by Staci Hart
Those fucking jerkoff, lowbrow, plebeian motherfuckers. They didn’t deserve to touch her. They don’t deserve to touch anyone. I should find them and cut off all their fingers.
I raked a hand through my hair as I padded back out of my room, stopping to pour a drink on my way to my music room. I flipped on the lamp next to the piano, taking a sip of my whiskey.
When I sat, I heard the melody, the one that had been haunting me, but with a new stanza, a continuation I hadn’t considered before. The notes rang in my head, sang in my bones, left through my fingers, filled the room.
And in my mind was Val.
The shadows of her body, the sound of her sigh. The feel of her against me, the heat of her skin. The smell of her, rich and lush, clinging to me.
My pulse picked up in anticipation of every brush of my fingers against the ivory keys. The tune felt familiar, as if I’d heard it before, though I knew I hadn’t—at least, not with my ears. I’d heard it with my heart instead.
I paused, picking up my pencil to jot on the sheet music. Then again, I played the stanza, made more notes.
An immeasurable amount of time went by—I was lost inside a slipstream—before the bench under me creaked, and I felt her next to me.
My fingers finished the phrase they had been caught in as she silently watched on. Normally, I would have stopped at the first sign of an audience. Normally, I wouldn’t have even entered this room when a woman was in my place. But there I was, playing the symphony no one had heard but me as Val sat at my elbow, her eyes on my fingers and her fingers toying with the tie of my black robe.
The final notes hung in the air, and I let them breathe, let them fill the room and the space between us. And when they finally faded away, I released the keys.
“That…that was beautiful,” she said with an air of wonder, her fingers brushing the edge of the sheet music on the rail. “What’s it called?”
“It doesn’t have a name. No one’s even heard it but you.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “It’s not finished. And anyway, I’m just messing around.”
“It’s really good, Sam. I mean it.” She gathered up a few pages and flipped through them. “Seriously, have you ever considered doing something with it?”
I took the pages from her gently and set them back on the stand. “No. I just do it for me.”
“Oh,” she said, threading her hands back in her lap. She glanced around the room. “I didn’t realize you collected instruments.”
“I don’t collect them. I play them.”
Her head swiveled around to meet my eyes. “Are you serious?”
My lips tilted in a smile. “Pick an instrument. Any instrument.”
She turned around on the bench and stood to wander around the room. “The French horn,” she said, pointing at it.
I met her at the horn, took the mouthpiece off, and blew in it a few times, cupping it in my hand to warm it up. Then I popped the piece back on, picked up the instrument, and played a verse of Strauss’s Nocturno, Op. 7 horn solo, slow and haunting. I’d always loved it.
Her eyes widened, but she was smiling. She walked across the room and pointed at the oboe. “This one.”
I chuckled, setting the horn back on its stand before making my way to the oboe. “All right, but you have to gimme a second.” I opened a reed case and popped one in my mouth. “Gotta get this nice and wet.”
She laughed, making her way around the room again, touching some of the instruments. I watched her, followed her fingertips as they traced the brass and wood and string.
I put the reed in its place and brought the instrument to my lips, pursing my lips tight. The opening bars to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake solo filled the room.
The shock on her face was priceless. “The oboe? No way.”
“Way,” I said as I set it back where it belonged.
“Okay, this one.” She pointed to the guitar. “No way can you also play something badass, too.”
I picked up my Gibson and tuned it, then pretended to fumble through a bit of “Hotel California.” Her face fell a little.
So I dropped the act, plucking out a song I’d written. The notes rose and fell, fast and then slow, the tune both happy and sad, in A-flat major.
Her lips parted, her eyes on my hands as my fingers moved without thought up and down the frets, up and down the strings as I strummed and picked the tune. She sank into the armchair, mesmerized, and there she sat until the song was finished. I set the guitar on its base, uncomfortable with her silence. She was so rarely silent. And I so rarely played for anyone.
I stepped toward her, knelt at her feet. Took her hands in my own. “I’m sorry, Val,” was all I could say.
“Please, don’t apologize.” She took a breath, turned her hands in mine so she could hold them. “You’re incredible, do you know that?”
I huffed a dismissive laugh.
“No, I mean it. Not just because you can play the oboe either.”
Another laugh, this one lighter, the tension between us easing.
“You’re patient and kind. You always have my back, always want my happiness. You’re always telling me what you think of me, and I never listen. But it’s not because I don’t believe your conviction. It’s just hard to imagine that you—beautiful, gorgeous you—could think those things about me. It feels like…like a deal you make with the devil. You might get what you want, but there’s always a catch. The guy gets the girl, but she dies in a car crash. You get all the money he promised you, but you lose all your friends. Your wish was granted, but you’re still not happy. There’s always a catch, Sam, and I just can’t figure out what this one is.”
I frowned, shaking my head. “You’ve idolized me, Val. I’m just a guy, a normal guy.”
“You are anything but normal,” she said on a laugh. “Just…bear with me as I occasionally slip into my crazy pants. I wish I could fake how I feel, pretend not to be insecure or needy, but you see right through me. You always do.”
