Double Exposition (Songs and Sonatas Book 1)

by Jerica MacMillan

  That’s not the kind of thing you say to a friend.

  Chapter Seven

  Jonathan

  Gabby’s quiet the whole drive to my house, only chiming in when I suggest hitting the drive thru of a sandwich place for dinner. She has her hands stuffed under her legs as she stares out the window. When she looks at me, it looks like she’s biting her lips to keep herself from talking.

  I wish she wouldn’t. I enjoy her conversation, the funny stories she tells about her classes and professors. But I’m not sure how to draw her out, get her to relax. She wasn’t stiff with me like this before.

  Hopefully she’ll relax once we get to my place with dinner to act as both shield and ice breaker.

  My roommate isn’t home tonight. He’s taking his girlfriend out for dinner and then staying the night at her place. When he let me know his plans earlier this week, I decided it’d be the perfect time to have Gabby over. My classes end at three on Thursdays, so I had time to come home and straighten up before picking her up.

  Even so, the place seems schlubby and inadequate once she steps through the door, from the tangle of cables and devices around the TV to the array of remotes and ring stains on the coffee table to the cracking vinyl on the corners of the couch. “Lived in,” is the most generous description of our place.

  My parents put the money my brothers and I made as kids in a trust that we don’t have full access to until we each turn twenty-five. I can use it for school and reasonable living expenses, but my practical dad wouldn’t give his approval for dropping a wad of cash on high-end furniture. He’s also the one who wanted me to have a roommate instead of just getting a place by myself. Something about wanting me to learn responsibility and the value of money. But it has the added benefit of helping me blend in with my friends since I try to keep my past under wraps for the most part.

  My guitar case sits on the blue upholstered loveseat adjacent to the couch. None of our furniture goes together. Neither of us wanted to spend a lot of money on it, so we hit garage sales and Craigslist and assembled the motley assortment we now have.

  I’ve had girls over before, but rarely did they know about my past as a boyband star, even if I wasn’t the frontman. I keep my hair shorter now on purpose, which, combined with the fact that I’ve gotten taller, broader, and my face looks older, means that I’m not often recognized except in a vague, “You look familiar, have I seen you around?” kind of way.

  A few people have figured it out, though. Like those girls in Gabby’s class that blurted it out in the coffee shop the day we met. Anytime someone brings it up to me, I ask them to keep it quiet. Mostly that works okay. But not always.

  At least Gabby isn’t starstruck. She was a little shocked at first, which makes sense, but she’s never acted differently around me than when we first met. Well, except for right now.

  And for some reason, I want Gabby to see me as more sophisticated than a typical college guy. I can’t even explain to myself why that is.

  She follows me to the kitchen table—at least that’s all a matching set—and sits in a chair, glancing around at the cabinets and floors that show their decades of wear. It’s an older house, comfortable, but it could use some updating. She doesn’t comment, though, and unwraps her sandwich, the crinkling paper loud in the silence that stretches between us.

  I clear my throat, desperate to break this weird tension. “So, was sight singing any better today?”

  She looks at me and rolls her eyes as she swallows. “Oh my God. Today he told us we shouldn’t have any free time. We’re music students, so any time not spent in class, rehearsal, or doing homework should be in the practice room.”

  Coughing, I drink my soda to wash down the food that got stuck in my throat at the ridiculousness of that statement. “Was he joking?”

  She shakes her head, her face solemn, but her eyes dancing. “Not even a little.”

  “So I guess you shouldn’t be here.”

  She tilts her head side to side. “I think we’re allowed breaks for food. But I’m not sure he’d approve of me listening to some former pop star’s version of music.”

  “‘Version of music’? Burn.”

  She grins around a mouthful of her sandwich.

  “Does that mean you want to get back as soon as possible?”

  Shaking her head, she swallows, taking a sip of her soda. “No. I don’t think I should let Mr. Sol-ti-re-fa dictate my life choices.” Her gaze turns more serious. “I mean, I know a career in music takes dedication and lots of hard work. But the man is married with four kids. Clearly he doesn’t even follow his own advice.”

  I chuckle, enjoying our banter, glad that she’s finally comfortable again. Her earlier tension bothered me more than it had a right to. But I don’t want her to feel nervous or uncomfortable around me.

  After finishing my sandwich and balling up the wrapper, I gesture toward the living room. “Shall we?”

  “Ready when you are.” She stands, waiting for me to pass before following me, the soft scent of her shampoo washing over me as I walk by.

  Her hair is down today, and I want to run my fingers through it. But that’s not why she’s here. She’s here to listen to my song and help me figure out what’s not working. Right. Need to stay focused.

  I pick up my guitar—a mid-range acoustic Taylor I got after Brash’s brief moment of fame ended. I wanted something decent to mess around on. I didn’t need the high-dollar instruments I played on stage or in the studio just for myself. Sitting on the coffee table, I strum the strings a bit and adjust the tuning, acutely aware of the fact that I have an actual trained musician listening to me, despite her protestations that she’s not all that great. She knows more than I do, and she’ll pick up on it if I’m out of tune at all. Even if chord dictation makes everything sound like musical soup by the end of class. I know that feeling from when I first started teaching myself songs from YouTube videos.

