Limestone and Flash returned to the music room with half-drunk smoothies and recollections of more than a few traded verbal barbs. Both were smiling, though Limestone still felt somewhat uncomfortable.
Her smile faded as they approached the guitar and bass set up by the wall.
Flash looked at her, then cleared his throat. “I should’ve asked if you played. I’m sorry. I guess I just assumed that with your singing skills, you’d totally be able to shred too.”
Limestone gave him a sidelong glance. “I have at least one confession to make, Charlie: I’m not actually a huge music buff.”
“No way.” He blinked and shook his head. “You’ve got a killer voice, and your lyrics are pure metal.”
“There’s that word again,” she said. “I didn’t sing about metal; I sang about rocks.”
He waved a hand. “Well, whether it was metal or rock, it was heavy. I just…” he stared at the instruments. “I dunno, I just wanted to kind of capture that again.”
She gave him a skeptical look. “Why?”
He looked away, then shrugged. “I dunno. That kind of music picks me up when I’m down, I guess.”
Limestone folded her arms. “You know, you’re awful moody for a guy on a first date.”
Without missing a beat, Flash smiled and winked at her. “Says the girl who’s awful moody for anything ever.”
Limestone gave him an uncomfortable half-smile. “I think I get it, about you and Sunset. You’ve got this whole nice-guy thing going on, but you know how to give as good as you get, and I think you like doing it.”
He held up his hands. “Hey, guilty as charged. I still say I’m a ‘nice guy,’ though. I don’t actually want to duke it out or piss people off.”
She nodded. “Well, I guess that’s a difference between you and me, then. I don’t mind mixing it up when I have to.”
Flash gave her an inquisitive look. “So… you get into fights? Like, where? I thought you were homeschooled, and you aren’t twenty-one yet…”
Limestone hesitated. Her pulse pumped harder. “Well, I mean, I don’t get into many fights, I just wouldn’t care if I did.”
“So do you know how to fight?”
She fumed. “Keep on asking and you might find out!”
Flash’s shoulders sagged. “Please, don’t do that.”
“Sometimes I don’t like the whole twenty-questions routine, okay?”
He nodded. “Sure, I get that. I can stop, but please just tell me if you need me to stop doing something, all right? It’s okay.”
Limestone furrowed her brow, trying not to blush. Then she turned and looked back at the instruments. “So… do I need one of those?”
Flash chuckled. “Not if you can’t play, I guess. I can just play some chords if you wanna do your vocal thing.”
She stepped over to them and looked down with curiosity. “How hard is it to learn?”
“Actually pretty hard,” he said, stepping next to her. “I’ve been playing guitar since I was a kid, and I’d say I’m still only just okay at it.”
Limestone gave him a wry grin. “But then, ‘since you were a kid’ was only, like, last year, right?”
He rolled his eyes. “Ha ha. Well, that’s just the guitar. The bass…” He bent over it, examined it, then finally picked it up. “Heh. ‘Base.’ Like your lime thing.”
“That joke was barely funny when I said it.”
“No, but seriously, bass can be a whole lot easier. I mean, you can do some really cool and impressive things on bass if you get good with it. But at its easiest all you really have to do is just strum it and do a simple fingering or two. The bigger issue is keeping in time.”
She looked at the black bass with narrowed eyes. “You’re sure it’s easy?”
“Sure I’m sure! Here, put it on.”
Limestone took the bass by its neck and held it out before her for a moment, as if considering whether it might try to wriggle out of her grasp. Then she gripped the long strap in her free hand and raised it uncertainly over her head. It settled heavily onto her shoulder, and she grunted as she adjusted to its weight.
“Well, so far so good,” she said. She raised her hands up to it. “So what do I do now?”
“We’re going to need a tune.” Flash raised his hand toward the frets, but then paused as his fingers brushed against hers. “Ah, sorry. Tell me about what you brought this time to sing.”
She reached into her back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. “Here, it’s fresh.”
He unfolded it and spent a few moments staring at it. A smile worked its way across his face. “Yeah! This is cool. This is gonna sound great. Have you thought about riffs or a melody for it?”
