Hammers, Strings, and Beautiful Things

by Morgan Lee Miller

  “I told you in Miami that you have a really nice smile,” I said. “Was that not a hint?”

  “Sorry, I’m having a moment right now. Seeing Jessie is making me all sorts of insecure and reminding me how long it’s been since I’ve been with someone, and it’s driving me crazy.”

  “You haven’t been with anyone since her?”

  “Hey!” She hit me in the arm again. “I thought this was a judge-free zone?”

  “I’m not judging! I just find that incredibly surprising.”

  “Do you understand why I’m frustrated now? I don’t even want to hear you complain about having needs. I completely know and understand more than you right now.”

  Her eyes drifted off mine and found a random spot on the wall to look at. That was when a light bulb clicked on in my head, and as much as the rational part of me desperately reached to flip it right back off, the other part of me currently controlled by the weed, Chardonnay, and residual Ritalin wanted to leave it on. Let it grow brighter. It was risky, but with great risks came great rewards.

  Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it…

  “Well, you know, since we both have needs, maybe we should just use each other.”

  Oh my God, no! You said it. How do we escape this moving bus?

  Her eyebrows climbed up her forehead at the same time her mouth parted to the smallest degree. “Are you serious?”

  “Uh…” Yup, tongue-tied now. “I mean—it was a joke?”

  “Was it, though?” Her tone was skeptical. Even she didn’t buy it. I didn’t either.

  “I didn’t mean for it to come off as creepy as it did…”

  The more I babbled, the more her smile grew through her blush. The more she smiled and blushed, the more my face and body felt as if it’d been hit with menopause.

  “Blair Bennett, are you coming on to me?” she asked, giggling.

  “I, uh, were you coming on to me in the pool? When you said I looked good in a bikini?”

  “Oh God, here we go,” she said and twisted herself to her other side to give me her back. With a turn of the knob, the nightstand light flickered off, and the two of us were draped in darkness with the occasional highway light sweeping by us in a blink of an eye. “Narcissism is contagious in Hollywood. I would stop going there.”

  “It’s a legit question,” I said.

  She flipped back over to face me, now mere inches away. “So was mine!”

  “You answer first. You hit on me first.”

  “How did I hit on you first? You allowed me to put sunscreen on your back.”

  “I didn’t want second degree sunburn again.” I held back a grin, knowing that her diversion to my question gave me all the answers. The girl knew how to work the media and their questions. If she didn’t want to answer the question, she diverted. And boy did she divert. “Just answer the question,” I continued. “Were you coming on to me in the pool?”

  “You literally just offered to give me an orgasm right now,” Reagan said. “You know what, you don’t need to answer my question. I already know the answer. You were coming on to me, and you’re only acting like this because you’re not sure how I took it. So, to torture you, I’m going to leave you with this: good night, Blair.” She tossed back over on her other side.

  “What? No! You can’t do that!”

  “Oh, I think I can.”

  Silence. Nothing but silence and the faint humming of the bus engine. I let out a frustrated moan, knowing I wasn’t going to get my answer. Her PR team did a great job sealing up all her secrets and making sure that frontal lobe of hers never cracked under pressure. Sexual pressure included.

  “Ugh, I shouldn’t have agreed to this,” I said. “I’m not gonna be able to fall asleep now.”

  “You shouldn’t be going to sleep frustrated…or Random Girl isn’t doing you right.”

  Everything below my underwear flared up with so much desire just thinking of Reagan doing me right.

  I inhaled way too much clary sage that night in Nashville, Tennessee.

  Chapter Six

  Ever since I made that horrible proposition that we sleep together, whatever weird tension that glued us together became even stronger. But weird in an exciting way, as if we had this secret we kept from my band, the crew, the fans, the press, and the whole world. And I loved that added thrill.