  She’s settled on the couch, her legs tucked under her, her eyes on me. I glance up and clear my throat, flashing a quick smile. I haven’t felt this nervous to play in a long time. “Alright. Here goes.”

  Her attention is distracting, so I focus on my fingers plucking the strings, the melody starting out soft and slow before transitioning to basic chord strumming while I sing. It feels awkward to keep my focus on my hands. I don’t need to see what I’m doing to play, especially not something that I’ve been working on for weeks, trying to get it right. My gaze drifts to her knees as I sing. She sits still, almost frozen, waiting for me to finish.

  As the last chords fade away, the reverberations drifting through the air, I raise my eyes to hers. I don’t stop the strings with my hand when I finish, and she waits for them to still before she says anything.

  “I like it.” She says it slowly, as though she’s picking such simple words with extreme care. Which is funny, because she hasn’t said anything all that helpful.

  I raise an eyebrow. “And?”

  She tilts her head and bites her lip, her eyes focused on the sound hole. “It’s more of a but. I like it, but it’s missing something.”

  I blow out a breath. “Yeah, I know. I’ve thought that for a while, but I can’t figure out what’s wrong.”

  She nods. “Yeah, that’s it. It’s not that it’s missing something. Something’s not right. In the middle.” She scoots forward, her feet coming out from under her to rest on the floor. “Play it again. Not the whole thing, just the end of the second verse and the bridge. That’s the weird part.”

  When I’m done, her brows are crinkled together, and she’s shaking her head still staring at the guitar.. “Yeah. I don’t know. It’s … weird. Something’s off.” She looks at me, then, instead of my guitar, a little grimace on her face. “Do you have it written down somewhere? I’m better with analyzing things on paper.”

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s probably not done correctly like you’re used to.” I slip the guitar back into the open case, and get the binder from my room
where I keep my written versions of the songs I’m working on. Flipping it open, I present it to her, squelching my self-consciousness about the scribbled notations and chord markings.

  She takes the binder, her eyebrows still crinkled as she looks over what I have written down, her finger drifting over the pencil marks. I step back, trying not to hover over her, fidgety and restless while she dissects my work.

  Brash never played my songs. At least not once we got picked up after our cover of the Jackson 5 song “ABC” went viral. After that we only played songs written by professional song writers, and if I ever mentioned that we had a few original songs that I’d written, our manager and the record producers gave me an, “Oh, that’s nice,” and brushed me off. The only thing that would’ve made it worse was if they’d actually patted me on the head like they seemed to want to.

  “Do you have a pencil?”

  Gabby’s voice pulls me out of my memories and back to the present. “Yeah. Of course. Hang on.”

  When I come back from grabbing a pencil out of my room, she’s opened the prongs of the binder and taken out the sheet with my song on it and a fresh sheet of staff paper. I hand her the pencil, and she starts marking symbols on the top line of the fresh sheet of paper.

  “From the melody sketched out here and the chord markings, you seem to be in G major, but you don’t have the key signature on your sheet.” She taps the sharp symbol next to the treble clef on the top line of the top staff. “Or measure markings.”

  Her voice is soft and nonjudgmental, but I feel like a kid being scolded. Or a student in a class. I clear my throat. “Yeah. My mom taught me the basics, but I don’t know much about key signatures. The lack of measure markings is just me being lazy. I’m the only one who’s ever seen this, and I know what I mean.”

  She looks up at me, her eyes sharp, surprise written on her face. “Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, the key signature makes it so that you don’t have to write a sharp next to all the Fs, because it’s in the key.” She taps that sharp again. “Since this sharp is on an F, all the Fs are sharp unless we use a natural sign for some reason. I don’t think we’ll be doing that, though.” Her fingers trace over the opening notes I have written down, and she hums a little to herself, copying them onto the clean sheet of paper. Her notes are little angled lines on the staff, the stems sharp slashes, connected by another line. “You have these as quarter notes, but when you played they were eighth notes.” She sits up and looks at me. “Play the opening again.”

  “Sure.” I grab the guitar and prop my foot on the edge of the coffee table, not wanting to crowd her by sitting on the coffee table again. After I play through to the point that it switches to vocals with strummed chords, she stops me.

  “Yeah, okay. Let me get the rhythm down. I’ll have you play it again a couple of times. Hang on.”

  We work through the whole song, me playing chunks, her scribbling down notes, making a cleaner copy of what I have written, until we get to the bridge. The part that isn’t quite right.

  She has me play it through while she stares at the chords I have written down, her forehead wrinkled in concentration. Muttering to herself and shaking her head, she writes on the paper after I get to the end of the bridge. I lean in to see what she’s writing, and it looks like Roman numerals under each chord.

  “What are you doing?”

  Her head pops up, and her forehead clears. “Oh, I’m analyzing your chord progression. I think that’s where the problem is. The rest of the song you’re solidly in G, but in the bridge you’re playing around with the minor chords. I think you should go the whole way and have that section in the relative minor. So E becomes your tonal center, but it’s E minor, right?” She glances between the paper and me, and I know my face is a picture of confusion, because I don’t quite get what she’s talking about. Setting the pencil down and scrubbing her face with her hands, she shakes her head. “I wish I had a piano. I could explain it a lot better with a piano.”

