"Ben, I don't even know--"
"You don't have to say anything," I cut in over her. "Just listen. I've loved you for a long, long time. No, please, Kylie, just listen. You're with Oz. I lost my chance. I get that. I hate it. It hurts. It fucking cuts me apart every single moment of every single day, is what it does." I don't bother to hide my emotions. "It makes me crazy. It should be you and me, not you and him. But I can't change that. I know that. I really do. And...if I really do love you, then I wouldn't want to change that. I'm just weak enough that I still do want you for myself, even though I know, I can fucking see that you're happy with Oz. So good for you. Be happy."
"Ben--" Her voice breaks.
"No, I'm not done." I force myself to stay absolutely still, barely even breathing. If I don't keep going, I'm liable to do something stupid, like try to kiss her to change her mind. "I'm not done. I do want you to be happy. I want you stay happy. And if--fuck--if Oz gives you that, then so be it. I'll accept that because I have no choice. But I can't just pretend it's fine for me. It's not. It hurts to see you with him. It makes me angry and crazy and jealous, and I don't know how to stop that. How to change that in me. I can't. I've fucking tried. For months, I've tried. It's not that I keep hoping you'll change your mind. I know you won't. It's that I can't help wishing. Wanting. And I think...I think no matter how much time passes, that'll never change. At least, not as long as I'm here around you. Around him."
"What are you saying, Ben?" Her voice is barely a whisper.
I pace away, running my hand through my freshly shorn hair. It's close to the scalp all over, easy to maintain in the long days of driving and no showers I've got ahead of me. I turn back to her, memorize her features, her perfect strawberry blonde hair, her pale skin, her blue eyes, her body. God. I love her so much, and I've never even held her hand.
"I'm saying...I don't know how to be in love with you and be your friend at the same time. I don't know how. I don't think it's possible. So...I'm choosing to show you I love you the only way I have left." I pinch the bridge of my nose, breathe deep, and then look up into her eyes. One last time. "I'm leaving, Kylie."
"Leaving? Where are you going? For how long?"
I shrug, shake my head. "I don't know...and I don't know. Anywhere but here, and possibly forever. For as long as it takes for me to get over you. Find someone else, maybe. I don't know."
She sniffs. "I don't want you to go." Her eyes are wet, but she doesn't wipe them. "You're my best friend, Ben."
I shake my head again. "No, I'm not. I'm your oldest friend." I point at the doorway into the studio. "He's your best friend."
She nods. "So you're just...running away."
I growl. "Fucking hell, Kylie. Don't make this any harder than it has to be." I want to punch the wall, kick the dumpster, kiss her senseless. I do none of this. I'm used to wanting her and not letting myself act on it. I'm good at it; I've got almost ten years of practice, after all. "I'm not running away. I'm letting you go."
"But I might never see you again."
I nod. "Yeah. I mean, I'll try to come back for Christmas, but...I don't know where I'll end up."
"What about college? You're leaving Vanderbilt too?"
I nod. "I finished the semester. I haven't officially withdrawn yet, but I doubt I'll be back in the fall. I might transfer somewhere else. Or I might try out for the minors or something. I don't know. I don't care. I'm just going. I've got to get away from you, Kylie. You're...you're in me. In my head, in my heart, in my life. But you don't want me the way I want you, and this city just isn't big enough. So...so..."
Kylie sighs, and finally wipes her eyes. "I get it." She looks up at me. "When are you leaving?"
"Right now. I've already said goodbye to everyone else."
She moves closer to me, and my heartbeat ratchets up to a hammering crescendo just from the scent of her shampoo. She hesitates, then wraps her arms around my middle. I freeze solid, don't hug her back. Don't dare. I just let her hold on to me and try to remember to breathe. She lets go finally, and looks up at me from far too close.
Without my permission, my hand lifts, touches her cheek. "I wish--" My voice is close to breaking. "I wish I'd at least kissed you. Just once." Her eyes widen, and she stops breathing. Then, before I do anything truly stupid, I step away. "But I didn't. And now...I never will." Another step backward. "Goodbye, Kylie." I turn away, and it takes every ounce of willpower I possess to do so.
