Love Always,

by Sonya Loveday

  I giggled. “This is skinny dipping,” I repeated as he laughed with me.

  “I don’t know why, but I always imagined it as something different than this.”

  “What’s this?”

  “Easy,” he admitted, his smile turning serious.

  “Most anything can be easy, Phillip. It’s all in how you view the task at hand.”

  Water splashed between us as Hannah popped up from under the water in front of us. “What are you two lovebirds doing over here?” she asked, splashing little bits of water in my face. I hadn’t noticed it, but we’d drifted well away from the others and their horseplay.

  “Plotting our extravagant takeover of the world,” I said, laughing evilly.

  “Haha. Funny. Hey, do you like loud music?” Hannah asked Phillip, completely bypassing me.

  He looked at her oddly. “Loud music? As in volume loud?”

  “Is there any other kind of music?” I asked, rolling my eyes at him.

  “There are all kinds of music,” he said, laughing a little. “As far as ‘loud,’ I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I mean heavy metal. Punk. Ska,” Hannah said, adding, “Have you not heard of any of this?”

  When he shrugged, Hannah’s mouth gaped.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” I said, giving Hannah a pointed look. “The boy doesn’t even know if he likes loud music.” I turned back to Phillip, splashing a little water in his face. “That’s it!” I declared. “You’re coming with us!”

  He was grinning as he wiped the droplets of water from his chin and mouth. “Coming where?”

  “Hannah’s brother’s in a band, and they’re having a concert later tonight. We were going to go after this.”

  “Don’t you have a curfew?” he asked, seeming unsure.

  Hannah and I exchanged looks. Laughter erupted from us.

  “We aren’t five,” Hannah said.

  “Geez,” I said, pushing at his shoulder. “You really are on lockdown, aren’t you?”

  I seemed to have struck a nerve.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  I thought about explaining, but then decided not to. Not because I didn’t want to argue. In fact, I enjoyed arguing. It helped release tension and brought you closer when done right. But right then, I didn’t want to argue with Phillip. I didn’t want to ruin his night.

  So I bit back my retort and said, “How about this. Why don’t you come? Give her brother’s band a listen. You might like them. You might not. At least then you’ll have a solid decision about what you do and do not like.”

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “A short trip out of town under a bar,” Hannah said. “We’ll take a cab.”

  We waited for his answer. Looked to each other when his head disappeared beneath the water and didn’t come back up right away.

  “Bet he says yes,” Hannah said, smirking at me.

  “What do I win if he doesn’t?” I asked, never able to turn down a bet.

  “A drink,” she said.

  “And if I lose?”

  The moment her smirk widened, I knew I was in for it. “You have to kiss him by the end of the night.”

  “No way, Hannah! You know that’s way past pushing it! He’s a guest!”

  “And since when were you worried about breaking the rules?” she retorted, laughing at me.

  She had me at that. I hadn’t been. But I couldn’t kiss Phillip. I just… I couldn’t. “He won’t say yes anyway. This would be just one thing too many for a yuppie like him.”

  His head popped back up. “You’re right,” he said.

  “I am?” I asked, feeling a small bout of relief.

  “Yeah. I need to make this decision… for me. I’ll go,” he said, flashing a toothy grin.

  Hannah snickered as she shoved at me and swam away.

  I’D NEVER FELT SO OUT of my element in all of my life.

  While the idea of going to listen to a band perform sounded like fun, the reality was much different than I’d expected it to be. Both in a good way and a bad one.

  Bodies… lots of them… gyrated and jumped together in one large mass of movement, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever make it out of the crush or be swept away in it. Music filled every pore of my body, pulsing and pounding in a chaotic beat. The only thing keeping me anchored was Maggie’s hand clutched in mine.

  “This is great, right?” she leaned in to shout next to my ear, lithely dancing.

  I didn’t even try to answer her over the music pounding out through the speakers. I just tightened my hold on her hand, bringing a mega-watt smile to her face.

  Ahead of us, Hannah jumped and twisted, hands in the air, flailing to the beat of the music. “How ‘bout we get some drinks?” she shouted. Maggie nodded and Hannah turned, worming her way through the crowd. I lost track of how many people I apologized to as Maggie, following Hannah, wove us through the tight-knit group to the other side of the room.

  “Phew! It’s a full house tonight!” Hannah shouted, waving three fingers in the air at the bartender before hoisting herself over a half-wall where a handful of beat-up, round tables sat vacant.

  Not giving Maggie a chance to climb over it herself, I lifted her up and over, receiving a wide grin from her.

  “Thanks!” she said, moving back to let me over.

  A hand clamped down on my shoulder, halting me as I threw my leg over.

  “I don’t think so, asshole.”

  “Wait! He’s with me!” Maggie said, putting her hand out to stop the bouncer from hauling me away.

  “You? He’s with you?” He looked at Phillip, curling his lip. “And here I thought you were a carpet muncher, shortcake.”

  I shrugged his hand off my shoulder, turning to deal with him myself, but Maggie was having none of it.

  She came over the wall like a spider monkey, putting herself between the hulking mass of muscles and me. “Go bother someone else, Bluto. We’re good here.”

