Hidden Tracks

by Zoe Lee

  “No,” he murmured, rolling his head to meet her gaze. “No boy either, in point of fact.”

  If he were someone else, she would feel like this was progress, a personal revelation that indicated trust or security. But he still looked distant and mysterious, so he could simply be pointing out her assumptions about his sexuality when she said a girl.

  It didn’t seem to matter to her body, which shivered under his gaze. Now that Downbeat’s set at Pitchfork was done, she assumed that Seth would leave tomorrow, or the day after at the latest. He would return to his other life where he ran his family’s restaurant. She had barely started her work with Downbeat for her story, but her time with Seth would shortly come to its end. She was curious about this possibility and her body wanted to give into the temptation of the frissons she kept feeling. She didn’t want this to pass by without even trying to figure it out.

  So she took a slow, deep drink and held the icy cocktail in her mouth for a long pause, feeling it tickle across her palate and dip into the back of her throat where she’d closed it. She swallowed with one hard convulsion of her throat and crossed her legs with languor. “What a shame,” she murmured, sliding one hand down her thigh, “on a night like tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  His bright eyes were calm and lazy, but also heavy-lidded, his body so at ease that it looked like a pose, as if he had to try to appear like there was no tension in his body. If he wanted to be enigmatic, she thought, feeling her body hum in response, then she could be a cool creature, the goddess ex-wife of a rockstar. She slid the icy glass across the upper swells of her breasts, the condensation leaving a trail of water droplets behind on her skin.

  “In my experience, musicians don’t want to be… lonely after a stellar performance like yours,” she explained, delicately but clearly pressing her luck a bit to see his reaction.

  “I’m not lonely,” he murmured, curling forwards over his wide-set knees. “Or alone.” His eyes swept across her face like a refreshing caress of air conditioning, making her nipples pucker, before his eyes looked around the bar at all of the others. He leaned an inch closer and the knuckles of one hand brushed one of her kneecaps, incidental but perhaps deliberate too. “It’s getting late. Can I walk you back to your hotel? It’s a pretty night.”

  Breathless with pride that she’d taken a leap and flirted with him, heart pounding in delight that he had reciprocated with this offer, she accepted simply, “Yes, thank you.”

  He pushed up with a smooth flex of his arms and shoulders, then offered her a hand. Unbearably charmed, she felt another shiver of pleasure when she clasped his fingers and he tugged her gently to her feet. She led the way towards the others, Seth shadowing her so closely that his breath was on the back of her neck and a hint of his cologne teased her.

  When she and Seth goodnight, the others were too drunk and too pumped with adrenaline still to notice anything unusual about Astrid and Seth leaving together. It wasn’t often that Astrid got to have any secrets. So it made her heart flutter as they left the bar to embark on an impetuous night with Seth that no one else knew about.

  Outside, the air conditioning was replaced by humidity streaked with the breeze off the lake, always an unexpected mixture that made Astrid’s skin flush and shiver and prickle with goosebumps. Seth kept pace with her, their heights nearly equal, and their thighs and the backs of their hands brushed occasionally as they began walking down a long city block.

  “What was the first thing you remember performing?” she asked idly.

  “Chopsticks,” he answered just as idly, probably joking, hair shaking in the breeze.

  With a soft laugh, she shook her head and leaned into him as they waited at an intersection for the light to change, and she shivered delicately when his hand brushed the small of her back and cupped her far hip lightly.

  “What was the first TV show you were obsessed with?” he asked as they crossed.

  “E.R.,” she answered honestly, guiding him to turn right towards her hotel.

  The streets had this particular feeling of vacancy, as if the very air here knew this part of the city was designed and expected to be full of people, and was confounded to find it nighttime, almost empty but still perfectly well lit. It made it seem ripe, as if it were hungry for secrets, so she obliged, telling Seth and the air around them some silly facts about herself, hungry for even a moment’s connection before she brought him up to her room.

