by Susan Ward
Alan kisses my cheek. “No. Besides, I was about to go get you. I need you here.”
I roll my eyes. “Me? I seriously doubt that.”
“I want you to record a song with me.”
It feels like someone has just punched the air out of my lungs, and it is absolutely impossible to assimilate this turn.
“Alan, I don’t sing. I’m a cellist.”
“Wrong. You have that backwards. You are a singer, not a cellist.”
I frown at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He meets my eyes directly. There is something in those penetrating black orbs that makes me tense.
“You were never going to get into Juilliard. You are a competent cellist, technically proficient, but when you play it’s like a beautiful meal with no taste. You hide behind the cello and put nothing of yourself in the music. I don’t even get a sense that you enjoy it. As a cellist, you will never be more than third chair in a third rate orchestra.”
My entire face burns from the humiliation of truth. I know he speaks the truth, and it is something I’ve always known, that no one would say to me. But it really does hurt the first time you have it confirmed by someone else.
“You told me I was flawless. Perfect.”
“Technically flawless. No taste.”
My brain and my emotions are not working cooperatively. “So why did you lie to me? Were you trying to hit on me?” I fling.
“Yes, I lied because I was hitting on you. But spending time with you made it something I just couldn’t do. Not that night. Not that way.”
I am caught completely off guard because I’ve forgotten Alan’s warning that he doesn’t do bullshit and to be careful what direction I go.
This conversation has deteriorated in ways I never imagined possible. I am breathing heavily, hurt, acutely aware that Alan let loose some really ugly truth in a room where we are not alone and he expects me stay to record with him.
“God, you’re an asshole.” I can’t hide the pain from my voice.
“Why? Because I prefer to be honest with you?”
My wounded eyes fix on him. “It’s not about honesty, Alan. Its meanness. You can be so mean sometimes.”
“I confirmed that you are not a cellist. That should be a relief to you. I asked you to record a song with me. That should be a compliment. I told you that I wanted to fuck you. That should be obvious by now.”
“Conceited and an asshole.” I rise. “I don’t sing.”
“Bullshit. You were willing to sing for Vince Carroll.”
I stare at him, shocked.
He leans against the closed studio door, crossing his arms, blocking my exit. “I changed my mind about how I wanted to complete this, the moment I heard you sing. I knew when I heard you. I knew what I wanted. Why are you being so stubborn about this?”
“Because I don’t want to record a song with you,” I counter in growing frustration.
He runs a hand through his hair. “You asked what you could do for me, Chrissie. Do this.”
It feels like the earth has fallen away again. Oh that was unfair, Alan. That was unfair. His quiet, raspy plea makes all the junk inside me stir up again.
Aggravated, I run my hand through my hair. “You are such an asshole.”
“I need you to do this,” he orders.
“You don’t need me for anything,” I say, feeling my resolve weaken.
He grabs my chin and kisses me roughly. Against my mouth, he breathes, “You are everything I need for everything I do.”
More theatrics. I let out a shuddering breath. “I’m not a singer.”
Alan touches my cheek with his callused thumb. “You are not an artist when you play the cello, but, baby, you are an artist when you sing. Perfect pitch. Beautiful tone. Believable. You don’t playact when you sing. You are magnificent.”
I brush at my face and realize I am crying. That was why Alan brushed me gently with his thumb, touching the tears I didn’t even feel because I am completely emotionally drained.
“Fine,” I agree, not all graciously.
Getting his way has made Alan shift in the blink of an eye, now energized and focused as if none of the prior thirty minutes happened. He’s talking with Ian like their thing was normal. He’s holding me against his chest like our thing was normal. And he’s about to record a song with me as if that is normal.
“Hit track seven, Ian.”
Alan is pulling me into the studio and he is all work again. I can feel Ian staring at me through the glass. Watching. The lyric sheet is forced into my hand. And then there is music in the studio. The melody is so beautiful. It’s a ballad.
