The Greta Van Fleet Collection

Lessons (Jake)

Author's note: This was a request that came bearing the sweetest message of love and kindness. So thank you, thank you...you know who you are :) I'm so glad people are enjoying my little daydreams about the boys, and I'm even happier that the requests are starting to pick up, because I love them just so, so much and I adore being able to stretch my wings and climb into your heads a little instead of just my own. So please keep those requests and comments coming, I'm living for them! Love and light! XOXO

"Jake, I'm never going to get this." You'd like to swing the guitar against the wall in frustration, but settle for plopping it down on the crazy quilt that covers Jake's bed instead. "I'm wasting my time. Worse, I'm wasting yours."

"Babe," he waits until you glance in his direction, still wallowing in self-pity. "Number one: Time you enjoy wasting, is not wasted time. Lennon said that. Number two: This isn't a waste of time. Take a deep breath and then pick it up."

The man has the patience of a saint, and you tell him so.

"No," he counters with a flashing wink. "I just know you're gonna kick ass someday soon."

"I obviously wasn't meant to play. Apparently there's only room for one guitar god in this relationship."

Jake simply raises his brow and points at the Gibson lying beside you.

"Look at those fingers." he reaches out and strokes your wrist as your hand rounds the neck of the guitar you're once again reluctantly holding. "See how pretty they look? Tell me you weren't meant to eat it up. Bullshit."

You feel a warm blush fan across your cheeks. He always knows exactly what to say to make you feel capable and beautiful. Not that those two things have to go hand in hand, but it's nice when they do from time to time.

"Go on then." he urges with an encouraging grin. "Try again, you're getting better, baby — I don't know why you can't hear it."

Your spine straightens, summoning any and every ounce of talent that might be hiding out somewhere in your veins. You want to make him proud, but more than that, you want to play the fucking guitar.

You've wanted it since you were small, but your mother said it wasn't ladylike calling it a classless instrument. Instead, you spent two evenings a week learning to play the piano...badly.

As if mommy's three martini lunches and four vodka tonic dinners were ladylike and dripping with class.

The first time you mustered the courage –or possibly, stupidity, you had feared– to bring Jake to your childhood home was the day you realized how deeply in love with him you had fallen. Most strolled the grounds wonderstruck. Marveling at the expansive square footage, gaping at the art and the Italian marble floors that shone because unseen staff members polished them quietly in the early morning hours.

Every boyfriend you had ever brought home wanted to kiss your father's ass in the hopes that financial success might be contagious. They tried too hard, unaware that by doing so, they held the shovel to dig their own grave. They wanted to eat meals with too many forks, and sip wine out of glasses cut from fine crystal, to swim in the black bottom pool and fuck in the expansive pool house afterward.

Jake had been wonderfully charming, (even though you'd expressed a desire to watch him get wasted on brandy and curse, just to see the look on your parents' faces), but the first opportunity that could be deemed appropriate he got you both the hell out of there.

"I don't know how you did it all those years." He'd said, grabbing your hand, finally looking wonderstruck for the first time that night as he pulled down the long, winding drive. "It's like there's no love in that house. You looked so sad."