Strummed

by Heidi Lowe

  She chuckled lightly. “What can I say, nothing else seems to matter when you're having fun.”

  “Well I'm glad you both enjoyed yourselves.”

  “I told you it was about me.”

  Whether it had been all along or not, it didn't matter now, because she was right. It would always be about her.

  “So you win.” I gave a deflated shrug. “I can't ever compete with you, Autumn, so you'll win every time, if winning is what's important to you.”

  “It's no fun if you don't put up a fight.”

  Just as I'd thought: this was all a game to her. Sleeping with other people's dates, probably sleeping with other people's wives too, it was all a big, fucking game. Jess was right about one thing, though. My anger wasn't with Trish – I'd already forgotten about her. It was with Autumn and her reprehensible actions. But not jealousy. It could never have been jealousy.

  “I'm not interested in fighting. Now, can I do my job?” I didn't wait for her to okay it, I bent down and retrieved the basket of soiled clothes, being careful not to look at her crotch as I did so.

  After my intense day at work, where I did everything possible to avoid spending more than a few minutes at a time in the same room as Autumn, the feeling of betrayal running deep, I threw myself onto the couch when I got home.

  Jess came home an hour later and found me in the same spot, staring at the ceiling. “I would ask if you're high, but who am I fooling?” She stood over me, eyes shining with amusement. “What's up?”

  “Do you even have to ask?”

  “No, I guess not.” She shoved my legs off the couch, clearing a seat for herself. “Autumn Anders. Your beautiful nightmare.”

  “She thought the whole thing was funny. Didn't show any contrition. I told you she did it to get back at me. She hates me just because I'm her assistant. I do everything for her, and I get treated like crap. How is that fair?”

  “It's not. No one said life was fair.”

  “And I've lasted longer than all the others. That should count for something, but it doesn't.”

  “Think of taking the abuse as part of the job description. And for God's sake, whatever you do, don't take another date to an event that she's attending. That's just asking for trouble.”

  “Don't worry, I've learned my lesson.” I sat up. “Do you know any single women, or men, looking for a prissy girlfriend? Preferably someone with an aversion to rock music, and hot, blonde rock stars.”

  She blinked wide for effect. “You're actually asking me to hook you up with someone? What happened to wanting to find your own date, not trusting me not to set you up with an ax murderer and all that?”

  “Look where finding my own date got me. I'm tired of being single.”

  She rubbed her hands together, a mischievous glint in her eye. “Leave it to me, I'll work my magic. This ought to be fun.”

  So why was I filled with such dread?

  Dating, unfortunately, simply wasn't for me. It took two weeks and five mediocre dates to come to that conclusion. Four women, one man, and no one that stood out to me as worthy of a second date. That was when the insecurity set in. Was it me? Was I just not built to be with anyone? Had I spent too much time around Autumn – had her disparaging attitude towards relationships somehow rubbed off on me, so that my dates could smell it on me? So many questions, all of which made me feel even more depressed about my chronic singleness.

  It was this subject that occupied my thoughts when Autumn's raspy, annoyingly sexy voice ripped me from my reverie. She'd just returned from a late lunch with her manager and found me down in one of her two garages, giving an unnecessary polish to the Aston Martin. I'd taken to cleaning it, seeing as it was not only my favorite one of her cars, but the one I drove most frequently. The act was surprisingly therapeutic. This had also become my haven, the place I crept to in order to get away from her for ten minutes.

  “So this is where you hide out. I'm starting to think you like that car more than you like me.” She laughed at this, knowing that was the case. The car didn't try to break my spirit daily, didn't wander around buck naked and tempt me with its curves and mounds, didn't sleep with my dates.

  “Just like to see it sparkle,” I said, barely paying attention to her. My answers to her were short and abrupt, a reflection of my feelings toward her. Ever since the Trish incident I couldn't bring myself to be as polite as I once was. If she'd been aware of it in the past, she hadn't shown it. But that was all about to change.