I scan the lyric sheet. His words are so moving and yet nakedly revealing. I feel a sick suspicion that this incredible ballad is about us. Allusions to the beach and other things. How the heck does he expect me to record with him a song about us? And jeez, why did he title it Long and Hard. It’s a beautiful ballad and he gave it the title of a porn movie.
Alan sinks on the floor in the middle of the room, guitar in hand, and he is looking at me, but I don’t look at him. He is waiting for the music to end.
“Come, sit. Watch my hands while I play. Just sing it, Chrissie. Don’t worry about being perfect. Don’t worry about even hitting the right notes. We’ll just sing through it until you’re comfortable.”
The first-run through is halting, off-key and just plain awful. I glance around. How long have we been here? Ian and Ryan are still at the console and the expression on Ian’s face says it all.
Alan reaches for a CF Martin acoustic guitar and lays it in my lap. “Again. This time you play, Chrissie.”
I stare at the instrument and I don’t pick it up. How does Alan know I play?
Those penetrating black eyes are watching me, amused. “Six instruments by the age of nine. Flute, guitar, piano, cello, violin, piccolo. It wasn’t bullshit, Chrissie. You are all that Jack talks about.”
I let out a shuddering breath and can’t stop myself from thinking: if that’s true, Alan, then why doesn’t he talk to me? Why does he ignore me? Do you have that nifty answer conveniently located in your head?
“Don’t roll the track again,” Alan shouts into the intercom. “We’re just going to play until Chrissie is comfortable.”
I feel on the verge of tears. “I don’t want to do this, Alan.”
“Play!”
I do as I am told and, for some reason, now that we are playing together, this is effortless. Like when we laugh or when we argue or when we have sex. We gel without trying. Whatever we do together is easy, and it feels right and I feel completely absorbed into him.
When we’ve run through it about fifteen times, Alan springs to his feet. He takes away the guitar, then grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet. He puts the headset on me.
“This will be one take, Ian, if you don’t fuck it up,” he says into the intercom. “And then we can call it quits for the day.”
His long fingers gently message my shoulders. He smiles. “It will be perfect, Chrissie.”
There is so much on his face, in his voice as we do this. For some reason, it flows through me, and my voice flows from me deep, throaty and powerful. He looks so beautiful when he lets the emotion run freely on his face.
When we are done it is quiet.
“Give me a minute and I’ll play it back.” Ryan’s voice echoes from the intercom.
Nervously I wait, but Alan is reclined beside me, long limbs relaxed. I don’t know how I sounded. I couldn’t hear myself, as absorbed I was with his haunting rasp and the feel of him. I pray that it wasn’t awful, and I’m more worried than I let on, since I’ve never heard myself on tape. I’ve never permitted Jack to record me, not even for shits and giggles. And I know the natural voice, the recorded voice, and the voice in your head are all different voices.
I have some natural talent, no training and, cords I rarely exercise, and for the life of me I can’t understand what Alan hears when he listens to me
sing that would make him want to record with me. Then the playback starts and the tight curl of my body grows anxiously tighter. It is my voice with Alan, but it is not a voice I’ve ever heard. I sound like a female version of my brother, throaty and pure and wispy, woven with emotion.
Halfway through the playback Alan touches my cheek. “Perfect,” he murmurs. He stands up, pulling me with him. “And no, baby. That’s not your brother you think you hear. It’s a little bit of Jack and all the things you don’t ever let show that are Chrissie.”
* * *
In the bedroom, I curl on my side, on the bed, while Alan draws a bath for me. I am a touch panicky about what I just did, since now that it’s done I can’t take it back.
I recorded a song with Alan Manzone. Our voices will be linked forever on vinyl. Even if no one ever hears the song, it will always be a piece of me forever connected with a piece of Alan.
My limbs feel like putty and I am weak. I am not used to letting so much emotion to the surface.
Alan takes me to the bath and he undresses me. It is the first time I notice that neither of us has spoken since we left the studio. He puts me in the tub. Why are we both silent? What is this I feel?
