To her credit, Tasha didn’t laugh. “Sure. Coming right up.” But she grabbed the pot with the orange around the top—decaf.
They sat there quietly for a while—Charlie at the counter, spinning the mug she’d had all of two sips from, Jeff in the back booth, tap-tap-tapping the end of his pen on his comp book. Finally Tasha said, “I could turn the radio off, you know.”
Jeff blinked and raised his head to meet her eyes. “Sorry?”
Sheepishly, she gestured above to the decrepit sound system piping out tinny twenty-year-old Top 40 hits, then to the guitar case under the table. “I could turn it off if it’s bothering you. I figured you didn’t want to leave your guitar in the car or whatever, but look. There’s nobody in here but me and Charlie, and there won’t be until the seniors start coming in for their early bird specials.”
At the mention of her name, Charlie glanced over. She looked away again just as quickly—still a little starstruck.
Tasha must have seen the internal struggle on his face, because she sweetened the deal. “Tell you what. I’m going to turn the music off. I’ve heard this song twenty times today already anyway and I’ll lose my mind if I have to listen to it one more time. Then I’m going to go in the back and hide until someone rings a bell.” There was one on the counter, the kind Jeff associated with library desks. “Be cool and don’t tell Grandma.”
Her grandparents still owned the diner. Jeff remembered her at about ten, coloring in the same booth he sat in now.
“All right,” Jeff agreed at last, smiling wanly. “Promise I won’t let Charlie dine and dash.”
Tasha winked at him, slung her dishtowel over her shoulder, and disappeared into the back. A moment later, the music cut out.
Sweet silence… for now. He pulled out the guitar case and unlatched it, careful not to glance over at his audience. “You don’t mind, do you?”
Charlie whirled on the stool, obviously a little surprised Jeff was addressing her directly. “Uh, no, it’s cool. I guess.”
Oh, sheguessed. Jeff kept a lid on his amusement—he wasn’t laughing at her and didn’t want her to think he was. He slung the strap over his head and nudged the case back under the table. For a few seconds, Jeff absently tuned the guitar, keeping his eyes on the tabletop. He strummed a G chord, then a C minor. The high E was a little flat, so he tightened the peg.
Eventually Charlie said, “What’re you doing? That doesn’t sound like a song.”
He looked up, half startled, to find Charlie watching him, coffee forgotten. “Tuning. Each of the strings has to be set to the right note. Otherwise this”—he strummed an A—“sounds like this.” He detuned the G and B strings and strummed again. They both winced at the discordant sound.
“Oh.” She paused as Jeff brought the guitar back into tune. “How do you know what note it should be?”
“Practice,” Jeff said dryly. But then he realized that wasn’t a helpful answer. “When I was your age, I used a tuner. It’s a little microphone that registers the frequency….” Too technical. “It tells you what note you’re playing.” Better.
The conversation lapsed while Jeff worked through the intro he’d been putting together. But his throat stuck on the lyrics. Sure, Charlie knew that he and Carter had a thing…. That was kind of the problem.
Damn it. He needed feedback and the only person available was a preteen. Hopefully Charlie had inherited the Rhodes family trait of being nonjudgmental. “Hey, can I ask you something weird?”
Charlie eyed him warily. “How weird?”
“Not, like, gross weird, it’s—” He let out a long breath and decided to start at the beginning. “I’m writing this song about… coming back home, I guess. Coming backhere.” A thinly veiled metaphor for coming back to Carter, but she was twelve; she didn’t have to know that. “Do you leave and come back every summer?”
She nodded, her drying hair sticking to her cheek. “Yeah. We moved a lot more when I was younger, but we’ve been in New Jersey for a while. But we always come to visit Grandma and—”
Shit. They both realized they’d wandered into an emotional minefield at the same moment. Charlie turned and fidgeted a napkin out of the countertop dispenser. Jeff pretended not to notice.
When he felt like he could speak again without betraying himself, he said, “Your grandfather was really special.” He cleared his throat. “He’s the one who taught me to play, actually.”
Charlie turned around again. Her eyes were just a bit red. She bit her lower lip. “He promised to teach me this summer.”
Boom.Maybe it was time for a strategic retreat. But it didn’t seem fair—Jeff was the one who’d brought it up. He thumbed absently at the low E and searched for the words.
“Why d’you wanna know?”
Blinking, Jeff looked up again. He’d lost the thread of conversation.
Charlie must’ve interpreted his confusion, because she clarified, “About leaving and coming back. Why d’you wanna know?”
“Because that’s what I did, I guess. Except it was just one time coming back, a long time later. It isn’t going the way I thought it would.”
She narrowed her eyes, but there was a smile hiding at the corner of her mouth. “Because of my uncle?”
