by Megan Walker
When the kiss breaks, we hold each other, breathless.
“I’m okay going further,” I say.
More than okay. It’s all I can do to not start stripping off all the rest of our clothes right now.
Shane’s expression freezes, and there’s something in it like fear.
“I can’t,” he says, with a little shake of his head.
It’s dumb, I know, but the insecurity floods back, and I find myself covering my chest with my arm.
“It’s not that,” he says hurriedly. “It’s not about you at all.”
I swallow past a lump in my throat, desperate to believe that. But what else could it—
“I can’t spend the night with anyone,” he says, cringing as he speaks. “Because I have nightmares.”
My body relaxes, though I’m ashamed at the relief I feel, given how awful that must be for him. And if him wanting to be my boyfriend wasn’t enough to convince me he’s in this for more than a green-room quickie, the thought that he automatically assumes sex with me includes staying overnight would certainly clinch it. I lay my head on his shoulder and rest my hand on his chest. I can feel his heart beating fast under my palm. “From the accident,” I say.
He nods. “I try to sleep as little as possible, but . . . it isn’t pretty.”
God, I can’t imagine having to relive that accident over and over. His best friend’s death. The terror, the loss. I had nightmares for a while after chemo and still very occasionally do. My doctor walking in with that look on her face. The pen tapping nervously on a clipboard. The drip of the IVs and beep of machines and smell of antiseptic.
I understand, even as I wish I could take those nightmares away from him. “And it would be too hard to have someone there,” I say.
“I wouldn’t want to keep you up.”
I shrug; that’s the last thing I’d worry about. “I sleep like the dead,” I say, which is true. My family always teased me about this; once there was a fire at a house down the street from us in the middle of the night. Fire trucks came, sirens wailing, and the rest of my family was up and watching from our front porch. Not me, though. I slept right through the whole thing.
But I don’t want it to seem like I’m forcing myself on him, especially given how fast this has all been moving. “I understand if you need your space, though,” I say quickly. “I wouldn’t have to stay over.”
He hesitates. “I think it would be unbearable to be with you like that and then let you go.”
Warmth fills me, and I snuggle closer. “I’d be happy to stay.” I smile. “Though if you’re going to wake me up with nightmares, I’m going to go home first and get a change of clothes and my retainer.”
He smiles. “Your retainer?”
“Yeah. It seems like we’re skipping the part where we try to impress each other and jumping straight to being real.” It’s funny how happy the idea makes me. Earlier today I was so panicked about him seeing the real me that I tried to set him up with my sister, and now I’m planning to show off my dental gear.
“I like the sound of that,” he says, and the way his arms tighten around me, I think he really does. “But it also scares the hell out of me.”
“I think that’s something of a theme with us.” God, there’s an us. It’s thrilling and terrifying all at the same time.
“You’re going to see stuff nobody else sees,” he says. “I want you to, but I’m afraid you won’t be able to handle it.”
I nuzzle my nose against the soft skin of his neck. “I’m enjoying learning all your layers.” Though I say it lightly, I hope he knows how deeply I mean that. How much it means to me that he’s willing to let me see.
“What happens when you reach the last ones?” He says this lightly too, but I can hear the fear in the words.
I sit up and wrap my arms around his neck, looking him directly in those gorgeous blue eyes, and I’m completely serious. “Then I think I’ll probably have fallen for you.”
The truth is, at the rate things are going, I’ll have fallen long before then. I’m about to say that part, but he blinks and his gaze shifts to something over my shoulder, his expression turning . . . annoyed?
I stiffen, afraid for a second that someone got in the room even though I know I locked the door, but when I glance over my shoulder, there’s nothing there. Now that I think about it, I’ve seen him do that before—look over abruptly at nothing.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, looking back at Shane.
“Nothing,” he says, his voice a little tight. “Just thinking.”
“Oh. Okay.” I don’t know what to make of the lack of his reaction to my words about having fallen for him, and I know even less when he suddenly starts talking again.
“Hey, my agent Parker called earlier. He wants me to go to this benefit for refugees tomorrow night. He’s kind of obsessed with the idea of me not disappearing off the public radar.”
I try to swallow my disappointment at the subject change.
“I think you deserve to disappear a little, after what you went through,” I say.
“Yeah, well. Tell that to Parker. He’s all over me to figure out the next step in my career.”
His hands are still stroking at my back, and I relax into him again. “What are you going to do?” I ask. “Are you going to go solo or try to join another band?”
“That’s the million dollar question. Like, literally, I think I could make a bundle off the interview privileges.” He pauses there, his lips pressed tightly together, and I can tell that’s another subject that’s hard for him. I don’t blame him for that.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t want to go solo, and the idea of joining a band without JT and Kevin . . .” There’s a flicker of pain in his eyes, and he shakes his head. “I’m not exactly a team player, and I’m not sure anyone’s going to want to put up with me or me with them.”
“What do you want to do next?”
