by Eli Lang
Maybe all it meant was that we could still talk to each other. I wasn’t sure that was enough.
Nick seemed to be considering if we’d actually proved it, though. He stared at me and chewed on his lip.
“You’re right,” he said after a minute. “In a way.” He shook his head and looked down at the scuffed toes of his boots. “I don’t know what I’m doing either, Quinn. I’m pretty lost here. Half of my mind is screaming at me to run as fast as I can from you, because I’m so sure it’s all going to turn out exactly like before, and it’d be stupid of me to let it.”
I tightened my hands on his waist, squeezing him slightly, drawing him back to me. “And the other half?”
He blinked up at me. “The other half says it’d be stupid not to see if we can be friends. The other half says it won’t hurt as much if I don’t expect too much.” That stung, but I tried not to let it show on my face. Nicky kept talking as if he didn’t notice. “The other half wants to take you home and get you into my bed, and make the most of the time I have with you.”
My breath shuddered out of me. “God, Nicky. Yes, please. Can we do that?”
He laughed, the sound wild and too loud, this side of hysterical. Then he nodded. But he said, “It’s a bad idea.”
I nodded. That was the truth. That was so very much the truth. “I don’t want it if you don’t want it.”
He stared up into my face. “But you want it. You want me.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway. “Very much.”
It was me who leaned forward and kissed him this time. No hesitation, and only a few seconds to see if he’d pull back, to judge if this was what he wanted too. It was rough and hard, openmouthed, with none of the finesse he’d given the earlier kiss. But he didn’t pull back. Instead, he groaned into my mouth and pressed himself against me, wrapped his arm around my neck to hold me to him.
It wasn’t enough. I wanted more and more and more. But we were still on the street, still practically in the way, and I wasn’t really keen on getting arrested for indecent exposure or attempting to have sex on a sidewalk. I broke the kiss and dropped my face to his shoulder, moved my lips to the slope of his neck.
“But you still want to fuck, right?” I asked, the crude words coming out silky.
He shuddered and moaned again. “Yes, please.”
I loved that I could do that to him. One of the things I hadn’t forgotten about him was how all it took was the lightest touch to set him off, to make him lose control. But not here. This wasn’t the place.
I tilted my head enough to see around us—I wasn’t ready to move from the hold he had on me, the warmth of him. It was darker here, closer to the residential area, and the streetlights were less frequent. Still too public, but I wasn’t sure I could wait until we got back to the studio—by then, maybe my rational mind, or Nicky’s, would have taken over and we’d remember that this wasn’t a good idea. That we were moving too fast. It wasn’t our house anyway, and I was sharing a room with Tuck. But not far ahead of us, on our side of the street, was a tight, close alley between two buildings. It would do.
I stepped back and pulled Nicky with me, and he followed without a question. The alley was cleaner than I’d hoped—no dumpsters or anything. It was too small for that. Just a way to get between the tightly packed buildings. The ground under our feet was gritty, and the brick and stucco walls were rough, but none of that mattered.
Nicky got the hint about where we were, and took over once we reached the alley and had ducked inside. He tugged us farther back, into the shadows where the light from the street didn’t quite reach. Then he pushed me up against the nearest wall and plastered himself to me again.
The next kiss went on for a while. Long enough that I had time to run my hands all over his arms, up his back, under his shirt, along his abs and up his chest. Long enough that I got to relearn the taste of him, the way his tongue felt in my mouth. Long enough that I could try to catalog the sounds he made when I bit his lower lip, or when I squeezed my hands down on his waist, or when I pressed forward and I could feel the hard line of his cock next to mine.
The last noise was a harsh, long, low groan that ripped its way out of him and buried itself under my skin, making me go from hot and bothered to I need you right fucking now. I grabbed him and spun us around, so he was the one pinned to the wall. Without missing a beat, he let me take his weight, and wrapped his legs around my waist. He was heavy, and I probably wouldn’t be able to hold him indefinitely, but right then, as it was, it felt like he was handing me his body and his trust, like he was . . . giving himself to me. It was a crazy, heady sensation, and it made me feel powerful and strong, like my blood was on fire, all molten honey in my veins.
