Jane's Harmony (Jane's Melody #2)

by Ryan Winfield

  Caleb slammed on the brakes when she screamed. He held out his arm to keep her in her seat, a gesture Jane would have thought only mothers did instinctively.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “You made it!” Jane shouted. “Oh my God, you made it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just got the e-mail. You made the show, Caleb! You’re going to Los Angeles, you superstar you.”

  “Let me see that,” he said.

  “You had just better look at the road and drive, buddy. I need you to live long enough so I can cash in on all your newfound wealth and fame.”

  “Then you read it to me,” he said, obviously excited.

  “Only if you promise to make love to me as soon as we get home,” she replied, clutching the phone to her breast.

  He put the blinker on and drifted onto the shoulder.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “I’m pulling over.”

  “But why are you pulling over?”

  “So I can read the e-mail myself, and then make love to you right here in the car.”

  Chapter 5

  I thought I told you I fired him for drinking on the job.”

  Mr. Zigler had moved his chair down from the beer truck and was reclining in the shade just beneath the open warehouse door. As Jane approached, he reached and turned off his radio, then picked up a spray bottle and misted himself.

  “What happened to paradise?” Jane asked, nodding toward the truck in the parking lot.

  “Shit,” he said, “this is too hot even for me. And my wife’s worried I’m getting skin cancer. Says she doesn’t want me to die. Which surprised the hell out of me, because I thought she’d been trying to poison me with her cooking all these years.”

  “I didn’t know you were married,” Jane said.

  “Hell, neither did I for the first few years. That turned out to be a problem. But seriously, we’ve been hitched now thirty-two years and there’s nobody on God’s good earth I’d rather come home to. Speaking of which, when are you and Caleb tying the knot?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We’ve talked about it a lot, but it’s hard to plan anything with this L.A. music show coming up. That’s kind of all we have time to think about right now.”

  Mr. Zigler nodded. “I’m sure gonna miss that kid around here. He’s a good worker, and it’ll take me two guys to replace him. But I knew when I hired him on it’d be temporary. I’ve got a few guys here who’ve been with me better’n ten-plus years. But Caleb’s meant for bigger things. You can see it in his eyes. You just can. When do y’all leave?”

  “He leaves next Tuesday.”

  “You’re not going with him?”

  Jane shook her head. “He wants me to, but I can’t.”

  Mr. Zigler raised his eyebrows, as if to ask why not.

  “It’s just . . . well, I’ve got to find work. They’re covering his expenses but they don’t pay him anything. Not unless he makes it through this first round of eliminations and onto the live show. They pay him then. That’s why he’s been working all this overtime with you. But anyway, you don’t care about all this. Is he in the back?”

  Mr. Zigler turned in his chair and looked back into the warehouse, as if to check. “I think he’s out with Brad doing deliveries all afternoon. Bars are stocking up for Hot Austin Nights.”

  Jane saw him eyeing the sack in her hand. She smiled and handed it to him, saying, “There are two sandwiches in there. I expect Caleb to get at least one of them when he gets back.”

  He smiled guiltily and took the sack. Jane heard the crinkle of a bag opening as she walked back to her car.

  “And one of the bags of chips is for him too,” she called to him over her shoulder.

  Jane woke before Caleb and lay in bed, looking up at the egg cartons on the ceiling and listening to the waves from her sound machine. It dawned on her that this was their last weekend together before he left.

  Weekends were her favorite because Caleb usually didn’t have to work, and she didn’t have to feel guilty about not job hunting. It was their uninterrupted time to spend together—walking Lady Bird Lake, seeing matinee movies, or even just staying in bed all day and making love. Some nights, if Caleb didn’t have a gig, she’d go out with him into the street and sit nearby with her arms wrapped around her knees and listen to him play for tips. He said he did it mostly just for inspiration, but it was always fun to go spend the money in his guitar case on a late-night ice cream cone or an early breakfast at an all-night diner. Jane wondered what she’d do to fill the time when he was gone.

  She unplugged her sound machine and took it with her into the bathroom for her ritual Saturday-morning shower. She lit a vanilla candle, turned on the shower, and looked at her reflection in the mirror. Faint stretch marks from when she had been pregnant with Melody remained on her belly. She remembered how frightened and abandoned she had felt when Melody’s father had taken off and left her to deal with her pregnancy alone, just shortly after she had begun to show. These feelings had lain dormant for many years, and she guessed that Caleb’s leaving was bringing them back up. But she knew Caleb was different. Oh, so very different. But she also knew that although she had accepted her stretch marks long ago, she wasn’t ready yet to face the other scars that remained unseen beneath the surface.

  Jane opened the cabinet and removed her ingredients. Next, she took out the small mixing bowl and the whisk. She uncapped the coconut oil and poured it into the bowl. Then she added sugar and the used coffee grounds she saved every day. She whisked this odd mixture into a sticky brown sludge and then used her fingers to smear it all over her naked body. She was almost completely covered in the strange concoction, crouched and rubbing it onto her calves, when the bathroom door opened.

  “Hey, babe, you mind if I . . . ah . . . sorry.”

  “Caleb! Don’t you know how to knock?”

