“I know.”
“And it doesn’t have to look right now the way you want it to look in ten years.”
“But I think that’s what scares me the most,” I tell him. “I’m terrified it will look the same in ten years—for me. But for Calvin? He will have moved on, or moved up, or moved away.”
“You don’t know that. You have no way of knowing. All you can do is forge your path.” Jeff stands up, taking his empty teacup to the kitchen. “Come on. Let’s order some food.”
I fall asleep like a rock in the guest room, sleeping so soundly that when Robert shakes me gently, I startle-snort awake, arms flailing wildly, and nearly knock the cordless phone out of his hand.
“Call for you,” he says. He puts the phone in my palm, adding in a growl, “Your guy played like shit last night.”
Standing, he leaves the room and closes the door behind him with a quiet click.
I stare at the phone, blinking into clarity. I don’t have to say anything to know it’s Calvin. And he played like shit last night?
Lifting the phone to my ear, I give a hoarse, “Hey.”
His voice sounds all sleepy and deep. “Hey.” I can feel the resonance of it as if he’d rolled over and spoken into my neck. “I hope it’s okay that I’m calling this number.”
Goose bumps break out along my arms. “Of course. My phone is at the apartment.”
His laugh is a hollow sound. “Yeah, I know.”
I stare up at the ceiling, waiting for the words to pop into my head. My anger feels like a next-day campfire—cooled off to only a dusty smolder.
“I was hoping you’d show up last night,” he says quietly. “At the theater.”
“I was upset.”
He inhales slowly, and lets the breath out in a groan. “Then I was hoping you might sneak in later, after I fell asleep.”
“I slept at Robert and Jeff’s.”
“I assumed that’s where you were when I came into the bedroom this morning to climb into bed an’ apologize,” he says, growly and soft, “but y’were still gone.”
He wants to apologize? I squeeze my eyes closed at the desire I feel to have his warm body next to me in bed.
“D’you think you might come home today?” He takes another deep inhale, and when he speaks, I can tell he’s stretching. “This isn’t right, mo stóirín. I don’t like this.”
“I don’t like it, either,” I say quietly, wondering whether Jeff and Robert can hear me out in the living room. “But you made me feel shitty, like I’d done something wrong. I don’t think I did.”
“I know. Shite”—he exhales through his nose—“I didn’t handle this right. Last night I was miserable over it. I played horribly.”
“Yeah, I can imagine how stressful it would be to think you might have to leave the country if things don’t work out with us.” I wince as soon as I’ve said it.
It’s a long few seconds before he speaks again, and his accent seems so strong across the line. “It isn’t like that. Do you really think I’d play you that way?”
I squeeze my eyes closed at the gentle lilt to his words.
T’isnt like dat. D’ye really tink I’d play ye dat way?
“I don’t know.”
“Would you prefer I come there? What do you want?”
In truth, I want to go home, climb in between the sheets with him, and feel that heavy warmth all around me as he pulls me close. I want the vibration of his voice on my neck, my shoulder, my breasts, and the way that every bit of light is blocked out for a moment when he climbs on top of me. But I also want this spark of strength I feel right now. I woke up in some ways yesterday, and it still doesn’t feel totally defined, but I don’t want it to evaporate before I can name it.
“I want to tell you I’m sorry,” he says, voice a low burr. “Come home and kick me in the teeth if you need to, but then kiss me.”
The living room is empty when I walk inside, dropping my keys on the counter and hanging my coat over the back of the chair. The bathroom door is open—he’s not in there, either. The apartment feels oddly still; there’s no rattle of the radiator or clinking of dishes being washed. It feels like I’ve been gone a week, instead of twenty-four hours.
I find Calvin in my bed, leaning against the headboard and staring at the doorway.
His expression relaxes immediately when he sees me. “Hey.”
Kicking off my shoes, I give him a little smile and sit on the edge of the bed, but he pulls back a corner of the covers, patting the mattress. “Come here. We can talk in here.”
It’s a hard offer to refuse. I tug down my running pants and pull off my sweatshirt before burrowing under the sheets. I’m immediately hit with the solid heat of his chest and crawl into his arms; he’s completely naked, and somehow feels warmer than the sun. Calvin slides a hand up my back, unfastening my bra and pulling it away to toss it somewhere over his shoulder. He lets out a quiet groan, and a tiny thrill winds through me that he needed to feel skin on skin as immediately as I did.
“I’m sorry.” He sucks his lower lip into his mouth and stares into my eyes. “It wasn’t fair, what I said. I think I was just embarrassed that I didn’t realize you’d been honest at the immigration office. Or, maybe frustrated that all that time I’d wanted you, and you were pretending not to want me. It seemed so easy. I think I felt confused.”
I smile at this and it unlocks his own grin; he looks relieved.
“I’m not sure I totally trust why you’re doing this.” I press a hand to his chest. He looks down and shakes his head a little; he doesn’t know what I mean. “You could stay in the apartment and have the job without having sex with me, you know.”
His eyes fall closed and he lets out a little “Ahhhh,” as if I’ve just confirmed something for him.