Alan starts undressing and my eyes round. He climbs into the water and eases me back against his chest. I relax and close my eyes. I feel my head move with the rhythm of his breath. My hair is all around us. The steam and dampness makes it puff out and cling. Those long fingers are gently washing me. Up and down my arms very slowly, and then everywhere. And by the time he is done, I am languid and aroused and I can feel his erection.
I want him. I want him now.
“Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
I close my eyes.
“Don’t open your eyes until I tell you.”
I feel him touch me between my legs. My hair is lifted from my shoulders and his lips are on my neck. He turns me in his arms until I’m straddling him and he is devouring me with his mouth, the kisses are deep, greedy, ragged with unspent adrenaline, and I want him in me, but he keeps us separate.
There is something different in me. I can feel something different in Alan. My fingers curl in his hair as his mouth moves to my breasts. I am impatient inside in feral way, and I don’t know where this urgency comes from. It is as if I can’t get close enough to him, that nothing I do, not even sharing my body, will get me close enough to him.
Alan lifts me from the tub and carries me back to the bed. He spreads me on my stomach. He lies down beside me and we are both damp. He starts touching and kissing me. The back of my body, up from my feet, down my back. When his tongue touches at the base of my spine, I feel his fingers between my legs and then in me. As he cups my sex with his fingers expertly teasing me, his tongue and kisses are in a different orifice of my body, since I am on my stomach, and I am mildly disgusted and incredibly hot. He is kissing me there. Around it. Near it. In there. All the while, his hands are cupping my sex and filling me with his fingers. As intense as my muscles have clenched during sex, they have never clenched in anticipation this way.
Why am I letting him do this? It’s disgusting and wrong and I don’t know why he wants this. He knows he is driving me crazy, and I can feel his excitement as he makes me more and more frantic.
He turns me on the bed and I can feel his damp, naked body surrounding me. I am breathing hard. And I am pulsing there. My eyes are still closed because Alan has not said I can open them, and for some reason I am raging in this in a way unlike any other time before.
Alan is all around me, totally consuming my body. His lips are against my ear. “The opposite of death is not life, Chrissie,” he roughly breathes into my swirling senses. “The opposite of death is you. You are my opposite of death.”
Oh god…and I am afraid. I am desperately aroused. I want him and Alan is in me.
Chapter Twelve
I am exhausted. I want to sleep. I don’t know how Alan manages the pace. Every hour he gets more energetic. Every hour I just want more to hide beneath the covers and sleep. The last forty-eight hours have been grueling. Hours in the studio. Sex. Sleep. Then the cycle all over again.
I don’t even know what day it is. Time has lost the feel of realness. I have lost the feel of realness. We have only been together for seven days and so much about me has changed. I think of the lying to Jack, ignoring Rene’s mountain of messages, the singing, the sex, and that I am all but living with a guy. I am lost in Alan and I have no feel of realness without him.
Alan made me sing three more tracks with him. I don’t know how he got me to do it. Maybe I just did it not to fight with him. He asked. I did. Maybe it is as simple as that. Alan asked me. Maybe that’s all there is to it.
The sex is only getting more intense and more frequent. I thought it would calm with time. I thought I would calm with time. I want him more. I am willing to do more.
The adrenaline-fueled intensity while he works is frightening and a turn-on. I feel something new, something different in him. I haven’t figured out what to label it in my head yet.
I curl into the blankets. I need sleep. Tomorrow I will think about how to slow this down.
* * *
When I wake, it is mid-morning and I am surprised to find Alan in bed with me. He worked the entire night and I slept, really slept, for the first time in days, until he woke me up in the early morning to make love to my drowsy, hot body. Once we were done I went immediately back to sleep.
He is sitting beside me reading. Panicking, I realize what it is he is reading. I grab for my black journal that I must have forgotten to put back into my duffel.
“Give me that.”
