This One’s For You

by Holloway, Taylor

  He’d been slow and steady before, but neither one of us had the patience for that now. We found a much faster, harder rhythm this time. I arched my back and met him, thrust for thrust. My bed frame smacked against the wall, punctuating my whimpers with the sound of metal on drywall. It didn’t take long before he started to hit the sweet spot. The wall behind my bed was probably just as fucked as me.

  Ian fisted my hair in his hand and I dug my fingertips into his shoulders. I was beyond anything but sensation. We were moving desperately against each other now, trying to get closer and chasing the release we both needed. I stared up into Ian’s blue eyes and saw my own need and love reflected there. When my body finally yielded to the pressure and I came a second time, there was nothing left in me but love.

  39

  Ian

  In the dizzy, hazy afterglow, Vanessa laid across my chest and I worried that my life had now reached its ultimate high point and that there was nothing else ever that could measure up. This moment was the top. It was perfect, and I also knew that it was fleeting. Sooner or later, one of us was going to draw us back to reality, and Vanessa would come to her senses about me. But as she smiled up at me and played with the hair on the back of my neck in a way that made me shiver, I hoped that her realization wouldn’t come immediately.

  “I’m happy to see you,” she said eventually.

  I smirked at her. I was beyond happy, but I didn’t want to overwhelm her with my feelings after what we’d just done. “I’m happy to see you, too.”

  “How was the rest of the tour?” she asked me, dropping her gaze but still touching me. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

  I held her closer. A week away from her had been far too long, and physical proximity aside, I’m not sure how I managed to go this long without fucking her either, but I clearly deserved some sort of a medal. She was lightning in a bottle and I was the Lord of Forbearance. Or I had been. It had been more than a month since the RinkyDink’s alley. This was so much better, and I was happy.

  She was looking at me funny.

  I remembered she’d asked a question.

  The male refractory period is a real thing, and I am convinced that it makes me stupid in addition to sleepy.

  “Miserable,” I told her. “It was an absolute clusterfuck. I was furious with Don. The whole band was, actually. They like you. They despise Thornton, and he did absolutely nothing to ingratiate himself by being a total prick at every interaction. At one point he tried to tell Jason that he shouldn’t address the stage-left side of the crowd because he was less photogenic that way. He also told Tom that he makes a weird face when he sings. It all went over about as well as can be expected. The only person he didn’t needle was me, and I think it was because he was genuinely afraid of me.”

  “I saw the photo of you punching him,” Vanessa said. Her voice was scolding. “Don’t punch people over me. It’s almost cute in a caveman kind of way, but I’m really not into it because I’m not a cavewoman.”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry. I know that I shouldn’t have done that. If it makes it any difference, the punch didn’t land. Jason managed to pull me back. He told me he regrets it now.”

  Vanessa giggled.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked, leaning back to look me in the eye.

  “What?”

  “Punch Thornton,” she said. Her tone indicated that it should have been obvious. “Why did you punch him?”

  I sighed. “If I tell you, you’re gonna’ want to punch him.”

  “I already do.”

  “Okay,” I said. “He made some comments about your footage not being good enough.”

  She blinked. “I take it back. If you’re punching people over my artistic integrity, you can have a free pass.”

  I laughed. Vanessa always seemed to be able to make me laugh. It occurred to me that I hadn’t laughed very much at all in the past week, and I missed it. I missed her.

  “Understood.” I shook my head. “To be fair though, everybody wanted to punch Thornton before it was over.”

  Vanessa’s expression turned thoughtful. “Well, I’m glad that the genius y’all hired to replace me turned out to be a pain.”

  “He could never replace you,” I promised her.

  “He did replace me. Literally.”

  “Actually, he literally told us that he couldn’t make something he’d be proud of out of the footage that he had from the two shows he captured and all of your footage. It was all a waste of time. He basically threw up his hands and walked away, and he said that he’d consider coming back if we do a second tour if we triple his fee. You can expect a call from Don any day now begging you to finish your work. Feel free to tell him to go kick rocks.”