I slipped my hands under his ass to hold him up better, but my body weight, pinning him in place, was doing most of the work. I couldn’t get a hand free to undo his jeans, though, and the position was awkward and tight, our bodies pressed almost too close.
“Nicky, I need . . .” I managed to shift one hand more directly under him, and I pawed at the front of his jeans, but I couldn’t do it one-handed.
He squeezed me tighter with his legs, making me buck up against him. He had his hands on my shoulders, but he dropped one and helped me get his button undone, and the zip. I was afraid I was going to hurt him, that I’d pinch him or something with the zipper, but he was careless with lust. He shoved at his jeans, hard enough that I wondered if the fabric would tear, but it was too tough for that. And together, we managed to move them out of the way enough that I could pull the waistband of his boxers down, get my hand inside and around him.
He was hot and sticky damp in my palm. The minute I touched him, it was like the world went still and silent around us. The gentle buzz of cars and conversation from down the street faded away. The urgency of before faded too, because here was my goal, in my hands. The worries I’d had, about whether I should really be doing this here, with Nicky, about what it would mean, and whether we should try to resurrect what we’d had a year ago, all grayed out. Just static, just background noise. All I could hear now was my breath, the harshness of it, mixing with Nicky’s panting. All my senses were on the way he felt, the tender, delicate silk of his skin, the pulse of his blood in his veins, the way he smelled, like sex and sweat and night air.
He looked up at me, blinking, then meeting my eyes. I could just make out the brown of his in the dark, flecks of color in the shadows of his face. He sighed, and I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to his so we were breathing the same air.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t urge me on, didn’t rock his hips. Like he was waiting for me, for whenever I was ready, for whenever I decided that we were going to feel things. I breathed out, and he breathed in.
I moved my hand. A tight circle, slick with his pre-come and sweat. I went slowly. I wanted to explore. I wanted to run the tips of my fingers over all these secret places of his. The veins and the smooth skin. The damp velvet and the softness-over-solidness. I wanted to feel the weight of him in my palm. I wanted to know the exact places to touch that would have him moaning the loudest, what would cause him to toss his head back, what would make his eyelids flutter.
I jerked my hand over him, fast and almost too hard, and he cried out, his body arching against mine, like he was fighting me, except he clung harder and closer, urging me on. I did it again.
“Ahhh, yes, that again, please.” His voice was rough and sweet and high and he let the words flow out without any pauses between them.
I did as he asked, alternating the harder strokes with soft ones, feather touches, teasing and exploring. He didn’t check his noises at all, and I didn’t want to ask him to. It would be so easy to get caught here, to be heard over the traffic. But in that moment, I couldn’t make myself care.
It didn’t take long for him to come. He cried out as he did, more a wail than anything, and the sound was so raw, so pulled from deep inside him, that I wanted to melt against him,
wanted to do anything to hear that noise again.
Afterward, he grinned at me and kissed me again, lazily, his lips soft and pliant. Then he slid his legs from around me and dropped to his feet. I held on to him until he was steady, and even then, I didn’t want to let go of him.
“You?” He made a move to reach for me. He still had an arm around my neck.
I shook my head. “I’m okay.” I was worked up, there wasn’t a question of that. But I wanted . . . I wanted to bask in him. In his pleasure. I wanted my part in it, this time, to be about pleasing him. “I want to . . .” I shrugged, not really knowing how to put it into words.
He nodded like he got it. He looked slightly disappointed, but I leaned forward and kissed him again, and when I drew back, he was smiling.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
I laughed. “It was good enough you want to thank me for it?”
