All my strength is drained. I collapse on top of her in wonderment, thinking of how I’d slept with guys before but it never came close to being this amazing. It was never once so powerful.
She folds me in her arms and kisses my forehead. We lie together for the longest time, wordlessly basking in the afterglow. I don’t know exactly how much time passes before she breaks the silence. “Are you all right?”
I just had the most mind-blowing sex imaginable with someone who just happens to be a girl. Well, that formula only works for one very specific equation. Suddenly, I’m laughing harder than I’ve ever laughed before, because solving said equation is cathartic in the scariest, yet most exquisite way. All the pieces of the puzzle have finally come together: why I never really connected with the guys I dated, how I always felt like some inexplicable thing was missing. Now I know it wasn’t them; it was me. Shit. “I think I’m gay.”
“Yeah? That’s awesome. Maybe we can do this again sometime,” she jokes.
I want so badly to tell her that she might just be the only person I ever want to do this with. I want to tell her that I love her, but I’m petrified that one little word will change everything. I mean, she didn’t drop the L word. She said her heart belongs to me. That’s not the same thing as “I love you.” The nomenclature matters. Right, Kendall, because having sex with her on the couch is so much less life-changing than words. “Maybe we can.” I kiss her and then push to my feet. I take a few steps toward my bedroom. When I notice she isn’t following, I turn back to find her staring at me. She looks so frightened.
“Um, did I say something wrong?”
I shake my head.
She sits upright and her muscles go taut as though my lack of explanation has literally scared her stiff. “Where are you going?”
“To bed,” I say nonchalantly. “Are you coming?” An invitation to share my bed… What a pathetic consolation prize to “I love you.”
She continues to eye me up and down for a moment before her face alights with a smile. “Yes.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Payton
I am coaxed into wakefulness not by the golden rays of sunlight flooding through the bedroom windows, but by the tingle of puckered lips and sultry breath against my neck. “Good morning,” Kendall whispers, her voice scarcely registering through the fog of slumber I’m trapped in.
“Good morning,” I reply, still groggy. I clear the gritty remainders of sleep from the inner corners of my eyes and focus on the sensation of bare flesh touching mine. It’s all the silky smoothness of skin on skin, unadulterated by the weighty coarseness of clothing. I ruffle the sheets and take a peek beneath them. We are both totally nude. She’s… I’m… Holy shit! Last night wasn’t a dream. I didn’t imagine it. It happened. What if it was a one-time thing? What if she regrets it? What if this totally fucks up our friendship forever? Payton, you twat, say something! “So I haven’t died and gone to heaven, have I? Please tell me this is real.”
“Died and gone to heaven, huh? That is so cheesy,” she says with a snigger. “Yes, it’s real.”
“Will you pinch me so I can be sure?”
“I’ll do better than that,” she says, then kisses my lips.
I laugh when she pulls away. “I knew this was a dream! You don’t even have morning breath!”
She huffs and hits me with a pillow. “Shut up and hold me, would you?”
“Gladly.” I stretch out my arms.
She snuggles into me, nuzzling my cheek with her nose. “Can we stay in bed all day? I don’t want to move from this spot.”
“Will your calendar allow for that, you being a highly in-demand superstar and all?”
“Screw my calendar,” she mutters and squeezes me tight around my waist. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I think we should try being productive today.”
“Boo,” she sighs. “I don’t want to do anything that requires me to put on clothes.”
“What I had in mind doesn’t necessarily require either of us to be dressed.”
“Oh, really?” Her eyebrows arch in the most overtly sexy way possible. She pounces to her knees and mounts me with all the stealth and expertise of a panther. I’m caught between her legs, which are spread on either side of my torso. She’s leaning over me, staring straight into my soul. The bedcovers have fallen away, allowing for a full view of her stark-naked frame. Kendall, you are perfect.
She slides her hand down my stomach, stopping just inside my left thigh. I nearly die from lack of oxygen to the brain. “Is this what you had in mind?” She grins devilishly.