I slipped my hand into her hair, smelled the mix of vanilla and coconut and my soap, wished I could somehow change how she felt. But that would have changed who she was, fundamentally, irreplaceably.
“Believe me when I say that I think you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” I said to the depths of her eyes and the reaches of her heart, and I meant every word. And I told her so with another kiss.
There were never enough kisses.
She wound around me, twisted into me, and my arms welcomed her, pulled her into my chest as best I could, which wasn’t very well at all. So I stood, bringing her with me. Even through the thick fabric of the robe, I could feel the shape of her body. And I wanted her again. I wanted all of her full of all of me.
So I did the only thing I could.
I broke away. “Come on,” I said, wishing there were anything else I could say but, “let’s get you home.”
21
The RLC
Val
“Jizz tastes like a roll of pennies.”
My roommates burst into laughter, and I shrugged. It was true.
Rin shook her head, her red lips smiling. “Oh, man—please tell me that wasn’t the size of his dick because, if so, I am so sorry.”
Katherine snorted. Amelia blushed.
I leaned on the high-top bar table. “No, no. More like…” My face quirked. “An aluminum can?”
Amelia gaped. “But how…how would that…where would you even put…”
“Okay, okay…a steel pipe,” I amended.
“There it is,” Rin said approvingly. “That’s a visual I can get behind.”
I sighed, smiling. “I honestly didn’t think I’d be so into it. But there he was, naked as sin and lying there, exposed and at my disposal. And it was hot. He’s beautiful. I would gladly put any part of him in my mouth, if he asked me to.”
“Well, cheers to a lesson well learned.” Katherine raised her glass, and we mirrored her.
�
�And to steel pipes,” Rin added.
“And to not choking!” Amelia chimed.
We laughed and took a drink.
“Sam’s angling to go to the club for your birthday,” Amelia said pointedly. “Have you decided what you want to do yet?”
My nose wrinkled. “Please don’t make a big deal about it.”
Katherine rolled her eyes. “You know we will. We always do.”
I sighed, smiling because I secretly loved the attention while also not wanting to get my hopes up. A wise man once said, low expectations are the key to life, and I was inclined to believe him.
“I don’t know what I want to do, and I can’t tell Sam no, so I’m sure we’ll be at the club.”
“Yay!” Amelia cheered, even throwing her little fists into the air. “I love it there. I’m so glad you met him, Val.”
“Me too.” My mind drifted back to the night before, and that touch of uncertainty that always followed me around when it came to Sam prickled. “Do you…do you think it’s bad that he told me I didn’t have to swallow?”
Rin’s and Katherine’s faces softened into gentle smiles.
“Not at all,” Rin said. “Trust me, he wanted you to swallow. I don’t know what weird, primal part of their brains that hits, but they always want you to swallow. He was just thinking about your comfort, which is so thoughtful. Polite.”
“A polite blowjob,” Katherine said on a laugh. “Sounds like an instructional at charm school.”
I chuckled. “He really is so polite. Holds open doors, compliments me, pays for my drinks, reciprocates oral. Like, he didn’t have to go down on me after I went down on him. Not that I minded. At all.” Feverish heat slithered through me at the memory. “How have I gone my whole adult life without that?”
“Amen,” Rin said, briefly raising her glass before taking a drink.
Katherine assessed me for a minute. “What you listed out sounds a lot more like dating than it does a friend or a tutor.”
That heat in my belly flamed at the suggestion. “I can’t even entertain that thought, Katherine.”
“Ignoring it doesn’t stop it from being true,” she countered.
“How long has it been?” Amelia asked. “How much longer before the lessons are over?”
I chewed my lip. “I don’t know. I’m afraid to look.”
“Why?” Katherine asked.
“Because I think it’s soon, and the thought makes me sick to my stomach. I don’t know what happens next. I don’t feel tutored enough. I don’t feel ready. Will he still want to be friends? Will he still want to hang out with me?”
Katherine’s eyes narrowed in thought. “Then it sounds like it’s time to make a decision about what you want next.”
I snorted a laugh. “I have a choice?”
“There’s always a choice,” she answered. “Do you still see him as just a friend and tutor after last night?”
The flame in my stomach flared painfully. “By all outward accounts, yes.”
“And the inward accounts?” Rin asked gently.
My shoulders slumped. “No. Not at all. But this is what I signed up for. These are the rules of engagement. I can’t change how he feels any more than I can change the way I feel.”
“And how do you feel?” Rin didn’t move, didn’t pick up her drink, just asked the question and watched me.
“Like I put my heart in a blender and hit Pulse.”
Katherine frowned, confused. “I don’t understand if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
“Bad. Very bad.”
“Got it,” she said with a nod.
“What if he has feelings for you, too?” Rin asked, ever the optimist.
“He doesn’t. I mean, he couldn’t.”
“Sure he could,” Amelia interjected. “Katherine’s right—everything you two do sounds like dating.”
