It must have burned at Connor all those years at Fenbrook to think that he was the interloper, the stupid one amongst the talented kids. I went cold inside as I wondered what he’d thought of me, when he’d seen me in class getting ‘A’s for my essays. It was a lot easier to understand his rage at the gym, now. It had always been there—maybe always would be—that deep river of anger—
I stopped playing.
It’s him!
I looked down at the cello, rewinding the music in my head. Hard and forceful, confident and even cocky. Barely-controlled anger underneath. My second section was Connor. I’d written him into the music.
I looked across at Connor and thought of his second section. Just like mine, it had been very different to his normal music. Slow, and almost timid. Oh God…he’d written me! Nervous and shy and…there’d been something else. A sort of dark rhythm underneath that had built and built, wanting—needing—to be met by a harmony. What could that—
I flushed.
Was that really how he saw me? A librarian with hidden passions? And what did it mean, that we’d unknowingly written each other into our music?
He was staring at me. “What?”
I swallowed, unable to stop the smile that twitched at my lips. “Nothing.”
We practiced our second sections again and again, but there were some parts that just wouldn’t come together. The cello, with all its somber grace, just wouldn’t do what I needed it to do. In a sense, it wasn’t him, in the same way his guitar wasn’t me. And we didn’t know each other’s instruments well enough to help.
“I have an idea,” he told me. And he put his guitar aside and held out his hand. It took me a second to realize that he wanted me to pass him my cello.
Understand, when you play the same physical instrument for years, it becomes part of you. No one played my cello but me. It wasn’t the cost—although the cost was hard to forget—it was the handing over of something so personal, so precious.
I bit my lip, turned it on its peg to face away from me and passed it across the short gap that separated us. His fingers brushed mine for a second as he gripped the neck, warm and strong.
He cradled the cello between his knees. “Like this?” he asked.
I swallowed. “More vertical. Lift her a little more.”
He looked at me. “Her?” That familiar smile played across his lips, and even though he was mocking me I somehow didn’t mind at all. I shrugged.
His hand ran up and down the slender neck, skimming over the polished wood until he found its balance. He handled its weight so easily that I was never worried about it sliding out of control—it was heavy for me, almost too big for me, but in his hands it looked almost frail.
Connor turned the cello just a little and ran a palm down its gently curving side. Out over the full swell at the top, then in at the narrow waist. Out again at the lower, flaring curve, following the smooth flank of it.
I found I was barely breathing.
He put his hand out for the bow, and I pressed it into his palm. He looked along it like a knight would a sword, then experimented with the flex of the horsehair. He gripped it—too close to one end. “Like this?”
Without thinking, I reached out and took hold of the bow in the correct position, a hand’s width further along. Our thumbs were touching. “There.”
He gripped the bow again, his fingers over mine. The warmth of his hand seemed to soak through my fingers and up my arm in a rush, coursing straight to my chest. “Like that?” he asked.
I nodded dumbly.
He started to play, very slowly, with me guiding his movements. The cello let us hear every touch he made, every slow brush of the bow on the taut strings. He was heavy where I’d always been gentle, and I had to pull his hand back to keep him from being too firm. The sensation of hearing the notes and at the same time feeling him making them, of having another person touch the strings even as I guided his touch…it was strange. And beautiful.
“Okay,” he said at last. “Do you trust me?”
I slowly slid my fingers from beneath his. They tingled, as if electrically charged. When he began to move the bow, I had to keep the very tips of my fingers brushing the back of his hand, so great was my fear of him damaging something. It wasn’t music—it was him exploring the limits, working out how he could coax what he wanted from the instrument. Free of my hesitation or fear, without all the careful grace I’d had drummed into me over the years by my teachers, he was able to make sounds I’d never heard before, things I wouldn’t have thought a cello capable of.
He plucked the C string hard, producing a sound similar to a bass guitar. From there, he began to improvise a walking bass line. Then, attacking the strings with the heel of the bow, he managed to make a sound that was uncannily like a guitar distortion effect.
“There,” I said. “That.” And he nodded.
Then he put the cello aside, and it was my turn.
His guitar felt so completely different to my cello, the soft hiss of the amp a constant reminder that I was connected to something, that every tiny movement was going to result in a roar. It was like moving from a bicycle to a sports car, trying to get used to the monster controlled by your right foot. The first time I plucked and the room reverberated to the sound, I almost dropped it.
“Don’t be afraid of it,” he told me. “Connect with the sound, not with the strings.” And he brought his chair around behind me. “Shuffle forward.”
I moved my stool forward, and he sat down behind me, opening his legs and pressing in close, his thighs against my ass. He folded himself around me and I smelled the cool clean scent of him. One hand gently wrapped around mine on the neck, the other idly caressing the back of my hand on the strings before settling over it. Suddenly, everything was very close and still in the room, my heart a rising drumbeat.
“Don’t run from it,” he told me. “Control it. Get angry.”