“Not exactly. I was thinking more along the lines of a music lesson.”
She presses her lips against my sternum. “This could turn into a music lesson,” she mumbles between kisses. “I can teach you to sing.”
“I already know how to sing.”
She moves her hand farther inward. “Then maybe you can teach me how to sing.”
“Wait.” I grab her wrist. “Do you think we’re moving a little fast? Don’t get me wrong, the physical stuff is incredible. But I don’t want sex to be all there is for us.”
Her lips narrow into a stone-cold frown. “Sex isn’t all there is for us. I care about you. It’s just that last night was the first time I’ve ever had, you know, The Big O.”
She cares about me… Cares. I try not to focus on the noncommittal nature of that word and instead choose to address the fact that sleeping with me resulted in her first orgasm ever. “Seriously? You’ve never?”
“No,” she says quickly, her face coloring a bit. “I always thought I was one of those girls who couldn’t get there.”
“Why haven’t you told me this before?”
“We never made a habit out of talking about sex, Payton. It’s the one thing we’ve hardly ever discussed.”
“That’s because I didn’t want to know who you were doing what with,” I admit.
“Yeah, I didn’t really want to know who you were doing anything with, either. That makes so much more sense to me now.” She smiles, then jumps off me. “Now, how about you teach me some piano?”
“You might have to get dressed for that, after all. I’ll probably be too distracted to teach you anything if you’re hanging out in all your stimulating, bare-assed glory.”
“Fine!” She stalks across the room, grabs a bathrobe from her closet, and slips it on. “You’d better put something on, too. I can’t keep my hands on the keys when all they want to do is roam all over you.”
“That’s fair,” I say. “I’ll meet you upstairs in five.”
❄ ❄ ❄
Kendall is so precious when she’s confused. I’ve been trying to introduce her to reading treble clef sheet music for the last hour, and it just isn’t working out. “Every line on the staff and every space in between those lines has a name, a note. The lines from bottom to top are EGBDF. The spaces from bottom to top are FACE.”
“That is so retarded. Why isn’t it BDEFG? Alphabetical order! I could remember that. And why the hell are A and C in the spaces? Who made this shit up?”
“Some Roman guy.” I laugh. “All right, let’s try it this way,” I point to each line and recite its respective note, “EGBDF, Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge.”
“Every good boy… damn it!” Her cellphone rings, breaking her concentration. “Uh, hi,” she answers tepidly. “You’re where? And you didn’t give any consideration to the fact that that might be kind of creepy? Yeah, okay, we can talk.” She hangs up, turns to me, and says, “Gunner is here. Is it cool with you if he comes up for a minute?”
Odd. “Should I get dressed?”
“No. This is your house. He’s the visitor. He can deal with seeing us in our robes.”
“Okay,” I nod.
She saunters down to the intercom and reluctantly gives Gunner permission to enter her breathing space. Five minutes later he’s standing in the doorway, looking totally uncomfortable. I stick my head over the railing to watch
their interaction from the safety of the loft.
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he starts. “I had no right to tell you to sort yourself out. I’ve never been into another guy, so I can’t even imagine what you’re going through.”
“No, I’m sorry. You were right. I did need to sort myself out; consider me sorted.” She pitches her thumb over her shoulder, up toward me.
Gunner looks up and smiles. “Hey, Payton.” He then thrusts his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. “So, what do we do now? It seems wrong parading you around as my arm candy when you’re… involved with someone else.”
Involved with. Sure, I’ll take that.
“I don’t know…” Kendall turns to me with questioning eyes.
All I can do is shrug. It took me years to become comfortable enough with who I am to tell anyone else about it. I can’t expect her to be prepared to make that kind of leap after only just realizing that she’s gay, or rather, thinking that she might be. It wouldn’t be fair. “There are all these rules one needs to abide by in order to survive in Hollywood, right? I don’t know exactly how it all works, but I know it’s complex. I think Gunner should remain your escort for the time being, until you’re, you know, good and settled with yourself.” The disbelief on Gunner’s face is bested only by the shock on Kendall’s.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “I’ll get there eventually, I promise.”