His expression sobered. “Yeah.” He bit at his lip, which was already swollen and tender looking from where I’d gone to town on it. “It was. And . . . thank you for tonight.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. That I wasn’t sure, still, why I had asked? That I had wanted to be with him again, that the kiss the day before had brought something big and frightening and wonderful back to life in me, and it scared me, but I still wanted it? Because it was like by being with Nicky, by being here, surrounded by music and love and people who were friends, I was going backward, leaping back into the life I’d had before Eric died. But he had died, and I hadn’t, and I was going along like everything was fine. Like a year had been enough time to get over him. To step into my place, where maybe he should be instead. Making music. Being in the center of recording. Falling a little bit in love.
I pushed the thoughts aside. I couldn’t examine them right now, and I didn’t want to.
I had a tissue in my pocket, thankfully, and Nicky and I cleaned up. He tucked himself back into his jeans, wiggling around to do it, because skinny jeans were no joke. We checked at the mouth of the alley to see if there was anyone around. It wasn’t like we could get caught now, but walking back out onto the street felt a little bit sneaky, like we’d gotten away with something. Which . . . we had. We walked the rest of the way back to the studio in silence, but it wasn’t strained. It was companionable, and when we got to Nicky’s car, parked in the driveway—the last one still there—he turned to me and smiled.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
I nodded and stepped forward. I didn’t know if we were going to do the whole kiss-goodbye thing, but I wanted . . . I wanted to be close to him again, just for a minute.
“And . . . if you’d rather not hang out with me and Joshua, that’s okay. I get it. Kids are stressful.”
That wasn’t the whole of it, and we both knew it. I was stressed about meeting his kid, definitely—especially because kids were simply not in my wheelhouse. But it wasn’t Josh that was worrying me, and I was pretty sure Nick was having similar thoughts. It was that meeting Josh meant something. It was big. I didn’t know if I was ready for that. I didn’t know what it said about us, Nicky and me.
But on the other hand, if I said no, that cut out one of the days Nicky and I had together, to figure this thing out between us. I didn’t want that, either. He was right—we had this time together. Maybe we could make something of it. Get something out of it.
“No, I’d like to,” I said.
His smile deepened, curled his lips at the corners. Made him look like I’d given him some kind of gift, like I’d done something great, and I couldn’t help loving the idea that I’d put that expression on his face. Especially when he’d been so nervous a second before. He still looked nervous, but it was tempered somewhat now by happiness.
“Okay.” We moved forward at the same time, and the kiss was gentle and quick, but I was glad it happened. It made me feel steadier in the midst of all this unsteadiness.
Nick got in his car. He gave me a short wave, and then he was driving away. I walked back into the house in a daze and fell onto my bed face-first. I lay there until it got uncomfortable, going over the night again and again in my mind.
I almost couldn’t make sense of any of it. The evening, dinner, the alley, the conversations we’d had, were such a whirlwind in my brain. I couldn’t decide if I was afraid—of everything that had happened, how far we’d gone, how completely uncertain everything was—or happy because at least for these few days, Nick wanted to be with me.
Eventually, I decided to think only about what Ava, and Nick himself, had said—only now mattered. I didn’t have to think further than that. I got up and took off my clothes. Then I crawled under the covers and willed myself to go to sleep.
The next day started pretty much exactly like every other day. Rest in Peach was taking only the morning to record, with the afternoon off, so they got there earlier than usual, but not by much. I wandered out to the kitchen around nine and rummaged through the fridge—I’d been weirded out doing that at first. It wasn’t my house. But Ben certainly wasn’t waiting around to feed us and cater to us. He’d given us free rein, and he had other important, techy things he needed to be doing. So it was paw through stuff or starve. The kitchen was always well stocked, though. There was organic hipster-style yogurt there—and it was actually really tasty—and fresh fruit to put on top if I wanted, which I did. And coffee in the pot, with every type of creamer and milk and sugar or nonsugar under the sun.
