See Her (Turn it Up #1)

Chapter 4

4

JACK

I give a quick knock before letting myself into Matt’s house, to find him sitting at his dining room table.He has his guitar out, and reaches out to slap hands with me. “How’s it going, man?” he asks, as I put my guitar down and fish through my bag for my notebook.

“It’s good,” I say, not offering him much.He’d give me so much shit if he knew my mind was on a girl I’ve known for such a short period of time. Matt and I are going over our set list because we have a show tonight… and I didn’t tell the beautiful new girl in my life about it, which is eating at me. I thought about it, but immediately dismissed the idea.Part of me wants to share it with her ASAP – tonight. But the other part of me doesn’t feel right about it for some reason.It feels a little off to just be shoving my music, a.k.a. my life, in her face so soon after meeting her. I tried to picture myself telling her to come out to The Cedar tonight, see me tearing it up on stage, and then expecting her to what? Swoon? Tell me that me and my band are awesome just to be polite because we still barely know each other? I feel like it would be saying So it’s been great to meet you, now come to my show tonight and be a fangirl. And who knows, it could even make her think that’s the only reason I want to spend time with her – to attract more fans. Plus, I’m kind of a different person when we’re performing.Not bad, but I’m in my element. I let loose and I try to project the vibe of the music we’re playing, which is usually pretty angsty.It’s rock music after all.

I tell myself that she’ll see the band,we just need a little more time together before I show her who we are and what we do.Obviously I don’t know all the people that come to our shows, but it’s different with her.I want her to know me, and music wasn’t even on my mind when I decided I wanted to know her.

“How was your time with your niece?” I ask Matt, keeping conversation light, hoping he doesn’t see anything is weighing on my mind.

“Fun,” he says, his face going all soft. “She’s adorable.She made up this cute song and was singing it.” Then his face hardens. “I might ask her to write it down so I can put it to music, since my partner can’t come up with shit lately.”

“Oh, you’ve got jokes. Shut up, asshole. Look.”

I open my notebook to Breakthrough , and drop it on the table in front of Matt.He glances down at it before looking back up at me. “Wow, four lines. Did you hurt yourself?”

I smack his arm. “Read it.”

He picks up the notebook and I see him reading over it a couple of times before he raises his eyebrows and looks back at me, shrugging. “Okay, not bad,” he says, setting it down.

“Can we do something with it?” I ask, sitting down and opening my guitar case.

“Yeah, you know we can, man.There’s not much there, but it’s enough to get us going, and hopefully more words will come once we get a good hook and melody.”I start tuning my guitar.

“What key should we start with?” I ask, setting out my pen and digging through my case for a pick.

“What, now? We have a set list to line up. ”

“We will, we will, just give me a half hour with this. Please? Can we do that?”

“Alright, alright. A half hour, since we haven’t written in a while. If that will get your head back in the game…”