  Since Nashville, Reagan asked me if I wanted to spend the night with her again under the guise of avoiding Miles’s snores, but I had a feeling it was more than that. If she felt anything like I did from our first sleepover, she was searching for the rush of exciting uncertainty of where the night would lead with the vulnerable backdrop of a darkened room and warm bed. Nashville to Atlanta to Birmingham, I found myself lying next to Reagan, discussing everything and anything. She told me about her life growing up in Nashville, the youngest with two older brothers, and how her oldest brother, Colton, who was five years older than her and was expecting his first child with his wife in November, and she went on about how she was going to spoil her niece and couldn’t wait to spend Thanksgiving with her family. She asked about my family, and I went on about my grandparents. How Grandma was the disciplinarian and the woman who got me into baking, who would always bake her amazing cookies for my friends who came over or for school bake sales. I told her how Gramps gave me different instruments to learn to distract me from getting so bored that I found trouble—like sneaking off with Dana Bohlen or pool hopping in all the ritzy neighborhoods with Miles and my other high school friends.

  The morning we arrived in Richmond, I woke up to my arm slung over Reagan’s body, her back snuggled into my front, and my face buried in her shoulder blades. It took me by surprise, and as much as I wanted to push myself to the farthest corner of her bed, the more I adjusted to the knowledge that we were in a perfect spooning position, the more comfortable it felt. It pulled a smile from me as I caught the smell of her shampoo emanating off her. The sounds of her deep breaths I’d grown used to over the course of a week told me she was still asleep, but that was okay because it bought me more time to enjoy her in my arms. I held her for a few more moments, holding in my pee so it could last a little longer. By the time I returned from the bathroom, she was already stretching and smiling at me.

  But that spooning session I’d keep to myself.

  Since the start of the tour, Reagan and I had a collection of shared moments of secret flirting and the undeclared war we were playing with each other to see who would break in making the first move. Every night I crawled into her bed, I hoped that it would be the night we would have our first kiss. There were plenty of silent opportunities. When our eyes securely locked in between conversations, moments of playful arm slapping, subtle comments about attractiveness, and accidental cuddles. I wasn’t sure how long it would go on, but it was pushing me over the edge. My lips were screaming for the touch of hers. My body was screaming for the touch of hers.

  Actually, every fiber of my being was screaming for her.

  During our sound check in Richmond, Reagan was back at the soundboard with the sound technician, curiously watching him adjust the microphone and instrument levels as she sipped on her green tea through a straw. Miles and I already tested our opening song and planned on playing around with two more before our sound check was completed.

  “Let’s warm up with a cover,” I told Miles.

  Everything was already sounding good. The mics were at the perfect level. The instruments. The bass. Why not have fun?

  “What are you thinking?” Miles asked behind his drum kit.

  “‘Jessie’s Girl.’”

  He frowned. “Really? Rick Springfield?”

  Without letting him voice his opinion, I went ahead without him, strumming the opening chords on the Fender and making a face at him. He flipped me off, our usual banter. When I turned around to face the soundboard, I found Reagan’s stare on me as the muted chords spilled out of the speakers and filled the empty arena. When I sang
the first lyric, I could feel her zero in on me quizzically. And when the bridge came around, she lowered her straw, crossed her arms, and squared her body to us with a wide smirk partially hidden by the bite in her lip.

  It was a perfect song to warm up to. It was the perfect song to get Reagan’s damn attention.

  But of course, we didn’t talk about it after the show when we ended the night drinking wine in her bed. I think she did that on purpose for more torture.

  The next night in DC, a local restaurant catered food for us before the show, and all fifty-something of us loaded up our plates. Reagan waited her turn for the tongs as I plucked the right sized lemon-pepper marinated chicken from the tin catering pan.

  “That’s a nice breast you have,” she said with a slight hesitation before she gestured to the chicken clasped in the tongs in front of my chest. Her tone sounded anything but innocent. Her single cocked eyebrow and the pull of one side of her lips insinuated that she knew exactly what she was trying to imply. The worst part was that she caught me so off guard with that comment I didn’t have anything to dish back to her. My throat went dry, my tongue was tied, and my cheeks felt so red; I handed her the tongs and scampered away to Miles so I didn’t have to look like an idiot that much longer.

