Sure, I tell her. And ten minutes later, she’s calling me back, saying that noon is fine with Freddy, and we’re on. “In like Flynn” is the phrase she actually uses, though I don’t think that’s apt.
I show up. Then Abigail shows up. But until Freddy shows up, she’s busy with something or other. If I was more paranoid, I’d almost say she’s avoiding me. She’s in the bathroom. Then she’s back to the bathroom to do her makeup as if we’re performing, but all I see when she comes out is that her adorable freckles have been spackled over yet again. Then she needs to do something for Danny, even though I know Danny is never up before one or two. Then it’s not really something for Danny right now, of course, but it’s something she knows he wants, or it’s something he asked her to do last weekend that she’s only getting around to now. Then she has to copy some of our songs in progress, but instead of using the copy/printer in Danny’s office, she takes pictures with her phone so they’ll be digital. Then she’s uploading them somewhere, and thoughts of piracy enter my mind, even though I know they’re not exactly being uploaded to LifeLyfe.
I try to engage her in conversation. I ask about her week. It’s been a few days since I’ve seen her, so what’s new? I tell her I looked up her mother, even bought her book. Which of the kids the author talks about is Abigail? In Mesmerize, they’re identified by birth order: eldest daughter, middle daughter, youngest daughter, son. I don’t even know where Abigail slots in, but the way I tell her is to say that the characterizations aren’t bad and that I don’t feel like her mom is shitting on her in quasi-public as much as she imagines. But when she laughs it off and again marches off somewhere, I wonder if I’m overstepping my bounds. If I’m being too forward. If she’d rather not talk about her family … or at least not talk about it with me.
When Freddy shows up, Abigail goes to him before me. The dynamic has changed. Freddy is supposed to be the businessman and organizer. He’s supposed to be the pushy one, making sure his two layabouts get the hell to work. I’m the brilliant but tortured artist who can turn it on and be charismatic when needed. Abigail is supposed to be more like a silent partner — the genius backstage, the quiet little mouse who doesn’t believe in herself enough to be here.
But it’s not like that at all. Now Abigail is in charge. She’s pulling Freddy over to a spot practically in the middle of the damned floor where I realize she’s set us up with two shoved-together tables and a few chairs. There’s even a small amp on the floor because sometimes Freddy plays an electric, even though that’s something we’ve yet to try as a trio.
We’re well prepared. Well stocked. I feel like a kid on the first day of school, my backpack heavy with just the right number of folders, papers, pens and pencils, even a goddamned protractor.
I consider making a joke. I’ve yet to see Abigail’s apartment, but she doesn’t strike me as an obsessive neatnick — someone crosses every t and dots every i. But seeing this, it would be easy to believe she’s a closet organizer. Not as in someone who organizes closets; I mean someone who’s been waiting, in secret, to organize something. And this band, if that’s what it is, must be her first out-of-the-closet victim in a very long time.
“Who’s got what?” she asks, and I consider making a joke about that, too. The times Abigail and I have been alone together and free to do what we want without the other being bitchy, our natural order has been funny. So, like, I might say I’ve got syphilis in response to her question. But if I make that dumb joke now, I’ll probably get smacked on the knuckles with a ruler.
“‘Got’ in what way?” Freddy asks.
“You guys have been working out some of the guitar, right? And I was thinking on the way over, you guys need a drummer. Do you have to write music for drums? You must, right? They can’t just hit them in whatever order they want.” But it’s not like it can be very hard, I mentally imagine her adding, and I see her sort of look internally as if she’s ticking a box on her master list.
“We need a singer, too,” Freddy adds.
“Gavin can sing.”
“Gavin doesn’t sing,” I say.
“I’ve heard you sing.”
“Gavin doesn’t sing in public.”
“I’ve also seen recordings of you singing in public.”
I feel like explaining more, like I’ve got the equivalent of a doctor’s note to miss gym, if we’re going with a school metaphor. In this case, my singer and cowriters were killed three years ago in an accident that part of me is convinced is somehow my fault, and I figure that gives me permission enough to not sing our old songs. The new songs should be grandfathered in just because singing was Grace’s thing, but I don’t know if Abigail, as businesslike as she seems now, will accept it. She might find such job performance unsatisfactory. I feel like she might fire me, or at least reduce the matching contributions to my 401(k).
“You could sing,” I say.
“Abigail definitely doesn’t sing.”
“I’ve seen you — ” I start to counter, but Freddy cuts me off.
“We’ll find a singer,” he says. This should be insulting to Abigail, but she nods her thanks. And I guess I agree? It’s hard to say. Abigail singing my song was maybe the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I felt lightheaded listening to it, and the only reason my fingers kept making the proper notes on my guitar was because they’d played it so many times through by then. But I’ve talked to a few people in the club since, and it’s universally agreed upon that Abigail has the voice of an angel. I’ve had knowing looks when I’ve asked, too — annoying looks that are half grins, as if they’re implying something that I’m trying to keep secret or haven’t realized myself. But it doesn’t matter how much I’ve felt spellbound by Abigail; it can’t have changed the way I heard her voice. And the fact that she was singing those words right to me — that’s not why it lifted me so high, is it?