  “You're still sore about your little punk friend, aren't you?” It came out of the blue. Two weeks and several dates – for both of us – had passed. It stunned me to learn she even remembered. “You're still pissed because I screwed her before you got to.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “I did you a favor. She wasn't right for you.”

  I let the rag drop. “Oh, but she was right for you?”

  She grinned. “I knew it was about her. You've been walking around with that face for days.”

  “Just answer me one question: why? Why did you do it, with her?”

  She shrugged nonchalantly. “Because I could. Because I knew that it would get to you. Because she was a reasonably attractive woman I hadn't already slept with. Take your pick.”

  I felt my lip curl in disgust as I looked at her. They were terrible reasons for being intimate with someone. What sort of person did that? “I should probably get back to my job, because I'm on the verge of saying something that I know I won't regret.”

  “I did you a favor.” That was the second time she said it, and both times I didn't understand it. “Did you honestly think you would find your happily ever after with her? The happy ending you insist on searching for, that most people know doesn't exist?”

  “That's not the point.” My voice was raised slightly.

  “Then what is the point?”

  “The point is you would have slept with her even if I had thought that, if I thought she was The One.”

  “I don't owe you anything,” she said, rather defensively I thought.

  “No, you don't. And we don't need to have this conversation. You're my boss, I'm just your assistant. I'll know better than to bring anyone I'm interested in around you. Or just date people who aren't susceptible to your charms.”

  She snorted derisively. “Good luck finding someone like that. I can have anyone I want.”

  I rolled my eyes for her to see. “There are plenty of people who would be turned off by your ego.”

  A half-smile crept to her lips and didn't move as she stepped toward me, closing the gap between us until not much remained of it. She couldn't have missed the sudden fear in my eyes. Her voice seemed to drop an octave, her big blue eyes taking on a come hither smokiness. Suddenly I became aware of every feature on her face, even noticing the damp sheen to her lower lip. She reached out and brushed a fallen strand of my hair behind my ear, making sure that I felt her finger on my skin.

  “Are you one of those people?” she murmured, her warm breath on my face. “Are you immune to my charms?”

  Swallowing my saliva felt more like swallowing gravel. My breaths came in starts, staggered and erratic. “Y–yes,” I croaked, barely audible.

  She backed me against the hood of the car, without touching me. I felt like prey, unable to put up a fight against a predator three times my size.

  “I don't believe you,” she purred, her lips grazing my ear. “I think that if I took your panties off right now, I would see just how susceptible you were, and I could probably fill a bucket with it.” She looked at me, probably to gauge my reaction, to see if I was crumbling beneath her. Her smile told me that what she witnessed on my face pleased her. She'd successfully reduced me to a trembling wreck, close to expiring without even being touched.

  “Shall we see?” she cooed, running her index finger down my chest. When she got to the zipper on my pants, her movement was slow in undoing it, all the while maintaining steady, unblinking eye
contact.

  “W–what are you doing?”

  “Testing a theory.”

  She was going to prove herself right. I already knew it. After all, I was the one soaking my panties. The worst thing about it was being powerless to stop it, or her. I was just a shivering, breathless mess with a throbbing vagina, whose cover was about to be blown.

  Her voyage into my panties was prolonged, her lips brushing mine, sucking in every breath I exhaled. And when finger met folds, swam through the sea of wetness between my legs, my eyes flitted shut. It was the gentlest touch against the most sensitive part of my body, more sensitive than it had ever been, but the mere contact was enough to send me into a panting frenzy.

  “Are you immune, baby?” she cooed, her voice snaking through my body, heightening the sensation of her fingers inside me. She'd never called me baby before, never done a lot of the things she was currently doing to me. It was all like a surreal dream that I never wanted to wake from.

  And then it was over. Barely five seconds later, and the most glorious feeling I'd had to date had reached a climax. Sadly, I hadn't. She removed her fingers, moist and shimmering with my guilt, my excitement, and she brought them to her lips, depositing a helping on her mouth, before licking a bit off. Then she arched forward and dropped a slow, light kiss to my open mouth.