  “My first performance was Twelfth Night. The best book I read in school was Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence. I always overdo it at Halloween. I’ve been to Italy at least ten times but I haven’t been to Canada or Mexico, despite living in America for twenty years.”

  He kept his hand at her hip, but pivoted his body into hers so that it was as if they were ballroom dancing and she were leading; he stepped back to keep up with her momentum, their bodies brushing. His other hand slid to her other hip, their elevated breaths catching between their lips only a few inches apart. He led her sideways a few paces until she gently bumped into the smooth marble of the Fannie May store on Michigan Avenue.

  As his hands traced up her sides, finally coming up to cup her face, his fingertips teasing the feathery strands at her hairline, she imagined she could smell mint and chocolate from inside the store. Her mind felt crisp like the scent of mint, but her body felt like it was dissolving, like chocolate turning to liquid on a warm tongue. She didn’t know this man at all, but she hadn’t always required that, especially not when her body was so voracious in its appetite for him. So when he looked down at her, waiting patiently for her to decide whether she would ask him to move aside or invite him to move closer, she felt no danger, no uncertainty. Her body wanted the pleasure of his; it was already pleasured by him.

  She stroked her tongue up the center of his chin onto his bottom lip, her bottom teeth following, and sighed in relief when his tongue flirted with hers. The kiss was light, their mouths not sealed together, and it was a tease, a temptation, on both of their parts.

  When it felt right, when she’d had enough for this second, she slid her mouth free. Taking his hand, she led him the last block or so to her hotel and up to her room, the silence delicious.

  The silence continued once they were in her room, taking off their shoes and discarding the trappings of modern life—shoes, purse, keys, wallet, cells—and then the trappings of civility—her blouse, his jeans and socks, her capris, his tee.

  But discarding civility didn’t mean that they launched themselves at each other, tore off the other’s underwear, and fucked like animals against the wall of Astrid’s hotel room.

  For them, it meant that they didn’t bother speaking, when their bodies were clearly displaying their needs, the places they longed to be touched and appreciated. It meant that their mouths flirted again while Astrid sent her fingertips featherlight in ten parallel, winding paths over his body, dipping beneath the elastic of his briefs to push them away. It meant that Seth slid his arms around her back and hips and guided her to her bed, where he flipped aside the bedding and slid her onto the cool, starched, white sheets.

  It meant that Astrid’s spine arched delicately and her muscles flexed powerfully while Seth’s mouth and hands tasted and touched every inch of her. It meant that she moaned shamelessly, head tossed back, when he licked light and taunting between her thighs with his hands spread over her soft belly. It meant that she enjoyed viscerally the way his masterful tongue and hands tuned her like an instrument before they played her, variations of the same song until she unraveled and cried out, pulsing against his mouth.

  Just like watching Seth onstage had overstimulated and aroused Astrid, she could tell that performing had filled Seth with wild energy, all of which was now being focused on her.

  Once she’d come the first time, he licked an interlude along her inner thighs and over the twin flares of her hips, before his fingers dipped into her slickness. He coaxed her back to the peak of pleasure with languid surges of his f
ingers, humming some urgent note. She pushed up onto her elbows to look down at him, to send one hand into his hair and urge his mouth back to her once he’d wound her to the breaking point one winch at a time.

  This orgasm shook her and it never quite stopped. It made her hips feel like they were pulling apart from her body to try to allow more of him to fill her. Another lover, especially another new lover, would have run out of patience by now. Or their own needs would have overcome their patience. But Seth’s eyes were ferocious and tireless on hers as he held his fingers deep but began vibrating his whole hand, honestly, the heel of his palm shaking against her clit. She shouted out, breaking the silence without words. She writhed against his hand and her hands kneaded his hair and shoulders, whatever she could reach.

  Finally she collapsed, womb still shuddering, and she gasped out a delirious laugh.

  “Water,” he murmured into her mound before she felt him leave the bed, but she was too liquefied by the three orgasms in under an hour to do more than flex her hips and toes.

