by Neve Wilder
I noticed a lot about him, though. Probably more than he’d ever imagined.
For instance, when I walked out of my bedroom the next morning at 6:30 a.m., I knew he was going to be wearing the dingy green mesh running shorts because he’d worn the blue ones the day before and he had a steady rotation going on among four pairs of shorts that he’d probably deny if I told him I was onto.
He glanced up at me from where he’d leaned over tying his shoelaces, expression shifting into one of surprise when he noticed my running gear. “No, you’re not.”
“I ran track in high school you know.” I went to the sink to chug a glass of water and felt his gaze trailing me, probably still in disbelief. I’d never once gone running with him, and I’d left my track career behind as soon as I’d gone to college. Who wanted to run around in circles when there was a bevy of mind-altering substances and sexual deviations to explore? I’d had enough trouble keeping up with my classes.
“Have your feet even seen a pair of running shoes since then? And how are you even awake? I’ll bet the last time you saw this hour was also high school.”
“Actually, it was three weeks ago.” No need to tell him it was because I’d stayed up all night doing things that would just piss him off.
It occurred to me that maybe this was some kind of sacred time for him; maybe I was interrupting. “I mean, if you don’t mind.”
He gave me a wary look, as if he wasn’t sure what my motivation was. That was fair. I wasn’t sure, either, but I’d slept like shit last night and hadn’t gotten much more on a page than a doodle that vaguely resembled his lips, so when I woke up to the sound of him moving around in the kitchen, I figured it was either go with him and remind my body that it had other capabilities besides fucking, partying, and music, or stare at the ceiling until he got back and dragged me into the basement for practice. Reluctantly proactive, that was me.
And besides, running was important to him, and he was important to me. After our conversation last night, I thought it might not be such a bad idea to show him that, if subtly. So far, it seemed to have gone right over his head.
Evan shrugged and straightened, catching his ankle in his hand for a quick quad stretch. I wasn’t bothering with stretches. My legs weren’t going to know what’d hit them anyway, so why bother with forewarning?
“Try to keep up,” he said, opening the door. And then, with a challenging little quirk of his mouth that sent a jolt of heat through my balls, he shot off down the front walk.
I’d just assumed that since I’d been a runner in high school, there’d be a little muscle memory involved, even a tiny bit. Something better than the internal shriek of my lungs and the burn of my calves and hamstrings that made me want to double over before we’d even gone a full mile.
I’d also assumed we’d be running along the main road. Wrong again. We got about a quarter of a mile down, and Evan veered off onto a trail I’d never noticed before. The terrain was uneven, but we were shaded by a thick canopy of green. The air itself smelled lush and ripe, full of color and life, and it was cooler than the asphalt we’d been running on. I kept up with Evan, just barely, though the glances he tossed me over his shoulder had shifted from amused to increasingly concerned.
Another tenth of a mile and he’d noticeably decreased his pace so that I was almost on his heels.
“I can keep up,” I huffed out, ignoring another twinge in my shin. They were going to be screaming tomorrow, but at least the scenery was nice: Evan’s legs packed with well-defined muscle and the way his running shorts draped over his tight ass would’ve given me a boner if my circulatory system wasn’t trying to shut down.
“You’re breathing like a guy with emphysema, and I’m pretty sure I heard your quads begging for mercy a few seconds ago.”
“That was my stomach. It needs coffee,” I panted out.
Evan glided nimbly over a thick tree root stretching over the trail, but when I tried to imitate his grace, the toe of my shoe caught and I went down hard—breath-knocked-out-of-my-chest, knees-skinned hard. Silver lining: the packed dirt floor of the trail was nice and cool against my sweaty cheek. I decided I’d just rest there for a minute.
“You all right?” Evan asked amid laughter, his shoes coming into view just in front of me.
“Just communing with nature.” I groaned, rolling to my side as I caught my breath. “It’s not funny. I could’ve broken a wrist. Unable to play or write—you going to take up the slack?”
“Eh, we’d figure it out.” He extended his hand to me, and I hauled myself up.
“Wouldn’t be able to jerk off properly—you going to figure that out for me, too?”
His mouth went slack, then curled up again. “Guess you’d have to live a monastic lifestyle for a while. You should try it. Very Zen.”
“I need to bust a nut once a day, or I feel off.” My brow ticked higher. “Don’t look at me like that. You have your rituals”—I gestured widely at the forest around us, then his running gear—“I have mine.”
He rolled his eyes and wiped some sweat from his forehead. “Whatever. It’s moot anyway; you’re fine.”
I bent over, dusting dirt from the open scrapes over my kneecaps. Those were going to be fun in the shower.
“I’m good. Let’s go.” I started to brush past him to continue down the trail, but he caught the sleeve of my shirt and tugged me a half step back.
“Hang on.” He reached out, fingertips curling under my jaw as he brushed his thumb lightly over my cheekbone. I winced as the salt from his skin leached into a cut I hadn’t realized was there. But the sting paled in comparison to the sensation of his hand on my face, the almost tender way he touched me and the intensity of his stare as he examined my cheek. It sweetened the sting and made me want more. I took in a slow breath as my cock started to fill and the memory of his lips pressed to mine crowded every other thought from my head.