  Just as my tongue jumped in to action, desperate to gain entry into her mouth, she pulled away. A fiendish grin spread the width of her face as she took in the yearning look in my eyes, before her gaze fell on my unfastened pants. “Yep, definitely immune.” She laughed to herself. “Get back to work. You missed a spot.”

  I watched her bounce off without glancing back to see again what she had done to me. For that I was grateful, because she wasn't around to see me practically collapse onto the hood of her car, and gasp for breath, tingling all over.

  Holy crap! She'd given me the kiss of death. The kiss I'd been searching for, the moment I'd dreamed of as a kid.

  Holy crap! It was her.

  TEN

  You wait your whole life for something, living only on a prayer, a smidgen of hope that it will actually materialize. But the world hardens you before it ever gets the chance to. Hardens you with its realities, steals your hope, your faith, and leaves you with cynicism – realism. The idea of ever finding The One, that person that your soul has been searching for since birth and you just didn't know it, soon becomes a pipe dream...

  Until you meet her. Finally see her with your own two eyes. Fully formed, in the flesh, more beautiful now than she ever was, now that you know it's her. You hear your soul shouting, The search is over. We've found her. Suddenly a sentence isn't just a mere sentence when it's coming from her mouth – it's a sonnet. Or when she's barking orders at you, you hear angels singing. Twenty-four years seemed like a lifetime to wait, but then you find her and realize that you would have waited twenty-four more for her.

  Nothing prepared me for Autumn. I'd been too preoccupied looking the other way, in another direction, searching for that special person. I wouldn't have dreamed that she would have been the one I'd been searching for, waiting for. Well, perhaps in my nightmares. Because only foolish people fall for rock stars; and only foolish, insane people fall for Autumn Anders. The woman had heart-breaker written all over her, in red pen. Hell, I'd seen the worst of her, the side her lovers never had, and still I'd fallen.

  Heart-breaker, and heartbroken: she wore both titles, but only one pridefully. Nancy Dunn was and always would be the love of her life, and there was no escaping that. I didn't think there would ever be room in her heart for another woman, and I'd thought this the day I'd met her. The thought didn't bother me then, but it did now.

  “Are you sure you don't want to take the kitchen sink too? 'Cause you've got everything else in there.” An amused Jess watched me from my bedroom door as I attempted to stuff another top into my overflowing suitcase. “You'll be gone two weeks, Elle. You can leave a few things behind.”

  I groaned with the effort, optimistic that if I just persevered I would get the damn thing in. “We'll be moving around a lot, and I don't know what the weather will be like. I have to be prepared.”

  “Gotta say, I've always been sorta envious of you since you started working for She Who Must Not Be Named, but this literally kills me. It's full-blown jealousy now. Yep, I officially hate you.”

  “You shouldn't. It will be long days, even longer nights, and bad diets, probably. Oh, and constantly rejecting Sam Richie's advances. That sort of thing gets real old, real quick.”

  “It all sounds awesome!”

  Actually, in spite of my underplaying the tour, it did sound exciting. I was fully aware of my fortunate situation. Getting to tour with a platinum-selling band, being front and center of the action, would have been a dream come true for anyone. But I'd taken to downplaying my excitement in all things involving Autumn, ever since our brief “dalliance” – or whatever it could be called – in her garage a couple of weeks ago. If Jess suspected anything, she didn't say. Didn't even inquire as to why I no longer put up a fight in the morning when I had to go to work. I wasn't ready to tell her that not only would I keep going back, but I wanted to be there, and would have gone in even if I wasn't being paid.

  “What's your first stop?”

  “The birthplace of the band – Nevada. They're performing in Reno.” I gave a little growl of success, having finally managed to fit the last item in.

  “Hey, you know you could meet some pretty interesting people while you're out there. You might even meet the love of your life. Keep an open mind.”