  When he came back, he was drinking from a water bottle and had a condom between two fingers, offering her the bottle but letting her take both it and the condom from him.

  She took her fill of the water, then tore open the condom and tilted her head to the bed beside her. He settled there, sitting up, his necklaces swaying an inch away from his sternum, and she couldn’t help but tangle her fingers in the warm metal and stones. She put the condom on with her other hand while he watched her intently, prick flexing into her hold. It was a pretty one, proportionate to him, dark pink and cut and so thick at the base.

  Her desire for him took her over completely and instead of letting him worship her like he had been doing, she climbed into his lap. His hands slid to her hips to steady her and he moaned into her gasp when she sank onto him and tangled the necklaces up more, until her knuckles were in the hollow of his throat. Once she was fully seated, she gasped again, easing side to side so that she could wrap her legs around his waist, locking her ankles. He was speared as deep as he could be and she was full of him even while she was surrounded by him, his arms around her ribs, back, and shoulders, his thighs beneath her ass.

  Their tongues danced now, moans escaping with panted breaths.

  Seth was still making a note of pleasure, now deeper and somehow more melodious, and hearing it enchanted Astrid, made her ride him with longer, surer movements.

  But when the melody went sharp with distress, she knew he was still too overwhelmed from the day, that it was too much to fully focus on the pleasure and let go. So she shifted her grip to fist both hands in his disheveled hair and pressed his face between her breasts, plumped up by her raised arms. She unhooked her ankles and bent her legs so that her thighs and calves held the sides of his ribcage. Now she was surrounding him, and she was the only stimulus left, and she began to moan, not exaggerating her pleasure, more like remembering to vocalize it because he needed it, needed to focus on it, to know it.

  Sure enough, after not too long, Seth was rocking his hips up to meet her, his melody dissolved into aborted moans with every rock, until he broke, head lifting to be thrown back to the sky. His moan was as mighty as a roar, body freezing as his orgasm erupted, and it was so powerful, so abandoned, that Astrid came one final, violent time, losing her breath.

  She whimpered when she rose up one last time, to pull all the way off his still-hard prick so that she could lie down, and he stripped off the condom, rolling away to dispose of it. He rolled back, bracing his upper body weight on one hand splayed out on the sheet near her waist, his other hand smoothing over her hair and the dip of her waist.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said quietly, “since a performance made me feel like that.”

  “Like you could conquer the world?” she suggested with a little wry smile.

  “No,” he disagreed, dipping down to kiss her lightly. “Like I was happy.”

  Hiding a sympathetic wince and choosing to give him a satiated, sleepy smile instead, she said, “I’m glad we had the chance to burn off the excess energy together tonight.”

  With one more melting kiss, he pulled back. “I’m staying at my sister’s best friend’s house, and I can’t disappear for the night. She wouldn’t worry—she’d tell my sister.”

  “I hate gossip too,” Astrid told him sleepily, her eyes already drifting shut, “and I didn’t invite you to spend the night anyway. You can take a shower before you go, if you like.”

  “I’ll just go, but thank you, Astrid.”

  “Mm…”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Astrid

  Early the next afternoon, invigorated by how well Downbeat had done at Pitchfork yesterday and by the sensual, energy-releasing sex she’d had with Seth last night, she knocked on the band’s suite at their hotel, practically whistling.

  Hank Hornsby opened the door.

  Astrid and Hank blinked at each other.

  “Hank,” Astrid nearly gasped in shock. He had filled out and the scraggly beard he’d been attempting to grow fifteen years ago was short and thick now. The wild curls were cut stylishly, longer on top and tamed with product, a burnished gold instead of the black they’d been dyed. “My God,” she suddenly barked out a laugh and wrapped her arms around him.