He doesn’t pause; it’s clear he doesn’t need to. “I want it to be like it was. But it’s not going to be, and I’m the lucky one who has all this potential that everyone’s bugging me about wasting.” He shrugs. “Which is fair, I guess.”
I don’t know that it is, not totally.
“Well, I don’t think you owe any of them anything.” I trace the curve of his bicep.
“Maybe not. But my agent is going to give up on me if I don’t show some kind of initiative soon. I can at least show up at this benefit, preferably with a gorgeous girl on my arm.” He gives me a pointed look, and I smile.
“I’m sure Shane Beckstrom has no shortage of gorgeous girls who’d love to go with him.”
“Maybe,” he says, running his fingers through the ends of my hair, letting them slip down my bare shoulder. “But there’s only one girl I want.”
The giddiness is back. The only one he wants, even now, even as I am, though he could have pretty much anyone.
“Will you go with me?” he asks.
I don’t even bother pretending to consider. It’s not like there’s any point in hiding from the public that he’s my boyfriend now, with it all over the internet—thanks, girls—and really, I don’t want to. And though I’m generally not a big fan of these kinds of events, which even in the music industry are often surprisingly stodgy and, less surprisingly, full of status-obsessed sycophants, going with Shane sounds like, well . . . fun.
Besides, I have lots of non-sycophant friends in the music business who I’d like to see again.
“Sure,” I say. “What’s the dress code?” I’m a designer, and they all know it. If I’m going, I’m doing so in style.
“Nice,” he says. “But I usually dress down. I can get away with that because I’m in punk.”
I bet he can. And because a general “I’
m famous enough I don’t need to give a rat’s ass what you think of me” attitude goes a long way at these things.
But it’s not like I don’t have plenty of options for him back at home. “If you want to dress up, I bet I have something you could wear.”
To which he raises an eyebrow, and I laugh.
“I don’t mean my clothes. Hot as that would be, I doubt you’d fit in them. I have plenty of costumes from bands I’ve worked for.”
His eyes gleam. “Please tell me you have that monstrous shirt that Felix Mays wore at the VMAs. I’m pretty sure I could pull that off.”
Oh my god. The thought of him wearing that shirt—especially among that group, who would recognize it very well—fills me with all kinds of delight.
“I do! And yes, you absolutely can. We’ll get that while we’re stopping by my place.” I pause, thinking of him in my apartment. Nix caught me in the dressing room earlier to tell me that she was vacating my apartment and staying with a friend for the next few days, with a not-so-subtle implication that she’s hoping I use this generous gesture of hers. Which I certainly plan on doing. Immediately.
And while I think the assumption was that I was going to his place, I’m not sure I want to wait long enough to get there.
“Or,” I say slowly, “you could stay over. If you don’t need to go home.”
His lips pull up into that devastating smile of his. “That sounds nice, actually.” His hands shift down to my ass, and he scoots me closer, and I’m finding it all kinds of hard to breathe again. “I’d like to see your apartment,” he says. “Particularly the ceiling above your bed.”
I laugh, but the image of us naked, of him lying back on the bed and me on top of him, blazes through my mind and from there my whole body. I feel my fingers tighten on his shoulders, my nails digging into his skin, and he lets out a shaky breath.
“Do you think we’re going to make it there?” I ask.
“I think I can control myself until we get to your house,” he murmurs, but his lips begin moving along my jaw, and I close my eyes.
“Mmm. Maybe I don’t want you to.”
He pulls back enough to look around the green room, and then his breath is warm against my ear. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispers. “I want to take my time with you.”
A delicious shiver runs through me. I press my forehead against his. “I like the sound of that.”
While I know the fear is still there—fear of too much too soon, fear of whether this is as real to him as to me and, if it is, whether it will stay that way—the desire and this happiness of being with him are so much stronger right now.
I’ve lived too much of these last few years in fear; I’m not about to let it keep me from him.
Twelve
Shane
Allison opens her apartment for me and then starts tidying up. She doesn’t need to—her place is pretty clean except for fabric and costume pieces and endless sketches of all sizes strewn and hung all over various surfaces. What’s supposed to be a large, formal dining room is taken over by a sewing machine and a large drafting table and cubby shelves full of various kinds of fabric. The furniture in the living room is all bold colors, funky and classy at the same time.
“This is definitely you,” I say.
Allison smiles at me. “You like it?”
I nod and put my hands in my pockets. With a different girl I would have been on her the moment we walked in the door. No need for preamble. But my nerves have only gotten worse on the drive here, and Allison’s grown quiet, which I think means she feels the same.
“Come on,” she says. “I’ll give you the tour. “
By this she means show me back to her bedroom, with a brief gesture at the kitchen. The colors at the back of the apartment are softer, and her walls are painted a sage green. A lot of the furniture is soft gray, with funky accents like an abstract painting with brilliant blues and purples and a single streak of silver. She slips into her bedroom and picks some laundry off the floor, then reaches to sweep some bras and prosthetics off the nightstand.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say. “I thought we were going with real.”
