by LJ Evans
“Mags, this is my girlfriend, Mia, and this is our little kitten, Jane.”
And then I was frozen again. Because he just called me his girlfriend. Was that what he thought I was? I mean, we had been sleeping together, literally and bodily for a little over a week, but I hadn’t really thought he’d labeled us. Because he knew as well as I did that we only had three weeks together, didn’t he?
“That’s a stupid name,” Maggie said.
“Maggie!” her dad said again, but this time there was actually a warning in the tone.
“Can I see it?” she asked.
“Yes, but she’s been injured, so you’ll have to be really gentle,” Derek told her. I set the carrier down and opened the door. Jane would usually come out and investigate of her own accord. She was curious, which was probably what had gotten her into trouble with the engine of the Camaro in the first place.
Today, she just hung out in the carrier. Maggie spread herself out on her belly on the granite floor and looked inside. “Why isn’t she coming out?”
“She’s a little overwhelmed by all this,” Derek said, but his eyes met mine with a smile that tugged at my heart again because I felt like he was talking about me as much as Jane. He knew me. How he knew me so well after so little time together was a mystery. But he did. He may not know that it was his label that had pushed me over the edge, but he’d known when I’d gone over and was trying to catch me before I fell too far.
“Can I pet her?”
“I’d just let her get used to you at first. We’re going to bring her out to the guesthouse and you can visit her there.“
“How long are you here for?” Dylan asked.
“Three days. Well, two more after today,” Derek responded.
“Good. Bianca’s gone tonight, but she’ll be back tomorrow. We can have a family dinner.”
Derek groaned.
“You’re hardly ever here anymore. We miss you.”
“You mean you miss having someone to rib,” Derek said with a smile.
“Well, what the hell else are little brother’s for?” Dylan teased back. “Come on, Maggie, I’m sure Betty is already freaking out because she can’t find you.”
The little girl scrambled up off the floor and put her tiny hand in her father’s. They ambled off down the corridor, and I watched them with awe. They were matching, overpowering dynamos. Even the four-year-old demanded more attention than I’d ever demanded in my whole life.
Derek grabbed Jane’s carrier, closing the door, and then grabbed my hand and his bag and tugged me towards the back of the house. I barely had time to grasp my own bag and follow.
We walked through several rooms that were ready to receive the Queen of England before we got to a wall of glass. Outside the smudge-less panes was a manicured yard filled with a pool designed for nirvana. In our part of Tennessee, most of the pools are utilitarian. They were built to swim and escape the heat in.
This pool was the kind you made movies about. The kind that filled romance novels. The kind that made me want to run screaming back to Tennessee because I knew I’d never belong here.
We made our way around the shimmering water and through a literal jungle until we found another house. A whole house! One story, but still a house. In the backyard! Derek opened the door and set down the bags. He turned to me, pulled everything from my hands, and then pulled me up close to his chest.
He looked down at me with that serious expression. The one that didn’t last long but always made me sorry if I was the one that brought it to the surface.
“Miss Mia, stop thinking,” he told me.
“I’m not.” and I tried to look away, but he captured my chin and drew my face up. His hand caressed the edge of my lips.
“You are. Don’t.”
And then he was kissing me. Kissing me hard and full of passion. Like he had at the Wooly Bisson. Like he hadn’t been able to in the four days since then. And I forgot, for a while, the world again and concentrated on the space where we made memories for ourselves that would always remain even if our hearts would eventually be broken.
It was “Photograph” playing in my head as he led me to his room. The room that was a glimpse of something that didn’t seem to be him at all. That must have been decorated by Bianca, because the room was beige and impersonal, and Derek was neither of those things. He was vivid colors and all humanity wrapped in a beautiful collage like his song said.
But I didn’t care what the room looked like as we shed our clothes and found ourselves in each other’s skin. As I found my way back around his abs and his body that continued to floor me with its gorgeousness. As he found his way back around my body that I seemed to appreciate more because he found it exciting.
I realized, as we made love in a room that was his but not his, that Ed’s words were true. Loving could heal. Loving could mend your soul. And it was the only thing we could take with us when we died. Like Jake had taken Cam’s love with him. And if I ended up hurt, well, that would be okay because even though the wounds would bleed, the words that we sang together with our skin touching, those words would stay inside the pages that were left behind.
COLD COFFEE
A Relationship
“Tell me how to fall in love the way you want me to.”
-Ed Sheeran
WHEN I WOKE THE next morning, it was to an empty bed. I immediately hated that. Hated that I wasn’t wrapped in arms that were tattooed for forgiveness. Hated that I wasn’t next to a body that made mine feel safe and wanted. Hated mornings.
I heard clanking coming from what I assumed to be a kitchen. I heard sizzling and smelled coffee. It was almost enough to make me want to get out of bed. But not quite enough.
A few minutes later, Derek appeared in the bedroom doorway with only a pair of jeans on.
He grinned at me and said for not the first time, but like it continued to amaze him. “You really hate mornings.”
“I’m slowly learning to appreciate the possibilities that morning can bring,” I said as I hugged the pillow and watched him.