“What do you have, Gavin?”
Her voice makes my head snap up in positive anticipation. I feel like a kid. She’s paying attention to me? The instinctual part of me is so excited, even though girls pay attention to me for hours at a time every Friday and Saturday night. I never work to find company; I hold out my hand and wait for someone exciting to take it. But still, Abigail’s voice snaps me, and I look toward her like an eager-to-please little puppy.
But the look in her eyes is, again, strictly business. What happened? Ghosts and baggage keep me from getting close, and it’s always been my fault that we’ve taken two steps forward and three steps back.
There’s this curious divide within me. The devil and angel are sharing my shoulders. The devil urges me to embrace and kiss her, take her to bed. The angel tells me I’m hurt, maybe still in mourning. She reminds me of Grace, but she’s not Grace. I’m not doing anyone — her, me, even Grace’s memory — any favors by acting rashly. And still, even knowing the way this is supposed to go, I don’t want to hear the angel. Not when the devil feels so right.
But regardless, that’s all gone now. Usually, I feel that whether my personal angel or devil is correct, they both have a point. I could travel down either path, and it’s just my decisions that make the difference. Not now. Now the devil is cockblocked, and the angel is smug. I no longer need to choose to do the right thing, based on what I’m seeing in Abigail now. The door to temptation is closed. The decision is made, and like it or not, she’s my creative partner, nothing more.
“Um,” I stammer, trying to find my place with this new, serious, confident woman. “I’ve got the stuff we were working on from last time.” That MY Abigail and I were working on last time.
But I can already feel my body and brain sabotaging me. She truly does seem different. Colder. She might even be mad at me, but I think this is something else. She seems driven, like Freddy usually does. It’s like whatever her mother’s assumed judgment has dampened in Abigail is finally rising up and finding its own. Maybe this is my doing, just not in the way my heart seems to insist. Maybe my talks with her about her f
amily, brief as they were, caused her to turn a corner. She didn’t go to Princeton or marry her Prince Less-Than-Charming. She moved to Inferno Falls to pave her own creative path instead. She’s been living beneath a wet blanket of confidence leaks and writer’s block, but now she seems to have shaken that blanket off. She’s not going to write her novel, but she can write lyrics like it’s a God-given gift. And now that she’s seeing our future together — different, again, than the one in my fantasies — she’ll fight tooth and nail to get it.
This is an Abigail who wants to join with my talent, not an Abigail who wants me personally. And, of course, that’s only making me want her more.
Abigail extends her hand, and I give her the sloppy sheets of lyrics. We haven’t married music and words on a single set of papers, but it’s easy enough to figure out. We know which lyrics go with which songs. And we’ll find the rhythms again as the notes start coming.
“Freddy?”
Freddy deflected to me the first go-round, but he’s prepared now that it’s his turn. It’s almost like we’re afraid of being chastised, and it’s amusing to think that Freddy, not Abigail, was the one who brought us together. The way she is now, she’s perhaps a tad bitchy, but mostly it seems like pure ambition driven by adrenaline. It’s as if she’s converted everything she’s ever wanted into one single focus.
She’s no longer looking at me with doe eyes. She’s not timid. She’s not reluctant; she’s flat-out uninterested. I can sense all that quiet energy usually bubbling up within her, and there’s no other way to say it: It’s turning me on. I know how wrong that is. This is our version of the chase, and now that she’s shut off, I’m finding that I really do want what I no longer seem able to have.
As if sensing my mood, she looks right at me. She’s wearing that brush of eyeliner, and I see something feline in her hazel depths. I want nothing more than to take her in my arms and wipe the concealer away. I no longer see a mostly quiet, dorky discombobulated waitress. Now Abigail is something else. Something that’s meeting my eyes as if to warn me back. To tell me not to come closer. But as the lioness within her awakens, the lion within me is doing the same. The reservations I’ve held — the angel who’s held me back — seem to diminish with each passing moment. It’s not just lust, either. I don’t want to take her because she seems no longer available for the taking. I want to possess her. And for what it’s worth, I want to protect her. Because as strong as she seems now, I know that shy, giggly, quiet girl is still in there, too.
Abigail leafs through the papers. I’ve lost all interest in the room, in Freddy, in Danny, who I see walking by from the corner of my eye. Something bangs in the back. Chloe, or some other blonde, walks by. I can’t see any of it, not really. I only have eyes for Abigail. I’m watching the swing of her soft red hair. The tilt of her delicate, slightly upturned nose. The movement of her lips as she reads our words. I remember the feel of those lips and long to feel them again. I want to feel them now. She’s a foot away, if we’re looking at our closest points. I could lean and be touching her. Then I could take her arm. Then the other arm. And I could pin her to her chair or pull her into mine, and I could mash my lips into hers. I hardly care that Freddy is watching. Abigail is the most beautiful, most desirable, most perfect thing I’ve ever seen. He’ll understand. And it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t.
I want time to march backward. I want her to look up at me the way she has before today. And in that moment, I decide: If she gives me even one tiny sign — a single crack in this ice — I will kiss her. Here and now, I’ll kiss her if she lets me. And damn the angel on my shoulder.
