by Blythe Stone
I let her. Being trapped by her wasn’t really being trapped. It was protective, loving, and ardent. She had no intentions other than pleasurable ones. I felt her hand move my up stomach, pulling my shirt with it. It wasn’t about sex, it was about feeling. A tactile sort of love that only Olivia could deliver to me. No one else’s touch had ever shown me that I was worthy.
“Did you know,” she asked, licking my earlobe into her mouth and sucking before talking again. I felt her hand push my shirt all the way up in the center, bunching it by the hook of her thumb. Her fingers tucked into the ring of my collar and tugging it down, stretching it. “Every inch of you is mine?” She asked. Her other hand was being more of a tease. I felt her drag a single fingertip down my bare side. She pushed her body into me and moved her lips back to mine, kissing me harder, feeling lit up.
“Yes, it’s obvious. I belong to you. I can’t even touch my own skin without thinking about you.”
“Fuck,” she let out, aggressive and aggravated. I felt her teeth bite down on the side of my neck, just a light pressure as she let her hand let go of the fabric on my shirt and she slipped her fingertips right underneath, allowing them to ride up my skin all the way to the other side of my neck and hold.
“Baby,” I whispered. I wanted her so much.
“Yes?” She asked, hardly containing herself as she kept on touching me, kept pushing. I felt her hands push over my breasts as she squeezed and pushed into me, kissing me again.
“Let’s go to the bedroom.”
I didn’t want to move but I needed to soon. My legs were already weak and I knew I could feel her more if we were lying down.
“When you play I get all weak in the knees.”
“Do you want me to play more?” She asked. She had to push herself to stop moving her lips and her hands, I could tell. It was always hard for her to stop once she’d started. Just as it was hard for her to start when she wasn’t quite there. “I can play for you,” she said. “I don’t mind. It relaxes me. That letter was just…” She swallowed loudly and let out a shaky breath.
“Can I sit with you?”
“Of course,” she answered. “Always.”
She took me to the piano and let me sit down before she went around the bench and sat beside me. I didn’t care what she played. I knew it would be sad. It was always sad and beautiful. I leaned my head on her shoulder far enough back that it wouldn’t impede her playing very much.
“I like watching your fingers move over the keys. It reminds of why you’re so good at everything… You know.”
She pushed her shoulder into mine and smiled. “You mean?” She took her left hand from off the keys and let it rest on my upper thigh as she rubbed it down and inward, just to tease. I felt her fingers pushing into my skin.
With her other hand on the higher keys, she danced a light unaccompanied solo, a quick and impatient rhythm I did not know.
“Yes, exactly,” I cleared my throat and smiled. “Your dexterity is off the charts.”
“Aww, babe,” she laughed lightly. That information was new to her apparently. She rubbed my thigh a few times a bit more lovingly. “Any requests?” She asked, taking her hand back to the keys and playing some random bit of a mystery song. It was like elevator music in a way. Like the stuff at Nordstrom that the pianist would just play and play and play for hours and hours every day.
“Ya know, I never felt too good at pleasing anyone before you.” Her fingers kept on tinkering. “I mean that in a lot of ways.”
“Maybe you saved all the pleasing for me.” I put my arm around her back and curled my fingers around her side.
“Play… Moonlight Sonata.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding her head. “You want the whole thing? Or just one movement?”
“Just play until you get tired. I could listen all night.”
I knew it would make me drift and I welcomed the peace.
“Alright but just so you know the third movement is a bit of a chore,” she laughed. “Kinda hard not to feel pissed off during that one but I do love to please.” She cleared her throat and just started to play.
“We shall start out light,” she said, the notes coming so smooth and so right. I watched her; she was pretending to be bored. “This part always reminds me of Schroeder,” she joked as it begun to intensify. “Okay, I’ll stop talking now,” she said, moving her eyes to the keys and watching just as I was. Soon though she stopped looking at the keys. She didn’t need to look, she was feeling it.
Her hands moved and I followed. I became aware of my eyelashes as my lids narrowed so that I was looking through them to see her hands. The music took away the last vestiges of my anxiety. I needed to play more, to sing more. It helped me.
When we got home I hoped we could spend more days like this. Locking ourselves away in the music room could be a therapy in its own. My eyes came open at the start of the second movement and a little more energy bounced me back to seeing her fingers move more quickly.
By the third I was sitting up and staring avidly, remembering those hands on me and loving the way they created the music from hammers and strings. It was the same way she played me to produce an entirely different sound. I didn’t want her to finish. I was sad already. I closed my eyes as she finished with a flourish. I opened to find her right hand in the air.
The music had taken her over. I clasped it in both of my hands and brought it to my lips, smelling the particular scent from the keys on her fingers.
“Thank you.”
“I love playing for you,” she said, turning inward to look at me. “I’m sad I don’t have a cello here, honestly. I didn’t know you liked that so much. I’d learn to play anything for you, really.”