Escaping Indigo was already in the kitchen, but Micah had gone down with Rest in Peach to listen to them play. After we ate, we trooped down too, and the band spent the rest of the morning polishing new material and getting ready to lay down tracks. Same old, same old—it felt that way, especially after nearly two weeks at this. But they were making progress, and the songs sounded amazing, raw and electric, plaintive and alive.
I kept half my attention on the studio room door, expecting Nicky and his son to show up any minute. I could admit to myself that I was . . . not nervous, exactly, but unsure. I hadn’t met very many kids—there were some musicians who toted their whole families around with them, and that was cool if it was what you were into, but our business wasn’t really suited to anyone under the age of eighteen. Or maybe fifteen. So the only kid experience I had to go on were me and Eric when we were little. We’d both been quiet and self-contained. Me because I’d been painfully shy. I’d grown out of it, but it had lasted a long time. Eric because he’d always been too busy inside his own head to project much noise outside of himself, unless he had a guitar and a microphone. And for some reason, I expected that Joshua would be the same way.
I should have known better. Nick was a good person—polite, with all sorts of manners and social niceties built in—but he was always bouncing, always searching for ways to bleed off some of the excess energy running through his muscles. And Josh was the same. Except he hadn’t figured out how to control any of it. The first time I saw him, he was running down the main hallway, full pelt, with Nick strolling behind him, casual as anything, a huge, proud grin on his face. I couldn’t even take a minute to be distracted by how much he glowed when he looked at his kid, because I was dead sure the kid in question was about to run straight into a glass door.
“Josh, stop,” Nick said, loud enough to be heard, and firm, but not harsh. And Josh . . . stopped. Dead still, like he’d been frozen. It was so sudden I thought he might fall over, but he kept his balance—wobbly and precarious, but upright.
It didn’t last long. Within a second, he’d turned around and run back to his father, who scooped him up and carried him over to the room I’d been sitting in. Tuck and Ava and Bellamy had wrapped up a song, so they set down their instruments and came over. Ben, who’d been recording what the band was working on, swiveled around in his chair.
My lack of knowledge about kids extended to how to talk to them. I didn’t have the first clue. Did you treat them like they were babies and couldn’t understand everything, so you weren’t lording your a
dult intelligence over them? Or did you act like they were miniature adults and speak to them that way, expecting that they’d get what you were saying?
It turned out it didn’t matter, because as soon as Nick set Josh down, Josh started babbling. Even if we’d wanted to talk to him, we wouldn’t have gotten a word in edgewise.
He chattered without seeming to worry about whether his words were coming out clearly. What he had to say was too important for small things like coherency or comprehensibility. It was . . . a flood of sound and impressions. Every now and then, I caught something that was crystal clear, like something about Winnie the Pooh, or something about Nicky or his mother, but otherwise he spoke too quickly and left words out, because they didn’t matter to him in his rush to speak. Once in a while, his voice would rise on a question and he’d pause and look around at us. We would all be standing there with our mouths hanging open. I didn’t know about Ben, but none of the rest of the band, or Micah, had any experience with kids. We’d all nod and make the right noises when Josh paused, though, because it was obvious he expected an answer. And we certainly weren’t going to disappoint him.
It was overwhelming. Of all the things I’d expected to feel, overwhelmed by speech wasn’t one of them. It was obvious Josh was smart, that his mind was going a million miles an hour. I had no idea how anyone kept up with it.
It wasn’t only the way Josh talked, though. It was Josh who was overwhelming. Or maybe not him, but everything he represented. I stood there and listened to him, and glanced back and forth between him and Nicky. And I tried to make this fit, in my mind. That Nick had a kid, that he was standing in front of me, and that I’d agreed to spend the day with them. I hadn’t known what I’d feel, meeting Nick’s kid, but now it hit me, what it all really meant. Nick wasn’t only Nick anymore. He was a father, a person with responsibilities; he was someone whose life centered around someone else.