Allison hesitates and nods. “That’s right.”
I walk up behind her. She has a walk-in closet with an enormous mirror on the wall right outside it. I wrap my arms around her, holding her against me, and in the mirror, I can see her expression soften.
She feels tense in my arms, and I’m not sure how much is anticipation and how much is fear. I’ve got a cocktail of both running through my own veins, and I realize I have no frame of reference for this. The last time I had sex with a girlfriend I was nineteen years old, and I sure as hell don’t want this relationship to go the way that one did.
“You okay?” I ask.
She nods. “Nervous.”
I smile. “If we’re being honest about that, so am I.”
“Really? I’m pretty sure you have a whole lot more experience than me.”
She says that with an edge to her voice, and I close my eyes.
“I mean,” she adds, “it’s not that I don’t have experience. I definitely do. And I’ve had casual sex, even. With guys I just met, occasionally. So it’s not that I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Noted,” I say, and she wilts against me.
“I’m making this weird.”
“No.” I’m afraid it’s me, the mess that I am, the things that I’ve done. But that isn’t all. “Feeling about you the way I do, not wanting to mess it up—that’s what’s making this weird.”
She turns around and looks up at me, reaches over and switches off the bedroom light and then slides my sunglasses off my face. It’s still daylight outside, and soft white light filters in through the curtains. I look down at her, transfixed. My whole body feels like it’s holding its breath, waiting to fall into her.
Then she rocks up on her toes and kisses me. Softly at first, then harder and harder. I lift her up into my arms, and her legs wrap around my waist, and we’re floating in midair, suspended in this delirious fog of passion and desire. My body craves hers, but the longing goes deeper, right into my core, and I realize all at once that I’m not falling. I’ve already fallen right into the middle of this with her, and I’m not sure exactly when it happened but she’s the very center of my being now, and I don’t know how to separate my need for her from my need for air.
I turn and fall back on the bed, Allison still in my arms, riding up on top of me and sending tendrils of heat through my body. Her hands grip my shoulders as we grind together, the heat scorching even through our clothes.
And then her hands are reaching for my fly, and mine are sliding up her skirt and pulling down her underwear. She lies on top of me, both of us breathing heavy as our hands explore, flinching and gasping at the lightest of touches, the most sensitive places. We’re gentle and careful, both holding back from escalating toward the heights our bodies desperately want to climb. I think she wants this to last as much as I do, to savor every moment of this first time together, which feels newer and more frightening than even my first time.
My heart pounds against hers, and I can’t stand it any longer. I want to be inside her, but I also want the rest of our clothes out of the way. I sit up beneath her, and her legs clinch around my waist, our bodies rubbing together slowly, softly, as I unzip her dress again and take off her bra. Allison shimmies out of her dress and pulls my shirt up over my head, and there she is, naked in my lap, like one of those nude sculptures of goddesses all wracked with desire. I lean back, peeling her off me, taking her in with my eyes, and Allison whimpers softly.
I bring my eyes up to hers. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
Her voice is as breathless as mine. “No. I was so afraid no one would ever look at me like that again.”
I smile and let my eyes travel the length o
f her again. I run my hands up the insides of her thighs, flexing so that she rocks against me again and again. Allison’s head rolls back and she moans softly, the corners of her eyes crinkling. She pulls her body close against mine again, and I’m lost in the pleasure of her skin against mine, her hands in my hair. And all at once I understand what she means about trust and vulnerability. I’ve had sex with a hundred groupies and as many random girls I met at clubs or shows, and none of them compared to this, to the mounting power of being with a woman I want to hold after, a woman I can’t stand the thought of ever letting go.
I lie back on the bed again and pull away from her so we’re lying side by side, catching our breath. “What I meant by the experience thing,” she whispers, “is that you must have a pretty good idea what you like, yeah?”
I run my hands up into her hair, holding her face in my palms. “Yes. I have a really good idea of what I like.” I kiss her deeply, hoping to drive my point home, but when we break apart, she still looks concerned.
“My past experience,” I whisper, “does it bother you?”
She reaches down and pulls off my pants, which I’m pretty sure is an excuse not to answer immediately. We lie in bed, entirely exposed to each other, and I run my hand up and down the outside of her thigh, waiting.
“Yes and no,” she says finally. She slides up against me so I’m hard against the soft skin of her stomach. “What’s in the past doesn’t bother me, but I guess it feels like a lot to measure up to.”
I was afraid that’s what she was thinking. I run my hand down her arm and bring her wrist to my mouth, brushing my tongue and teeth against it. “Ally,” I say, “you have nothing to worry about.”
“You’ve just been with a lot of girls with perfect bodies,” she says, her voice breaking as I work on the inside of her wrist.
“Maybe,” I say, “but if I could have any girl in the world here with me like this, if I could snap my fingers and make it happen, I’d choose you. Every time. Every time.”
