A couple of guitar tips.

Cole followed me to my bedroom. Sarah watched us go but gave us boys some space. The fact that she didn’t say anything implying she trusted me to get along with her brother.

I left the door open, of course, and when Cole went into my room, his eyes immediately landed on my two electric guitars standing side by side on their stands, then on the bass next to them.

He just stared at them, eyes wide, before asking me, “Why does this one have only four strings?”

“That’s a bass. It looks like a guitar, but it’s different. I’ve only been learning it for about six months.”

He nodded, and his eyes went back to the guitars.

“Which one do you like more?” I asked him.

“...The black one.”

“My man.” I nodded approvingly, and he seemed to smile a bit.

I picked up the guitar, the Ep. Les Paul that the girls gave me for Christmas. It had become my main guitar already, and it sounded like a hundred angels rocking in perfect harmony. I admit, I hesitated. Letting a kid hold half my soul was terrifying, but…

“Wanna hold it?” I asked him.

Cole pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “Y-Yeah. Can I?”

“Sit down.”

He sat down on my desk chair and I gave him the guitar. “Careful. It’s heavier than an acoustic.”

Kid knew how to hold a guitar, at least. He set it on his lap and looked it up and down.

I plugged the guitar and turned on the amp at a low volume.“Go ahead, play something.”

“...” Cole waited a moment, thinking it through, then played a basic finger exercise meant to get someone used to moving their hands and fingers up and down the fret.

As he played that, Cake walked into the room, tail high up, and jumped on the bed, eyes on Cole. The kid was too focused on his playing to notice. He struggled, was slow and a little clumsy, but so was everyone when they started. And yet…

“Hey, you’re getting it down. That’s good. I can see what you mean about your fingers, though. Mmm, here, look.”

I picked up the second guitar, the cheap one I bought when I was a kid, and sat across from Cole on my bed. “Raise the fretboard a bit, keep it more diagonal, then make sure your thumb is somewhere behind your middle finger, like this. You’re keeping it too high, that’s why you can’t reach some notes and you have to move your wrist more.”

Cole frowned as he tried to do what I told him, watching my own hand and trying to copy it. He got it, and he did reach all strings with no problem now, but he had switched his positioning, so now the same exercise as before felt different to him and he did it even slower.

He clicked his tongue.

“Hey, it happens. That grip on the fretboard will work better for you, but you have to practice. Eventually, you can do it faster and it’ll always be good as a warmup.” I played the same exercise as Cole, only smoother and faster, going up and down the fretboard and getting faster and faster. Cole’s eyes went wide. “Okay, sorry, that’s just showing off…” I said, chuckling. “But really, there’s no point to these exercises if you’re not having fun playing. Have you learned any songs?”

“N-Not yet. I’m practicing, but my teacher says I should learn scales and chords first.”

I grimaced. “I get why he would, but… It’s always better to have a goal to work towards. Is there any song you want to learn?”

Cole nodded. “But it’s too hard for me.”

“Tell me the name of the song.”

He did and I searched for it on my phone. It was a popular pop song, recent. Not my style, but the guitar did sound good. Complex, too, but…

I distilled it to the very basics, stripping away most of the flair. It ended up sounding flatter, but still very recognizable as the song. “How about it? Think you could play that?”

Cole’s eyes went wide again, his jaw dropping. “Y-You learned it just hearing it once?”

“Not exactly,” I said, chuckling. “It’s an approximation, and just the simplest I could make it. When you play for long enough, you start to develop your ears and you can recognize what notes someone is playing, even if it’s a different instrument. It takes practice, and time, and it’s hard, but… It’s fun. So, do you think you could play this?”

“I mean…” Cole swallowed. “It’s easier than what I saw on the internet.”

A knock on the open door drew out attention. Sarah was standing there, leaning against the door frame. “Hey, guitarists. If we take any longer we’ll find a longer line at the park. Unless you don’t want to go. Robert, Violet and I can go on our own.”

“Um…!” Cole exclaimed, but he started looking from me to his sister, conflicted.

“We’re going, we’re going,” I told her. “Come on, Cole. We can practice whenever we want, after all, right?”

He pursed his lips and nodded with his head down. “Y-Yeah. Um… Thanks.”

“Careful with that guitar, Cole,” Sarah told him. “If you drop that, Oliver might actually **** you.”

“W-What?”

“Hey, shoo! Get out of here. Only musicians allowed here. Shoo!” I told Sarah, making shooing motions with my hand. She went back downstarts, laughing.

I didn’t call attention to it, but I did catch Cole smiling. He also did seem to hold the guitar with much more… fear of dropping it.

Robert and Violet didn’t want to say goodbye to the dogs, and Cake didn’t let them play with her, keeping her distance. However, she did let Cole pet her gently. I think that improved his mood. When a cat rejects others but kind of accepts you, you somehow feel special.

We left Isabelle with the pets and got in Sarah's car, ready to go to the theme park. That visit was a good icebreaker, and the atmosphere in the car was a lot more relaxed than I expected.

Thank God.

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