Normally, I’d never have done that. I’d never have allowed the mask to slip, to let myself show rage as he showed it. But I was already so far out of my comfort zone that it didn’t seem that much further to go, to let my sense of outrage and unfairness over the recital, over my whole future being at risk, spill over into my playing. The power of the guitar still made it feel like trying to control a raging, snapping beast, but my anger gave me the strength to wrestle it into submission. I lost myself in the howling and wailing, cathartic in a way that my normal style never could have been. When I stopped, I realized I was exhausted: physically and emotionally. My fingers were sore and shaking, my body cramped from clutching the guitar. My mind felt fried from struggling with the unfamiliar, my soul pleasantly cleansed, at least for a while.
His mouth was almost at my ear. “Slide down an octave like you did at the end.”
I hadn’t even been aware of doing it—it was just what I’d do on the cello. I did it again, and this time I heard it. The matching partner to what he’d done on the cello, a rush of energy and emotion teased from the strings. “There,” he said, and I nodded.
I was suddenly aware of the closeness of his body, his chest pressed hard against my back, his arms wrapping me into him. And against my ass, the press of his cock, hot and hard.
We stayed there for three trembling breaths.
“We should both try some things,” I told him. “If we got a couple of acoustic guitars, we could both experiment. Sort of…meet halfway.”
I felt him nod, his body not moving an inch. “Good idea.”
A second’s silence. Long enough for one of us to say something…but neither of us did. After another two beats of my thumping heart, he slowly unwound from me and got up.
Chapter 13
A few days later, Clarissa and I had dinner at a classy restaurant downtown, as we did every month. When we first started doing it, I hadn’t understood why she’d want me as company rather than Natasha, her roommate, or Jasmine, who could have told her all about her latest one night stand. Then it clicked that it wa
s about money. Clarissa came from by far the wealthiest background of any of us and her parents gave her a generous living allowance. She never made an issue of it and was certainly never superior or snobby about it—and that was kind of the point. When she went out with Natasha and Jasmine, she had to be very careful to pick places they’d be able to afford, so that they didn’t feel uncomfortable. She couldn’t discuss her shopping trips or bitch about how much her BMW cost to service. She couldn’t tell some story from her days at a private school, or talk about the fumble in the bushes she’d had at seventeen with the valet parking attendant at the country club.
With me, it was different. My parents certainly weren’t as wealthy as hers, but our backgrounds were similar enough that she could relax.
Sitting in the back of the cab, watching the city lights draw dancing patterns on the seats, I thought about what had happened in the practice room: the way he’d pressed up against me, the scent of him so close, the rasp of his stubble against my cheek when he’d turned his head to speak….
The feel of his cock, hard against me.
It means nothing, I told myself. I knew enough about guys to know that they’d get hard at the slightest provocation. He’d been hard because he’d been pressed up against a warm body. Nothing to do with me.
Unless…it was.
Ridiculous. I’d finally admitted to myself that he turned me on—I was actually wet, by the end of the session—but it would be crazy to think it went both ways. What on earth would he want with me? I wasn’t Clarissa, with her easy elegance and razor-sharp dress sense, or Jasmine with her curves and eyes you could drown in, or Natasha with her poise and grace. I was a geek. A geek who couldn’t keep a hold of her feelings, at that: I’d started having stickily vivid dreams about a guy I didn’t even like—
That made me stop. At first it had been so simple—he’d been a jerk and I’d hated him. Then I’d started to see underneath the mask, and I’d started to warm to him a little. Now, knowing about the dyslexia, I could understand his anger. I felt sorry for him—though I knew he’d never want my pity—and I wanted to help him.
But did I like him? He still drove me crazy at least half the time. He was my exact opposite in nearly every way, the chaos to my order. And yet...every time I saw him, I became a little less sure about the things that made us different and a little more sure about the things that made us the same. We were worlds apart, but sometimes I felt like I was more deeply connected to him than anyone I’d ever met.
I sighed. The one thing that was clear…was that nothing was clear. I didn’t know what, exactly, I felt for him, other than the shamefully intense response he drew from my body every time he was close. Maybe some girl time would help me sort my head out.
***
One of you has to arrive first at a restaurant. We’d long since learned that this should be Clarissa, who has no problem whatsoever waiting at the bar and fighting off guys. That night when I arrived, she already had three men clustered around her. She’d been there for five minutes.
“You’re a ballerina?” asked a heavy-jawed man in a suit, who looked like he might be a gangster. “That’s amazin’. You must be all bendy and shit.”
“You sure I can’t buy you a drink?” asked another.
The third one smiled. “Hey, can you—”
“Hi!” I said, cutting him off before he could ask if she could put her ankles behind her head. “Shall we go?”
We swept out of the bar to a chorus of disappointed sighs. I wondered what it must be like, to have that constant male attention everywhere you go. I’d never had a single person be that enraptured by me.
I noticed as we sat down that Clarissa had a store bag with her. Not Prada, for once. Some unpronounceable brand that sounded like it might be Scandinavian.