  “I will.” Her expression shifted. “Actually, I might not. I worked hard on that footage. I’d like to finish it.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” I told her.

  “Why?” she seemed genuinely perplexed.

  “Because Don is an asshole for the way he behaved. He deserves to fuck this up and have no recourse.” I still sounded sour about it all. Sourer than Vanessa. Actually, between the two of us, Vanessa had been the professional, collected one. I was the one who punched people.

  “You really don’t like Don, huh?” Vanessa asked.

  I would have shrugged, but it’s hard to do when there’s someone lying on your chest. “I’m alright with him. He did piss me off though, and he hurt you. Apparently, that can make me be vindictive and petty. Oh, and violent. Let’s not forget violent.”

  “I gave you a free pass on that punch.”

  I smiled. “I appreciate that, but, unfortunately, I’m not sure I can give myself that kind of get out of jail free card. I’m not proud of the way I acted, and the fact that you and I both ended up in the tabloids, again, because of it… Let’s just say that I would have done things differently if I could.”

  “Well, I forgive you, for what it’s worth.”

  It was worth a lot. I felt totally content, although I was also exhausted. My day had started in a hotel suite fourteen hours ago in Chicago. It seemed a world away now.

  “Does that mean I can stay for a while?” I asked her.

  Vanessa smiled and me. “Yes, actually you aren’t allowed to leave right now,” she told me, and her voice became slightly muffled when she nuzzled deeper against my neck. I thought I detected a note of something, some doubt or indecision, but I was too tired to argue or give it much thought. I’d figure the rest out in the morning.

  40

  Vanessa

  “So, the good news is that I wanted to make you breakfast in bed, so I made pancakes,” Ian said, sitting next to me on the bed. I rolled over and realized that I smelled something unpleasant. There was a sharp, caustic smell in my apartment.

  “And the bad news?” I mumbled sleepily.

  Ian shifted uncomfortably and stroked my hair in a way that made me feel comforted down to my bones. “The bad news is that I apparently don’t know how to make pancakes, or how to put out a grease fire.”

  He had a sheepish expression on his face, and it made my heart melt. In his shirtless, boxer-wearing state I was inclined to forgive all sorts of kitchen mishaps. The only thing I wanted for breakfast was him.

  “You still get points for attempting to make me breakfast,” I told him. Ian grinned. “There’s some cereal in the fridge,” I said, then remembered that he didn’t drink milk. Did I have any almond milk? I didn’t think so. I frowned. “Or, um, bread? What do you usually eat for breakfast?”

  Ian stretched out next to me on the bed and I immediately snuggled up against him. “I usually eat a granola bar,” he told me. “And I don’t really cook very well. Or often. But I looked on the internet and I tried to use applesauce instead of eggs and coconut oil instead of butter and water instead of milk to make the pancakes, but, um, it didn’t work out like I expected.”

  I didn’t know the first thing about vegan cooking, but I imagined that it took some
skill to adjust recipes on the fly. I’d also begun to realize that Ian was sort of the master of the understatement. “Is my kitchen on fire?” I asked.

  He shook his head innocently. “No,” he said confidently. Then his expression shifted and he added, “not anymore.”

  All I could do was laugh. He’d tried and that was sweet. I didn’t want to see my kitchen. Thankfully, I had a man in my bed who was a perfect distraction.

  “Only one day in and I’m already at risk of losing my security deposit,” I said, shaking my head. Then a thought occurred to me. “How did you find me? Nobody knows my new address yet.”

  Ian looked even more guilty. “Ryan did it. Don’t ask me how. He has ways.”

  I shrugged. “I’m glad you found me.”

  “Me too,” he told me.

  Ian wrapped his arms around me, and I sighed into his chest. This was exactly where I wanted to be. It felt wonderful to be held again. I could see myself getting very, very used to this.