“I know.”
“Okay,” Gunner affirms. “You’re cool with it. I’m cool with it. What about Lawrence? Do we clue him in?”
“No,” Kendall shakes her head. “He’s my publicist, not my shrink. When it’s essential for him to know, I’ll tell him.”
“Right then, we’re good.” Gunner rubs his neck and shuffles anxiously in place. “I’ll let you ladies get back to whatever it is you were doing.”
Kendall suppresses a chortle. “Yeah, I’ll call you.”
❄ ❄ ❄
Two months into the exploration of formerly uncharted territory and we’re still muddling through it like two little girls lost in the woods. We’re intimate with each other—exclusively—but we still don’t have a proper title. I want to give our relationship a new name, one that outlines exactly what we are; “friends” doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. It’s such a frightening subject, and I’m such a wimp that I won’t dare broach it. Seriously, where would I even begin? “Hey, Kendall. What the fuck are we doing? Because I love you, you know, and it would be great if you felt the same about me.” That’s so lame. Besides, what if she doesn’t feel the same about me? What if this is just a fling for her? I know I couldn’t handle that. She is everything I’ve ever wanted, but what if she isn’t really mine?
The thing that complicates this situation even further is that we have so little time to talk. Life has basically become an enormous ball of chaos for Kendall. Between script workshops, costume fittings, strength training, martial arts and fencing classes for The Relishing, and all the preparation for her upcoming Idol Worship press tour, I really only get to see her when we cuddle up in bed at night—which we do every night—or when she manages to squeeze me into her schedule for breakfast.
In the interest of fairness, it isn’t only her agenda that’s overloaded these days. My spring semester is in full swing and I feel like I’m so far behind the curve that I could eat, sleep, and breathe music composition and never be able to catch up. Every MALA student I’ve met so far is light-years ahead of me when it comes to large-format composing. And the competition is cutthroat! Some days I leave campus wondering whether I enrolled in college or joined the cast of Survivor: Songsmith Island.
Kendall pops her head into the bedroom, effectively tearing me away from my thoughts and the task of orchestrating a piece for a string quartet. “Whoa, that’s a lot of blank staff paper,” she says distractedly.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I joke. “Wait, what are you doing here?”
She beams. “My fencing classes were cancelled today, which means my Friday afternoon is now free! I thought we could hang out for a while, just the two of us—you know, since you basically blew off our dinner plans last night.”
“Kendall, I was working on a group project. Group, meaning I had to take into account the schedules of three other people. They decided last minute that the only time we could all meet was last night in Pro Tools Studio B, so that’s where I needed to be instead of at a dinner where we’d sit across the table from each other in a sparsely lit restaurant pretending to be ‘just dear friends.’ And I didn’t blow you off, I left you two voicemails about it and texted you half a dozen times. I’m sorry you were in training and didn’t check your messages until seven. Besides, I’m not sure you really have the right to be upset with me for missing one dinner when you’re hardly ever home.”
“Oh, don’t even…” she starts indignantly, but catches herself mid-sentence. “Okay, I see what you did there. You’re not wrong, things have been crazy hectic for me lately. But I’m home now, and I’d like us to not fight so we can spend some time together before everyone arrives because I miss you.”
At first I only digest the part where she says ‘I miss you.’ I look at her, befuddled until I process the ‘everyone arrives’ part of her speech. “Hold on, before everyone arrives?”
“We’re going to the Gay and Lesbian Cinema Committee Awards tonight. Did you forget?”
Yes, of course I forgot. I’m up to my ears in college kid problems. Son of a bitch. “Well, technically, we aren’t going. We’ll only be in the same place at the same time.”