  In his soft voice, he whispered, “Hey, Ms. A. I wasn’t sure if you would remember me.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, stepping back. Then she laughed again and cupped his face. “You’re a man,” she couldn’t help but tease warmly. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m the band’s manager,” he replied, pulling her into the suite. “Kayla didn’t tell you?”

  “She might’ve said Hank, but I didn’t put it together,” Astrid admitted.

  “Well you two look cozy,” Xavier boomed happily when they came into the sunken living room, the band, Kayla, and a few others sprawled out eating Mexican food.

  Astrid smiled, the most relaxed one she’d shown them yet, and sat on an unoccupied footstool nearest Xavier, while Hank picked up his plate and took the end of the sofa on her other side. “Hank was a roadie for Barnyard,” she explained, “for, what, four years?”

  “Almost five,” Hank whispered.

  “Right...” Xavier said blankly.

  “How have you survived this long?” Gin laughed at him. “She’s Astrid Sinclair.”

  “Yeah, I know her name,” he retorted, just as blankly as before. “What am I missing?”

  Trentham groaned and stated, “She’s Barley Finn’s ex-wife, dumbass.”

  “What?”

  “Help yourself to some tacos,” Hank whispered.

  Xavier gaped like a goldfish. Astrid just selected a can of soda and popped the tab, since she’d already eaten. Xavier started to babble about how he hadn’t known, how had he not put it together, why hadn’t he known she was a journalist.

  “Stop making an ass of yourself,” murmured Seth.

  That caught Astrid’s attention. Where had he come from?

  He flowed onto the sofa on Hank’s other side holding a cup of coffee and a plate of tacos, his hair tied back, wearing jeans worn so thin they frayed at his knees. His green tee shirt had a round neck deep enough for her to see where the sharp tendons in his neck seemed to anchor into his collarbones. When his eyes fixed on her, she was already looking at him, so they locked eyes for a long moment, something swimming deep under the surface of his.

  Astrid broke the connection because she was on the clock, and what they’d done last night had no place here, deliberately shifting to Xavier. “I think it’s a bit charming that you didn’t know,” she offered to him, effectively shutting down his babbling.

  “Should we get this interview started?” Kayla asked.

  “Let’s leave my idiocy out though, okay?” Xavier begged.

  “Maybe,” Astrid said as she took out her cell and opened the audio recording app.

  Then she glanced back at Seth, Jorge’s wife Anita, and ano
ther man she thought might have played with them during the set too, and asked Hank, “Is everyone staying for this?”

  “If it’s alright with you,” Hank whispered with an easy smile.

  Unable to stop herself from beaming at him some more, she nodded her head. “There aren’t any rules for how this goes, so whatever makes the band happy is good for me.” She widened her focus to everyone in the room and explained, “If, as we go forward, I feel like we need to adjust the dynamic for any reason, I’ll talk to everyone about it.”

  “How about you tell us your approach?” Kayla asked before Astrid could tell them.

  Raising one eyebrow gently at Kayla’s impatience, Astrid set down her pop. “My approach changes with each story and each band because you’re all different, but some things will stay the same. First, I do need to record audio. That’s just for me, and once I’ve selected quotes and drafted the essay, I’ll give you time to review it and provide additional, clarifying quotes if you feel any are needed. I’m not out to blindside or trick my subjects.”

  “You’d better not be,” Trentham grumbled.

  Kayla whacked him, not that it seemed to affect him very much.

  “Second, I haven’t done any research other than listening to your commercially available music,” she said. By now, she was used to the looks of shock and confusion this brought to everyone’s faces, so she gave it a little bit before she went on, “Obviously, I live in this world and love music, so that doesn’t mean I’m coming in totally clueless. I read music news, I watch late night television, I’m on social media, like most of us. But I don’t put together dossiers on every band member or a timeline of your history. My editor always makes sure I know vital information. For example, I wouldn’t want to interview an artist and have no idea that they were a cancer survivor or that they’re a recovering alcoholic.”

  “You want to be as unbiased as possible,” Xavier exclaimed. “That’s so cool.”