A wood-burned sign hung over the three seat basement bar where they rarely entertained.
The sign was a gift from a coworker, who got the woodburning kit for Christmas.
3rd Shift Troubadour
Laura woke just after he got home from work, and when he heard her alarm-The Muppets theme, always-he’d begin to play his acoustic guitar, a bottle of Southern Comfort and a bottle of Jezynowka looking over his shoulder.
Danny was a Diet Coke guy, maybe a beer after he mowed the lawn.
He didn’t stare at the fretboard as much as it stared at him when he tried a new chord he saw on Youtube.
With a cherry cough lozenge in his mouth, he sang his new one, Highway 122.
The song was anthemic he thought, with a haunting melody and a-
“Honey?”
Laura stood in the doorway, boxers a size too big for her, the bottom of her t-shirt caught on the navel piercing she had gotten at her sister’s bachelorette party two decades ago.
Danny looked at her, remembered when he would fall asleep on the sofa playing his guitar and Laura would leave Post-It notes complimenting him on his songs.
Autumn Princess was her favorite, a song inspired by a picture of her eating a candy apple at a cider mill with her parents when she was 19.
“Honey?” she said again, though he had heard the first one.
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