by Katie Porter
“Come in if you’re going to.” Alec’s voice is calmer than I feel. “I’ve made you a cup of tea.”
Running is out of the question now, I suppose. I cup my elbows in my palms as I enter. “How do you know I drink tea?”
“You like it with plenty of milk, but little sugar.” He stirs first one mug, then the other.
He wears a Henley and lounge pants. They’re tied loosely at his narrow hips, hanging low enough that I see divots at the base of his spine. His back is straight and the pull of the Henley reveals shoulders layered with a surprising amount of muscle for how slender he is. There is no denying he is a grown man. He doesn’t have the soft, tender skin of the twenty-somethings I’ve fucked. His body knows that it’s strong but admits that it has lived as well.
Sometimes he lived a little too hard, right at that razor’s edge.
He turns and hands me one of the cups. It’s the fine bone china that I’ve been afraid to touch, and there’s even a proper saucer. I’ve only been using the stoneware I found in one of the kitchen cabinets.
I let the saucer and its precarious passenger ride in the boat of my palms. The cup’s design is deceptively simple: white with only a tiny silvery ridge around the edges. The kind of elegance that costs an arm and a leg. I’d lay money that metal rim is not silver. It’s platinum. He’s filled it with the familiar pale brown of milky tea.
He takes his teacup in one casual hand, leaning a hip against the counter. Hair falls across his eyes. He’s tousled. I wonder if he tossed and turned in whatever grand bed he owns. I hope he did. I want him to suffer with desire. I want him to suffer over having good health while my father dies two floors below.
I sip my tea. Black tea is a rich but simple flavor that I’ve always found difficult to describe. It’s comforting and alarming at the same time, like most things associated with home. Dad carried his tea addiction with him when he moved to the States. At first he needed to have expensive UK brands imported, but things became easier with the development of Amazon warehouses. I’ve made Dad thousands of cups of tea.
Around the third sip, I realize I can’t remember the last time my hot beverage wasn’t made by someone who didn’t work behind a counter for nine dollars an hour. The cup rattles against the saucer as I put it down.
“Not right?” Alec asks.
“A bit too much sugar.” It’s a lie.
He takes a drink and licks his bottom lip as if he doesn’t want to leave even one drop behind. Waste not want not... or the English tea obsession? I don’t know that it matters. It’s all a part of him, it seems.
“I’m going to hold a gathering in two weeks,” he says. It feels apropos of nothing, filling our dark silence with banality.
But maybe it’s a warning. “A party?”
“The Skies will be making an announcement. Something new.” He sips tea again, watching me over the expensive, platinum flash of rim.
A hot spike of feeling slams down my back. I’m taken aback. But I’m not surprised. Maybe for someone like Alec, the show always goes on. There’s no tidy ending to fame.
Yet I know what he’s likely worried about. “Not all of The Skies. Ian, or maybe Nicholas. But don’t invite Lee.”
Lee was my father’s replacement. Knowing Dad’s ego, I always assumed Dad was so confident in walking away. He must have thought the rift was too damaging and The Skies would rip in half. It happened to The Kinks. It happened to The Smiths. Dad knew he was as iconic as Johnny Marr, and believed the other members of The Skies were nowhere near as brilliant as The Kinks and The Smiths. His leaving left a yawning crevasse, and the struggle to replace his mastery of guitar would obviously herald their end.
It did not.
They placed an advert and found a new guitarist within three weeks.
Lee was four years younger than the rest of the band. He was still living at home when he took the train up from Sussex to their studio for his audition. The music rags had a field day with that. I assume Dad flew into raging fits every time he read an article about the young prodigy.
I didn’t know firsthand. I wasn’t born yet. I’ve read the biographies and the articles for myself and filled in the gaps. Dad had a lot of raging fits. Maybe they were about The Skies. Maybe they were about Mom and the banker with whom she created her second family.
Lee didn’t fare much better. Young and set adrift, he hurt a lot when the band imploded. Not that I knew that firsthand either.