Maybe he was thinking the same thing, because his gaze transformed from intense scrutiny to a kind of hooded curiosity. I was careful not to react; after what he’d said last night, I was hell-bent on playing it cool. Two seconds later, he snapped his hand away. “Wash that good when we get back,” he said, and then loped off.
By the time we got back to the cabin, my whole body was melting down. I left Evan to continue on with his push-ups, sit-ups, and whatever the fuck else he did to get those ripped arms, while I stripped my sopping-wet shirt off at the door, then went to bend my head under the kitchen faucet and suck up the equivalent of a small town’s water reservoir.
After showering—unfortunately not together, as I often fantasized about—we reconvened in the basement. I sat on the floor and opened my notebook, paging through it, looking for anything promising among my dark scribbles while Evan tuned his guitar.
With a quick glance over at me, he reached for my guitar and tuned it as well. It was an unspoken, unacknowledged practice between us when we were writing together, and I never minded it because I liked watching him do it, liked watching how his fingers soft-shoed over the strings, the deft plucks, the tilt of his head as he listened to the vibration, searching for the perfect resonance. His gaze would drift far off, eyes narrowing. Elsewhere. Someplace where there were only sound waves and pitch. Evan said I looked like an angry scientist when I was writing, stabbing at the page with the pen, bleeding ink all over my hands. He looked like someone who’d reached enlightenment when he played, and there was a beauty in it that never failed to mesmerize me.
We were so fucking different in so many ways that sometimes I thought it was a wonder we’d come as far as we had.
Evan finished tuning my guitar and handed it to me where I sat on the floor. We ran through some of our first album to warm up. At the end of “This Time,” his fingers hesitated over the strings, his mouth moving soundlessly, which usually meant he had some fresh notes wiggling on the line and was trying to figure out how to best reel them in.
He pulled a variation on a C chord, then dropp
ed the note and slid his hand down the fretboard before dancing back up again through a series of minor chords that made my hair stand on end. It was dark and haunting, and it was definitely something. I listened, rapt, until he blinked up at me from beneath his lashes for my take. There was a tentativeness in his gaze that was so unusual, it was striking.
“Do it again,” I nodded, and he did, and then one more time until I’d picked up on the chord pattern and played it back to him.
“It needs an anchor, yeah? It’s just floating around there like a black balloon. Needs a string you can hold on to to keep it from floating off,” I mumbled, letting my fingers run over the strings. We tried out a few combos, Evan running the notes while I layered in beneath until we found it: a steady, metronome bassline that held the roots of the song in place and let Evan’s overlying chords dance lightly on top of it.
“This is really good,” I said, and Evan nodded slowly.
“Just have to fill in the rest. Not sure if that’s a chorus or verse yet.”
“It’s a chorus. Feels that way to me.”
“You getting anything yet? Because I’ve got nothing for lyrics.”
“Nope, but I can feel it.” It was like a tickle at the base of my skull, like anticipation. An edginess that ran through my fingertips and trembled in my vocal chords. “What were you thinking of?”
Evan dropped his gaze to his guitar, then over to the stack of records with a shake of his head. “I dunno. Old things. When I was a kid.” His lips pressed together, released. “You.”
“Me?”
“Yeah.”
I wanted him to elucidate and tell me what the fuck that meant, because what he’d played, it had pulled and tugged at me. It had gravity. It floated, then sank. It was hopeful and sad at once.
Did you ever worry that when you transitioned to larger shows some of the onstage chemistry between you two would be lost?
Evan: Nah, not really. We’ve always been ourselves, and Les has that kind of peacock presence that scales up easily—
Les: A peacock, huh?
Evan: Don’t even try to deny it. But that’s what’s great about… I mean, when I was doing shows on my own, it was very different, because I’m naturally quieter, I guess, and Les is so outgoing. He has a knack for drawing me out of my shell. We have fun up there. We always do, no matter where we’re playing.
Les: What he’s trying to say is: I help him be his best self, live his best life. Someone needs to give me my own talk show. I’m down to give away some cars.
Evan: That would be a disaster.
Les: A very entertaining one.
Chapter 22
We were walking along the downtown strip after dinner a few days later when Les bumped his shoulder against mine and leaned in, breath falling warm across my neck as he murmured, “Don’t look now, but we’re being followed.”
“What? Who?” I resisted, just barely, the urge to crane a look around.
“Who do you think? That photographer.”
My hands reflexively balled into fists at my side, but I forced them to relax, forced my shoulders to relax. Forced everything to relax. I couldn’t do jack about my blood pressure, though. It was simmering. “That wasn’t on the list, though, right? Just dinner?”
“Just dinner.” Les nodded, seeming considerably more at ease with this situation than I was. The boundary overstepping annoyed me. For God’s sake, we’d just spent two hours in a booth at an Italian restaurant doing something I was pretty sure the tabloids would call “canoodling.” Touches to the arm, sitting next to each other, gazing deeply into one another’s eyes. I’d drawn the line at kissing because we were in public. In the South, beyond the somewhat protective boundary lines of the bigger cities. And while our publicist from New York might not understand that, Les and I did.