Limestone frowned. “Not really.”
Flash folded his arms for a moment, but then reached over and picked up the guitar. He turned up the gain and set about noodling around. It took him a bit of experimentation before eventually settling on something simple, mid-tempo, but heavy. “How’s this?”
Limestone shrugged. “Sounds fine. Do you want me to play over it?” She strummed the bass uncertainly, emitting a mishmash of twangy low notes.
He smiled and set the guitar back down. “No, let me show you.” He raised his hand up to hers on the frets again, and met her eyes as she recoiled slightly. “I’m not going to bite you,” he added, deepening his smile. “Just get your index finger here, your middle finger here, and third finger here…”
She furrowed her brow as she tried the fretting. “You mean like this?”
Flash laughed. “No. Look…” He stepped back, looking at each of her sides in turn. “Okay, there’s a way that I could show you, but you’re totally going to think I’m just making a move.”
Limestone raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”
He stepped around behind her, chuckling. Limestone stiffened as he moved his body into gentle contact with hers. His left hand curled around her own as he looked over her left shoulder. “Put your fingers like this.”
She did. Flash nodded. “Good! Now put your right hand down here, by the pickups.” Again, he took her hand in his, and guided it into position.
Limestone brought her head around far enough to get a partial look at him. “Speaking of pickups, don’t think for one second that I’ve missed how blatant this one is, Charlie.”
“Come on, pluck the strings.” He guided her through the movement, and she smiled at the decent-sounding notes that came out over the amp. “Okay, now do it again. And again. Now get into a rhythm with it.”
He let go of her hands and stepped away. Limestone’s first thought was of how his warmth on her back had been nice, but that was quickly replaced by a strange sense of pride at what she was doing. “I’m playing,” she said, stepping over the cord leading from bass to amp as she turned to face him. “I’m really playing!”
Flash rolled his eyes, but smiled. “Bass players. Always think they’re Harmony’s gift to music when they sit there hanging on a couple of notes.”
Limestone gave him a look that was half-sneer and half-smile. “You know, I never did get to finish smashing your guitar earlier.”
He picked up the guitar and nodded his head to be beat she was setting. “Yeah, well, maybe wait until we’ve actually jammed a little.” His hands moved over the strings without strumming them. “Okay, I’m gonna jump in here. Don’t lose the beat. Whatever you do, just keep doing it.”
Flash started playing. It was just the riff he’d worked out earlier, but Limestone’s eyes widened as she reflected on how much better it sounded with a beat behind it. Her beat.
“You’re slowing down,” he said. “Try to stay consistent.”
She gritted her teeth and focused on the beat. The fingers of her left hand hurt from keeping them motionless, but the tips of the fingers on her right hand were calloused from years of work in the quarry and had few issues with plucking the heavy strings. Her mind wandered as she maintained focus, and for a moment she was reminded of what it was like to use her favorite jackhammer, and how it could be an experience replete with both numbing discomfort and immense satisfaction. Metal splitting earth; muscle guiding metal; mind controlling muscle… in some ways, it was just the same experience.
“Yeah!” Flash called. “You’re getting funky now. Get into it!”
She did, letting her legs bend and her head bob with the beat she strummed.
Flash’s melody shifted. Their eyes met, and they both grinned, and Flash stuck his tongue out, working his way out of the main riff and into a solo. He walked over to his amp and raised a foot to the dials along the front of it, groping for something.
There was a small clicking sound, after which the distortion on Flash’s guitar ascended to unholy levels. He grinned through gritted teeth, still maintaining his spiraling solo, and raised his foot to her amp as well. It took him a few moments of batting at knobs, but eventually he dialed her volume up so high that she could feel the beat reverberate in her sternum.
The two of them continued playing, sometimes staring into each other’s eyes with deep smiles, and sometimes just closing their eyes and letting the sound flow through them.
Their ears rang. Their fingers ached. Their hearts soared with the simple, heavy groove that they forged through their music.
Though they were two, they played as one.
And as one, together, they rocked.