  During our performance, I told Miles I wanted to switch up our set list and do a cover. It was nice to change things up a bit, right? Since I spent a lot of time inhaling the faint clary sage permanently stuck to Reagan’s skin and hair, I told Miles I was going to play “Crash Into Me” by Dave Matthews while he stayed quiet on the drums. The song was about Dave Matthews’s wet dreams over a girl, which sounded a lot creepier than the romantic, sexy sound of the song. So, while the lights dimmed on Miles, I started the song off by adding a few layers to my looping machine to add some flair. The first loop was a lick on the Fender, and the second loop was a few slides of quarter notes. Then I quickly threw on the acoustic baby Martin and played the guitar part we all knew and loved against the loops. I could see Reagan in her concert attire, standing in the shadows of the side stage with her eyes glued on me as I sang to the twenty thousand people of DC. But really, I sang to her…even though I pretended not to notice her watching me.

  In response to my impulsive cover, Reagan stopped halfway through her set list and checked in with the crowd, asking them how they were doing, and they responded in a roaring cheer.

  “You guys don’t mind if I sing a cover, do you?” Their cheering told her they didn’t mind one bit.

  A cover wasn’t part of her set list at all. She’d never played any cover since the beginning of the tour, and she didn’t even spice up her sound check to play a cover with her band. It was one thing for a two-person band to switch up their set list. It was an ordeal for Reagan to switch it up and tell her band, her dancers, and her crew that she would add a song they never prepared for.

  She broke out into “Cool for the Summer” by Demi Lovato, a song that was sexual and all about girls hooking up with girls. But she sang and performed it with her usual innocent disposition. I never thought a pop song would turn me on so much. She made it a point to walk over to the side of the stage where I stood unnoticed as she sang. Hearing her sing those words made me so dizzy. The crowd on the floor pushed closer to her, tossing their hands up, begging for just a finger graze, and after she satisfied a few begging hands, she turned to the side stage, looked straight at me, and winked.

  That pretty much did it for me.

  * * *

  After begging me to play the song all freakin’ day, I caved and granted Miles’s wish for the second cover song for our next show in Philly. As much I wanted to play “Electric Feel” by MGMT to passive-aggressively sing to Reagan, Miles vetoed because he said only seven people in the crowd would know that song, and we had to cover a song everyone could sing along to. So, on stage in front of our Philly audience, I first looped the jingle of a tambourine, followed by a few bluesy chords layered with some subtle synthesizers on the keyboard, and then the third loop was the famous bass line at the beginning of the song. On the acoustic Martin guitar, I played live a sultry fingerpicking melody with some Latin spice reverberating in each note. And that was how we created “You Drive Me Crazy” by Britney Spears with a Midnight Konfusion flair. From the sound of the crowd cheering and singing every word back to us, I could tell they enjoyed it too. Reagan followed our cover with “Dress” by Taylor Swift, wearing the sparkly purple dress she always wore during that portion of her set. I never heard the song before, but apparently it matched us to a T. Our secrets, how no one suspected anything going on between us or that I shared her bed. Since Miles was one of the biggest Swifties out there, he told me that not only was it a Taylor Swift song, but it was her most risqué song. According to him, when Taylor Swift first shared the song with her most fervent fans at her Rhode Island house, with her parents also present, her dad walked out because it was too much for his ears. I had no idea that Taylor Swift had the ability to do that to her poor father.

  Of course, this new juicy knowledge drew my attention back to Reagan as she sang the chorus. She didn’t want us to be best friends; she dreamed about me ripping that dress off her. My mouth dropped to the floor. I totally got why Taylor Swift’s dad had to walk out now.

  That purple sequin dress took on a whole new meaning that I would never be able to shake off.

  I’d been buzzing from the past two days of intense flirting with Reagan. We had a day off in Manhattan before Reagan’s sold-out Madison Square Garden show. Since a bunch of lyrics clogged my head, I dedicated some of that time freeing those lyrics into my journal. I cracked open beer after beer to fuel my thoughts, filled the fresh pages of my journal with all the lyrics until I hit a good stopping point and my right wrist cramped up. That was when you knew you had an amazing writing session. Wrist cramps were good cramps.

