We stayed like that for a while until he coaxed me back up into a sitting position.
“So, can we make a promise?” he asked, grabbing my chin between his thumb and forefinger and forcing me to look him in the eyes. “Let’s make a promise to each other right now. Let’s promise that we’re in this for the long-haul. No matter what happens, we’re going to find a way to make this work. It’s too important to screw up,” he said. “What do you say?” he asked. “You and me babe, how ’bout it?”
Damn, he made that lyric sound cool. I only let him sweat for a second before I smiled and said, “I say it’s a deal.” Maybe I should have given him a harder time, made him work harder for my forgiveness, but in the end, I didn’t care. I believed that he wasn’t going to push me away again, and when it came down to it, that was enough.
Luke pulled me in close to give me a long, steamy kiss. In that moment, I realized just how much I’d been longing for the feel of his lips against mine. It was like I’d been missing a part of me, and now I was whole again.
Things started to heat up pretty quickly after that. His hands found the sides of my face while mine snaked around his back and pulled me even tighter against him. At what age would making out in cars stop being fun? It wasn’t twenty-nine. But before our clothes started flying off, I pulled away.
“We have to go back to the party,” I said, somewhat remorsefully. “At least for a little bit. Everyone braved the cold to come out for my birthday, and I can’t just leave like I did and not go back.”
He closed his eyes and dropped his head. “You’re killing me, L.L.”
“We’ve been apart for two weeks. Two more hours won’t kill you.” It might kill me, though. I wanted this guy bad. But social decorum prevailed and we dutifully made our way back to the bar.
Once we were inside, Luke ordered a few bottles of champagne. After I introduced him to my entourage, we all toasted to me and to friends and to nights out together. Then Luke and I privately toasted to our joyful reunion.
A few hours and a lot of champagne later, Luke turned to me. “Alright, you ready to get out of here?” he asked. “I want to give you your present back at the house.” He rubbed his hand suggestively across my lower back and gave my ass a wicked little squeeze.
I looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. “Is my present your dick?” I asked in a most inelegant tone. What little grace I had always flew right out the window after my fourth drink.
“It might be,” he smiled devilishly.
I rolled my eyes. “My god, all men think that they have a woman’s secret to happiness dangling between their legs.”
“Alright fine,” he shrugged. “If that’s the way you feel then I won’t give it to you.”
“No I want it!” I said too quickly. Calm down, slag, I scolded myself.
“Then I suggest you get your coat.”
But I didn’t reach for my coat, at least not right away. Instead I stood on my tiptoes, threw my arms around his neck, and buried my face in his chest. I was just so happy to be next to him again that I wanted to get as close as possible. Then, because I was more than a little bit drunk and feeling naughty, I parted my lips and bit him right above his collarbone. Not hard, but enough to make him know that I did it. Why could I say? In my book, biting was the sincerest form of foreplay. Plus, Luke bit me all the time. It was good for him to be on the receiving end for once.
Luke responded by squeezing my ass with abandon. “Alright you little tart,” he said. “Let’s get you home.”
Hmm, home, yes. I knew that he meant his apartment and it made me feel giddy to hear him refer to it like that. Like it was someplace where he and I belonged together.
He found my coat and held it out for me to slip my arms into before he put on his own. Then, without warning he crouched down, grabbed me around my thighs, and threw me over his shoulder so my hips were next to his ears and my face was planted in his lower back.
“Luke!” I yelled.
“Everyone say goodnight to the birthday girl!” Luke announced before he spun around so that I was invertedly facing my friends.
“G’night birthday girl,” was the slurred adieu I received.
Resigned to my fate of being carried out of the bar in a most compromising position, I lifted my arm and waved pathetically as Luke headed for the door.
We were back at his apartment within minutes. Thankfully, I was allowed to walk up the stairs on my own. Well, almost on my own. Luke’s big hand clasped my miniature one and pulled me eagerly forward.
