Just What I Needed

Just What I Needed (63)

Hauling in the deep breath, Keely let it out in time with the note hanging on the air inside her hotel room.

She didn’t know what else to do, so she just listened.

Maybe the mixing wasn’t as smooth or, well, brilliant as she was used to with Seth’s work, but that didn’t take away from the album. Perhaps it even enhanced the effect. With a little more edge to the songs, playing on the little mishaps like a quickening of the tempo or a messed up chord, it gave the music a wholesome quality. It was pure, and that was enough to make up for everything else.

Now she could only wonder if that had been the point in the beginning. That was a question she’d eventually have to ask.

And maybe the drums weren’t as good as what he’d played on her album, but that only showed the musical development over the years. But she couldn’t really point out a flaw with that either, he just wasn’t as skilled yet as he was now.

Was he a musical prodigy?

No doubt.

As the song she was listening to for the sixth or so time hit the end of the final hook, Keely let out a deep breath while the guitar began to fade into nothingness.

Closing her eyes, she let her head roll back slightly and stretch the stiff muscles that were tense throughout her shoulders. Lightly she ran her hand up her bare knee, her palm skidding along her skin absently.

Why was it so hard for her to understand her life on a daily basis when she took the time to think but when she was listening to music it all made sense within moments?

The only issue was that once the song ended; all that absolution would sprint away.

Hearing the tell-tale sound of her phone vibrating along the wooden table, Keely shoved herself forward with a sigh. Quickly silencing the music, she stretched out to the end table, snatching up her phone and raising it to her eyes.

Unsurprised by who was calling, she just pressed the phone to her ear and asked, “Hello?”

“It’s John,” her guitarist informed her.

Not liking her rather listless mood, Keely just puffed out her cheeks disinterestedly as she tugged the notepad and pen on the kitchen table towards herself. “Yeah, mystery solved,” she replied vaguely as she began to scribble down words on the pad.

“We’re just pulling into the parking lot of your hotel in a moment,” he continued as if she’d never spoken.

“Great,” Keely told him dully before she hung up.

Even as she ended the call, her hand kept moving busily across the page, her writing almost illegible in its haste.

Feeling interested at what she’d just jotted down absentmindedly. To her great disappointment, she found that she hadn’t had a moment of brilliance, but just kinship as she read the words. “I am afraid of falling in love, so I keep myself to myself. I want a cookie and I need a hug, but I keep myself to myself. I keep myself to myself. And when I’m sad, I comfort myself with thinking that, no one understands. Sometimes I dig through shells at a low tide. I wonder if anything fragile, could ever survive in this world without getting broken. I am afraid of things that can hurt, so I keep myself to myself.”

No, she’d had no brilliance in that moment. Just copying another person’s song.

Ten guesses why she was writing down that song of all she had to choose from.

Frustrated, she shoved the paper and pen away from herself and pushed out of the seat.

For an hour straight she’d been waiting for that call, she couldn’t just ignore it completely. In the black skirt that cut of just inches above her knees and travelled up to the v neck and into two thick straps over her shoulders, she was very much overdressed for a night of simply listening to Seth’s solo album in her hotel room.