by Lauren Rowe
Aloha is clearly bowled over. “But... how? How did you even get started?”
“I learned a bunch of songs on my guitar first, just to figure out what stuff I liked to play and sing. Uncle Dax told me to learn songs that inspire me, so that’s what I did.”
Aloha swallows hard. “What songs inspire you?”
“Lots and lots. A biggie for me is ‘Brave’ by Sarah Bareilles. I play it all the time to remind myself to always say what needs to be said.”
“I love that song,” Aloha says, but her voice is small. Overwhelmed.
Theo reaches for his guitar excitedly. “You wanna sing it together?”
“No, you sing it to me, Theo-Leo. You’re obviously a lot braver than I am. Hopefully, while I listen, some of your bravery will rub off on me.”
Chapter 41
Zander
I stride down the hallway of our Seattle hotel, a ribbon-tied guitar in my hand. A while back, Aloha revealed she sometimes feels like a rudderless sailboat: she’s got gale-force winds at her back and no way to steer. Well, after watching Aloha sing with Theo tonight, I’ve got a hunch this guitar might be her rudder.
As a favor to me, Barry accompanied Aloha back to the hotel from the Morgans earlier so I could secretly transport the guitar and give it to her later in private. And now, here I am, the guitar in my hand and excited butterflies in my stomach.
I reach Aloha’s room and raise my fist to knock... and freeze when I hear crying on the other side of the door. Shit. I lean the guitar against the wall and pound on the door. “Aloha!”
No answer.
My chest tight, I grab the “emergency” keycard to Aloha’s room and swipe it, but before I’ve turned the knob, the door opens and there she is, her pink journal in hand and tears streaming down her cheeks. As I lurch into the room, Aloha drops the journal to the floor and hurls herself at me. I pick her up and, quickly, we’ve assumed our usual monkey-in-a-tree position.
“Sweetheart,” I say as I cross the room with my baby in my arms. “Tell me.”
She shakes her head into my collarbone.
I reach the bed, lay her down onto her back, and survey her arms. But, thank God, there’s nothing. Just to be thorough, though, I pull down the waistband on her shorts, one side at a time. Still nothing.
“I told you I’m not gonna do that again,” she says, wiping her eyes.
“Yeah, and I’m gonna make damn sure of it.” I sit on the edge of the bed and grab her hands. “Why are you crying? Give your pain to me.”
She straddles my lap, slides her arms around my neck, and smashes her nose against mine. “Crying isn’t always how I fall apart. Sometimes, it’s how I put myself back together. I was writing poetry and it made me cry. But I’m okay.”
My shoulders soften. “What were you writing about that made you cry?”
“Tonight. The joy of it. The heartbreak of it. Thinking about the fact that a twelve-year-old is a million times braver than me. I was remembering the look of pure joy on Mrs. Morgan’s face when she heard Dax’s song cracked the Top Ten. When a song cracked Top Ten for me for the first time, my mother’s immediate reaction was to ask about my royalty rate for the song.”
I nuzzle her nose. “Family doesn’t have to be the people who share your DNA, you know. It can be the people you choose.”
Choose me, Aloha.
Please, choose me.
I continue, “I know you feel like a canary in a gilded cage. But guess what? There’s no lock on the cage door.”
She crushes her mouth against mine.
In short order, our clothes are off, a condom is covering my hard dick, and I’m pulling her on top of me to ride me like a pony.
“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper as Aloha’s body fucks mine enthusiastically. “Perfect. God, I love you.” Shit.
But Aloha doesn’t even flinch in the face of my latest slip-up. She just keeps right on fucking me, her pleasure ramping up without the slightest hitch.
A jolt of electricity flashes through my entire body like a thunderclap. I cup Aloha’s breasts in my palms and lose myself as she fucks the living hell out of me. “Aloha,” I grit out.
She opens her mouth like she’s going to say something in reply. But, instead, her green eyes roll back into her head and she comes like fireworks around my cock.
The pleasure of her muscles constricting around me is too much for a mere mortal like me to withstand. I come so hard, I see flashes of blinding white light.
When we both come down, Aloha hurls herself off my cock and splays herself onto the mattress on her back. After removing my condom, I crash down onto the mattress next to her on my back, sweating and barely able to breathe.
“You’re supernatural,” I say between ragged breaths.
“Look, I can understand why you’re madly in love with me. I’d be madly in love with me, too. But you gotta stop saying the magic words. You’re cramping my style.”
I laugh. “I’m cramping your style? Baby girl, I am your style. I’ve upped your street cred by a long mile.”
“True.”
“Don’t even talk to me about cramping your style. I’ve seen the Disney robots you used to date—the Fresh Prince of Bel Air reject.”
She laughs. “God, he was such a dork.”
“Cramping your style,” I mutter. “Please.”
“But, seriously, dude. Whatever happened to ‘playing it cool’ for the rest of the tour? Whatever happened to keeping your big mouth shut and your big cock hard?”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen, apparently. Sorry, not sorry.”