  I had to put my hand up over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Little Maggie was a spitfire. One who had her dander up. I should have been offended by the fact that she was defending me, instead of the other way around.

  I realized it then. Maggie was not your normal run-of-the-mill girl. She did what she wanted, when she wanted, however she wanted, and damn the consequences. She was everything I’d been raised to look away from.

  But there was no looking away from her. I couldn’t no matter how hard I tried.

  They shouted a few more insults at each other, things I couldn’t hear over the music pounding through the air. Maggie tossed her hands up and turned her back on him, gesturing for me to go over the wall before her. I would have argued, but the look on her face told me I better not.

  As soon as I was over the wall, I reached over to give her my hand. She ignored it and vaulted the half wall like a gymnast, landing beside me with a wink.

  “This is insane,” I said with a slight gesture at the packed room as we both took a seat across from each other. Names, lyrics, and inappropriate pictures in black sharpie littered the surface of the worn-down table nestled between us. Dried-up wads of darkened gum were pressed within the crevices of the concrete wall next to us.

  Maggie’s elbows pressed against the table, tilting it toward her as she leaned closer to me. “It won’t be so bad once the band breaks for a set change. Most people only stay until ten or so, and then they move down the line of clubs.”

  A woman appeared, and then Maggie jumped up from her stool to grab the drinks from the waitress.

  The place was packed, and I couldn’t see how the party would break up so quickly seeing the fun that everyone seemed to be having.

  “Thanks,” I said as I picked up the drink she’d sat in front of me, thinking it was soda. I took a deep drink and almost spewed the contents across the table as the fumes of alcohol burned a path down my throat.

  I forced myself to swallow it.

  “Might wanna go easy on that, Phil
lip. My boy Dan makes one helluva rum and coke,” Hannah hooted as she slapped the tabletop.

  “Where’s the coke?” I asked, gasping.

  “There’s my brother!” Hannah said, picking her drink up from the table and darting away to the side of the stage.

  “I thought her brother was already playing?” I asked, leaning toward Maggie so she could hear me over the lead singer who growled incomprehensible words into the microphone.

  Maggie shook her head as she swallowed a sip of her drink. “The bands switch out at eleven. There’ll be a half hour teardown and set up before he goes on. That’s usually when people start clearing out and heading off to do the Death March with the band.”

  “The Death March?” That didn’t sound like something fun at all.

  She laughed, putting her hand on my arm with a light squeeze. “It’s not what you think.”

  “And how do you know what I’m thinking?” I asked, picking my glass up and taking a small sip. In for a penny, in for a pound as my father always said when he’d found himself in situations he couldn’t change or control.

  “It’s written all over your face. I can almost see the words scroll across your forehead,” she said, tapping her finger as if there really were words there.

  “So what is it then… this Death March?” I asked, capturing her fingers in mine without thinking about it. Touching her felt right. Felt normal. It should have scared the hell out of me… and it did, earlier, but not anymore.

  What was it about her?

  “So the band, once they pack up and load their equipment, set out down the strip and go to every bar, getting a drink at every one of them. When they get to the end, they either pass out or find a way home,” she said, pausing only briefly before continuing, “and most of these people tag along. They call it the Death March because that’s exactly what you feel like the next morning.”

  That worried me a little. “Does Hannah’s brother’s band do that?”

  She smiled warmly at me. “No. They do their set and, when it’s done, they pack up and have a drink, two tops, and then head home.”

  I inwardly sighed in relief because, if she’d have said yes, I would have felt obligated to stick it out with her to make sure she made it home and didn’t end up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning.

  “So what about you? What do you do for fun?” Maggie asked, steering the conversation away from the Death March and all its victims.

  “Fun? Well, there’s…” My mind drew a complete blank. Fun was frivolous. Fun involved enjoying an activity. And for the life of me, I couldn’t come up with a single thing that I could have called ‘fun’.

  Sure, I’d had fun before with my friends when we’d get a free moment to go play a round of golf or head to the pool for a few hours of swimming. But, looking into Maggie’s eyes, I could tell that wasn’t what she meant by fun. I looked around. This was her version of fun. Buried so deep inside the music that your thoughts were weightless. Where rules were left on the other side of the door. Where formalities were buying the next drink.

  She bumped her shoulder into mine. “Don’t strain yourself, Phillip. It was just a question.”

  I gave her a half-hearted laugh that drowned itself out in the noise around us. “What about you? What do you do for fun?”

  She lifted her face, her bright eyes trapping me in her gaze. “Everything and anything. Something and nothing. Fun can be found everywhere.” She smirked at me. “Like in the clouds, for instance. Or under the moonlight.” She reached across the table, laying her hand on mine. “Or just by sitting across from a good-looking guy with more than a few surprises up his sleeves.”

  Her smile and her words were like magic, lulling me.

  Her eyebrows tossed a question in my direction. “If you can’t have fun, what’s the point in life?” she finished with a shrug, letting go of my hand.

  It jolted me, what she had said. I hadn’t lived a pointless life. A scheduled one, yes, but by no means pointless. Hearing her say that made me question what I was even doing in a bar, listening to music that deafened me while sipping on a drink that was surely going to give me a blinding headache in the morning.

