When The Time Comes

chapter 35; Liberty

I sit down next to Omar, our shoulders briefly brushing against each other as I take the guitar on to my lap.

"I'll snap one of the strings," I warn him.

After wiping some of the dust off from the bridge, he takes my fingers and places them on the strings. My wrist feels weird, holding it at this angle. 

"This is the G chord," he says, his hand still draped over mine on the strings. 

I run my thumb down the strings, not completely sure if that sounded right. Whatever that means. I'm not sure if it sounds good but I do know that it didn't sound that way when Omar demonstrated it to me first.

"How's that feel?" he asks, finally letting go of my hand.

My palm is a little sweaty but my wrist stays in place, too afraid to lose the places on the strings. 

"Feels unnatural."

This makes him laugh a little. I'm glad my mediocracy and tone deafness could be of amusement to him. It makes the situation feel a little less tense. Sitting this close to Omar has me rethinking every little move I make.

"How many more for a song?" I finally let go of the chord.

"For a verse, you could get by with three more," he replies. 

"Three? I think I've already forgotten the G."

"It takes practice."

"And practice takes time."

His shoulders somewhat slump after my comment. I guess he wasn't thinking about the same thing as I was. Meanwhile, that's all I can think about. Being in this house, his mother's house while my own mother has no idea why her only daughter isn't picking up the phone, makes me obsessively remember I don't have much time left. And neither does he.

"You could practice as long as you're here," he says. "Here."

He takes my fingers between his again, directing each to a different string and fret. Except this time, I feel slightly nervous. Nervous that I'm sitting way too close to him and that I somehow like our knees touching. It's one of those crooked moments that make everything that happens afterwards feel weird and twisted. I know where these thoughts lead which could only mean that I shouldn't be thinking them at all. I don't dare to look his way, afraid he's thinking them too. 

When Omar finally moves away and I keep strumming the same chord as if I'll have any recall of it anyway. His mom calls him from somewhere in the house. I straighten up and he tells me to stay as long as I want to practice and that he'll be back. When he leaves the room, my body relaxes and it feels like I can think straight again.

Outside his window, the branches of an aged tree sway periodically. The wind picks up and then dissipates. The overreaching twigs scrape the side of the window in a careful beat. I keep strumming the same strings, sometimes making them sound poor and I stop midway, afraid that I've caused one of them to snap off. I've seen that sort of thing happen to people on the internet. A string strummed loose and essentially scarring the guitarist's face. I stop playing and I can hear Omar and his mother conversing from somewhere in the house. I look back outside the window, listening to the scratches until their voices kind of blur into the background like white noise.

Time passes by and I'm unaware of just how much has until a feminine scream cuts me out of my thoughts. At first, I think it's coming from outside and so I am inclined to go and peer out of the window. I push the guitar off my lap and leave it laying on the bed. When I go to stand up, there's another scream until it changes into a series of yells. When I realize it's Omar's name that's being yelled, I rush out the bedroom door and down the corridor.