  That was often her line to me, because she was so familiar with my lack of open-mindedness. She could have saved her breath on that piece of advice, as it didn't apply anymore. I mean, nothing says open-minded like falling for a female rock star ten years your senior, who just happened to be your mean boss.

  I should have said that while seeing Autumn had become my obsession, something I craved daily, almost a necessity – akin to water for me, it was much like sweet-tasting poison. I suffered when I saw her, and suffered when I didn't.

  We'd just boarded the plane to Nevada, for the first leg of the tour, and found our seats in First Class. I'd never flown anything other than coach in the past. As I took my seat beside Greta, I watched Autumn slump into hers, and was immediately joined by an attractive brunette she'd met in the V.I.P lounge of the airport. I saw all kinds of red pretty much from the start of the flight until we touched down in Reno Airport. My fury at seeing them laughing and joking, whispering, flirting loudly, could have brought the plane down that day. Not only was the woman sitting in my seat – something Autumn had arranged without my approval – she was having the conversation I should have been having, with the woman I wanted to be with. I knew it was irrational thinking this way, as though I had a claim to someone like Autumn Anders, when she'd barely even kissed me, but I couldn't help myself.

  This wasn't the first time. In fact, this was the tamest display I'd seen since our little tryst a couple of weeks back. Three women had come after me, and I'd seen them all. They'd smiled at me from her bed or as they were leaving her house, meaning no harm; but in their smiles I saw taunts. There they were doing all the things she'd denied me, and I couldn't even get a proper kiss, with tongues. Worst of all, she hadn't mentioned it, had proceeded as normal, treating me badly and flaunting her lovers in front of me. She'd been where no one else had gone before, and she'd done so without asking; yet she couldn't extend a polite acknowledgment, a show that it wasn't just a trivial matter to her.

  Through the corner of my eye I saw Greta watching me watch them, and I knew she knew. Greta was an enigma to me. That type of person who let others do the talking while she sat by and observed, assessing the situation, sizing everyone up. You never really knew what she was thinking.

  “Are you looking forward to seeing your folks?” she asked. I knew what she was doing, trying to take my mind off them, trying to drown out the snicker
ing.

  “Yes, actually. They've been bugging me about coming to visit. They think the city's turning me against them.”

  She laughed. “My folks were like that, but instead of just the city it was rock music. All of that expensive piano tuition down the drain, I remember my mom yelling. To this day she still won't listen to any of my songs.”

  “Wow, that's extreme.”

  “Parents are extreme.” She shrugged, smiling. She was so easy to talk to that she instantly made me feel better. “Except Autumn's folks. Now those guys, they knew how to party. I think people are a lot more laid back in Norway and Germany, or maybe it's just them, but they're the most down-to-earth people you're ever likely to meet. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was too outrageous for them when we were teenagers.” Her face lit up as she spoke of her fond memories. “Nancy scored some pot once, from her brother's buddy, and we smoked it in Autumn's garage. Me and Nancy almost crapped ourselves trying to hide our joints when her parents walked in and caught us, but Autumn kept on smoking, right in front of them. Wanna know what her old man did? Pulled up a chair, took Autumn's joint and started smoking with us!”

  “Really?” I shook my head in wonderment. “That's crazy. Were they hippies or something?”

  “I don't think so. Just really cool people. Still are, last time I saw them. Very supportive of Autumn, no matter what she does. Well, mostly...” She threw a disapproving glance at her flirting band mate, currently working on notch number who-knew-what on her bedpost.

  “I never would have thought that about her parents, given how...prickly she is,” I said, using prickly as the politest way of calling her band mate and best friend a cold bitch.

  “She wasn't always like this, you know that, don't you?”

  Of course I did.

  “After what happened in 2007, it was as if she had a personality transplant.” Greta's face and tone darkened, and her eyes filled with melancholy. “Sure, bits of the old personality show every now and then. She's still in there somewhere. Sometimes I think she wants to keep it locked away, to stay unhappy, and then sometimes, recently, I've thought maybe she'll get back to her old self.”