Total pages in book: 198
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
“You’re gonna sing?” Amos asked slowly.
I wiggled my eyebrows. “Unless you want to?”
That got him to stop talking, but it didn’t get him to look any less dubious.
“What about you, Jackie? You want to?” I asked my coworker.
That got her to snap out of it. She looked at me too and shook her head. “In front of Yuki? No.”
With the notebook propped on my knee, I closed an eye and whispered the words under my breath to get the timing of them okay. Clearing my throat, I heard the distinct sound of tires on the driveway.
I remembered the chords he played along with the lyrics the day his dad and I had overheard him and was going to stick to them. They were simple enough for me to follow since I wasn’t specifically talented enough to play difficult things and sing at the same time; it had to be one or the other. Figuring it was as good as it was going to get, I started. There wasn’t a nervous bone in my body. Yuki knew I wasn’t Whitney or Christina. Then again, no one was Whitney or Christina. I wasn’t Lady Yuki either.
I found a book yesterday
With stories I cannot speak
Empty and hollow
The words are nothing but bleak
Okay, this was going well. I smiled a little at Am, whose mouth was slightly gaped, before I kept going. There wasn’t much left.
Maybe there is a map
To find the happiness in me
Don’t let me be
Left to sink into the debris
I dipped straight into the chorus because it was what he had written since I hadn’t convinced him to save it for a little later.
We rise and fall with the tide
I cannot be led
Nowhere left to hide
The fire must be fed
Yuki caught on to the rhythm and started tapping her foot, smiling wide. “Do it again!” she cheered.
I smiled back at her and nodded, doing the chorus once more and then starting from the beginning, doing it a little easier, tapping my foot to keep the time. My friend gestured me to sing it once more, but this time, her sweet voice joined in, clearer, higher, and more piercing than mine.
Some people in life just had it, this talent embedded into their DNA that made them extra special, and Yuki Young was one of them.
And it was the same vibe I’d gotten from Amos. This ability to make me break out in goose bumps.
So I smiled as she sang along to the parts she’d memorized and eyed the two teenagers sitting on the floor, staring at us. And when I got to the end of the chorus, I grinned at my friend and said, “Good, right?”
Yuki was already nodding and smiling so wide, I couldn’t have loved her more for being so sweet to my new friend. “He wrote that? You wrote that, Amos?”
He nodded quickly, gaze going from her to me.
“Great job, teddy bear. Just great, great job. That line about being left to sink into the debris . . .” She nodded again. “That was really good. Memorable. I loved it.”
Amos’s eyes swept to me, and just as he opened his mouth, another much deeper voice spoke up from behind me.
“Wow.”
I turned to look over my shoulder to find Mr. Rhodes standing just inside the garage. Dressed in that incredible uniform with his arms crossed over his chest, feet wide apart, he was smiling. Faintly, but it was definitely there.
Probably because of Yuki’s beautiful voice.
But it was me he was looking at. Me that he was focusing that slim smile on.
I smiled right back at him.
“I didn’t know you sang!” Jackie shouted out of nowhere.
I turned my attention back to her. “I’ve sat through a lot of voice lessons. I’m not bad, but I’m not good.”
Beside me, Yuki snorted. I didn’t even spare her a glance. “What? I wish my voice was as husky as yours.”
That got me to blink at her. “Don’t you have a four-octave range?”
She blinked back. “Just accept the compliment, Ora.”
Standing up, I handed the guitar back over to Amos, who was watching me still pretty sneakily and then set his notebook down beside the pillow he’d been sitting on. My old friend had gotten up too, and I tapped her shoulder before gesturing to my landlord.
“Yuki, this is Mr. Rhodes, Amos’s dad and the man who owns the house. Mr. Rhodes, this is my friend Yuki.”
She instantly thrust her hand out. “Pleasure to meet you, Officer.”
Mr. Rhodes’s eyebrows rose up from beneath the sunglasses. “I’m a game warden, but nice to meet you too.” I hadn’t noticed until then that he was carrying bags in each hand. He shifted the one in his right hand over to the left and shook hers quickly, so quickly it wouldn’t hit me until later how quickly he moved on, before he turned his attention back . . . to me. “Not sure if you want to come over, but I brought the kids lunch. I’ve got plenty.”