Just What I Needed

Just What I Needed (56)

“You sure that you can even play?” Keely asked hesitantly.

Seth glanced up at her, giving a careless shrug as his good hand plucked the white roll of gauze from the top of the plain wooden bureau. “I can play fine,” he answered confidently. Yet when he began to wrap the sore muscles of his wrist and hand with the white tape, she didn’t miss the quick wince of pain that flashed across his face before he quickly masked it.

Unsure she watched uncertainly as he tried to bind his hand tightly with his other hand so the pain would lessen in his wrist and hand while he played the guitar. Sending a quick glance to his blank face, she looked back down, drumming her fingers over the knees of her crossed legs.

They’d spent the whole day together with Colton and Marco, preparing for the concert that was barely more than an hour away now. And not once, in all the time they’d spent with one another, had Seth complained about his hand and wrist that now had a rather nasty bruise spreading across it, his knuckles raw from the impact with the wall. No, he hadn’t whined at all, not when they’d been squeezing in practice between their sound check, meetings with the sound, light and stage crew, phone calls with the news stations that were covering their show, and not to mention fending off a rather frantic Maureen. However, out of the corner of her eye, Keely had seen him more than once wince when he thought no one was watching and begin flexing his right hand.

It had only been a few hours ago when they’d finally called it quits, hoping that the frantic people around them could figure a way to handle themselves until the show. Apparently the show was causing quite a bit of stress for everyone it involved, except her. They’d split up with the intention of each of them getting ready for the concert, though Keely had used the time to duck out and get the stainless steel guitar pick she’d bought for Seth engraved.

As promised she’d gone back to her motel room eventually though, beginning to get ready for the show. It was almost strange to do that outside of a dressing room. Really Keely found it rather pointless to really work on her hair too much before a show, because it would only get messed up beyond repair by the time the set was over, she moved around a lot. Yet she still did it, blow drying it out so it was on the straighter side since doing anything else would be fruitless with the snow falling. She’d long ago stopped bothering with makeup though, it just melted off as she sweated through the performance. It was rather gross, but true, they all sweated a lot while they played.

After getting ready Keely had driven through the now thickly falling snow to Linda’s home where the four of them had agreed to meet. All the way she’d been pondering how frozen they would be, playing a concert in the snow was ridiculous. Although if she had put on makeup it probably wouldn’t have sweated it off, but she quickly shrugged that one off, it had come to the point where makeup was too much work for her. And it was only when she was shoving the door of the Pelham blue mustang that she realized how early she was.

So that was how she ended up in the middle of Seth’s painfully impersonal bedroom. Sitting cross legged in the middle of the very comfortable bed, wearing her stylishly ripped skinny jeans, slip on sneakers were waiting for her downstairs, woolly socks along with her zipped up light grey hoodie beneath her brown leather jacket. She felt it was fitting for an outdoor concert in the middle of winter, but what did she know?

Watching as Seth scowled down at the lump he’d created in the gauze and began to unravel the wrappings only to start over again, Keely pursed her lips thoughtfully. “You know I could take over the guitar for just one night until your wrist is better, and you could sing?” she offered.

Yet he just snorted, “Like that’s going to happen. Rebel, it’ll be fine.”

Instantly her eyes narrowed on him, her fingers stilling in their movement. “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you saying that I’m not good enough on the guitar to play the show?”