We started reading the menu, and even though the meal was going to make things seriously tight for the rest of the month, it was still great to bathe in luxury for a few hours. The descriptions sounded like the chef had conducted a three month love affair with each and every creature before reluctantly whacking it over the head. Slices of outdoor-reared organic duck breast, marinated in a dark soy and anise syrup, anointed with oil and seared, then served drizzled with a reduction of fresh blackcurrants.
“I have to show you this,” Clarissa told me when we’d ordered. She took a silver dress from the store bag, the fabric so soft and shining that it seemed to flow over her outstretched arm like liquid.
“That’s amazing,” I said with feeling. “It’s like…future-sexy.”
She grinned. “I know! With silver heels. I might do silver lipstick.”
It wasn’t often that I got into clothes, but I could imagine the outfit perfectly. “You should wear the spiky necklace—that’d be perfect.”
She looked bemused. “Which necklace?”
“The spiky one. The one with all the little crystals.”
She frowned and then all the color drained from her face. “I’ve only worn that for—”
Too late, I remembered where I’d seen it.
She lurched forward. “Please tell me you didn’t see it on the internet!” she whispered.
I could feel the heat rushing to my cheeks. “No, I—It was on your laptop,” I said in a tiny voice.
I saw the fear turn to anger in her eyes. “Bathroom! Now!” she told me viciously, and stalked off towards it leaving me to catch up.
The bathroom, mercifully, was empty. She turned to face me and I actually took a half step back when I saw her expression. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly.
“How could you? My laptop?! That’s my private stuff! No one else was meant to see it!” She took a step towards me and I had to fight the urge to run. The thing about Clarissa is, she’s quite tall, and she was in killer heels. And I’m not, and I wasn’t. She towered over me, and I suddenly felt the tiled wall behind my back, my cheeks hot with shame and guilt.
“It was an accident! I was just going to Google for pizza, and it was open on your taskbar and I’m sorry!” I said in a rush.
She frowned. “So you only saw, like, a freeze frame?”
Something in my expression must have told her no.
“You played it?!”
“I didn’t know it was you, at first! I thought it was just porn. Very tasteful porn!”
She’d reddened almost as much as me, now. I could tell she didn’t want to ask, but needed to know how bad things were. “But you only saw a second of it, once you realized it was us?”
I’ve never been good at lying. I looked at the floor.
“Karen! How could you?!”
“I don’t know! I was waiting for Natasha and I just sort of…watched some.”
“All of it?!”
“I sort of skipped through. Only, like…three or four bits.” I closed my eyes. “I’m really sorry.”
Clarissa wheeled away from me with a groan of frustration and went over to the sinks. She stood clutching the marbled countertop, staring at her own reflection in the mirror.
Very slowly, I edged over to her. “Sorry,” I said again.
She didn’t respond.
“How can I make it up to you?”
She kept staring straight ahead.
“Please?”
I finally saw her eyes flick to me in the mirror and then she sighed. “You’re on standby next time Jasmine calls drunk in a bar at three in the morning needing a pick up.”
I nodded frantically. “Absolutely.”
“And you have to let me get you into a dress next time you go out—no arguments.”
“Deal.”
She let out a long sigh. “Okay, fine. You’re forgiven. At least it means I can talk to you about Neil.”
She led the way out of the bathroom. “Wait,” I said, hurrying after her. “What’s wrong with Neil?”
***
We’d finished our entrées and were on our next glass of wine before she finally told me.
“We don’t communicate,” she sai
d, turning the wine glass slowly in her hands. “It’s like I said before…we have the sex thing, and the sex thing’s great. Better than great. I mean, it’s hard to get across how good it is.” She looked at the table. “Have you ever had sex that’s, like…beyond? Not just the sex itself but everything—the buildup, the talking about it beforehand….have you ever had sex like that?”
For a second, I wondered whether to tell her I was a virgin. “No.”
“It isn’t that the relationship’s based on sex. That would be okay, because we could go somewhere from it—we could get to know each other and grow it. This is more like…the sex has given us a relationship, with roles and rules and things, and so there’s no room for a normal relationship. It’s like one of those things you read about with a contract. Masters and slaves.”
“You have a contract?” I could feel my eyes going wide.
“No! But it’s like that. Like we have very defined parts to play and we can’t go beyond them, and that keeps us at a distance. It’s not that we don’t want to communicate, it’s that we’re not allowed to, in a weird way, because that would spoil what we have. Does that make any sort of sense?”
I sipped some wine and tried to get my head around it. “You mean, like…if you were the secretary and he was your boss, and it was fun because of that, it would also limit it because you’d always have to be his secretary? If you married him, or even changed jobs, it might not work?”
She leaned forward. “Yes! Exactly like that!”
I frowned. “So what are your roles?”
She flushed.
“Sorry. Don’t tell me if—”
“No. No, I need to.” She took a deep breath. “Well, he’s a biker, obviously. I mean, he’s so many things. He’s a geek, in a way, and smart as hell—he’s at MIT for God’s sake. And he’s a hippy. But for the sake of the relationship, he’s a biker. A tough biker who”—she colored more—“knows what he wants. And I’m meant to be this posh, innocent”—she lowered her voice—“submissive.”
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