"Ben?" Her voice stops me. "Will you be okay?"
I stop, but don't turn around. Slowly, I nod. "Yeah. Eventually."
A long tense silence. She's about to say something else. I can feel it, and I wait for it. But then, with a sad exhalation, all she says is, "'Bye, Ben. I'll miss you."
I want to look back, but I don't. I blink hard against the aching burn in my throat, in my chest, in my eyes. "Yeah. Me, too." It's unclear, even to me, whether I mean I'll miss her, too, or whether I'll miss me.
Both, maybe.
I don't look back. Not at her, and not at Nashville as I drive past the city limits. When I'm far enough away that I don't recognize the landmarks, I turn on the stereo, hunt through the songs I've got loaded onto the flash drive. Find one that speaks to this moment. It's a Kylie song, the kind of thing I listened to for her.
It's "Let Her Go" by Passenger.
I listen to it on repeat until my throat hurts from singing along, and eventually I let the radio take me to other songs, as the road takes me to other places.
I remember what Colt said by the creek that day: Sometimes there is no where, there's only go.
And I go.
POSTSCRIPT
Kylie
One year later
Performing never gets old. It never loses its patina of wonder for me. Every single time Oz and I get up on stage, I feel alive, like raw energy replaces the very blood in my veins, like life itself is bigger and more colorful and more amazing. We're on tour with Mom and Dad and The Harris Mountain Boys. This tour has been, very literally, the most amazing experience of my entire life. Each and every day, even if we're just rolling across the country on the tour bus, holds new joy and fresh and exciting things to see and feel and hear and do.
Oz and I get better each time we play together. Oz, not surprisingly, has turned out be an intense and tireless lyrics-writing machine. He's got an endless well of emotion and life experience to pull from, and once I persuaded him to give it a try, he found he couldn't stop the words from pouring out. It works for me, because I'd rather write the music.
We're on the last leg of the summer tour, making the arc across the northern border and down through Michigan--where Mom and Dad are both from--and back to Nashville. The last date of the tour is Nashville, and I'm scared to fucking death for that show. It wasn't announced until less than a month ago, and it sold out in under an hour. We sold out the Ryman. In an hour.
Andersen has been instrumental in all this. He's gotten us huge press over the summer, increased our visibility in a way we could never have expected. Mom and Dad put together the tour, but Andersen used his industry connections to get us noticed, to get people talking about us.
Oz and I? God, I love that man. We haven't gotten a lot of time alone together over the tour, seeing as we're sharing a bus with Mom and Dad, and they won't let us bunk together. It's okay, though. We sneak off together after shows, or during lunch breaks while we're traveling. Gareth, Amy, and Buddy, being more our age than Mom and Dad's, are sympathetic to our plight, so they find ways to give us privacy on their bus whenever possible.
Oz is creative, too. He cornered me backstage one time, in Portland, Maine, I think it was, and dragged me outside into the maze of equipment crates. He pressed me up against the wall, hiding us between a pile of sound equipment boxes and an empty crate that held I don't know what. We were all but invisible there, and he took full advantage of it. His hips pinned mine to the wall, and his fingers busied themselves lifting my shin-length skirt up around my hips. I wr
apped my legs around his, grinning into his neck as he realized I wasn't wearing any underwear. My giggle at his surprise turned rather quickly into a groan of need, and from there into a barely stifled squeal as he filled me. He silenced me with a kiss, kept his mouth crushed to mine and ate my cries and whimpers, sucked down my breath and gave me his own, holding me aloft with strong hands cupping my ass.
It wasn't long before we were both trembling and gasping together, straightening clothes just in time to see a sound tech rummaging for a cord. He grinned at us, as if he knew exactly what we'd just been doing. Maybe it should've, but it didn't bother me that he'd known.
I'm still going to school. I'm at Belmont now, studying for a degree in music management. I love playing, and I will to the day I die, but I also love the technical end of it, the business side. I love working with Andersen to get exactly the right sound, tweaking and tweaking and tweaking until the song is perfect. Oz is content to perform, I think. He and my dad have gotten close, and they're talking about opening up a classic car restoration business together. Dad used to do that for a living, and Oz has a knack for the kind of details that make a restoration look authentic. That's what Dad says, at least, and I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.