  He had his hand covering his mouth, and she could tell he was trying not to laugh. “Sorry, babe. I heard the shower and just assumed you were in there. I have to pee.”

  “Well, go pee somewhere else.”

  “But this is the only bathroom.”

  “You’re telling me?” she asked, standing there exposed, wearing only her coffee rub.

  He smiled and slowly backed from the bathroom. He had the door nearly shut when he opened it again and leaned in. She could see the question on his lips before he even asked it.

  “I saw it on Dr. Oz,” she said. “Now get out!”

  He had made them both a big breakfast by the time she joined him in the kitchen. An apology of sorts, she assumed. She didn’t say a word as she pulled a stool up to the small bar that they used for their table and waited for him to serve her. He laid everything out and then sat down and joined her.

  “I thought you had to use the bathroom,” she said.

  “Oh, I did, but I peed already in the sink.”

  She slugged him on the shoulder. “Caleb! Tell me you didn’t.”

  “Okay, I didn’t.”

  “Did you, though? Because that’s a deal breaker if you did.”

  He laughed. “Of course I didn’t. I ran downstairs to the convenience store. Here, I got you some oranges too, because he wouldn’t let me use the restroom unless I bought something.”

  “How romantic of you,” she said sarcastically. “Did you brew coffee?”

  “I did. Would you like some?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Okay, but only if you promise to drink it and not wear it.”

  He burst out laughing at his own joke, and Jane shoved him so hard he fell off his stool.

  “You set me up for that, you jerk.”

  He picked himself off the floor, still laughing, and poured them each a cup of coffee. “Seriously, though,” he said, setting her coffee in front of h
er, “how was the Dr. Oz skin treatment?”

  Jane buttered a piece of toast, still refusing to make eye contact with him. “Fine,” she said. “He claims it only takes seven minutes, but he doesn’t say anything about the thirty-seven minutes it takes to clean the shower after.”

  “But does it work?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t tell yet.”

  Caleb moved around behind her and leaned in to brush his lips against her neck. “Let me have a look,” he said softly. “Maybe I can tell.”

  Jane tried to ignore him, still buttering her toast.

  “Mmm . . .” he said, kissing his way around her neck. “Still not sure, though. Maybe I need a better look. Maybe here. Oh, yes. I think this Dr. Oz of yours must be a real genius. I can’t remember ever seeing skin so smooth.”

  “I didn’t put it on my ear, you goofball.”

  “How about here? I know you put it here.”

  His lips moved down to her collarbone, and she could feel his thick hair drop into her shirt and tickle her bare chest. The butter was an inch thick on the toast by this time, and Jane set it down along with the knife and leaned her head back.

  “I was wondering if it worked a little lower,” she said.

  Caleb spun her around on her stool to face him. Then he kissed her. When his lips left hers, he moved lower, pulling the loose T-shirt down and flicking his tongue over her nipple.

  “Maybe here?” he asked.

  “Yes, maybe right there.”

  “I wonder if this magic potion works everywhere,” he said, moving his mouth to her other breast. “Maybe I need to inspect you thoroughly so we can give this TV doctor of yours an honest appraisal.”

  “Maybe you’re all talk,” Jane said.

  Caleb lifted her shirt over her head, and Jane reflexively raised her arms. He tossed the shirt aside, then cupped his hands beneath her chin and leaned in and kissed her, and soon all she could think about was him. His sexy smile; his haunted eyes. His lips. His body. Oh, dear Lord, his body. And those hands. Hands that did a real man’s work. Hands that made music. Hands that made love to her. Hands that were right now tugging on her shorts.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  But he pressed a finger to her lips to silence her. Then he continued to pull her shorts free. She lifted herself off the stool slightly to help him, and when she straightened her knees he slipped them free. They landed on the floor next to her shirt. He stood back a moment and looked at her in the light slanting in from the partially drawn curtains. Any other man and she would have been uncomfortable sitting naked on that stool. Not so with Caleb. The way he looked at her, with desire and appreciation in his eyes, made her feel like some kind of prize that he would spend his entire life winning again and again.

  He pulled his own shirt off and tossed it down with hers. His skin was golden in the morning light. She could see the striations of muscle between his ribs, the cut of his obliques. Then he pulled his shorts off and stepped out of them. His thighs were long and strong, and she could see between them that he was already swollen for her with his need.

  She wanted him on the bed now, and she started to rise from the stool. But he shook his head and stepped toward her and forced her back down. Then he bent and kissed her gently, and when he pulled his mouth away, he dropped down onto his knees before her. She felt his tongue on her inner thigh, his thick hair there too. Then she slid forward on the stool and parted her legs to make room for him to come closer, and she shuddered with pleasure when he did—his tongue now teasing her. He wrapped his arms under her legs and around to grip her thighs, then pulled them apart, working his talented mouth there between them. She opened her eyes and looked down on him, kneeling before her, lost in the intricate details of her most intimate flesh, and she felt for a moment on that stool like a queen on her throne with the world taut and trembling before her, and all her kingdom safe between her legs.

