Kevin was more of a morning person -- economics forced him to be that way. He'd taken a job with UPS during the first winter out of school as a package handler, loading the trucks up. 4am-9am, the sunrise shift, unloading trucks. It'd given him an appreciation for physical fitness he hadn't had going in, though he also realized that there was no way he'd make a driver position in a couple months. When he'd been in high school, which he graduated with a less than stellar grade point average only through a series of haggling deals made with his mother to prevent dropping out, he'd been all but impossible to wake up. Now? He could pull himself up at 7am sharp, even if he'd only slept four hours. So he'd taken the guitar, an old Martin acoustic model; this old black lady came in the store saying it had been her husband's for fifty years, and she wanted it to go to the right sort of player. He paid her what she asked and hid it from the boss, but only barely. 

In any case, that was the guitar that Parker was trying to get ahold of, and though it was this beautiful old thing that he loved, he let her grab it in a way that would have earned most other people a slap or something; she was, after all, handing him coffee, and that meant that he had to let go anyway. 

[i]“Teach me somethin’,”[/i] She told him.

He almost told her "let's try some Slayer today" but that would probably have garnered him a look of loathing; that sort of metal wasn't for everyone, and Parker was definitely one of those people; even one coffee in her wasn't going to be enough. But beyond that, the idea was to do something simpler and learnable in a day, not to show off. It had to be kept simple, or it'd be discouraging. 

He glanced around the apartment, which was decorated less according to his tastes than to hers, but which included a comfortable couch and some other furniture, kept clean only by a rigid sort of self-discipline, while figuring out what to play -- part of the ritual was to pick good songs. He'd learned from his stepfather, who had an electric guitar at the time, and came to acoustics later. But there were good songs out there that almost demanded an acoustic guitar. Others could be converted over, but he'd been saving one, "I dunno, I think you're starting to run me out of songs here, Parker, unless, of course..." the usual way of it was to hand her that Martin after getting the basics of the song down and then grabbing one of his own to take up another role. It wasn't as simple, sometimes, as just playing the whole song on one guitar -- some required two to do right.

In any case, he started to move fingers and pick over the strings; a simple melody that repeated itself, but was highly distinctive. Once in a while, he played Pink Floyd, but it was not a regular thing, but it seemed like the right time to work on it -- a wistful sort of tune, a trip down memory lane. That was "Wish You Were Here" to a T. Simple song, but one of the best. Some of them were like that.

"Once you have that, I'll get mine and play the other part," he told her.