  “I have an electric piano in my room. Will that work?”

  “Really?” Her eyes are wide with surprise.

  I set my guitar back in its case. “Yeah. Come on.”

  She gathers up the papers, pencil, and binder from the coffee table. “Bring your guitar. Because whatever I plunk out on the piano, you’ll have to translate to that. Might as well have it ready.”

  Guitar in hand, I lead the way to my room, glad it’s not too much of a sty. I hadn’t planned on her being in here, because she just came over to listen to my song. Her soft scent in my space is messing with my head.

  Setting down the guitar on the bed, I pull the little folding stool out and press the power button on the piano, unplugging my headphones and turning up the volume a little. She settles on the bench, setting the binder and papers against the wire music stand.

  “Okay, so your song is in the key of G major.” She plays a slow scale up and down. “All major keys have what’s called a relative minor.” She plays another scale, this one starting on a different note and sounding sadder. “E minor is the relative minor for G major. Instead of just focusing on two, three, and six chords in the bridge, you should go all the way into E minor. It’ll make more sense. And we can borrow from E major so we have major four and five chords, which give a better signal of the key than if we left them natural.”

  I clear my throat, not wanting to interrupt, but needing to. “Um, you lost me on that last part.”

  She flashes me a smile. “Sorry. I get carried away sometimes.” Playing another minor scale, but this one a little different, she continues to explain, “A lot of the time we use what’s called the melodic minor. What that means is that we raise the sixth and seventh degree of the scale so they sound like they would in the parallel major.”

  My brows come together. “Parallel major?”

  She chuckles. “Sorry. Yeah. The parallel major has the same name and a different key signature. So, E minor and E major. The relative minor has the same key signature as the major, like G major and E minor. They both have one sharp—F sharp.”

  I nod like I completely understand. I kind of do, but I don’t want her to think I’m a moron by having her explain it more. I’ll Google it after she leaves. “Okay. So what’s the melodic thing you were just talking about?”

  “Right. For the melodic minor we make the last part of the scale sound like the major scale on the way up. That gives us the half step between ti and do that we’re used to.”

  “Uh, okay.”

  She laughs. “Never mind. That’s not that important for our purposes. What you need to do is use E minor, A major, and B major chords for the bridge. I think that’ll fix what’s wrong. But you might need to rework the melody to fit with those chords better.”

  I strum through the chords she mentions a few times to get a feel for them and how they’ll fit with the melody as it is. I throw in an F minor the second time through, which I think adds a little something extra.

  Gabby’s brow furrows. “Wait. What was that? That other chord you played.”

  “This one? F minor,” I say as I strum it again.

  She shakes her head. “That should be diminished, not minor. Try it as a diminished chord. Make it a C flat. You could even throw in an E flat if you want. Try it both ways and see what you think.”

  Biting my lip in concentration, I sit down on the bed, my legs jostling against Gabby on the bench. I try the F diminished a few different ways, my brain figuring out that C flat and B are the same note after struggling for a second. Finally I settle on something that flows nicely with the rest of the chords and play it through a few times, getting the movements between chords settled into the muscles of my fingers.

  “Yeah.” Gabby’s smiling now. “That’s better. Don’t you think?”

  I smile back. “Yeah. It is. Now I just need to see how the melody lays over it.” Starting from the end of the verse before the bridge, I work out the transition, and go over the bridge, stopping a few times to rework
the melody.

  When I play it through again, it works, whatever was missing finally clicking into place like the last piece of a puzzle. I play the whole song through once more from beginning to end, and it flows, like it was always meant to be, and it was just waiting for me to put it all together the right way.

  God, this is what I love about music and songwriting, the feel of it when I get it just right. It’s addicting. A high I can never get enough of. My eyes lock with Gabby’s.

  Can she feel it too?

  Chapter Eight

  Gabby

  The final notes of Jonathan’s song fade out as he stares at me, his face lit up from the inside, like a kid on Christmas morning who’s gotten everything on his list.

  His song was beautiful the first time that he played it, about a love lost and found, full of nostalgia and longing. But with the changes? It’s so much more now.

  He sets his guitar down and stands, leaning over me, brushing against my shoulder. Tapping at the paper on the piano’s music stand, he says, “Okay, let’s write this down so it’s all there.” He hums through the bridge again, and when he gets to the first part he changed, he looks around.

  Handing him the pencil, I hold my breath at the quick smile he flashes my way. I think about moving, getting off the bench and out of the way, but the way the piano is wedged into the room and where he’s standing, I’m pretty much trapped.

  And really, I like being this close to him. I’m enjoying the brush of his side against my shoulder, his arm against mine as he reaches past me to hold the paper still while he erases the notes I drew and draws in the new ones, trying to copy my style of thick slanted lines for note heads. He scribbles in the names of the chords underneath, then stares at the page for a moment, like he’s soaking it all in.