“Tell me,” I urged softly and he bit his lip, his strong white teeth sinking into the flesh of his full lower lip and I had to beat back a shiver, it was so sexy.
He stopped biting his lip and started, “Right.”
I tore my eyes from his mouth to look into his.
He went on, “After a fight, Dad bought a guitar. Pissed Mom off, which was his intention. She went fuckin’ ballistic. When he came home with that guitar, it was the worst fight up until then, but she was dedicated to upping the game so it wasn’t their worst fight ever. Still, she was off on one. Dad, for once, didn’t back down and return the guitar. He was out in the garage all the time, plucking at it. The whole point was him bein’ shit at doin’ it, and since it was electric and he also got an amp, him makin’ nothin’ but noise and that noise bein’ loud sent her over the edge time and again.”
“I’m beginning to think your childhood was worse than mine,” I shared and watched Hop’s face get warm and intent.
“How long’s she been at the bottle?” he asked quietly.
“One year, she tripped and spilled a glass of red wine on my fabulous gypsy Halloween costume,” I answered instantly. “Since it wouldn’t do for me to go out in a wine-stained gypsy costume, no matter how fabulous it was, Dad had to cut holes out of a sheet from the guest bedroom so I went as a blue paisley ghost. The sheet was so huge I tripped on it and chipped my front tooth on the sidewalk outside our neighbor’s house. My tooth is capped. I was nine.”
“Babe,” he murmured, his voice low and gruff, filled with feeling.
Feeling for me.
That feeling coming from Hop felt nice, but the reason he was giving it to me didn’t, so I shrugged. “Something life has taught me over and over, it can suck.”
“That it can, lady,” he agreed.
“So anyway,” I moved to change the subject. “I take it you confiscated your dad’s guitar.”
Hop thankfully, but not surprisingly, went with me but he did it while both of his hands drifted up my back, gathered my hair away from my face and one hand held it bunched at the back of my head while the other one moved to stroke my spine.
This felt nice too.
Or, nicer.
“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Dad got sick of drivin’ Mom ‘round the bend and I was curious. Picked it up. To this day, don’t know how it happened but I just took to it. No lessons, nothing. Just started strumming and made music. Dad was fuckin’ thrilled. Thought it was the shit. Mom was pissed. Thought it’d give me ideas of bein’ a juke box hero. I didn’t care what either of them thought. Two things took me out of the shit that was my life with them and that was bein’ at a bike shop with my dad or sittin’ in the garage, fuckin’ around with that guitar.”
“How old were you?” I asked.
“Twelve,” he answered.
“Wow, that’s young,” I remarked and it was Hop’s turn to shrug. “That’s also really cool,” I continued.
That was when Hop grinned. “I thought so too. When I was fourteen, met Danny from last night. He took lessons, his parents wanted him to play classical guitar but it was all about the rock riff with him. They were disappointed but he didn’t give a shit. That bug bites you, no cure for it.”
“Obviously there was a cure for you,” I said and his hand stopped stroking my spine as he wrapped his arm tight around me.
“For me, it wasn’t about the same thing as it was for Danny,” Hop shared. “He feeds off what you saw last night, standin’ in front of a mic, makin’ music, women pressed to the front of the stage, shouting, dancing. He gets high off that vibe and he works through that high in a hotel room later with a couple of bottles of bourbon, some grass and as many warm, soft bodies as he can get. When we recruited the guys and formed a band, if he turned up for rehearsals, it was a miracle. But he never missed a show.”
“What was it about for you?” I asked.
“The poetry,” Hop answered and I was so surprised by this answer, I blinked.
“What?”
“Music is poetry, babe. Each note is a word that’s uniquely crafted to go with the next note. For me, the only way it gets better is if you put that to lyrics. You take them apart, any good song tells a story separately, through the music and through the lyrics. What makes it grab you by the balls is when you put them together. I didn’t have a lot of beauty in my life. Found it in that.”
This was deep, another revelation about Hop that didn’t surprise me but I felt my brows draw together.
“So why did you quit?”