In the Absence of You

by Sunniva Dee

  Shandor watches me from the elevator, gesturing for me to join him. I’m not on his floor. I point at the restroom, give him the thumbs-up, and wait until the door closes between us.

  I tell Troy I can take Emil upstairs.

  Troy shakes his head, his gaze traveling over my face for signs that I’m about to fall apart. I can be ice. I am ice.

  “No, seriously. It’s on my way anyway.”

  “How’s it on your way? He needs the east elevators. And he’s heavy. I’ll get him to bed.”

  My room’s in the west tower. “I know how heavy he is,” I say. “I’ve handled him before.” As I stare back at Troy, convincing him, I’m struck by his eyelashes. They’re the thickest and longest I’ve ever seen, and they curve upward in the craziest way, hitting his eyebrows. “I’ll come with,” he murmurs.

  “No,” I quip out too quickly.

  Troy blinks while Emil rummages inside his overnight bag, lost to those around him. Plague. Love.

  There’s so much unspoken understanding in Troy’s eyes. “Okay then. Call me if you need help.”

  Troy follows us to the elevators. He watches, hands in his pockets, as Emil leans against the wall and hums a song I don’t recognize. “Get a good night’s sleep,” Troy says gruffly as the doors close.

  “Yup. Not a worry,” Emil cracks, drunken-loud. He sees me then, when he realizes it’s just us in the cab going up. “What’re you doing ’ere?”

  “Getting you to your room.”

  “’Kay, just open the door to it, a’ight? Z’all I need.” He tries to give me a serious stare-down, which comes off boyish and cute.

  “Of course,” I say.

  He isn’t inside me anymore, but I don’t think we’ve moved since sleep claimed us. He, because he was drunk. Me, because I can’t disturb our connection. We drifted off, arms entwined by the fingers and stretched above our heads, touching the headboard. I rock my head back now, looking at Emil. He’s snoring, cheek heavy against my chest. On the nightstand, the alarm clock displays eight a.m.

  I don’t want a confrontation with Shandor, and I’d like for Troy not to look at me with worry in his eyes. Troy’s aware of where I went. Irene knows I’m not in our shared room, but to avoid rumors, I should get back before the nine o’clock wakeup call.

  Just—if I leave before he wakes up, what good will this have done to us? I stroke Emil’s back, following tight tendons along his spine to the small of his back. He groans a little, such a sweet sound.

  I kiss his neck. Snuggle into the side of it. “Baby, I should head to my room,” I whisper, wanting him sober and conscious before I leave. I might be a calculating bitch right now, but I have six days left to save my sanity.

  His snores disappear. So does the relaxed breathing. “Aishe? Ah dammit.” Beautifully disheveled, Emil glides off to the side and lifts up on one arm to stare at me. “Please tell me we didn’t.”

  “It’s okay.” I kiss his bicep, but he thuds to his back, covering his face with a hand.

  “I can’t believe this. Did it take me one day to sleep with you again? Wow, I’m a loser.”

  “Shh, no. I wanted to get you to bed. You were being noble, telling me I should leave, but then we kissed, and one thing led to another. It was good for me. It sounded like it was good for you too,” I joke.

  The breath leaving Emil is too heavy. Then he stills. Peers out from under his fist. “Why didn’t you just leave, Aishe?”

  “Because you didn’t want me to.” In the end, you didn’t.

  “Shit, I don’t remember. Aishe, please, do me a favor. Whatever I say when I’m drunk, don’t listen, because I don’t want us to keep doing this.”

  He’s so serious, and it’s another deep stab to my heart. I’m in survival mode. I know better than to argue though. He’s got to see it himself. Maybe if I’m flirtier, less serious than I’ve been with him so far?

  I cup Emil’s cheek and try to convey the tenderness I feel for him without overwhelming him with my urgency.

  Six days!

  “Yes, I understand. One last kiss?” I pout my lips. He’s said he loves my lips.

  Emil’s gaze draws to my mouth, and I have a brief sensation of victory. Until he says, “Don’t do this to me. Just please leave. I need to shower and get ready for the road.”

  I find myself sinking and sinking, saying, “I’ll turn on the shower for you. Maybe I’ll take one too before I leave?” and Emil replying, “No!”