“But we’re not. He’s teaching me, not actually dating me. They’re two very different things.”
“Well, they look a whole lot alike from the outside,” Katherine said flatly. “Dating seems vacuous. I think I’d rather not do it. Ever.”
“No one uses vacuous in casual conversation,” Amelia told her with a comforting pat of her hand.
“I do,” Katherine answered with a shrug. “Anyway, have you considered asking him how he feels?”
“Nope, not once.” I took a sip of my drink to punctuate my definitive certainty that I never would.
“I know it’s scary,” Rin started, “but you have to be brave. We made a pact.” She straightened up, reaching into her purse and returning with her tube of Boss Bitch. She set it on the table with the snap of a gavel in a courtroom. “I hereby call a meeting of the Red Lipstick Coalition to order.”
Amelia and Katherine straightened up in their seats like traitors.
Rin picked up the lipstick and held it like a beacon. “We do so solemnly swear to use this shiny little tube of power to inspire braveness, boldness, and courage. We promise to jump when it’s scary, to stand tall when we want to hide, to scream our truth instead of whisper our fears. May we be mistresses of our destinies and to hell with anyone who tries to tell us otherwise.”
“Hear, hear,” we cheered.
Well, they cheered. I grumbled.
Rin smiled, looking mightily pleased. “You’re the one who said it first, Val. You’re the one who inspired us to get this red lipstick in the first place. You’re our fearless leader, the girl who isn’t afraid of anything.”
“The girl who started all this hadn’t yet met Sam.”
Rin rolled her eyes. “Val, you solemnly swore to be brave and bold. You promised to jump when it’s scary. So put on your red lipstick and jump. Tell him how you feel. Or, at the very least, ask him how he feels.”
“Do you guys honestly think he has real feelings for me?”
“What happened after the oral?” Katherine asked. I could almost see her mentally lick the tip of her pencil to take notes.
“Well…we talked for a minute, and he showed me to the shower. We got into a little…argument, I guess you could call it.”
“About what?” Amelia asked with a frown.
My nose wrinkled, and I felt myself shrink in my seat just a little. “I was feeling self-conscious, and when he told me all these wonderful things, I…well, I didn’t believe him. And that made him mad. I might have accused him of bullshitting me just to be nice.”
Rin flinched. “Ouch.”
I sighed. “Yeah. He stormed out, and the whole time I was in the shower, I just felt like scum. When I came out, he was gone. I found him in his music room and listened to him play piano for a while. And then he apologized.”
“He apologized to you?” Katherine asked. “After you called him a liar? Val, he likes you.”
I flushed, flustered. “I just…he couldn’t. He can’t. It’s not possible. Besides, if I let myself even think it only to find out he still just sees me as a friend…”
“I don’t think a guy would go down on you like a porn star if he didn’t like you as more than a friend,” Katherine said with authority. “Back me up, Rin.”
Rin shrugged apologetically. “She’s not wrong, Val.”
Fluttering surprise lit through me. “But he said…”
Katherine’s face flattened. “People don’t always say what they think or what they want. Case in point—you have withheld your feelings from Sam since the very beginning. The idea that he has indisputably said exactly what he means is ludicrous on its own merit.”
Rin reached for my hand, and my panic eased marginally when I met her eyes. “You don’t have to talk to him right away. But it might be time you considered your feelings and his. Maybe he likes you.”
“Maybe he doesn’t,” I volleyed.
She nodded. “Maybe he doesn’t. But can you honestly say that things are the same as they were before last night?”
When I really considered it, my heart sank and filled up all at the same time, the feeling of stretc
hing and falling almost too much to withstand. I clutched my drink in my clammy palm. “No,” I answered quietly. “It’s not the same.”
“Things change,” she said. “That’s life. We change. The people we love change. Everything changes, which is a blessing as much as it is a curse. There’s a chance that the man of your dreams could have feelings for you. I think you just have to be open to the possibility.”
“But then I’ll have hope. And hope, as sweet as it is, has the power to break my heart.”
“And it has the power to inspire you, Val. You just have to let it in.”
I looked around at the faces of my friends and did just that. And even though that hope was held inside a heart with a false bottom, I wished for its truth all the same.
22
Because, Of Course.
Sam
I shouldn’t have been thinking about Val in the shower, but there I was in a full lather, standing with my face in the shower stream and her on my mind.
It wasn’t like that, although I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t taken matters into my own hands twice since we parted ways last night. And once more the second I’d stepped into the shower after my workout.
I chalked my appetite up to the fact that we hadn’t slept together. I’d had her naked and spread eagle in my bed and hadn’t fucked her. Not with the one part of me that wanted her most, at least.
She was irresistible, from her body that gave and gave to the innocence of her pleasure. I could have kept her in my bed all night, occupied the long hours with the sweetness between her thighs, the softness of her sighs.
Those sighs aren’t yours to keep.
I let out a sigh of my own and turned off the shower.
I’d gotten close. Too close. Close enough to know what I was missing.
Close enough to count the abundant reasons I couldn’t have her.