be honest,” he said. “You’re afraid to go there, to the deepest part of your heart where it’s all hurt and fucked up and soft as putty. Maybe you’re trying to avoid the pain. But that, Mr. Football, is where the music lives.”