I’m going to the awards with Lauren, which is totally unfair. It’s one thing for Kendall to keep up the charade with Gunner, but it’s utterly uncool that we’re using Lauren as a pawn to keep our whatever this is under wraps. After a long, awkward conversation between the three of us, Lauren agreed to help us out: I will appear publicly with her at events that Kendall and Gunner are scheduled to attend, that way I can be in the mix without anyone suspecting I might be there with Kendall.
The hitch is Lauren still kind of likes me, and I’m not the only one who knows it. The tension between her and Kendall is unbearable sometimes. I can’t help thinking that it’s my fault. They were friends before I came between them. It’s weird, feeling like I’m the cause of a dynamic shift in the way these two people—both of whom I care about—view one another. It’s almost as if they’re enemies now, or in some kind of heated competition with each other.
But the fact that I know the whole evening is going to be uncomfortable for everyone involved is not the reason I don’t want to go to.
“I think I should stay home. I really need to concentrate on this. I’ve got two weeks left to finish it and still so much to write. I haven’t even started on the cello part yet.”
She stands there, arms folded, lashes batting away as though nothing I just said is of any consequence. “Please,” she mopes. “The Visibility Award means so much to me. I want you there when I receive it.”
“All right, I’ll go.” How could I refuse her?
She skips happily into my arms, tenderly kisses my lips. “Lawrence will be here with the makeup and hair team at six. Gunner and Lauren are coming later.”
❄ ❄ ❄
Gunner and Lauren show up just as I’m throwing on the pair of dangling ruby earrings Kendall bought me especially for this evening. They’re not quite my style, but they complement my gown seamlessly. With bated breath, I watch as Kendall greets them. She kisses Gunner on both cheeks without reluctance, but flashes an ill-at-ease smile at Lauren.
“Hi guys,” I call from my chair as Felicia finishes painting my face. She gives me a thorough once-over then releases me. I saunter over to the group, hug Gunner and then Lauren in direct defiance of the freshly suggested hostilities between her and Kendall.
“You look beautiful,” Lauren says after I pull back from our embrace.
My eyes instinctively flutter to Kendall. Her jaw muscles flair as I reply, “Tha
nk you. So do you.”
“Yeah, you and Kendall are both stunners,” Gunner adds with such swiftness. It’s as if he’s aiming to defuse a live explosive. I’m so appreciative of his quick input, I could kiss him.
“Okay kids,” Lawrence chimes in, “now that we’ve made it abundantly clear every woman in the room looks great, we need to leave.” He aims a stiff finger at Kendall, “You can’t be late to an awards show if you’re an honored guest.”
“Right,” Kendall says. She shuffles to the kitchen table, picks up her clutch, and trundles back to us. She holds the door open for everyone, and then locks it behind her.
❄ ❄ ❄
We arrive at the Navarro Theater to fewer screaming fans than I expected. The photographers and reporters, however, are out in full force. Lauren and I trail slightly behind Gunner and Kendall as they make their way down the red carpet. We all pose for pictures, forcing smiles the size of Texas.
Once we enter the building, Kendall steps off to the side of the hallway, away from Gunner and their combined party of handlers. I realize she’s waiting for me and quickly join her. “I can’t wait until this thing is over.” She takes a step closer to me and whispers in my ear, “I’m dying to get you out of that dress.”
I shudder, awkward from the remnants of her breath against my skin. “You’ll take care of that later, I’m sure.”
“Oh yeah, you can bet on it with confidence.” She arches her eyebrows with a slight insinuation of naughtiness. “I guess I’d better go find my seat before I lose control of myself, huh?”
“Yeah, you’d better.” I watch her slink away into the amphitheater.
❄ ❄ ❄
“You two should be more careful,” Lauren whispers once I’ve returned to her side. “It looked like y’all were gonna make out right there in the corner.”
“Damn, really?” I am all but completely troubled at her insight.
“Yeah, you’re lucky the press isn’t allowed inside.”
I nod. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“No problem. Ready to do this?” She slips her hand into mine. I quell the itch to pull my hand away and nod.
The Gravity Between Us (New Adult Contemporary Romance) Page 18