“We could be convincing without this,” I say quietly. “But now that you know I had a thing for you before we met, I’m not comfortable doing this without knowing where you stand. It feels really unbalanced.”
His eyes flicker back and forth between mine. “My desire for you as a lover is entirely separate from my desire for the job you helped me find.”
I struggle to speak past the glow these words trigger in me. “Really? Because as you said yourself, it would be incredibly shitty of you to play me like that.”
He leans down, close enough to kiss me, but stops just shy. “Really. Of course my feelings are influenced by your understanding of music. Your opinion matters more to me than even Robert’s, or Ramón’s. But that isn’t about the job, that’s because music is part of you, too.”
I move in, resting my lips on his, and he groans, rolling over me, bringing a hand up to cup my jaw. Tension melts everywhere inside, and I rock into him when he settles between my thighs.
Making up is . . . pretty fun.
Calvin pulls back slightly, grinning down at me. “Six months before we met, huh?”
“At least,” I say, laughing and blushing. “It was a pretty epic crush.”
I slide my hands around his shoulders and then into his hair as he kisses lower, to my breasts, and my stomach, and then beneath the covers, where he kisses one thigh and then the other, and then sweeps his tongue across me.
Wanting to watch, I push the covers away, and he looks up, smiling into another kiss. He teases, pointing his tongue, nipping—almost as if he’s performing for me.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I whisper.
A long, soft suck and then: “What’s that?”
“And the answer is yes, I imagined you doing this before I met you.”
He pulls back a little, expression heating. “Imagined me kissing you here?”
I nod, and a deep ache builds just watching him watching me.
“Would you touch yourself?”
“Sometimes.”
He glides a finger over me, up and down, and then pushes it inside. “You’re getting wet just telling me about it.”
I dig a hand into his hair. “I’m not
going to apologize for fantasizing about you.”
“I would fucking hope not.” He watches what he’s doing. “I don’t want you to stop fantasizing, either.”
“What do you fantasize about?”
He closes his eyes and bends to lick me, thinking. Pulling back, he says, “A lot of things,” and I feel the heat of his breath against me.
A lot of tings.
I tug at his arm, and he climbs back up my body, bending to kiss me with an open, hungry mouth.
Pulling his hand over my breast, I say, “Tell me.”
He squeezes, and then bends, sucking. “I think about saying some filthy things to you while we’re on the couch. I like when you’re facing me, so I can lick you how you like it.”
Oh. My blood heats and I arch into his mouth.
“I think about having you near the window and letting those paparazzi down on the street watch us. I get a little kick out of imagining those pictures on Twitter.”
I reach down, wrapping my hand around him, and he groans before coming back up to kiss me.
“I think about how you look when you put me in your mouth. How fast I come when you do that.” He slides his hand between us, pushing two fingers into me, and we start to move, his words speeding up. “I think about being somewhere with you, and you do that—you go down on me and no one knows.”
“Like at the theater?”
“Or anywhere,” he says, breath hot on my cheek. He grunts, fucking my hand, so close to where I want him, and I guide him there, nudging his own hand away from me. He slides in bare, so deep, and I cry out before he swallows the sound.
We haven’t done this before . . . we need to put on a condom.
“I think about this,” he whispers, “just like this. Oh, Christ, it feels good.”
It does, and so neither of us stops it. It’s so easy to keep moving, to fall into that rolling rhythm; in the past weeks he’s figured out what I need and starts there: deep, pressing, immediately. My hands roam the skin on his back, down over his ass, his thighs, as far down as I can reach.
He must know he’s forgiven because he doesn’t talk anymore, doesn’t check in with me to be sure I’m okay, and this is something I adore most about him. I think he trusts that if I didn’t want this right now, I would tell him. He isn’t going to let something go unsaid.
But even so, as he moves in these perfect circles over me, another shadow steps into view. I wonder what it is we’re fixing here, and to what end? I’ve already established that we don’t need to be intimate for him to stay here. And we certainly don’t need to be in love. But he kisses me like it’s love, and as he pushes faster into me, he sounds like a man overcome with love, and when he rolls so I’m on top of him, he watches me with something that looks a lot like love in his eyes.
But how would I really know?
“Why did you stop?” he asks, cupping my hips. “Is it okay?”
His chest has a faint sheen of sweat—from exertion, from the heat of our bodies moving together—and I press my palm to it; his heart is racing. I search his face. His eyes are clear, maybe a little worried.
“It’s good.”
I am so bad at asking for what I want.
“Did I hurt you?” he whispers.
Shaking my head, I say, “No.”
He sits up beneath me and wraps his arms around my waist, looking up at my face. “What are you thinking? What can I say to make this okay?”
“I guess I’m wondering what we’re doing.”
He gives me a wicked, cheeky smile. “I thought we were busy making love.”
“Is that what this is?” I honestly have never felt this before, so I don’t even know what to call it. But I’m not sure I can do this and keep myself from falling in love with him.
He kisses my chin. “Does it feel like something else to you?”