  EMIL

  “I know it’s not an excuse, goddammit! Get off my case.” I scrub my hand over my face. “Stop fucking mothering me. I hate this.”

  I have no idea what happened, how Aishe got into my bed and how I ended up sleeping with her again. I was just going to stew in my own drunken misery. I had no plans for sex, least of all with someone I’m trying not to mess with.

  Troy’s shaking his head. He’s involved Bo too, and now Bo’s closing the door to the back lounge so Nadia doesn’t have to overhear my stupid-ass business.

  “How about this: no more single rooms, at least not when you’re too sloshed to know what you’re doing. We have two more hotel nights. Share with Troy. If she follows you again, Troy will be there.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Fine.”

  I have no control anymore. My life’s tail-spinning. This morning, after Aishe left, I rang in another ballad to Zoe’s phone. I didn’t quite pull it off. My throat feels strange. It tickles, and I’m definitely getting on the huskier side now. We have four more shows. If my voice stops working, I don’t know what I’ll do.

  When the bus hobbles out of the hotel parking lot, I flop into one of the recliners in the front lounge. Captain’s chairs are good for sleeping, and my bunk’s a fucking lonely place right now.

  I’m hungover as hell. Sick to my stomach. Troll suggested a Bloody Mary, but I don’t want one. Instead I pop my earbuds in and close my eyes.

  The playlist takes me to one of Luminessence’s songs. Everything reminds me of Zoe, and this tune transports me to a library trip she insisted on. The guys were waiting for me at practice, but my bossy girl decided we needed to pick up books first—of course I humored my girl.

  “Here. This is the best section,” she whispered, exaggerating because people were speaking with normal voices around us. Zee crooked her finger and hunched her back as if we were being sneaky by entering the anatomy section.

  “Oh the human body! Let’s see if there are encyclopedias solely dedicated to the female body,” I suggested. “There should be, because that’d be fascinating.”

  She snorted, locked her hands around my stomach, and play-pulled me into a remote part. “I wanna see if it’s still here. It’s such a crazy book. Wait.” She sank to her haunches, and I instantly scooted down behind her, nibbling at her ear. Whatever she found wouldn’t be as interesting as her anyway.

  “Emil,” she hissed, biting her lip while I bit her neck.

  “You know I love you?” I murmured.

  “Yep. Wait… looky, here ’tis. So eerie.” She whipped open some unassuming book. That was filled with photos of dead people and skeletons and body parts. They all said stuff in Latin beneath them.

  “What the flip is this?” I asked.

  “Right? It’s old-timey science. See how they pickled that guy’s head?”

  “Jesus, what’s with his forehead? It’s double the size of mine. You’re nuts, you know that? Of all the books, this is what you wanted to show me?” I felt my grin spread wide. My Zee, she was an expert at making me grin.

  “It cracks me up.” She grinned back. “Aren’t we just so lucky not to be deformed and living a few hundred years back? If that happened, the mad scientists would be at the ready to put us in jars of formaldehyde or whatever for their little museums. This book’s from Italy.”

  “Well,” I said, humming a few bars of Luminessence’s ballad against her ear as she settled in against me on the floor, book in her lap. “You’re certainly not deformed.”

  “No?�
� She leaned the back of her head against my chest, waiting for more.

  “No, because you’re delicious. All of you, every single part is delicious. Actually, if this were before, maybe they’d hunt you down anyway. Not for their freak-show museums, but for their man-candy stores.”

  “Man-candy stores? Sounds like a store for women.” She turned enough to waggle her brows at me.

  “Nope, it’s where they candied especially delectable females, and the men would buy little bags of you to suck on.”

  “Eww!” Her stomach rippled with laughter under my hand. It made me want to kiss her mouth, which I did. “In that case, I hope you were there and came in and bought my vagina to suck on.”

  “Oh hell yeah, I would. First your clitty-clit.”

  “Dork!”

  “Then I’d buy the rest of you and assemble you into one big piece of candied ass.” I took her hand and wedged it in between our bodies. She formed it around my cock.

  “I don’t have a big ass.” She tried to scoff between our kisses.