I am wondering about our future together, though. I know we're in love, and I know there will never be anyone else for either of us. But I'm still living with my parents. Oz has his own apartment now, and when we're in Nashville I stay there more nights than not, but it's...it's not the same. Whenever I talk about officially moving in with him, he kind of dismisses the subject, glosses over it and makes it seem like we've got all the time in the world to figure it out. And, I mean, we do, I guess, but I want to be with him all the time, and I want that now. I don't want to have to always go back to Mom and Dad's for clean clothes. I don't want to be split between their house and Oz's. I belong with Oz now. He's my home.
But he just seems reticent to rush things. That's his big excuse: I don't want to rush things. What the hell is that supposed to mean? We knew each other a matter of months before we had sex together, and it was not much longer than that before we both knew we loved each other. Less than a year, and we were totally serious and committed. How much more rushed can you get? I don't need more time. It's not like I'm pressuring him to propose; I don't expect that level of commitment from him yet. Don't get me wrong--I'd say yes before he got the words out if he asked, but I know that's a big deal. It is for me, too, but I think it's just different for guys, especially one who grew up as nomadic as Oz. He could still get the urge to travel, to move on. I don't think he'd just up and leave. He'd want me with him, and he knows I'm committed to finishing my degree.
All this means that despite how happy I am, in general, there's a tiny little nagging bit of impatience inside me. Like a teeny pebble in your shoe, not painful, just...irritating. I want everything with Oz, and I want it now.
As our tour gets closer and closer to Nashville, the more antsy I get. I don't know why. Oz has been acting odd, too. Going off with Dad at strange times, whispering together. They're writing a song, I know that much. I know what songwriting looks like, and that's what they're doing. But why the secrecy? They always clam up if I get near them, and it's starting to bug me. Plus, Oz has been on the phone a lot, with I'm not sure whom, or why.
Something's up, and I want to know what.
A day out of Nashville, our second-to-last show, in Detroit. The Fox Theater is sold out. Oz is jittery, distracted. Mom and Dad are almost done with their set, and Oz and I are getting ready to go on for ours. I take Oz's hands in mine, stand chest to chest with him, look up into his gray-brown eyes.
"Oz...I know you're hiding something from me. Just...just tell me if I need to be worried about whatever it is. Tell me if it's something bad. About me, or us." I hate how insecure I sound, but I need some kind of reassurance from him.
Oz nudges my forehead with his, sighing. "You don't need to worry. I know I've been acting weird lately, and I'm sorry. It's nothing bad, I promise. I love you, only you, and I'm not going anywhere."
"Then what is it?"
He grins at me. "Well, I'm planning a surprise for you. That's all I'm gonna say."
I frown. "Can't you at least give me a hint?"
Oz shakes his head. "Nope. No hints."
And then we're on, and there's no time for talking. We go on, and I have to push away my curiosity, my distraction.
The show was fantastic, but all the way from Detroit to Nashville, Oz is jittery and nervous and strange. Dad keeps looking at me, and then at Oz, and then grinning.
It's not that I hate surprises; I don't. I like surprises. I just...this one seems big, for some reason, and I don't know what to expect. I just have to wait, I guess.
Finally, we reach Nashville and get to spend a night at home in our own beds. Friday night we have an end-of-tour celebratory dinner--Mom and Dad and Oz and I, plus Amy, Gareth, Buddy, and a lot of the crew who've been on the road with us since April. They're like family now, and I know Oz especially has gotten close with some of the guitar techs. It's good to see, really. I know Oz doesn't make friends easily, so watching him open up a little to people who are not me or Mom and Dad is cool.
We spend all day Saturday at the Ryman, practicing, putting together our set list, getting everything tuned and dialed in. And then, just when I think I'm going to get a few minutes alone with Oz, he vanishes with Daddy. I turn to Mom, huffing in irritation.
"What the hell is going on with them, Mom?"