He unlocked the door and threw it open before tugging me inside. When he flipped on the lights, I stayed rooted to the spot, shocked by what I saw in front of me. It looked like a bomb had gone off in here. There were empty beer bottles and food containers all over the place. Clothes and shoes were discarded on the floor. A pile of dirty dishes sat in the sink. Ew.
“I’m sorry it’s so messy,” Luke said when he saw me looking around. “With you not here, I didn’t feel much of a need to clean up. And since I wasn’t sure how tonight was going to go, I didn’t want to tempt fate. You know, like if you decided to hit me rather than kiss me, I didn’t want to have to come home to a mockingly spotless apartment alone.”
“Hmm,” I said. “We can deal with this tomorrow.” I really didn’t care about the mess. As Alex had pointed out, my apartment was a disaster too. But I secretly found it amusing that Luke and I had obviously dealt with our separation in a similar manner: by throwing our shit all over the place.
“Now,” I went on. “I was given to understand that I would be receiving some sort of bestowal here tonight.” I was aiming for a seductive tone, but I was pretty lubed after all that champagne, so my pronunciation of “bestowal” was seriously lacking in vowel sounds. I should have just said “gift.”
Luke laughed at me. “Alright Merriam-Webster, let’s get you out of that dress.” Then he took my hand and led me back to the bedroom. Once inside, he ripped out my ponytail holder and fisted his hands in my now loose hair. Pulling me close and inhaling deeply, he whispered, “God, I missed this.”
My face was already nuzzled against his chest, so I wound my arms around his waist and inhaled deeply myself. “Me too.” I said.
The next hour was a blur of pure sensation. I lost track of where Luke ended and I began. We were completely in sync, moving together as one blissful unit. “Tell me that you’re mine, Lyssa,” Luke demanded against my fevered skin.
“I’m yours,” I breathlessly agreed before waves of pleasure finally broke over me. And then I was crying at the sheer joy of it all. I wasn’t even embarrassed. I felt adored and content. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I was home.
A while later, Luke and I were lying in bed, idly staring up at the ceiling and listening to each other breathe. I had sobered up from my champagne buzz, but I still felt drunk with happiness at how my night had ended up. I had fully expected to pass out next to some fast food tonight, not fall asleep next to a sexy musician. What a freebie.
Finally, Luke cleared his throat and said, “Now we have the small matter of your birthday present to discuss.”
I picked my head up from his chest to look at him. I was confused. “Didn’t you just give it to me?” I was certainly satisfied with the thorough tending to that I had just received.
He laughed. “Did you really believe that I thought my dick was a sufficient gift to commemorate your twenty-ninth year? Exceptional though it may be, I’m not actually that arrogant.”
“Contradictory though that sentence may be –”
“Hey, it’s not arrogance if it’s true.”
“You’re really not helping your case.”
“Anyway,” he said emphatically, letting me know that he was steering us back to the original conversation. “I was wracking my brain for what to get you.”
“You didn’t have to get me anything,” I said truthfully.
“I know, but I wanted to. So, at first I thought, jewelry?”
/> I crinkled my nose. I wasn’t big on jewelry. I had a couple of rings that belonged to my grandmother and a few nice pieces that my parents had given me as graduation presents, and that was honestly enough for me. For some reason, my X chromosomes hadn’t come with the fondness-for-sparkly-things gene.
“Then I thought, clothes? A purse maybe?”
I shook my head at those too. It wasn’t that I didn’t like clothes and bags. It was just that I didn’t like anyone else to pick them out for me. Especially not a boyfriend. I hated the idea of t-shirt-and-jeans-wearing Luke Davies feeling like he needed to roll into the Neiman Marcus women’s department to buy me something.
“And then I thought, no, my girl doesn’t want anything like that,” he said. “She wants words. She wants music. So, Lyssa Lyons, in honor of your birthday, I present to you my second studio album.” He turned and reached into the top drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a CD, his CD, and handed it to me. “I know you already know this,” he said, “but I wrote every line, every note, for you, and I meant them all.”