“I don’t even care what you play. It makes me calm and it gives me peace. Plus, there’s the added fascination of it being you. The hands that I know so well, making me happy in yet another way.”
I still didn’t see what her mother meant. She was better at music than I could ever hope to be.
“Maybe we should play together sometime.”
“I’d love that, baby,” she said, a bit of sadness touching her.
“You’re better than me but I could learn something easier or I could sing, but I like your voice more.” I smiled, thinking of the times I’d heard her sing.
“You should sing to me more often.”
“You know I love to sing,” she said, staring back at me vulnerably. She took her hand away and placed it back on the keys. “Here,” she said, as she started to play something slow and a bit simple. “A while back, when I was in New York, I couldn’t stop listening to this song and hearing it in my head,” she said. “I felt so far away from you and it was killing me,” she confessed. “Anyway,” she said, moving back to the keys and concentrating on pounding out the rhythm. When her voice started I knew I hadn’t ever heard the song.
The song was about distance between two people. A craving to break down barriers and transcend walls.
“That’s pretty,” I took her arm. “And so sad.”
We weren’t happy song people. “I want to write you a song but it would take forever.”
I frowned and relaxed, leaning on her again.
“I’ve written you a few songs,” she said.
“You have?!”
I pulled her around so I could see her face.
“When?”
“You’re kidding me, right?” She asked confused. “The first thing I ever played you was a song I wrote about you… That’s why I was so nervous that day. You kept asking me about it, about what it meant and all I could think in my mind was: Avery, Avery, Avery, over and over again. I just couldn’t say. I couldn’t tell you, how much you already meant. It hurt too much to know. I couldn’t say. I couldn’t get you out of my head,” she said. “You were so deep inside me...”
“Play it again, please.”
I needed to hear it now. My memory was no match for the real thing.
She let out a h
eavy sigh. “Okay,” she said.
I watched her move and close her eyes as she started to play. Of course, she knew this song by heart.
It was a beautiful song and I was her inspiration. How could it be? She got into this more than she had anything else she’d played. It didn’t come from someone else. This was her own music. It was a gift to me. I felt it rather than heard it.
Before she finished I turned my head into her shoulder and let the tears that had come to the surface soak into her shirt. I didn’t want to cry again. A lot of things had happened since she wrote this song. Yet, it still contained all the emotions that we’d been through.
“You have to stop making me cry. My eyes are gonna be all red.” I sniffed and hugged her to make sure she knew I wasn’t serious.
“I’m sorry,” she laughed sweetly, moving to hold me.
“It’s a beautiful song. Would you record it for me so I can listen to it when I can’t hear you play it?”
I thought of all the times it would have been wonderful to have such a thing. An instant reminder of Olivia’s love. The real pure source of it.
“I’ve already recorded it,” she said. “I was scared I’d get amnesia or something.”
I lifted my head. “I’m really glad you’re paranoid,” I half-pouted, half-smiled.
“I’m not kidding though, I have the original sheet music at home. I wrote that before I even kissed you. It’s changed a little since then but you really got to me.”
“Enough that you had to write a song?” I kissed her lightly before she could answer and then rested my head on hers.
“Enough that I could write a whole score…” She said quietly.
She started playing something else; it was a variation of the first. I heard notes and rhythms that had been there before.
“You know how weird composers are. Once they find an obsession every little thing’s an event… Avery at the Lake,” she said, dancing a bit of a dark cyclical song. “Avery at the dock,” the music changed, it swept and became almost weightless like we were flying away, the notes shifting into the higher register above the staff and slowly to float away.
“What about Avery right now?” I asked.
“Ah,” she said, bringing her hands back down so the notes would be more familiar but there were sharps in there, a slow curious shiver of five notes before a long rest and then an echo that spoke lower and then higher just off from hitting the mark. “Right now, could take some time,” she said, stopping herself. “There’s too much to sift through...”
“Later then.” My hands went to hers on the keys, matching their position. “I love your hands.” My fingers were a little bit longer but hers were more elegant, made for this kind of thing. Mine were made for rougher activities.
“I could write something if you wanted me too,” she said. “Usually I just write when I can’t push the music away. I just hear it sometimes and it begs to be played. It’s odd.”
“I’m really glad you have music though. It’s an outlet and an art. It suits you. I can see you feeling it and that’s beautiful.”
I followed her fingers over the keys, hopeless as usual. I could never keep up with her.
“What are we going to do when we move? We have to at least get a keyboard. That’s not the same though is it?”
“I have a keyboard in storage. It’ll do. But you’re right, I don’t exactly love it. It’s not the same. Hopefully we can get a small house and I can find a reject stand-up or something. I’ve seen a lot of small houses up that way, I’ve actually been looking. But if you want to live in dorms, and have the full experience, we can do that.”
“I just know my mom can help find us something more solid that feels like a home. She’s been magic ever since you came along.”