She looks at me. I look at her, and it’s impossible that she can’t see my desire. My wanting. My intention, if she’ll desire me back.
“Okay,” she says, her face still strictly business. “Let’s get started.”
CHAPTER 29
Abigail
Gavin’s constant gaze keeps prickling my skin. It’s all I can do to concentrate on the work rather than on the way his smoldering gaze is sliding all over my body like hands.
I feel myself responding as if he’s touching me: My breath has gone shallow and sped up; my skin feels hot and has stippled into gooseflesh. My nipples are hard beneath my shirt and sensitive enough to almost hurt. I hope the guys can’t see them because it feels like an advertisement. If they do, maybe they’ll assume I’m cold rather than turned on, but still I feel like I’m broadcasting need — or at least my feminine body. I’ve never thought my body was anything special, but if Gavin sees my nipples the way he looks right now, part of me feels sure he’ll reach out to touch them like a hungry animal. And worst of all, I can feel my chest heaving with an involuntary response, arching a bit to press my girls against my shirt like a betrayal, showing him what could be his if he wanted it.
Which I don’t want him to know because it’s not true. Brandon Grant only confirmed something that’s been clear from the start: Justified or not, Gavin Adams is a broken heart waiting to happen. I’ve been stupid enough to fantasize (behind Lisa’s back, telling her the opposite) that he’d be different with me than he is with everyone else. It doesn’t matter that he beds a new girl every night, that the floozies swarm when he plays. It doesn’t matter that they all want him, that they won’t stop wanting him, that he won’t stop wanting them. It doesn’t matter that he only seems to deal in single-serving relationships. I’ve been rationalizing a lie: that for me, things would be different.
Why should it matter that he only has one-night stands? He won’t with me.
Why should it matter that he’s as addicted to pretty girls as any man with a drug? That will all stop if he ends up with me.
Why should it matter that he looks at women like meat? He must want me for more than that.
But as I try to keep my mind on the music we’re making together — trying to keep the songs’ potential front and center because there is a future here if I can keep our minds out of the gutter and use Freddy as an unwitting chaperone — it’s hard. The more I try to give Gavin my coldest, most professional shoulder, the more he seems to want me. It’s classic reverse psychology, except that I’m not trying to manipulate Gavin at all.
He’s looking at me like he looks at all the girls: like a steak. Like something delicious to have once then be done with.
That should repulse me. It should, in fact, make me want to reach out and slap him, tell him that I’m not that kind of girl.
Instead, I’m sitting here unable to focus with my nipples hard and my panties wet.
And oh, God, I’m so wet.
As Freddy takes over the conversation, I try paradoxically to focus on my arousal. Because if I’m reduced to such base symptoms as hard nipples and creamy girl parts, then this clearly isn’t what I’d want anyway. If I’m sensing animal lust from Gavin and am responding in kind, then this proves Lisa’s point, as rammed home by Brandon: Gavin Adams is not a relationship man. Unless sex is all I want, I need to stay away.
For me, the potential of sex feels like a beginning. Gavin’s wanting eyes on my flesh could, in my mind, be our first next step. We’ve waited, after all. He didn’t sleep with me the first night, or the second, or the third. We’ve only had one real date, but at least we had one, which isn’t something any of his other conquests seem able to say. There have been a few informal dates, too. So in my head, we’ve had relationship foreplay. It might be time, if Gavin weren’t such damaged goods. With another man — a proper man, who’d stay with me and love me as I unfortunately seem to love him — sleeping together would feel like the next logical step.
But for Gavin, I’d be another notch on his bedpost.
I know this, but the truth is hard to keep front and center. It’s hard to turn from his glances, from the desire written all over his face. Because it’s the right time for us, and my body wants his — not as a conclusion, but as a start. I want to wake up beside him and have more of the Gavin I already love. But because of the way he does things, acc
ording to several accounts and my own eyes and common sense, that’s not what would happen. To him, sex is a goal. The surest way to lose our affection would be closing the loop.
It’s an awful conclusion, but if I want to work with him — and I do — I can’t forget it: the only way to stay friends is to remain right here at the bleeding edge — always wanting, but never satisfying.
Just thinking it makes my legs want to buckle — or squeeze together to quench the need. It’s so unfair. I want him and he wants me, but we can’t take that step. We haven’t taken it before now, and that says something. So we’ll keep not taking it, and that will say something, too.
Still, I want to believe it could be different. I even tried to argue what I’m thinking now to Lisa before I headed out, and she said that was my pussy thinking. That’s Lisa for you. “Men aren’t the only people who can think with their genitals,” she warned. And it’s true. Because right now, the intelligent place between my legs has all sorts of reasons that my logical conclusions are wrong.
He really is different with you.
He doesn’t just want your body. You’ve seen it: he wants you, for you.
He respects you. He laughs with you. He likes you.
But maybe that’s the way it is with other girls? It almost has to be. And, in fact, my cranial brain insists, he does laugh with the hot college girls in the club. And as far as liking and respecting? As far as being your friend? Those are tricks men like him pull to get girls into bed.
The Forbidden Muse (Inferno Falls #2) Page 18