  The end of the song wrapped up and the house lights came on, momentarily blinding me as I blinked my surroundings into focus again.

  “I need to use the restroom. I’ll be right back,” Maggie said, leaving me alone at the table.

  In front of me, the crowd had thinned slightly. I sat there watching them, wondering what life would be like had I been born to a middle-class family whose expectations weren’t as heavily weighted as my own.

  There were shouts and catcalls, insults and jabs tossed all around, but all done in fun. What would it be like to be able to let go and live so freely? I knew I had only been bugged by Maggie’s statement because it touched home. I had been taught that fun was careless. Fun was reckless. Fun was beneath my kind.

  But I should be the one who decided what fun would mean for me.

  Grabbing the glass in front of me, I picked it up and finished it off in three gulps. There was no time like the moment to live in it and own it. I wouldn’t sit there like a stick in the mud while everyone around me carried on without a care in the world.

  By the time Maggie made it back to the table, not only had I made my decision to just go with the flow, but I was more than slightly drunk to boot.

  Mother would be so ashamed of me, and I really didn’t care.

  WHILE HANNAH’S BROTHER’S BAND WASN’T into screaming into the microphone, they made a good show of being an eclectic mix of music I’d never listened to before.

  Dancing to it had been even harder.

  Every note felt like a punch to the lungs and heart, playing louder than I think I’d ever heard music play before. Spotlights moved from player to player as the crowd sang and shouted to the lyrics pouring from the lead singer’s voice.

  And then the beat changed, slowing down to something that pulsed through the air, slow and heady, something that layered the air in a sensuous beat. Bodies swayed side to side. Some coupling together so closely that they blended into one form.

  “Can you feel it?” she asked me, her almond-shaped, hooded eyes working their way across my face. Strobes of light moved across her features, highlighting the sensuousness of her lips.

  “Feel what?” I asked, my gaze trailing over her slender nose, all the way down to the softness of her lips made pink from biting them too often.

  “The music,” she said, pressing herself closer against me, “dancing in your soul. Connecting all of us to this moment. Can you feel it?”

  I nodded as Maggie closed her eyes, hands over her head as her hips moved in such an erotic way that it drew me to her. There could have been a million people around us or none. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the silky feeling of her skin under my fingers as I moved my hands over the curve of her shoulders, slipping them further down her back as she bumped her hips against mine.

  Both of us caught up in a moment that pulled all of our layers away until it was just her body surrendering to mine by touch alone.

  Leaning in, my lips trailed a path up her pulsing neck, tasting the salt of her skin. I ached all the way through to the center of my bones for her. I wanted to wrap her legs around me and carry her off with the beat of the music echoing in our soul as I laid claim to her, worshiping her body with my own.

  Her fingers landed lightly on my neck, scorching the skin as she moved them up through my hair, tugging as she pushed her body harder against mine.

  It was like unleashing a storm.

  My hands moved under her jaw, pushing her head up for a kiss that felt punishing, demanding something from one another that could only be completely satisfied by the joining of our bodies. I wanted her, and there was no doubt in my mind that she wanted me just as badly.

  She broke the kiss with deep breaths that burst against my neck as she ducked her head under my chin, shaking as hard as I was from the rush of
what we’d built between us.

  Hannah appeared at Maggie’s side, smirking. “I thought I might have to call the fire department for a minute there.”

  Maggie’s eyes didn’t leave mine. The fire hadn’t left her, not even a little. I could see the way her heart hammered against her chest. The vein in her neck pulsed in exact time with my own.

  Hannah snapped her fingers in between our faces, breaking the connection immediately.

  “What?” Maggie stammered, looking over at Hannah, noticing her for the first time.

  “You, my friend, need a drink. And lots of ice, I think. Or would you two rather go? I completely understand if you do,” she said, letting a bawdy laugh ripple through the air.

  Maggie’s eyes found mine again as something shifted inside of her. I could see it as well as feel it when she said, “A drink?”

  I nodded, willing my body to stop shaking. I damn well didn’t want a drink. I wanted Maggie all to myself for the rest of the night. She’d lit a fire in me I’d never felt before. One that raged through my body like an inferno that threatened to swallow me whole and spit out nothing but the shell I used to be.

  Sipping the icy cold contents of the beer I insisted on gave me a few minutes to pull myself together. It would have been so easy to lead Maggie out of the bar and find a spot to slake the need crawling through me.

  But did I really want that? Did I want to treat Maggie as a way to purge the fire we’d created?

  Yes and no.

  I wanted her for more than that, and it was unfair of me to want it. Our worlds, while tethered for the moment, would surely come unwound in the light of the morning. Her free spirit would lift her up and away from my concreted spot on the ground.

  Closing my eyes, I allowed myself a brief moment to grieve for what could never be between us. And it hurt more than anything I could compare it to.

  “PHILLIP!”

  Oh God… oh God! My head rattled with the screech of my mother’s voice. Enough so that I pulled the pillow over my head, hoping she’d go away. Hoping I was having nothing more than a nightmare.