It had actually been kind of fun, though, and we cracked ourselves up at least a handful of times playing our parts. Once when Les leaned in to whisper that I was staring at him so intently he was worried I was about to have a stroke. Another time when he smeared a bit of oregano on his teeth and smiled smarmily, saying, “Kiss me, you fool.” When I shoved my breadstick in his mouth instead, he bobbed his head on it lewdly. I figured that was the picture that would end up online. Then Les had reached under the table and dropped his hand ever so casually on my thigh and I froze up. Reading the tension in my expression, he’d let his hand fall away with one last light squeeze. His features were contemplative, though, and I didn’t know what to make of it.
All of that should have been enough for the photographer, so I wasn’t sure why she was still following us.
Les took his ball cap off and riffled a hand through his hair as I scoured the street beside us, searching for a cab we could duck into and make our escape. Ahead of us, a cluster of girls leaned against a storefront, peering into the glass. They glanced up at us as we closed in on them, then returned to ogling whatever was on the other side of the windowpane. Except one. Her eyes narrowed at the two of us just as I grabbed Les’s elbow and started to cross the street.
“Where are we going?” he asked as we stopped in the center lane while a slow stream of traffic passed. An orange car braked for us, and I nudged Les forward until we hit the curb below a neon sign.
“A wax museum? Feeling the need to be among some fellow stiffs?” he quipped. He’d had more wine than I had at dinner because, well, it was Les, and he spoke with a jaunty smile that told me he was buzzed.
“There’s an entrance fee, and it’s dark inside. Not optimal for photos.” I shoved a twenty-dollar bill at the sleepy-eyed attendant in the booth and pushed inside, dragging Les with me and mentally congratulating myself on my quick thinking.
Les touched the tip of his nose. “Aren’t you clever?”
“Very. You’re just better-looking, which apparently trumps in interviews.”
“And life, really.” He snickered.
“Sad truth.”
The museum was broken into two rooms, and there appeared to be only one other couple wandering through it at this hour, which was exactly what I’d hoped for. It was dark and quiet and there was no one to pay any attention to us. My breaths came easier as we made our way from statue to statue. Dolly Parton, Kenny Chesney, Willie Nelson, George Jones. All the country greats. Tom Cruise. Taylor Swift. Les stopped in front of Dolly Parton, folding his arms over his chest and leaning in to inspect her like he was looking for flaws.
“I swear you’re obsessed with her tits.”
“Nah. She’s got great legs, too.” He gave me a flippant smile as he slung an arm around her shoulders, then pecked her on one waxen cheek.
“You know, if we ever get to meet her, you’re going to embarrass us both.”
Les arched a brow. “Please. If we ever meet her, I’m going to tell her that I can’t think about my childhood without thinking about ‘Yellow Roses’ because my mom used to sing it every night before she put me to bed. And that ‘Coat of Many Colors’ is what made me want to write music.”
My lips parted in quiet disbelief. Fuck him for surprising me with his sudden depth and sincerity. I was trying to think of what I’d say to her when Les glanced backward and said, “Three o’clock.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.” But nope, when I glanced over my shoulder, the chestnut-haired photographer from dinner was making a beeline in our direction, camera already on the rise. I stalked into the next room, looking for an exit, Les laughing as he trailed after me.
“I’m glad this is so funny to you.”
“I don’t get why you’re so pissed about this. Let’s just see what she wants, because she’s clearly after something.”
“A bigger paycheck. And we did our fucking part. She needs to go away.”
I wound around the displays and pawed through the thick curtains that draped the walls of the museum. There had to be an emergency exit, and I didn’t care if it set the alarms off. Maybe the photographer could explain it to the owner. I just wanted to get ba
ck to the cabin.
Les hooked me by the elbow, velvet dragging across my face as I was pulled behind a curtain.
“This isn’t an exit,” I protested. We were in some kind of storage niche, and it was creepy as hell. A wall sconce emitting a pitiful amount of light revealed wax statues surrounding us in various states of undress and dismemberment. The headless torso of what I could only assume was Arnold Schwarzenegger flexed behind Les, who looked around with interest.
“She’ll probably assume we found one, though, when she sees we’re not out there. Then she’ll go, too. Easy.” He spoke in a low voice. “Ohhh, Demi Moore. Remember when she was married to Ashton Kutcher? I always thought that was fake, because I’d never have let that woman go. Take my picture with her!” He fumbled in his pocket for his phone.
“Les, you pretty much push your women and men out the door when you’re through with them. Also, where are her legs?”
“I think that’s them behind… no fucking shit, is that New Kids on the Block? Oh wait, maybe it’s One Direction? Hurry up! Phone. Now. I need this.”
He shoved his phone in my hand as I tried to shush him, but it was too late; a shaft of light pierced our stupid hidey-hole and backlit the photographer like something out of a horror B movie.
“Evening, fellas. Having yourselves a private tour?” The perky insouciance in her smile tempted me to snatch the camera out of her hands and break it against Arnold’s mountainous bicep.