“No, Lee will be here too,” Alec said. “Everyone will. Is there any way we can help your father through this? Some way we can mitigate his hurt?”
“Why ask me?”
He pushes away from the counter and ranges closer. I want him in my orbit. My skin is happier with every quarter inch he closes between us. “Why not ask you? You’re his caretaker. You’re his daughter. You’re closer to him than anyone in the world, it seems.”
“No one is close to him. I don’t know... how he works. Inside. If I did...” If I did, I’d have learned long ago how to avoid being cut apart by his love. I shake my head. “I came here with him looking for answers. Go ahead. Invite The Skies into your home or keep them at arm’s length forever. I don’t care. It will be what it is.”
He skims two fingers along the underside of my jaw until they rest at my ear. “You make that sound like a dare.”
“Isn’t it?”
“What do you imagine you’ll see? A wild debauchery? Lines of cocaine on the coffee table? Perhaps bowls of unidentified pills?” His mouth curves in that little smile. Maybe he’s mocking me and maybe he’s being wistful about days past. There’s no law saying it can’t be both. “We’re middle-aged men now. We drink wine and compare our private bankers and contemplate memoirs.”
“I don’t think I believe that. At the very least, you’ll reminisce. Stories of your favorite whores.”
“I never needed sex workers, love.” He twines a lock of my hair around his finger. I hadn’t realized some strands had come loose from the braid down my back. He noticed though. He noticed and used it as chink in my armor. He comes closer. I love him for it, just a little bit. Maybe more than a little bit.
“Because women were throwing themselves at you?” I ask, my mouth dry.
“Women too.”
And men. He means men threw themselves at him. As well they should have, because young Alec Davies didn’t give a shit about gender conformity. During his first performance on a national award show, he wore a sparkling cardigan short enough to expose bare ribs. He rode out the end of the '90s in dark eyeliner and hair long enough to hide how drugs had made his jaw razor sharp.
The rumors flew from the start: sexuality, gender, drugs. He stoked it all with sideways comments in interviews, never directly confirming anything. Everyone knew about a university relationship with a woman, and their public break. They also knew he spent his late twenties with a male roommate, even after he was rich enough to live alone. The mainstream found him difficult to understand in a way that would have made more sense today.
I tilt my head. “Did you take handsome twinks up on their offers, as well as pretty Latvian girls?”
Memories flash in his eyes, turning him into sex on a stick. “More often than not.”
“Do you think perhaps I’ll be scandalized?” I twist the drawstring of his pajama pants. I’m not pulling them open, nothing so crass. But I balance my fingertips in the loops. The strings bite into my skin, just enough for my heartbeat to stutter and jump with maybes. “Or is this a warning?”
He shakes his head, more solemn than I would have expected. “A personal warning, perhaps. It’s in regard to a man who’ll be at the party. Sinjin Wodehouse.”
“I don’t know that name.”
Alec seems to be looking into me, watching for a particular reaction. “He was important to me. We’re close friends now.”
“So you’re warning me that your ex-boyfriend will be here.” I chuckle. My fingers find their way under the shirt. His skin is warm.
The conversation has distracted him. Maybe he doesn’t notice my small invasion, but I notice. I notice with every bit of me. “You think this is going to upset me?”
“I can’t predict you. I don’t know you well enough.” Hovering unsaid is whether or not he’d like to. Whether or not I’ll let him.
“Do you want it to upset me?” I tip my head near his. “Would you like me to gnash and wail? Throw fits? Oh, I know. When he’s here I could become wildly jealous and make a huge scene. I’ll throw champagne in your face.”
He smiles and it steals my breath away. Such a beautiful expression on the stark elegance of his features. “My apologies. I shouldn’t have underestimated you.”
“Apology accepted.” I open my hand across his lower stomach. His skin is taut. I haven’t had a chance to see if he has a six pack. I want him above me. Beneath me. Everywhere. “You can make it up to me by telling me the story of your first kiss with Sinjin.”