She snuggles up to me, pressing her cheek against my chest. “Fine. Whatever. Just keep fucking me like that and you can say whatever the hell you want to me while we’re in flagrante delicto.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. It wasn’t an “I love you, too, Zander.” But it’s progress. “I’ll take it,” I say. I roll onto my side and kiss her. And I’m relieved and thrilled when she kisses me back with equal passion, not a hint of skittishness about her. Out of nowhere, I bolt upright. “Shit! I just remembered something.”
“Huh?”
I bound toward the door, buck naked. “Don’t move, hula girl.”
“Where the hell are you going?”
“I just remembered I left a little something for you in the hallway. Hopefully, it’s still out there.”
“You mean a present?”
“A present.”
“For meeeeee?”
“For youuuuu.”
Aloha sits up. “At least cover yourself with a towel, babe. You don’t wanna scare a passing maid with your giant Alabama black snake.”
Laughing, I grab a towel, put it around my waist, and fling open the door. And, hallelujah, the guitar is still there. I call to Aloha over my shoulder as I poke my upper torso out the door to grab it. “It’s here! Close your eyes!”
“Oooh, this is so exciting!”
“Are your eyes closed?”
“Yes, sir.”
I tiptoe back into the room with the guitar and stand before Aloha at the foot of the bed, butterflies ravaging my stomach. “Okay, open.”
Aloha opens her eyes. Her lips part in surprise, but she doesn’t look elated. She looks... terrified. Like someone with an acute fear of heights who’s just been brought to the bitter edge of a tall diving cliff and been told, “Jump!”
“Wow,” Aloha chokes out, her chest heaving. “You got me a guitar.”
“Dax told me exactly what kind to get.”
She presses her lips together for a moment and then says politely, “Thank you. That was very sweet of you.”
I chuckle. “And, boom, she flips into Aloha Carmichael mode on me.” I wrap Aloha’s hand around the neck of the guitar and push the base of it onto her lap. And then I grab the pink journal off the floor and put it in front of her on the bed. “You’ve got the beginnings of a hundred songs in this journal, my love,” I say. “Beautiful, amazing, honest songs. Don’t wait for pe
rmission to be brave like Theo, Aloha. Just do it. Be brave. Push open the door to your cage. Kick ‘Aloha Carmichael’ to the curb and decide to be nothing and nobody but... you.”
Chapter 42
Zander
I wake up to the sound of Aloha in the next room strumming her new guitar and singing “Brave”—that Sarah Bareilles song Theo sang for her last night. And my heart bursts.
Not long after I gave Aloha her new guitar last night, she started tentatively fiddling with it, much to my relief. She looked up the chords to a few simple songs. Songs with easy chord progressions she could muddle through singing and playing. When she flubbed a couple chords in rapid succession on “Here Comes the Sun,” she laughed and said, “I was never an amazing guitarist, even back when I used to play every day. I was good enough to accompany myself in a basic way and write my little songs. So, don’t expect musical genius here.”
“Babe, you weren’t put on this earth to be an amazing guitarist,” I replied. “Don’t let the guitar hold you back. Let it set you free.”
So, she kept at it. And, soon, it was clear her fingers were remembering and her confidence was building. She was still playing and singing when I fell asleep in the wee hours of the morning.
And now, mere hours later, she’s in there singing “Brave” like a boss—filling the suite with the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard in my life.
I pull on a pair of briefs and beeline into the other room, and my heart explodes at the sight of her. She’s in a tank top and undies, playing and singing her little heart out. Her dark hair is wild, splayed around her shoulders. Her face is on fire. If I were tasked with creating an artwork entitled “Woman Doing Exactly What She Was Born to Do,” I’d pick Aloha in this very moment as my artistic inspiration.
Aloha’s eyes lock with mine. She smiles as she continues playing and singing.
I take a seat across from her, my eyes trained on hers, my skin electrified. She’s beauty incarnate in this moment. Breathtaking. Perfection.
When Aloha finishes her song, I applaud softly and rise, my chest heaving. I step forward until I’m standing immediately in front of her, looking down at her glowing face.
She grabs my bare torso and lays her cheek against my abs. “Thank you,” she whispers. “I love it.”
Oh, Jesus. For a split second, I thought Aloha was going to say “I love you.” I take a deep, steadying breath. “You’re very welcome. You sound great.”
She smiles up at me. She looks exhausted but radiant. “I just couldn’t stop playing and playing. Once I got going, I felt drugged.”
“Did you sleep at all?”
“For about three hours. Crystal’s gonna kill me for getting so little sleep the night before a show. Not to mention for using my voice all night.”
“You’ll sleep on the plane. Did you try playing any of your old songs?”
“Not yet.”
Yet.
Damn. I’m beginning to love that little word.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” she says.
I stroke the top of her hair. “Wake me every day for the rest of my life, singing like that.” Shit. I add quickly, “I had to get up anyway. In exactly twenty-eight minutes, I’m scheduled to ‘pick you up from your room’ to escort you down to the car headed for the airport.”
“Yeah, I need to get moving. Crystal just texted she’ll be here in fifteen and Barry’s coming to say a quick goodbye in twenty.”
“Well, in that case, I’ll shower in my room and report back here in twenty-five.”
