Free Echoes of Us by Teegan Loy Page B

hear him sing again.
    Jade returned with his guitar. Watching him sit down next to me with that guitar made me break out in a sweat. When he ran his fingers down the neck of the guitar, all I could think about was what his calloused fingers would feel like against my bare skin. I shuddered.
    “Do you sing too?” Jade asked, plucking at the strings.
    “What? Oh, I mean a little,” I said. “Not very well.”
    “He’s lying, Jade,” Maggie shouted from the kitchen. “He’s good and his lyrics are awesome.”
    “Shut up!” I shouted back, because I didn’t know what else to say.
    Jade stroked the strings again and started strumming. He stopped after a few chords and tuned a string before he resumed playing.
    “See if you recognize this one,” he said, picking out some notes. Maggie appeared in the doorway and stared at him. We both knew the song.
    When he opened his mouth and launched into “Maggie May,” I almost slid off the couch, and Maggie looked like she was having a spontaneous orgasm on the spot. Hearing him sing had been good last night, but I had been outside, not sitting right next to him. Now I heard all the nuances of his voice, and it was like heaven. I was transfixed, frozen with wonder as he sang the words and coaxed the notes from his guitar.
    “Take the next verse, Rylan,” Jade challenged. When I didn’t move, he nudged me with his knee.
    “What?”
    “Sing, Rylan. Sing the next verse,” he repeated. I wasn’t sure if I could make my voice work. He grinned when I started to sing. His foot tapped out the beat, and when he joined me in the final chorus, the real Maggie Mae turned into a fangirl and screamed.
    “Holy shit, you guys sound great together. Rylan, you need to teach Jade one of your songs. Please. Please,” she begged. She got down on her knees and crawled across the floor, like a woman dying of thirst.
    “God damn,” Jade said. “We did sound good together.”
    “You should get your keyboard,” Maggie said.
    “You play keyboard?” Jade asked.
    “A little,” I said. “I took a few years of piano lessons until my dad made me quit.”
    “Why would he make you quit?”
    Shit. I wasn’t about to reveal the truth to him. My brother had told my dad people were making fun of me for playing the piano. Lucas told my dad he didn’t want me to get beat up, so my dad decided it was best that I stop playing. Really, Lucas thought I was getting out of work because of the lessons.
    After my dad made me quit, my music teacher at school let me practice during one of my free periods.
    “Not enough time. When I got older, I had to help with the planting and the harvesting and all the other fun shit that comes with living on a working farm.” I shrugged. “I started playing again when I met Maggie. She gave me a keyboard.”
    “I’ll get the keyboard if you show Jade the lyrics you wrote this afternoon,” Maggie said.
    Sweat beaded up on my forehead, and I shifted uncomfortably. Jade placed his hand on my forearm. A wave of calmness flowed through me.
    “You don’t have to show me,” Jade said quietly.
    “No, it’s okay,” I said. “I just….”
    “Rylan, I won’t laugh at you,” he said.
    Maggie cleared her throat. She was holding the notebook, giving me an encouraging look. I nodded, and she handed the book to Jade. I suddenly had the urge to bolt out of the room, but Jade shuffled closer to me. We were now touching from our shoulders to the tips of our shoes.
    My leg vibrated as I watched his eyes shift from side to side as he read what I’d written a few short hours ago. He read for a few minutes and then picked up his guitar and strummed different chords before he settled on one and started singing my lyrics.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maggie fumbling with her phone, but Jade’s singing pulled me away from her. He stopped playing and I wanted to protest, but he changed a few notes and started again. This time he kept going, and the words meshed with