“Breakfast is ready.”
“Not tempting enough.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty darn sure.”
“Hmm,” he eased towards me. “What can I tempt my Little Bird with?”
I curled my toes up protectively because he had a bad habit of tickling me or pulling me out of bed when he wanted me to get up. For the first time in days, we didn’t have to be anywhere and I was kind of liking the idea of staying right where I was. All day. Maybe I could tempt him instead.
When he got close enough, I grabbed a loop on his jeans. “I think you have this whole day off idea wrong,” I said quietly, and my free hand brushed across his skin.
“Mia,” he sounded like his brother with that warning tone in his voice talking to Maggie yesterday.
“Days off are meant to be spent in bed,” I said.
He groaned as my hand made another pass. And then he was on top of me, pinning me to the bed like a coyote pins his prey. Except I didn’t feel like prey.
“You, Miss Mia, are going to be the death of me,” he said huskily.
“At least it will be a pleasant death,” I said with my own sassy grin.
“Breakfast is going to get cold. And I cooked. For you,” he said, but he said it in between kisses on my lips, and on my neck and then lower to my breast that he uncovered from the t-shirt I’d thrown on last night.
“Some things are better than breakfast,” I told him.
* * *
Later, we found cold coffee and cold pancakes in the kitchen. I sat on the counter while he heated things back up in the microwave, grumbling about it all being ruined now.
I wasn’t the kind of girl who usually sat on counters, but it seemed… decadent. Like I was going to be tossed out at any minute. Good Girl Mia hated it, but she was losing out more and more to this Other Mia who tried new things… like adventures with sexy musicians.
Derek
placed my plate next to me and I caught his hand. I kissed the palm. “Thank you for making me breakfast,” I said.
He looked down at his hand where I’d kissed it, then he looked up at me. His gray eyes turned to thunder clouds again. He pushed his body in between my legs, and I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him close, and laying my head on his shoulder. I smiled against his chest. Happy. And that happy feeling continued to shock me to the core whenever I felt it with him and not the guilt that usually came with it. As if I’d discovered the last unknown frontier.
“Are you smiling?” he asked with a smile in his own voice.
I just nodded.
“God, Little Bird.” He hugged me tight to him, and I think we would have found our way into each other’s skin again if a knock on the door hadn’t been followed by a little four-year-old’s voice demanding entry.
We pulled apart just as Maggie and a woman who reminded me of a young Carol Burnett rounded the corner. I slid down from the counter, tugging at the hem of my t-shirt while Derek adjusted his jeans. The Carol doppelgänger’s eyes widened, and she quickly averted them.
Maggie, however, came right up to Derek and hugged his leg. “Uncle Derek, where is your kitty?”
“Last we saw, she was cuddled on her blanket in the bedroom,” he said ruffling her hair in a way that made me think of Jake ruffling mine.
Maggie took off towards the bedroom and I hoped nothing in there would give us away. “Hi, Betty,” Derek said to the woman who was awkwardly moving towards the living space.
She just waved.
“Do you want some coffee?” he asked with a smile and a wink at me that Betty couldn’t see.
“No, thank you. Do you want us to come back later?”
“Nah, we were just having breakfast,” he said, and he tugged at my hair, wrapping it around his finger till the finger met my lip in that way that made me feel safe and claimed and so many other different and complicated emotions.
“I’m going to go take a shower,” I said, grabbing a plain pancake off the plate and making to leave, but he hadn’t let go of my hair yet.
“What happened to staying in bed on our day off?” he whispered quietly, all smiling BB.
“Seems like you have company.”
He kissed me and let me go, and we both made our way to the bedroom, but I left him and Maggie to play with Jane the Kitten while I found myself in the luxury of his bathroom. It was five-star hotel type luxury with scents and shampoos and soaps that my mama would never in a million years have spent money on.
Which reminded me, with a wave of guilt, that I hadn’t texted Mama in almost a day. I sent her a quick good morning and then texted Cam to ask about her and the baby before losing myself in the scents and heat of the scalding shower.
When I came out, Betty and Maggie were gone and Derek was nowhere to be found. I texted him. No response. Then I heard laughter and splashing coming from outside.
I found him in the pool. Maggie was riding a huge swan monstrosity while he pulled her through the water. She was definitely in charge, telling him exactly where to go, and he laughingly obeyed, serf to her medieval princess. I sat in my summer dress on a chase lounge watching them. Betty joined me.
“Hi, I’m Mia,” I said with a smile.
“Betty. Sorry about earlier.” She flushed and looked away.
I matched her flush with one of my own and waved her off.
“It’s just. Well. Derek’s never had someone here before. I didn’t know,” she said as she watched Derek. And if she wasn’t at least twenty years older than him, I might have been suspicious that she had a crush on him. But I think it was just Derek’s way of charming everyone, old and young alike. You wanted to like him as soon as you met him.
What caught me in her response though was that she said he’d never had anyone at the guesthouse. That seemed almost impossible. “Never?” I questioned.
She just shook her head.
“Miss Mia, come join us!” Derek yelled from the pool.