  “Dude, not your actual ass. You’re a piece of ass, all of you,” I explained patiently, making sure I puffed way too much air into her ear canal, causing her to shudder.

  “Weirdo,” she laughed. “In that century you speak of, I’d rather not be candied and scattered into all these jars. I’d still hunt you down and make you follow me around like a puppy.”

  “Puppy? You want puppy love?”

  “Of course…” She trailed off when I slid a hand up and covered her breast.

  “I’ll puppy-love you. Doggy-love you. From behind. See what I did there?”

  “Cheapest joke ever, Emil—omigod.”

  “No, I’m serious. Do they have nowhere to hide in this place? I need you naked. At least from the waist and down. I’m not picky when it comes to undress as long as it’s that: ‘undress.’”

  My Zee found us a place, all right. It wasn’t private, but at least it was out of the way, behind the last shelf and a copy machine. We added some flair to the section. Or you could say we christened it.

  AISHE

  My access to Emil has become too limited. Travel days are long, and being on separate buses makes it so that I rarely see him. In Chicago, we have another hotel night though, which lifts my hopes. We’ll be at the Hard Rock hotel, and I pray to God he books himself another single.

  I realize that Emil won’t let me near him unless he’s drunk, and here I am, stooping to a level where I hope he hits the bottle tonight too.

  In the midst of my Emil-haze, I’m thankful for the solidarity of the group I travel with. When people live in such close quarters, there are always disagreements, but the Clown Irruption staff doesn’t gossip. Even when Bo wanted to quit the band to take care of Nadia after her miscarriage they didn’t.

  Now there must be a secret understanding; I’m not the only one keeping details from Shandor. Maybe to maintain peace on the bus, no one talks about Emil and me, and I’m grateful over Irene keeping quiet about how I didn’t sleep in our last hotel room.

  It’s after the show, and Paul McCartney is singing “Maybe I’m Amazed” from one of the dressing rooms. The door is closed, there’s no music accompanying it, and the song cuts off after the first verse.

  I open the door and find Emil there, sweat still dripping from his forehead and eyes on his phone.

  “I brought you popcorn,” I say, my voice low. It’s true. The promoter brought it in from the movie theater across the street.

  Emil raises dull eyes to me. Nods. Points at the vanity in front of him. It proffers bright, bare bulbs that frame a square mirror. A thin streak of blood stains Emil’s skin from his ear down to his lip, a remainder of “The Entertainer.” It has become every fan’s favorite performance.

  Cautiously, I put the popcorn down. I turn without making sudden movements—he needs to trust me—then I extend my hand to wipe the blood off his face. Emil tenses at first, eyes light with an alarm I’d rather not register. “You’ve got blood on you. I’ll get it off before the after-party.”

  He sighs. Lets me touch him. I step in closer, so close I almost brush against him with my body. It’s on purpose when my breast touches his chest while I rub. He watches me lick my finger and rub against his cheek again.

  “Do you have a fresh shirt in your bag?” I ask, looking him over. He’s wearing another white button-up splattered with fake blood. “I can get this one washed for you at the hotel tonight.” I shrug as if it’s no big deal. “I need more whites for my round of laundry anyway.”

  He clears his throat. Places his phone in his pocket before he shakes his head. “No, I don’t. I gotta go through my clothes on the bus. I need to do laundry. Most of my shit’s got blood on it now.” He laughs, the sound hollow to me.

  “Fake blood.” I needed to say that.

  I could get on his bus and grab whatever he needs washed. I’d be so happy to help him, but I know better than to be intrusive. “Fender left some shirts for the band in the other dressing room. I’ll get you one if you strip that thing off.”

  I leave before he can object.

  Troy’s next door, watching me enter, grab a shirt, and retreat. “That for Emil?” he asks, making Troll look up from the deli tray.

  “Yeah. He’s bloody.” I lift a shoulder, cool, before I head back to my plague.

  Emil has shed his shirt when I come in.

  If you care, it’s crazy how well you get to know someone’s body in a few weeks. I’ve touched the skin stretching over each of Emil’s muscles. The sensation of him sits in my digits. I know how every slope feels as my gaze travels from section to section.