She laughs and runs her fingertip across the waistband of my briefs. “I wish we had a bit more time this morning. I’d give you the blowjob of your life to thank you for your amazing gift.”
Arousal floods my cock. “Hold that thought until tonight. Please.”
She smiles. “I will.”
I grasp her cheeks. “You’re lit up, Aloha. Shining like a thousand suns.”
“So are you.”
“That’s what happens when a man witnesses the most beautiful sight in the world.” Fuck, Zander. Stop. I release her face. “Okay, hula girl. Enough pillow talk. I gotta put on my bodyguard cape now.”
She reaches around me and squeezes my ass cheek. “Back on duty you go, Mr. Bodyguard.”
I peel myself away from her and head toward the bedroom to grab my clothes off the floor.
“Hey, Mr. Bodyguard?”
I turn around just outside the bedroom door, my eyebrows raised.
“When you’re on duty out there and you’ve got your game face on... if I touch my chin like this, just know it means I’m giving you a big ol’ telepathic kiss.”
I touch my chin and wink. “Right back at ya.”
We share a brief smile before I head into the bedroom and start throwing my clothes on.
Aloha appears in the doorway, leaning against the jamb. “Would you do me a big favor on the plane today? Will you read my journal while I sleep?”
I stare at her, my heart in my mouth.
“I’ve got so much stuff in there, it’s kind of overwhelming. Will you read the whole thing and see what leaps out at you? Tell me what you’d focus on, if you were me?”
My heart has resumed beating again, and now it’s racing. “I’d be honored. I’m not a songwriter, but I can certainly tell you which poems or lines grab me the most.”
“That’s perfect. You know me better than anyone and I trust you completely, so I just want to know what stuff strikes you as the most me.”
My heart is seriously not going to survive this conversation. “I’d be happy to give you my two cents. Of course.”
“Thank you so much.” She smiles shyly. “Do you have a journal?”
“No.”
“If you did, I’d want to read it. Every word.”
I bite my lip. “If you want to know something about me—anything at all—then just ask me. I’ll always tell you the whole truth. I promise.”
“I already know that. But thank you for saying it.”
I take a huge breath and exhale before saying, “I gotta dip. God help me if I’m standing here in nothing but my underwear and a goofy smile when Barry arrives.”
“God help you,” she says, but her smile is every bit as beaming as mine.
I finish throwing on my clothes and bound to her. I kiss her gently. “See you in a bit, hula girl.”
“Bye, Shaggy Swaggy.”
She touches her chin.
I touch mine.
And then, as my heart explodes and splatters all over the walls of the swanky suite around me, I drag myself out the front door.
Chapter 43
Zander
Holy fuck.
My eyes lurch from the opened journal in my hand to the top of Aloha’s sleeping head. Aloha and I are sitting together on her private plane. Her head is resting on my shoulder. And I need the fucking crash cart.
I’ve been reading Aloha’s pink journal during the flight from Seattle as she asked me to do. And while many of Aloha’s poems have elicited strong reactions from me, nothing has come close to obliterating my heart the way this particular one just did. I’m not sure precisely when Aloha wrote it, but based on its content and physical placement in the journal, it’s obviously a recent entry. And it’s undoubtedly, explicitly about me. Or, rather, about us.
I inhale the scent of Aloha’s coconut shampoo—the scent that’s become an addiction to me by now—exhale slowly, look down, and read the entire poem again.
The Bodyguard and the Hula Girl
He’s my boy toy
And I’m his hula girl.
He’s Mister Bodyguard
And I’m a kitten’s breath away
From falling hard.
Or maybe just falling
Into the abyss
And selfishly using his bright smile and kiss
As a breathing apparatus.
Am I toying with this boy’s heart?
I don’t mean to do it, if I am,
&
nbsp; Honestly.
But, yeah, probably, I am.
Because it comes so naturally to me
To tease and please, so damned easily
That I might not even know it
If indeed I’m performing
Or otherwise committing a sin or misdeed.
Is this a yarn I’m spinning
Or a true story with a perfect beginning?
If this is a dream, then don’t wake me from it,
Please.
And if it’s more than that,
If it’s genuine reality,
Then teach me how to believe it,
To know for certain when a romance goes
From ephemeral to irrevocable,
Fictional to factual,
When a fairytale becomes dependable and actual,
Rather than merely hormonal and situational.
Yes, I’ve been playing with my boy toy,
I’m sure of it now,
All the while praying I don’t break him
Or make him hate me
Or leave me,
Or, God forbid, go back to Daphne.
That bitch.
But is she really more of a bitch than me?
Because I’ve been playing with my boy toy
Shamelessly,
All the while closing my eyes and praying
That when he finds out The Package
Ain’t what she’s cracked up to be
He’ll still somehow, miraculously,
Inexplicably...
For reasons that will surely escape me...
Reject the fate of poor Kevin and Whitney
And decide to stay with me,
His fucked-up hula girl,
His koala in a eucalyptus tree,
His clingy baby monkey.
And by “stay,” by the way,
I mean to say not just for a tour,
But until a far-away day...