I shook my head with a smile and waved my Kindle at him. I’d sit and read to give him time with his niece. His beautiful niece who certainly didn’t need to be told that she was beautiful. She already knew it. How are some people born with that knowledge?
They swam for an hour or more, and then we all made our way into the big house into a kitchen the size of my family’s entire house in Tennessee, where a chef had lunch ready on a buffet table. I was floored again. Derek didn’t even blink an eye. This was his normal life.
It made me feel far away from him again. Our realities spiraling one more twirl out from the core that was us. Soon the gap would be impossible to cross. As if he sensed my thoughts, he grabbed my hand at the table and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “Breathe, Miss Mia, it’s just lunch.”
But it wasn’t, was it? It was a whole lifestyle that I didn’t know how to live in. I would never have expected this from Derek. He was so casual and down to earth. He was at home making grilled cheese in a motor home and eating fried chicken in a karaoke dive bar. But even though I hadn’t expected this, this life also seemed to fit him. The rich kid in a world of money and power. It was only surprising that he didn’t seem the least bit entitled because of it all.
After lunch, Betty bundled Maggie off to a nap that I seriously doubted would really happen, but it allowed Derek and I to make our way back to the guesthouse that he called home, but didn’t really seem like a home. Instead, it felt like a resort you would visit for a few days before you returned to reality. And I guess that was it. This was my resort. My three week vacation, but my reality waited for me at the end of this journey.
I knew that Derek hadn’t realized that yet. He’d called me his girlfriend after all. That wasn’t something you usually did if it was all going to be over in a handful of days.
I wandered the room. There were a few pictures scattered around the side tables, beautifully manicured pictures of Maggie, Dylan, Derek, and a blonde that screamed Hollywood, and who I assumed must be Bianca. But there were no pictures of Derek as a little boy or his parents. Those were the kinds of pictures that were plastered around our house in Tennessee like sprinkles on cupcakes. Our pictures were full of life. Prom pictures and graduation pictures. Plenty of football and dive pictures. Pictures of all of us on vacation at the beach or picnicking at the lake.
Here there were only these posed pictures. An image of the family that had been manufactured for the world to see.
As I roamed the room, I picked up random instruments that were also scattered about. The instruments were the only thing in the guesthouse that did seem to fit Derek, especially after all the ones I’d seen him play on the road.
While I rambled about, Derek lounged on the couch, his guitar in his lap, plucking strings.
“Question twenty, Little Bird?” he asked.
“How am I at twenty?” I turned and crossed my arms over my chest taking in his glorious lankiness.
“We lost count, I know, but I’m sure you’re at least at twenty. Maybe more.”
I paused. I really wanted to ask about the pictures and his childhood, but instead I went for something safer.
“You have a lot of instruments.”
He shrugged. “I majored in compositional music at UCLA.”
My mouth dropped. This was a perfect example of how a three week journey didn’t make us boyfriend and girlfriend. A real girlfriend would have known this.
“You went to college?” I breathed out.
“Wounding me, Miss Mia, wounding me,” he chuckled with his lips twitching in a way that said he was enjoying shocking me. “I just finished my master’s program in May.”
He still had his gaze fixed on me as he hit notes on his guitar. I couldn’t take the heat of his stare. It was like he absorbed some piece of me every time he concentrated on me that long. I turned, frazzled, because his confession about college had made me realize that there was still so much more about him that I wanted to know but I wasn’t sur
e if the remaining time together would be enough to find it all out.
I set down the strange pipe like instrument I’d held onto, placing it next to one of the fake pictures that could have come pre-purchased in the frame.
“That wasn’t the question you really wanted to ask,” Derek prompted me.
I debated whether to ask the questions whirling in my brain because saying, hey, these pictures look pretty fake, wasn’t exactly something Old Mia would ever say. So I settled for something close.
“Where’s your childhood?” I waved my hand abstractly at all the pictures.
“Not here.” He smiled, but there was a shuttered look that came into his eyes, one that I was unaccustomed to seeing in a man who had always been an open book.
“Well, I know you didn’t grow up here, but don’t you have any pictures?”
“I’m sure Hugo does.”
I stared at him, speechless for the second time in almost as many minutes.
“Hugo? Hugo Brantly has your childhood pictures?”
He shrugged as if it was no big deal.
He started a new melody on the guitar, one I hadn’t heard before. It was aching and lovely. But I also realized that this was Derek’s way of changing the subject. He didn’t want to talk about Hugo and the PlayBabe Mansion. He was good at avoiding talking about himself and the things that haunted him, but I knew him well enough now, to know that this was one of his ghosts because he’d been serious and not smiling.
“That’s new,” I said as I sat down next to him, curling my feet up under me on the couch.
“It’s called the ‘Wooly Bison’.”
I slugged his shoulder. But it had reminded me of our time at the Wooly Bison. It made me think of us and the first time we’d made love as the shimmery Oklahoma sunshine filtered into our hotel room. It was amazing how he could speak to me without words whether that was through his music or his fingers or his eyes. He watched me as he played. No words, just chords.