“I think it’s starting to feel like that to me, but I don’t actually know.” I press my mouth to his and let him deepen it, before pulling away the tiniest bit. “It feels like we should make sure we’re on the same page after”—he kisses me—“what happened with Lulu and—”
He interrupts me with another kiss. “And the fact that we’re already married?” he asks. His hand moves up my back and into my hair.
“Yeah, exactly. We’ve talked about logistics and backstory and fantasy, but we haven’t really talked about feelings.”
“You were gone all day yesterday. I woke up this morning and you still weren’t here.” He tilts his head, sucking on my neck. “I thought I fucked it up with you, and I honestly have never felt so panicked in my life.”
“The initial plan was a year,” I whisper.
“I say to hell with the initial plan.”
“It’s more complicated than just having a new girlfriend. We took vows.”
Calvin grins up at me. “I’m aware.”
“Doesn’t that paradoxically complicate the new plan?”
“How am I supposed to know?” He laughs into my shoulder and bites me gently. “I’ve never done this before. I just know I’m falling for the girl I married.”
twenty-four
Calvin hands me my buzzing phone. “Lulu again.”
I put it facedown on the coffee table and turn back to my laptop. For the first time in ages, I woke up with words in my head, and I’m determined to get them down before they fade back into fog.
He lies behind me on the couch. “Aren’t you going to call her?”
“Not right now.”
I can feel him reading over my shoulder. “What is this?”
“I don’t even know, actually.” I’m so tempted to cover it up, to hide the words by closing my screen because it feels like a bare tree trunk—all naked and vulnerable to the elements. Instead, I pretend my hands are glued to the keyboard. I’ve listened to Calvin stumble through a new run of notes or work out a new composition a hundred times already, and he’s never shy. Why should I be?
“For a book?” he asks. He knows how long this has eluded me, what having that spark of inspiration has to mean.
“No. Maybe? I’m not sure.” I read back through the notes I’ve made, almost tentative, careful not to chase off the spark. I can’t stop thinking about how it felt to roam the city yesterday in search of a talent like his. I can’t stop thinking about how it feels to listen to him and Ramón play together. “I just had this thought in my head, about how we met and where you are now, and how it feels to have heard you in both places.”
His hand runs over my shoulder and into my shirt, resting at the swell above my heart. “I like the look on your face right now. So intense.”
I miss writing. I wrote endless short stories during college and while getting my master’s. I had to write every day or I felt like a clogged drain, full of words. The day I got my degree and turned to face the world as a person no longer under the protective umbrella of school, it seemed like all the ideas dried up.
And that’s been true since I started working at the theater. After talking to Robert and Jeff, I wonder if it’s because I’m surrounded by people who are brilliant in a way I’m not, and it leaves me feeling ordinary by comparison.
But this . . . writing about how it feels to listen to music, to have found him—it almost feels like I’m writing a description of how my organs work together, what keeps me breathing. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this before.
His hand slips lower still, toying with my nipple, and his mouth comes to my neck, warm and biting. “Can I do this while you write?”
I’m still tender from the second round of makeup sex we had only an hour ago, but when his fingertips trap the peak of my breast in a gentle pinch, my whole body hums. “I’m not sure I could focus. It’d be like me putting my mouth on you while you play.”
His laugh is a low vibration against my skin. “We should try that later.”
I turn to capture his mouth in a kiss. “I’m almost done.”
Calvin retreats a little, moving his hand back up and
returning his mouth to the back of my neck, and although I worried this distraction would chase away my muse, the words seem stronger, if anything. I remember this feeling—the thrill of being so full of something and having it come out with such clarity. My fingers fly over the keyboard and I ignore the typos for now, ignore the way I see him following my thoughts on the screen, ignore everything.
The creativity is back, and the knowledge that it’s back because I’m happy propels me forward in this positive feedback loop that just keeps sending more and more words from my brain to my fingers.
My phone buzzes again, and Calvin reaches for it, turning off the vibration.
And then it lights up again, and again, ringing. I catch the name Lulu on the screen, and my writing mojo is still flimsy enough that the anxiety over dealing with her punctures a tiny hole in it.
“She’s called ten times already today,” he says. “She called a million times yesterday, too.”
I growl at the sight of the phone lighting up with another voicemail.
“I bet she’s violently hungover even two days later.” He rests his chin on my shoulder. “Do you want me to put your phone in the other room?”
I want to say yes. I want to return to what I was doing, and have him return to peppering kisses along my neck and shoulders, but in truth, the core of the idea is laid out on this page in front of me, and I know that the niggling awareness of Lulu’s panic is going to spread if I don’t call her back.
I’m angry, yes, but I’m not punitive.
I drop my hand onto my phone and pick it up, sighing. “Let me just get this over with.”
The call doesn’t even seem to ring through before she’s answering. “Holllllls. I am an asshole.”
“You are.”
“Dude. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry.”
The thing is, I know she’s genuinely mortified about her behavior the other night. Lulu is her own worst enemy. Drunk Lulu is a brutal alter ego and a burden she has to carry as long as she lets herself get wasted like that.
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