“Bloody hell.” His eyes go wide a moment, then narrow so that the lines at the corners intensify. “You say these things to be shocking.”
“I say these things because I want to know.” I let my hand slip out from under his shirt and cruise up the center of his chest. Heat burns from him. I walk my fingers up his neck and across his lips. “I’m very, very interested in things this mouth can do. In things it has done. I want to know what dreams I’ll take to bed tonight.”
Chapter Eight
Harlow
“I THINK YOU’RE SURE to be disappointed. It was a very gentlemanly kiss, at the end of an uneventful first date. Just dinner and a show.”
I haven’t moved my hand, so I feel him talk as much as I hear him and see his mouth move. Each word becomes its own caress. “What show?”
“The Third Prokofiev Piano Concerto by a virtuoso pianist.”
“A show,” I say, unable to keep a mocking tone at bay. This is a man from another realm. A stratosphere far above me. It’s a feeling that ought to intimidate, and yet it makes all of this feel like a dream. Nothing is going to last. I might as well reach for the stars. “Tell me where you stood. Tell me who kissed who. Tell me how.”
“On the corner waiting for my car. I held his shoulder.” He mimics the action with me, his thumb rubbing over my bare skin. His other hand moves to my hip. “I kissed him, giving him plenty of time to back away if he wished.”
“How polite you sound.”
“It was polite.”
“Anemic.”
“Maybe that.” His fingertips dig into my arm, drawing me closer, or maybe I lean in toward him. “Maybe respectful.”
“Do you respect me.”
“I do. Do you respect yourself?”
“Not even a bit,” I say, and then I kiss him.
I wind my mouth over his. My tongue strokes deep immediately, but he lets me. He takes me in. His hands go to my hips and he yanks me to him. I twist my arms around his shoulders, elbows on the sharp caps of his arms. I knot the silken hair at his nape. He takes my weight as I lift against him. The move is sudden. Hard.
I lock my legs around his hips.
He spins us, driving us up against a kitchen counter. I use the leverage against my ass to grind harder on him. His cock is long and hard, centered right against where I need him most. I’m throbbing. This is all so fucked.
It feels like our kiss goes on and on. I can’t count seconds because I can’t even count the beats of my heart. They run together too fast. There’s him, my center, my black hole. He’ll suck me up and destroy every bit of me.
He pulls away and presses our foreheads together, his eyes closed. “We can’t do this.”
“I can.” I arch my body, letting pressure rise and fall on my clit. “And I know you want to.”
“You’re so young. If I’d put my dick in the wrong hole on our first tour, you’d be the same age as a kid I never had.”
I lick his bottom lip. He still tastes of sugary tea. So sweetly innocent, as if he’s the one being corrupted. “We all know you were high as fuck for two decades. Emotions don’t develop when you’re using. This will only go bad if you think years makes you the one in charge.”
“Christ, no one is in charge of you. Maybe not even you.”
I don’t think he means for that to hurt the way it does. I don’t let it show. “How old is Sinjin?”
“In his thirties.”
“Still younger than you.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. He fists my braid and buries his face in my neck. His mouth moves over me, but he’s not drugging me with kisses the way I want. He’s berating himself. “Sinjin is a hard man. Sharp. He knew what I was willing to give.”
And here I am in his kitchen at two in the morning. I wish this could mean more than it does, but I know I’m here only because of my father, because of the old bonds between them. I’m a hanger-on of the first order. Worse than a groupie. I have no defenses.
I have only envy. Sick, stomach-churning envy.
I close my eyes so that I can stop seeing his perfect, pristine kitchen. “Tell me a story,” I say. The stories are what I’m in this country for, and I’m not getting what I hoped for.
He pulls away. I think he may be looking at me, but I won’t open my eyes. “There’s nothing more to tell about the kiss.”
“Anything. Any story. How you first met my dad. Tell me about the last time you saw him. Tell me about the first time you used heroin. I don’t care.”
He wraps me tight into his arms and I don’t know if the comfort is for me or him. I take it greedily. I twist the back of his shirt.