I sat up and turned it over in my hand, trying to remember how long it had been since I’d actually held a physical CD. A while. But that didn’t mean that I was any less touched by the gesture. A whole album of music written for me. It was spectacular. “Thank you,” I said sincerely, and then I leaned over to kiss him.
He let me, but then he pulled back. “Wait,” he said. “You have to open it up.” He took the plastic square from my hands, popped it open, and handed me the little booklet from inside. With his index finger, he showed me which page to flip to before he pointed to a solitary line printed at the bottom.
“For my L.L.” I read aloud. I felt a lump form in my throat. “You dedicated it to me?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it. For him to say that the songs were for me right now, at this moment in time, was one thing. But for him to write the sentiment down, to make it permanent, made me feel like no matter what, they always would be.
“You bet,” he smiled.
“But wh – what if we hadn’t gotten back together?” I asked.
He shrugged. “It wouldn’t have made the album any less about you,” he said simply. “Plus, I had a pretty good feeling that we would.”
“Oh sure,” I said as I wiped a tear from my eye. “You’ll do this, but you won’t run a vacuum through this place before you bring me back here?”
“Hey, I didn’t say that I knew we’d get back together tonight. I thought you might need a bit more convincing. Maybe force me to grovel a little.”
“Well, you definitely don’t need to grovel after this. Thank you,” I said. “It’s perfect.” Then I kissed him again. And it was perfect. It wasn’t ostentatious or overly sentimental. It was thoughtful and genuine, which was exactly what I wanted. I even loved that he hadn’t used my full name, just my initials – the nickname that only he used – because he knew I’d hate that kind of attention. I was so lucky to have this man back in my life.
Luke took the CD from me, placed it on the nightstand, and pulled me back against his chest. “Now,” he said as his arms wrapped around me. “Lie here with me and forget the world for a while. Happy birthday, L.L.” He kissed the top of my head. “I hope it was a good one.”
“It was,” I said, snuggling in close. “Best birthday ever.”
Wreckage And Bone
Things seemed to pick up pretty much right where they’d left off after that. I started staying at Luke’s full-time again. I moved my stuff right back into my old drawers, which were just as empty as they’d been the night that I’d unceremoniously pulled everything out of them. I didn’t know why, but the fact that Luke hadn’t refilled them in my absence was touching. I knew it had only been a few weeks, but to me, it was a clear indication that I’d still been there even though I wasn’t. He’d kept the space reserved for me, not just in his home, but in his life. So once all of my things were back in place, it was like I’d never left.
Well, except it was. But in a good way. Things between Luke and me were different. Better. Even better than they’d been when we’d first gotten together. He and I had always had fun hanging out with each other, but that was largely all it had been: fun. Joking around, nights out, spontaneous sex. Don’t get me wrong, we still did all of those things in spades, but now we also, like, shared our lives with each other. We talked all the time, and I learned more about Luke than I ever thought I’d learn about another human being. We talked about what he'd been like as a kid, how all he’d ever wanted in the world was a younger brother, but how year after year he’d remained an only child. We talked about how it had affected him when, right before he started high school, his parents had split up. I heard about how he’d taken his rebellious teenage stage so far that his father had threatened him with military school. I learned that this was probably just because Luke had smashed his dad’s ’66 Mustang into a telephone pole. I even got to spend some time with his mom and dad, on separate occasions of course. I’d been a little nervous about meeting the parents, since it was such a huge milestone in a relationship, but I found that they were both lovely, warm people who seemed to be pleasantly surprised that Luke was finally introducing them to a girl he was dating. Hearing them express their delight at this development made me smile ever so smugly to myself. All in all, I really felt like I’d been brought into the fold of the Luke Davies universe and now that I was here, I didn’t know how I’d ever survived outside of it.