Mom just shrugs and shakes her head. "I don't know, sweetie. It's a big secret, though. Dad won't even tell me what's going on. Says it would ruin the surprise." She wraps her arm around me. "Here's a little advice, though, honey. When guys do things like this, on their own, and don't involve us women in it, you know it's something romantic. The only time a man will go to these kinds of lengths to keep something secret is if he's got something huge and sexy and sweet up his sleeve. I really, really don't think you need to be worried. Just...be prepared for anything."
I lean into her. "He's never secretive. It's weirding me out."
Mom laughs. "I know, honey. But try not to freak out. Oz loves you, and that's all that really matters, right?"
I nod and try to push away the worry. "Right."
Eventually, Oz and Daddy come back, and we four have dinner together. Oz and Dad act like nothing at all is amiss, so I try not to as well. Later that night, as Oz and I let ourselves into his apartment, I decide to try a little seduction-interrogation.
As soon as the door is locked behind us, I push Oz's back against the wall, take his keys from him, toss them aside, not caring where they land. Oz's eyes are narrowed, as if he knows what I'm planning. He's wearing a plain white button-down, which I make short work of removing, leaving him deliciously sexy in just blue jeans and boots. I pause to strip, peeling my T-shirt, bra, jeans, and panties off in record time. Naked now, I kiss my way from his jaw to his chest, down his ribs to his navel. I slip the end of his belt out of the buckle, unbutton his jeans, tug them down. The act of getting his jeans past his hips has pulled the waistband of his boxers down just far enough to let the tip of his cock show, and I grin up at him.
He licks his lips and sucks in a deep breath. "Kylie, babe. What are you planning on doing down there?"
I slide his boxers off, keeping my eyes on him. "What do you think I'm planning on doing down here?"
"I think you're fishing for information."
I wrap my lips around him and suck hard, tasting his flesh and the essence that begins to seep out of his tip onto my tongue. When he's groaning, I lift my mouth off him. "Is it working?"
"Nope." He tangles his fingers in my hair. "You might have to try again."
I laugh, and then comply. This time, I grip him at the base and slide my fingers around his thickness as I work the head with my lips and tongue. He starts moving in time with my suction, and when I know he's close, I take my mouth away. "How about now? Tel
l me what's going on, and I'll let you come in my mouth. I know how much you love that, and it's been a while. Since Montana, right? You know you want it."
He groans. "Goddamn, Ky. That's mean. Cruel and unusual punishment."
I laugh and flick his tip with my tongue. "But effective, right?"
He shudders and his hips piston, trying to get closer to my mouth, seeking relief. I don't give it to him. "Fuck, baby. I'm not...not telling. It's a surprise. A good surprise. You want it to be a surprise. Just try to trust me on this, will you?" He growls. "I'm going crazy here, baby."
"Just a hint?" I beg.
He hisses as I pump my fingers up and down his length. "Fuck...fuck. If I give you a hint, you'll make me come?"
"So hard, baby. I swear."
He laughs, and then lets his head thump back against the wall. I slow my hands on him, drawing it out. He can't help moving into my touch, and I know I've got him.
But then he moves like a striking snake. There's no warning, no chance of resisting. One second I'm in control, on my knees in front of him with his thick cock in my hands and my lips descending to finish him off, and then the next second I'm on my hands and knees, and he's behind me.
I open my mouth to protest, but all that comes out is a gasping shriek. He's in me, sliding deep, fast, hard, and I can only whimper.
"Oz...Jesus, Oz. Oh, god." All my demands and plans are ruined. He's in control now, hands gripping my hips, pulling me against him, drawing moans from me.
He leans over me, bites my earlobe. "You want a hint, baby? I'll give you a hint. It's a surprise. A really, really, big" --he emphasizes this with a hard thrust that has me rocking forward-- "surprise."
I can't help but move back into him, needing what he's giving me now. "Why won't you tell me?"
"Because you have to wait till tomorrow." He breathes into my ear, his breath hot. "Don't you trust me, baby?"
"Yeah, I trust you," I gasp.
"Then let it be a surprise."
I'm on the edge now, a few strokes away from coming hard. "Okay, Oz. Okay. Okay. I trust you."
He pulls out, and I whimper in shock. "NO! Fuck, Oz, put it back in, please, I need it, I was right there!"
Falling Under Page 24