  But I shouldn’t. There was no way that I should let myself get accustomed to having Ian in my bed, or in my life. I’d seen his world now, and it was pretty obvious that there wasn’t a place for me in it. Axial Tilt was poised for a resurgence. That would mean more tours, more cities, more endless time on a bus. It had been exciting for a few weeks, and I’d been unhappy that my time was cut short, but it wasn’t my life. My life was here, in Austin. I wanted to build up my portfolio and get my freelance work to be self-sustaining. The two trajectories were not parallel.

  “What’ve you got planned for today?” I asked Ian, almost afraid of the answer.

  He shrugged. “Not a thing. Hopefully, hanging out with you.”

  “Do you want to help me unpack?” I teased. I ran my fingertips down his muscular arms. “I could use someone with your, um, skillset to help me lift heavy things.”

  Ian smiled a crooked smile at me. “I can do that.” I kissed him, and he rolled us skillfully until I was under him. “But first, breakfast,” he told me, whispering in my ear and kissing down the length of my neck.

  “What’s for breakfast?” I asked him, fighting a giggle.

  He looked down at me in fake surprise. “What a silly question. You are. Now, give me back my shirt…”

  * * *

  Several hours, a shared, giggling shower, donuts, and countless boxes later, and my apartment was starting to look and feel like home. How many girls can say they can get a rock star to help them move? Probably just me.

  “Here?” Ian asked, holding up the last picture I needed to hang.

  I nodded. “Yes, right there,” I told him, happy to direct the action from the couch. “Perfect.”

  I was beat. Unpacking is worse than packing. Both are horrible, but if I had to choose, I’d choose packing in a hot second. At least when you pack, the mess gets smaller as it condenses into boxes. When you unpack, it’s like a mess that just keeps on giving. Unpacking is like a matryoshka doll that’s just endlessly full of tape, bubble wrap, and all the shit you should have thrown out before you moved.

  Ian hammered the nail into the wall, hung the picture, and then joined me on the couch.

  “So, those are your parents, huh?” Ian asked, pointing to the picture he’d just hung.

  It was a photo of my parents and me from the late nineties. I was just a little, redheaded baby in my mom’s arms.

  I nodded. “Yeah. In better times.”

  They looked so happy in the picture. Sadly, it didn’t last long.

  “Better times?”

  I frowned and stared down at the ground. “They got divorced when I was a kid,” I told Ian. “My dad left my mom for his secretary. It was a pretty ugly divorce.”

  When I looked up, Ian’s expression was understanding. “My parents got divorced when I was a kid, too. They eventually reconciled enough to sort of co-parent, and I think Ryan got spared the worst of it because he was so little, but for a while it was… bad. How old were you when they divorced?”

  “I was twelve. Sixth grade.” Watching your parents fall violently out of love can be hell, especially if you’re also trying to go through puberty. I’d been raised in relative luxury up until that point, and then all of a sudden my mom and I were living out of a crappy hotel room, my body was changing, and my world didn’t make sense.

  “Do they get along now?” Ian asked.

  I shook my head. “My dad fought her tooth and nail for every dollar and for control over me. He was the CEO of a pretty big company, and he’s very used to getting his way. My mom was furious at him, but she had almost no skills from being a homemaker for so long, so it was hard for her to navigate a divorce. Meanwhile, I had to put up with my dad’s girlfriend, Stacey, who was all of nineteen, pretending that she was going to be my stepmother. She’d been in for a rude awakening when my dad traded her in for his tennis instructor a year later.”

  Ian winced. “Sounds like you had it worse than I did. I feel bad for your mom.”

  I shrugged. “She figured it out. She eventually won primary custody and the mother of all alimony agreements, getting the house, the vacation house, three of the cars, and the better boat.”

  Ian blinked. “You’re rich, huh?”

  I shook my head. “No. My dad was rich. Emphasis on the past tense. His chickens eventually came home to roost on the professional side as well as the personal one. He’s my dad, and he’s a good dad to me, but he’s not a particularly good person. He came to this country from Scotland to make a name and a legacy for himself, and he did. He didn’t really care who or what got in the way of that goal.”