But even if Luke and I hadn’t been in such a great place in our relationship, it still would have been a fun time to simply be around him. Since his album had just come out, he was in that sweet spot where a lot of its promotion was still being done by his label’s marketing department, rather than by him personally. So Luke mostly got to just sit back and watch it fly off the shelves…er, servers. And that it was. I didn’t know what the exact sales count was up to, but I knew that his label was projecting at least a million copies to sell, which was outrageously good for someone on Luke’s level. Luke wasn’t really big enough to have his music played on mainstream radio stations, but he usually got picked up by the smaller, independent ones as well as satellite radio. He also had the sort of following that earned him “featured artist” status on a bunch of online music streaming services, so word definitely got out that he had new stuff. And the feedback so far had been excellent. Not just from his fans – although every musician will tell you that that’s the only feedback that matters – but from music critics too. Adjectives like “grown up” and “soulful” and “stirring” were being thrown around in abundance to describe the sound, and it was clear that hearing those words made Luke pleased as punch. He practically floated around the apartment in a sort of euphoric daze.
And as for me, well, I was pretty damn pleased about the success of the album myself. At first I’d been a little bit wary. I wasn’t a fan of the spotlight and having an entire album with songs about me be released worldwide didn’t seem like the soundest strategy for remaining anonymous. But it wasn’t like I was mentioned by name or anything and I was confident that very few people would ever see my initials on the CD booklet. Plus, having so many people be impressed with songs that were written about Luke’s feelings for me filled me with a certain sense of elation that never seemed to get old. If I’d been smiling smugly about being special enough to Luke to meet his parents, then I was doing smug cartwheels about the album.
While all of these good vibrations were going on around me, I would often find myself lying in bed at night, listening to Luke’s steady breathing, and remarking with a sense of wonder at how amazing my life had become. I’d somehow managed to stumble face first into some alternate dimension where everything felt like it was exactly as it should be. I wasn’t sure why the stars had suddenly aligned or what I’d done in a past life that I was being rewarded for now, but I was absolutely certain of one thing: it was worth the wait.
Around the ides of March, Chicago was blessed with a few days of blissfully warm
weather. And by “blissfully warm,” I meant that it was just hot enough to melt the last of the dirty snow that still lingered on the ground after the brutal winter. But that didn’t stop the sturdy inhabitants of the city from breaking out their t-shirts and shorts like it was the Fourth of July. We knew all too well that freezing temperatures were possible even into April and May, so we were determined to take advantage of this little taste of springtime while we could.
“Do you want to go for a run?” Luke asked me one morning. It was a Saturday during the warm spell and we were both lying in bed. I was reading and Luke was doing his best to distract me by running his fingers along the inside of my thigh that I had draped across his torso. Neither of us was feeling any particular rush to get out of bed and be productive, but we both knew that we should probably go and enjoy the sunshine.
I looked at him skeptically out of the corner of my eye. “Are you suggesting that I need to go for a run?” I asked. “And think before you speak, my friend. There is a right and a wrong answer here.” I was really just messing with him. I didn’t actually think that that was what he was implying. However, I did try pretty hard to not put on the extra pounds that most Midwesterners gained during our winter hibernation, so I just wanted to be sure.
He snorted, seeing right through my faux-cynicism. He was smart, this man of mine. “No. Not only because that’s not true, but also because I did not wake up this morning and think, ‘Hmm, how can I insult Lyssa so that she won’t speak to me for the rest of the day?’” he said and I laughed. “I meant,” he went on, “Would you like to go for a run with me? We can pretend to be one of those healthy, active couples that we usually make fun of. You know, the ones who make their own juice.”
I put down my book and looked at him. “Are you proposing that we engage in role play, Mr. Davies?” I asked.
“I wasn’t, but now I am,” he said before he leaned over and started nibbling on my neck. “That makes the idea of exercising sound much more enjoyable, doesn’t it?”
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