  She buried her hands in his thick hair and pulled him up to her mouth. Not because she’d had enough, but because she needed more. He tasted sweet and salty and it drove her mad with desire. He was standing before her now and the stool was high and their waists were at the perfect height. She wrapped her hand around him and felt him pulsing in her grip. Then she reached behind him with her other hand and gripped his ass, pulling him toward her, guiding him to where she needed more than anything else for him to be.

  He moaned as soon as he was inside her and so did she. He was gentle and rhythmic at first, but his tempo quickly built. Jane reclined against the short back of the stool and looked down and watched—his quads were flexed, his abs were tightened, and he was hard and long and disappearing inside her with each thrust.

  “Fuck, yes,” she said. “Just like that.”

  She felt herself blushing because she never spoke like that. But then Caleb smiled.

  “You like that, baby?” he asked. “You want me to fuck you like this?”

  “Yes, please. Yes.”

  He grabbed her thighs and spread her legs farther and drove himself deeper, thrusting like a man in need of relief. She knew she was close when she began to feel weightless and every nerve in her body seemed to scream with pleasure. Then he was driving into her harder and the stool was wobbling and Jane reached her arms out and spread them on the counter behind her, pushing their breakfast aside, and she leaned back on the stool with her arms spread and her legs spread and Caleb rising between her, his chest slick already with sweat, his mouth half-open and moaning, and they looked into each other’s eyes and fucked until she heard herself scream—

  “Oh God, yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Don’t. Stop. Now.”

  And then pleasure flooded over her like light and she was speechless and shaking and Caleb must have felt it because he came too. The stool had half tipped, so Caleb lifted her and kicked the stool over, then gently laid her on the floor, their legs and arms tangled and him still inside her. When Jane’s heart stopped thudding in her ear, she heard the neighbor pounding on their bedroom wall, her dog barking in the background.

  “That woman needs to get laid,” Caleb said breathlessly.

  “If it’ll shut that damn dog up,” Jane joked, “then I say you go do it.”

  “I’ll have to do it later, you wore me out.”

  “Don’t you dare, mister,” Jane said, kissing him. Then she wrapped her arms around him. “You’re all mine.”

  He scooted slightly on his back, and Jane rested her head on his chest and lay quiet for a minute or so.

  “I’m going to miss you, Caleb.”

  “I’m going to miss you too, baby. But I’m not gone yet.”

  “No. But you will be soon.”

  “It’ll only be a few weeks.”

  “An hour is too long. And it’s three weeks and two days if you go all the way to the live show.”

  “You know I want you to come. Why don’t you?”

  “We talked about this, Caleb. I need to get to work. My savings are draining away. And besides, what would I do all day? Sit around in the hotel and wait for you?”

  “I could stay here, then.”

  “Hell no,” she said, lifting her head and looking at him. “This is your big break.”

  Caleb smiled, brushing her hair away from her eye. “And it was all because of you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. I’m worried you might hate it.”

  “I won’t hate it,” he said.

  “Then I’m worried you might love it.”

  “I love you, you silly freak,” he said, laughing. “Now we had better get up off this dirty floor and eat our breakfast.”

  “But it’s cold now.”

  “How about Magnolia for breakfast, then? My treat.”

  “I’d like that,” she said. “But I’ll need to take another shower first.”

  Cale
b laughed.

  “What?” Jane asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You laughed about something.”

  “You want me to bring in the coffee grounds for you?”

  “This is worse than that nail salon you brought me to.”

  “Oh, zip it,” Jane said. “You don’t need to pretend to not like it for us. We both know you’re secretly enjoying it, and we don’t consider you any less manly because of it.”

  “She’s right,” the hairstylist said, painting bleach onto another piece of foil. “And you know what they say about those who protest too much.”

  Caleb just scowled into the mirror. His head was nearly covered now in foil, and Jane had to admit to herself that he did look a little ridiculous. She couldn’t contain her chuckle.

  “See, I do look like a dolt,” he said. “And what’s with this damn tinfoil? I swear I’m picking up a Russian radio station.”

  “That’s on the speakers in the salon, silly,” the stylist said. “The owner’s Ukrainian.”

  “Think how great highlights’ll look on TV,” Jane said.

  The stylist winked at Jane over Caleb’s head. “TV?” she asked. “I had no idea you were going to be famous. We better dye your eyelashes and wax your eyebrows while we’re at it.”

  Caleb shook his head so violently that a few of the foils fell out. He started to rise from the chair, but the stylist laughed and pushed him back down.

  “I’m kidding, handsome. Your eyebrows are perfect.”

  When they finished at the salon, they stopped at Hoffbrau Steaks for an early dinner. The sign said the restaurant had been there since 1934, and by the look of the small space and the worn tables set end to end, Jane guessed they hadn’t updated the decor since then either. But for less than fifteen bucks you got a garlic salad, potato wedges, and a grilled rib eye swimming in a pool of lemon butter with free soda bread to mop the butter up, which they both did. After they had eaten, they sat and sipped Diet Cokes and made each other laugh by passing notes back and forth on a napkin with wild guesses about the other oddball patrons eating on their left and right. When the server dropped off their check, they both grabbed for it.