“My mother was a writer who never let anyone read her work.” He strokes my hair back from my head. “I saw her write every night. Yellow pencils and A4 notebooks. She filled hundreds of them.”
“What was she writing?”
“I don’t know. No one ever knew.” I look up in time to see a rueful smile flit over his mouth and disappear just as fast. “With the first fire of winter, she’d burn her whole year’s work.”
I make a soft noise. Something surprised or maybe wounded. I don’t know.
“At first, I helped her because I didn’t know any better, when I was very young. It seemed like an exciting game, getting to throw paper into the fireplace. They caught flame in a different way than the wood. It took years before I realized what was happening. I connected what we were burning to the hours she spent in her favorite chair with a cup of tea at her elbow.”
“And then?”
“I refused one time. My father burned them instead, plus some of her most precious books. I learned that it was the price he demanded of her. Burning everything was what he wanted for ‘allowing’ her the gift of writing. For using her free time on nonsense.” His expression drawn so tightly, the hand on the side of my face trembles. “I helped her with the burning every year after that.”
“Alec,” I breathe.
“We fed her notebooks to the fire. All that fine, tidy script. Words I never got to read. By doing so we bought another year of peace. It was a hard bargain.”
I hold his face, touch his chest. There’s a sick, hollow feeling in my own, but at least he still feels whole. I know that kind of fear. I know the terror that would fuel. It makes sense now that he would find a kind of home in my father, some security in another artist. No wonder Dad was so important to him. Once. Long ago.
“When did it stop?”
“When she died of a stroke,” he says. “I was seventeen. She was only forty-three.”
“I’m so sorry.” I’m sorry and to be honest, I’m deeply, fiercely glad at the same time. He knows the same kind of dysfunctional pain that I do. We have the kind of fucked up beginnings that feel familiar. “And you never found even a scrap? A hint of what she wrote?”
His body is aligned with mine. My legs are still over his hips and we’re pressed stomach to stomach. The scent of his cologne has faded to something I have to seek out. I nuzzle his neck.
“Nothing,” he says. “Her secr
ets stayed her own. She kept her end of the bargain.”
“And he didn’t?”
“No.” But he lets the word hang. He’s not going to explain.
That’s okay. I can only hear so much of his grief at once. Sympathy will break my heart, and stupid, delusional love will glue it back together. It won’t be the real kind of love. It’ll be a desperate, clingy, fake thing that lasts until I find the cracks in his façade.
I kiss him softly, offering my mouth like a supplicant. I want to be his. Even if it’s temporary.
Especially if it’s temporary.
He returns my kisses, though he keeps his hands carefully placed on my shoulders. Maybe he fears losing control if he touches me anywhere else. His restraint makes me feel dangerous, like we’re rockets about to explode.
I slip off the counter and he lets me, even stepping away so he’s not caging me in. Does he think I want to walk away? He doesn’t understand how the tragedy of his story is another sort of aphrodisiac.
I sink to my knees there between him and the white lacquer cabinet. My lord and master. The backs of his calves are tight with tension.
“Harlow,” he says on a groan. “We can’t.”
“We can’t,” I echo. I glide up the front of his rigid thighs, and I stare up at him. What must I look like, kneeling, so eager. “That’s not the same thing as no.”
“Then, we shouldn’t.” But the rough way he strokes my head gives lie to his words. His thumb tangles in my hair and tugs. I shiver with that sting. “Harlow, this is wrong.”
“I want wrong to be right.”
His groan is primal, the kind of thing he makes-believe in concerts. This time it’s all for me. And when his hands go to the ties of his pajama pants, they don’t tremble and they don’t shake. They’re as steady as my desire.
He pulls the strings, but I’m the one who grips his waistband. My knuckles flirt with the thick bulge hiding behind innocent cotton. Making him grunt is my drug. I feel the surge of sound all the way down to my core. I clench. I’m wet. I know what he’ll sound like when he’s finally inside me.