  I turn away as soon as he looks up. He’s got a hand deep in the ice bucket, grabbing and dropping cubes into a tumbler. “You want some?” He chin-ups the Jameson.

  “No, I’m good,” I say. “Thank you though.”

  I move closer, less careful this time. A path of dried blood travels over a nipple and down to his stomach. I reach for it. Rub with my whole hand. He sucks in his stomach, and I think it means he enjoys my touch.

  “I’ll wash it off in the shower afterward,” he tells me. “Don’t worry.”

  “I don’t mind.” I don’t. I don’t.

  I ease closer, steadying myself on his back as I make small circles over his chest. The blood comes off easily, but Emil’s eyes are closed, a small furrow between his brows. I think he’s struggling. Still, he takes pleasure in the light massage and how I align my body with his.

  I don’t understand why he does this to himself. He’s better off with me than he is alone. I dip my head so my hair trails over his skin too. Taut beneath my fingertips, he seems ready to bolt. He doesn’t though, and I exhale my relief quietly; he’s choosing to stay with me, and he isn’t even intoxicated.

  My hand glides off his chest and below his arm, curving over ribs and muscle that twitch under my caresses. I’m so near, so in his space, smelling the mix of fresh sweat and his perfume, that new one in a blue bottle.

  His breathing stutters. “Aishe.”

  Should I?

  I lean in and place a small, chaste kiss above a nipple. My heart thunders. I’m either sealing or breaking my chance for tonight.

  “You get the T-shirt, man?” Troy asks from the door.

  Emil jumps back. Draws a hand through his hair and shakes his head in disbelief. “I… don’t even.” He doesn’t say anything else, just looks at me like he doesn’t know me.

  I smile, because what else can I do? The shirt is on the floor. I don’t recall dropping it, but my focus wasn’t on a piece of fabric. I snap forward. Fish it off the ground and hold it up for him like we weren’t just in an almost-embrace.

  So close.

  “No meet-n-greet?” I ask Troy who stares at me too. I don’t like the disappointment in his eyes. Am I a disappointment to Troy now?

  If he knew that I’m fighting for my life, his features would be more understanding.

  “No, the promoter wants us to h
ead straight to the Hard Rock. He’s holding an after-party there for a few hundred people in one of the ballrooms.” Troy crosses his arms, holding my stare until I break away. In my peripheral, Emil pulls the green Fender shirt over his head. I could have helped him.

  “Troll wants you, Aishe. Something about those broken-heart tees. He thought there were more of them than there are.”

  I bob my head. Throw a last glance at my plague, and walk out of the room. I didn’t ruin my chances. He needs me. Emil’s signals before Troy entered the room showed that; he tried but he couldn’t pull away from me. The realization gives me a small taste of triumph. Now I just need to play my cards right at the after-party, and the night will be Emil’s and mine.

  We check into our rooms. Emil shares with Troy, which makes me have to readjust my plans. By now I’m an expert at catching room numbers, so that part is easy. Just, the only way I can see this work is if I get Emil upstairs before the after-party is over, before Troy arrives.

  Oh I’ll treat him so well. Pull out all the stops, use every trick. And once I’ve blown his mind, making him reach the highest of highs, he’ll let me sleep in his arms again.

  I don’t mind if Troy’s there when we wake up in the morning. I’ve slept in Emil’s bunk often enough with Troy beneath us on the bus.

  My success depends on so much. Emil’s resistance might have weakened after our dressing room run-in, but I need to look prettier than ever. And Emil needs to be drunk. Not too drunk, but drunk.

  I look at my watch. Ten thirty. “You sure you don’t want to come along?” Irene asks, peaking her head into our bathroom. She’s so polite. Why would I want to crash her get-together with her best friends from high school?

  “Oh no. You enjoy, Irene. It’ll be a blast for you. How long since the last time you saw them again?” I ask, polite too. Because I still have it in me.

  “Four years.” Her smile tips so high she’s beaming.

  “Yeah, I’m definitely not going. You enjoy. I’ll probably hit up the after-party for a sec and then go to bed,” I say. “I’m exhausted anyway.”

  I finish curling my hair in long, thick coils that hang down my back all the way to my butt. I know Emil likes “my mane” as he calls it.