  The night before the big show, after a whole day of writing and resting, as I brushed my teeth before I surrendered to bed and sleep, my phone buzzed with a text from Reagan. The time flashed 12:18 on my screen with Reagan’s name right below it.

  Her text read: Room 2213. I have 180-degree view of Central Park and the whole city. Plus, a Jacuzzi tub. Just saying.

  I beamed as foamy blue toothpaste dripped down the sides of my mouth. As I clenched my toothbrush between my teeth, I typed back, Is this a formal invite?

  My invite from Nashville never expires unless verbally addressed, which it hasn’t.

  I responded to her eagerly. Coming.

  And she quickly responded. I wish.

  My toothbrush fell from my mouth and into the sink. Toothpaste splattered on the counter and my chin as I reread that message. Yup, she really said that. This was happening.

  I sprinted to room 2213 without even cleaning up the mess.

  On my walk to her suite, I prepped myself for what this could turn into because I knew exactly what this was. I was always so terrified of making the first move that I went through my whole twenty-four years of existence having never made it. Hence, why Reagan and I were in this game. All my past girlfriends? They kissed me first. It was great because I didn’t have to put too much thought into it. But Reagan was the first girl who stole all my thoughts and injected them with so much analyzation. I had a feeling that if I didn’t initiate a kiss, we’d be playing this game of cuddles, talking about orgasms, and singing songs about sex on repeat for the whole tour. I had to do something because I wasn’t sure how much longer I could let my brain keep wondering how her lips tasted.

  When I stood outside her door, my pulse thumped against my skin, and I hoped that maybe we wouldn’t kiss tonight so she couldn’t feel the movements if she sucked on my neck. I was so nervous. The only time I remembered being this nervous with sweaty palms and my pulse twitching this rapidly was when I was about to lose my virginity to Dana Bohlen, and I hoped that my inexperience wouldn’t scare her away from me or sleeping with girls.

  With a deep breath, I knocked on the door, and a few
moments ticked by as I waited. I was hoping she would answer faster, then part of me wondered if she purposely kept me waiting to keep me on my toes. She always did a good job of that. And it worked because the longer it took her to answer the door, the more my pulse panicked under my skin.

  She opened the door wrapped up in a white robe, her damp hair up in a messy bun, and her collarbone teasing me from underneath the cotton fabric. She let me inside her lavish suite which seemed even bigger than my apartment in West Hollywood. And sure enough, two floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked all of New York with Central Park right below us, the dark blob encompassed by glimmering building lights.

  “Wow,” I said, taking in her suite, then taking in her in that robe. “And wow. You’re very forward.” I gestured to her robe.

  “I was just about to change into pj’s.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “No?”

  I shook my head. “You can sleep in your robe.”

  “I could. It’s really soft. Feel it.”

  She tugged on the front of the robe just a bit for my grip to catch. Her tug teased me, showing more of her collarbone and the swell of her breasts. She wasn’t doing this to show off her robe. She was doing this to tease me. This was the lasso to pull me into her lips.

  “It’s really soft,” I said through my arid throat, and I couldn’t keep my eyes from trailing the soft skin down to her breasts. “Feels comfortable enough to sleep in.”

  “Well, if you really want me to sleep in this, as my guest, I’ll do what you want.”

  “Then as your guest, I get dibs on little spoon.”

  Her eyelids relaxed into a side eye, and she blew out a long sigh as if granting my wish took up all the energy inside her. “Okay, but it’s only because you have a nice face and nice sleeve.”

  I flashed her a smile before I jumped on the left side of the bed, burying myself underneath the white duvet and curling my body into a perfect little spoon position. When Reagan joined me, the leftover heat from her warm shower wrapped me up with her embrace, and the smell of the hotel shampoo and body wash permeated the air around us. Her body fit snug around mine, and my stomach fluttered when her arm hung in front of me, then wandered around until she found my hand to hold.