Love Song (LGBTQ+) (COMPLETED)

31. Embracer

Damp and loose, my hair fell down my back as I entered the lounge room to see Jay tuning a guitar on his lap. Seeing him with a guitar was far from an unfamiliar sight, sometimes it almost seemed like he was attached at the hip with one. Half of the time, he never even played it. He would either clean it off or be tuning it. The other half, he spent happily covering grunge songs, which was odd for him.

Jay didn't do grunge music on his albums, not even a single with that sound had been released. As gravelly as his voice was able to get, it had also been just as smooth. That contrast was part of what made him so successful vocally. The gravel in his voice was able to portray everything from anger to agony, while the smoother tones were able to hit a different side of his music, a side that painted vulnerability and sadness.

It was obvious when I watched him, though it took me a while to realize it. He wasn't happy unless he was creating something. He could carry a smile and look happy, but he wasn't truly happy inside unless he had a guitar in his hands, and the way his smile grew when he held a guitar made it pretty clear. Jay lived and breathed music, he was at his best when he was making music, he was at his happiest when those sounds left this diaphragm.

Just like I was happiest when she was smiling, just like I was at my best whenever I was around her. I was barely able to live and breathe without her, just like he would've been without music. Maybe it was weird of me to be so attached to someone that I couldn't live without them, but my home hadn't ever really felt like home without her there. If home was truly where the heart was, then it was with Grace. That was where my heart was. That was where it always would be, or so I wanted to think.

The worst part was that it took me so long to truly realize it. That everything I did was never for her. I used her and what she had done as an excuse to run away from the pain I felt, to run away from the demons that hunted me down, and to hide from the reality I wanted so badly to avoid. Grace had been my excuse to get numb, to get high. I claimed to love her so much, yet the most I could do for her was use her as an excuse to be something other than myself, to be somewhere other than reality.

I was miserable, but I was too high to see it. I was hollow, but I was too high to see it. I was slowly murdering myself, but I was too high to see it. I was too high to be anything other than high. I lived in a false utopia that was created in her name, pretending to be something that I truly wasn't without her, that I would never be without her - happy. It was just more of the same pretending I had always been so good at.

Jay looked up, a half-hearted smile rested on his face. "Finally. You and Joanna seriously take forever in the shower."

"So do you, pretty boy." my tongue freed itself from behind my lips. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting for you, actually." he leaned over the arm of the couch and reached to his right. "My manager dropped this off the other day when you were in your meeting. I was going to show you, but you weren't looking too hot, so I just decided to hold back. Well, either way, you won't playing it for at least another day."

Coming back up, I was first given the oddly pleasurable sight of a red-faced Jay and dark, matte black acoustic guitar. The entire thing had been black, inside and out, from the pegs to the bridge. It almost looked like someone had done a nice job spray painting the entire thing one color, including the strings. Just like an unknowing child, I stared at Jay curiously with no idea what he was talking about.

It took me a moment to remember that I was the one who asked him to teach me what Grace hadn't. If I was being honest, I never expected him to agree to do it, which had been the whole reason I said it. I knew I didn't have the same kind of talent that he or Grace had, no matter how much I tried and learned, I wouldn't have been in the same hemisphere as either of them. There was learned ability and then natural talent. And while they could get close, there would always be an insurmountable mountain that existed between the two.