  Ian reached out to hold my hand. “Scotland huh? Well, he made you, so he must not be all that bad.”

  I smirked and brushed my fingers over the brightly colored tattoos on Ian’s wrists. My father would absolutely, positively fucking loathe Ian. He’d liked Sam precisely because he was so conventional. Ian was so far in the opposite direction that I could only imagine my dad would have a heart attack if I brought him home. “You haven’t met him,” I said with a shake of my head. “He’s definitely an acquired taste.”

  “I haven’t met him, yet,” Ian said, and my heart started to pound against my ribs. “But maybe one day I’ll win him over.”

  My smile froze. “Ian, you don’t have to—”

  He kissed me to cut me off. “I want to. I want to believe we’ve got some kind of path ahead of us—”

  “But we don’t.” I pulled my hand out of his and scooted a few inches away. “Ian, there’s no chance for us. We shouldn’t pretend that there is.”

  He paused. “Why do you think that?”

  I sighed. “So many reasons. Your career. My career. The fact that you’ll probably be leaving for the second half of the tour in a week or two. The fact that I’m still recovering from… a lot of stuff. A year and a half ago, I was engaged before my fiancé was murdered…” I felt like I was on the verge of breaking down into a crying mess all of a sudden. I beat the feeling back through sheer force of will.

  Ian’s eyes flicked over my face and body in quick succession. I could tell he was trying to figure out what to say. Finally, he swallowed and nodded.

  “We can have this though, can’t we?” he asked me. “I can see you don’t want to commit to anything serious, but we can still see each other, right?”

  I should have said no, but I felt myself nodding, and then Ian was kissing me, and I wasn’t thinking clearly anymore.

  It would have been wiser to protect my heart and end things then and there. But I couldn’t. Even though I meant what I said, I knew I secretly wanted more.

  41

  Ian

  “So, it went well with Vanessa,” Ryan said, digging into his quinoa with more enthusiasm than I expected. This time around, he wasn’t nearly so squeamish in the face of the vegan food. In fact, he’d suggested this place for lunch.

  He was slowly coming around to the dark side. Between me and Rosie, we’d already weaned him off most meat, but the man stil
l ate far too much cholesterol and packaged, processed food. But this was progress, so I was carefully encouraged.

  I nodded in answer to his question. “Better than I expected, that’s for sure.”

  “I mean, you spent the night.” He cocked an eyebrow. “What more did you want?”

  “Yeah. That’s true.” I did spend the night. Twice, actually.

  “And you’re going to see her again tomorrow, right?” Ryan couldn’t seem to understand my mood. I knew I was quieter than usual today (I was rarely quiet at all).

  “Yes.”

  “So why are you wearing that hang-dog face?” he finally asked. “You look like someone that just got rejected. That doesn’t seem to be the case here.”

  I frowned into my bite of falafel sandwich. “She doesn’t think I’m serious about her.”

  Ryan looked thoughtful. “Are you saying that you are serious about her?” he asked carefully. “Is that even a good idea?”

  “You were the one who encouraged me to pursue Vanessa.”

  “Yes, but that was before the success of the tour. You could be on the road for a long time. And I didn’t know you’d…” he trailed off.

  “Succeed?” I asked irritably. “Gee, thanks.” I avoided sticking my tongue out at him, but only just.

  He shook his head. “I was going to say ‘fall in love,’ actually. I didn’t doubt that you’d succeed. You’ve always been good at that.”

  I blinked at him. “Oh. Sorry.” My days of merely succeeding with women were behind me. This time, I wanted more. I wanted what Ryan and Jason had. A stable, happy relationship.

  Ryan sighed. “So, you’re in love with her, huh?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.” And she didn’t seem to reciprocate. Or if she did, she wasn’t about to tell me.

  “And you don’t think she feels the same way?”