Alan looks up. “Why? It’s very good. I didn’t know you write song lyrics.”
Song lyrics? I make a face at him. “I don’t write song lyrics. That’s just a journal. Fragments of nothing. Thoughts. Dreams. Sort of streams of consciousness, James Joyce type shit. And it is my personal shit. Do you always just invade people’s privacy and read their personal thoughts?”
He ignores me and continues to read.
I push my hair back from my face and sit up, tugging the blankets with me to cover my nudity. I hold out my hand. “Please, give it back.”
He continues to read. Hyper-focused Alan. He turns a page. He looks at me. “Chrissie, these are song lyrics. Look at how you’ve put them together. You even have chord notations on some of the margins.”
I roll my eyes. “Can I have my journal back, please?”
He glances down at me, grinning. “I haven’t finished it. I’m still looking for the parts about me.”
I stare at him. “There aren’t any.”
“No?”
“No.”
He looks hurt, but I know he’s just pretending. He’s in a good mood. He’s suddenly all around me, kissing me. He starts kissing my armpit and I squirm, frowning at him, knowing he’s just doing this to irritate me, because he knows I am overly ticklish and he knows I hate it.
God, he is in a wicked good mood. What the heck is up with him today? Happy Alan on turbo-drive. Happy Alan is never on turbo-drive.
I wiggle beneath him, and I see my journal on the bed beside him. I cautiously move my arm. He stops me. He plants his body spread eagle atop me.
“You can’t have the journal back until you make love to me,” he says, grinning.
I twist and squirm beneath him so he can’t kiss me. “Oh, go away. Don’t you have Ian waiting in the studio or an interview or something else to do? I’m irritated with you right now.”
He laughs. “Nope. Nothing but you to do, Chrissie.”
I still. “You mean you are done? As in done, done?”
He rolls off me to lie beside me, stretching on his pillow, and rakes his hand through his hair. “Yes. Done. Ian took the tracks this morning.”
“Ian took the masters? Did he leave a copy?”
Alan nods. I start to jump from the bed, but he stops me with a han
d. “I have something I need you to sign.”
He rummages on the floor beside the bed, through papers and whatever else got stacked there while I slept.
I sink back on the bed. “Sign? I don’t understand.”
“Just bullshit legal paperwork. No big deal.” He is scanning the documents, frowning as if trying to find the right one.
He hands it to me. I scan the papers. I only half understand what I’m reading. “What is this?”
Alan yawns and relaxes back against his pillow, turned attractively on his side, facing me. “Just your standard release, Chrissie. It’s nothing. Just sign.”
I make a face. “Maybe I don’t want to. Is it for the label?”
He hands me a pen. “No, me. Just something my management company makes me get. It’s no big deal.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “Unless you count that paragraph on page four that says I own you for the next ten years.”
I make a face at him. “What happens if I don’t sign? Am I free of you at last?”
He gives me a sexy half smile and his eyes glow wickedly. “I dump you right out the front door in a sheet for wasting my time. You either trust me or you don’t, Chrissie. Sign the damn thing.”
God, why is everything a test of wills with him? I’m having that feeling I sometimes get when he’s mocking me, that inside of the mockery he is really being serious. Fine, Alan, Fine. You win.
I take a pen and, angry and heavy, I scrawl my name on the signature line. I’m about to toss it back in his face, when he takes the contract, and starts pointing here and here for my initials.
I stare down at it, studying the papers in my lap. “There. Happy now?”
“Ecstatic.” He stretches back on the bed and closes his eyes.
I focus on the signature next to mine. “Who is Alan Wells?”
“Me,” he whispers through another yawn. “My real name. The lawyers require it.”
I frown and curl into him. “I didn’t know that Alan Manzone wasn’t your real name. It’s kind of creepy to have to have a lawyer tell you who you’ve been sleeping with.”
He ignores that comment and tosses the papers on the floor. He starts to rummage through the junk again and pulls out a board, sitting cross-legged beside me on the bed.