“I don’t think I want to do dorms. We might have to have roommates and I don’t want to share with other people, only you, unless you want to do that. I like the idea of finding a stand-up.”
I gave her a faint smile. “That sounds not only cute but useful.”
“I can’t wait until we’re really just away from everyone and together. This feels hard right now. Not right now, this feels amazing. I just mean, before, we had so many people around us and all of those people kept us apart and complicated things so moving away and starting over together could be really amazing. I just can’t really wait. I wish it was already happening. I want to wake up on a Sunday in our bed in our house with no plans and just us. No parents off in the distance, no obligations...”
“That sounds amazing. I wish it could be. I’d even have us sleep through the next few months just to get to the good stuff.”
I sighed, sad that my dreams could not come true. I’d even have the nightmares for that long just to skip the trial and graduation… Everything that we had to do before we could go.
“I can’t wait till summer.”
“Summer,” she hummed. “We can move early,” she suggested. “Start our life, our real solitary life.” She pulled my hair back from my face and ran her fingers over mine, looking down at them as she played. I felt her moving the ring on my hand, carefully twisting it this way and then that. “What do you want out of summer?” She asked.
“This. Everything you just said. Maybe we can get married then. I like the idea of us starting that way.”
I didn’t want to wait when it seemed so right.
“I don’t want to rush anything,” she said. “I’m kind of scared about that right now… When I proposed it was so clear but we’ve been so gone from each other, Baby… Doesn’t that scare you? We haven’t been communicating for months. That’s really… It’s not okay.”
“I love you and I want to marry you,” she said. “But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was scared about what’s going to happen as soon as it happens.”
“I guess I should stop trying to run before walking,” I tried to rein myself in. All of that hope and expectation had thrown me into that question of marriage again like it was a piece we needed to complete us. I shouldn’t think of it that way.
“I’m in love with you, okay? That’s not going to change. And we can get married tonight,” she said. “We can get married tomorrow. I’ll have no regrets. But I’d rather you be in a good place when it happens. I’d rather you know what you want.”
“I’m just saying before we go to school if it’s right…” I pushed. “Maybe.”
She was right in everything that she said. Always the more level-headed when we got to really thinking.
“You’re always right for me,” she said. “These last few months have just spooked me. And then there’s today...” She sighed. “I want to marry you. I want to marry you right now,” she said. “I’m just scared that once it happens you’ll start to see things you didn’t see before. I’m worried things will change. Worried you won’t want me anymore.”
“That is never going to happen. Marriage couldn’t change the way I feel about you. It’s just a formal commitment.”
“Yeah but what if you give me everything Avery. What if you give me everything I’ve never had? Like this place. Like right now. What if you give me everything and then things change… The last few months I was so silently broken. And apparently you were too and I know that now but that feeling was… It was so scary…”
“We’re not going to rush into anything. I can’t see the future and I can’t tell you that I’m never going to mess up because I know I will but I won’t lose you. You’re too important. This is the norm for us.”
“I don’t think I could ever be in a place where I could think you would hurt me on purpose… I’ve never felt that before. I don’t think I can,” she said.
“I won’t bring it up again but I want you to tell me when you want to get married. When you feel it. I know I’m not going to change.”
“I already want to be married to you,” she said. “In my heart I already am. If that sounds cheap I’m sorry. We can go tomorrow. I’d pay for everything. I’d drive. The only
thing stopping us is your birthday in May.”
“I know.” I hated that it was my age that made it impossible for us to do this.
“Maybe it’s a good thing though. I agree. I could marry you this second and be happy but maybe you were right. We already are, in the most important way. The rest is just a legality. We can have that too but right now I can tell you as an absolute that I promise to love you as long as I’m alive and more than likely after.”
It was cheesy but it was me.
“Oh sweetie,” she laughed through a pained stare as she brushed her hand down the side of my face. “I know. I couldn’t be sure about this if I wasn’t already sure about you. I know I want to love you forever. I know you’re worth it. You deserve it. I’ve never felt even close to this for anyone else. You’re like the only person who has ever really made a difference in my life. You know that right? You altered me. You gave me a reason to be.”
We gave each other the same kind of transformation. Complex chemical reactions had catalysts to start them off. As soon as we combined, something happened.
We each changed, creating one new element made from two. The originals were gone. Without her I would still be in room condition, asleep and unaware of real emotion.
With her I became softer, warm and malleable but most importantly I could feel. I was a real person.
“You're my wife. I don't care about a piece of paper.”
I was calm and more sure that I could ever imagine being.
Chapter Twenty-One
Olivia
“Paper or not, I’m yours and I can wait.”
Avery cared about that piece of paper. It could help her to feel safe. I knew that a long time ago, long before she ever voiced it.
She'd been craving company and safety and security for a long time and I wanted to be that. I still do.
All that talk about when was a good time? All that talk about how we should wait?
I had to wait. There was no choice. But I knew if I could’ve married her at the lodge I would’ve done it. It just wasn’t a legal option.
