The Companion Contract

by Solace Ames

  Emanuel spoke at just the right volume so I could hear him above the screams. “Fausto saw someone recording, and that was against the agreement. Don’t mention it later.”

  Xiomara slipped off her guitar and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

  No one would ever forget this amazing shambles of a show, whether they recorded it or not.

  All the strings Emanuel had pulled, all the risks, were finally paying off. And I was a part of it. For the first time in my life, I was actually an integral part of something I believed in.

  * * *

  Miles wandered out in the ocean until he was up to his knees and stayed there. Unless he planned on getting high with a sand shark, I wasn’t duty-bound to follow him out there and get my dress wet, so I sat down on a piece of driftwood and patiently waited.

  Before long, Xiomara came and sat beside me. We watched the purple fire of the last of the sunset. I wanted to tell her what the music had meant to me, but I was frozen in time, transported back to that bleak garage in San Diego.

  I couldn’t separate the past from the present. If I could even pry them apart just a little, I’d reach over and pat my younger self on the shoulder, tell her it would be all right. There’s joy in this world waiting for you, I’d whisper in her ear.

  “You were really good,” I said. “You kept up the bass line. The heartbeat.”

  “I feel different. I’m here as a placeholder and then I’m going back to my Plan A for life, you know, but something changed up there. All I did was hang back and play, but I feel so different. I wonder if Miles...”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just nerves. I’m really self-conscious these days.”

  “You’re probably not worse than anyone else,” I said diplomatically. “You seem really confident.”

  “I didn’t have much of a childhood, so I’m worried now that everything’s final with my transition, I might start regressing in my emotions. Become more immature. It’s a thing. Got to watch myself before I fuck up.”

  “What did you miss?”

  “My mother thought she could make me normal. At least I knew she loved me, or she wouldn’t have tried. If she beat me into being a boy, she figured she’d save me from more pain down the line. We went to visit the U.S. for the first time when I was five, and I had so many scrapes and bruises Emanuel wouldn’t let me go home with her.”

  “Do you talk to her at all?”

  She shook her head. “No point in it. I don’t miss her anymore. You miss your mom, right, Amy? She was good to you?”

  “She still is,” I said. “Yeah, I miss her like burning. She’s barred from the U.S. for at least another three years.”

  “Are you going on tour?”

  “I thought I was.” The idea hit me just then. I didn’t have to choose between a career I hated and the weird torment of life on the road with a man who’d never acknowledge me as anything but a charity project. I didn’t want to end up like Xiomara looking at Miles, or Miles looking at Xiomara. It would hurt to separate from Emanuel—though I wondered if he truly let anyone close to him, anyway—but the pain would fade. “My family doesn’t need so much money anymore. They were having a hard time for a while in Manila, but my brother has a job in a call center and one of my sisters went to Singapore to be a maid and she’s not doing too bad—it’s not one of those jobs where they lock us in basements and feed us scraps. I can do anything. Go anywhere. I’m just beginning to understand that.”

  “We’re blessed,” Xiomara said. “Or lucky, depending on your spiritual or philosophical world view, I guess. You’ve got to believe in your blessing.”

  “I do.”

  New certainty charged through me.

  Would it be so hard to speak to Emanuel? To tell him my feelings and my plans?

  I left Xiomara there, separated from Miles by about fifty feet of ocean and God knows how much bitterness.

  I’d find him. I’d tell him. I was strong enough. I wanted to live a life of joyful intensity and no regrets, not ever.

  I followed the path of softly glowing lights back to the patio, now cleared of instruments. Emanuel was close in conversation with a knot of men in suits, but when he saw me he broke away from them and met me by the patio railing.

  “Were you talking business? I didn’t mean to...” Damn it, I was already apologizing. My resolution rapidly drained. He seemed so self-contained and self-sufficient, guarded by invisible armor.

  “Yes. I welcome the distraction. I don’t like our host or his movies, but the invitation came at a good time.”

  “The killer bowerbird one sounds too cheesy even for me.” I looked down at my feet, rubbed my toes against each other to feel the sand grains, anchoring myself with sensations. My stomach had already started folding itself into origami like it usually did whenever I got within arm’s length of Emanuel.

  “He asked me once, years ago, to star in one of his movies as the villain. An albino demon serial killer. I’d have to wear red contact lenses, of course. I turned him down, and not politely either.”

  “That’s really awful. It must be hard for young people with the evil albino thing from the media hanging over their heads.” I was glad he didn’t have to take the role, although a small part of me turned bitter, considering my history. I wouldn’t just play the demon for the cameras, I’d pull my eyes and sing me so horny if there was a paycheck in it—I couldn’t afford to be picky when I started out in the business.

  “I don’t judge you for not doing the same.”

  “How the fuck do you do that? Know what I’m thinking?” I stared up at him, my eyes painfully wide, astonished and dizzy.

  “I watch you closely.”

  “It’s more than that.” How had I jumped to accusing him? Turn it around, quick. “I wanted to tell you something, and I was hoping I could get it out smoother and more sophisticated, but I think I messed that up, so...so...I’m not going on tour. I want to stay until the new album, and then I’m out.”

  “Is it Miles?”

  Thank fucking God, at least he wasn’t psychic.

  I shook my head. “It’s you.”

  “Amy. Look at me.” He took his sunglasses off and became another man, cold armor gone, emotions I couldn’t read swirling behind his eyes. “I want you to stay.”

  Too little, too late. The word want hit me like a slap in the face. Want? I wanted my family back, I wanted a fucking haircut. Want wasn’t specific enough. The heat rose in my cheeks and drained from my heart, leaving me feeling cold and broken and ungrateful too, because after all, he’d been so good to me.

  “I see you just fine, but you don’t see me,” I said, my voice choking up near the end. I took a deep breath and felt something deep inside me float loose. I wondered if it was my pride—no, I could still meet his inexorable gaze without flinching. I still had my pride.

  I’d lost my hope.

  His mouth hardened. He was angry. I realized, with a shock, that I’d never seen him truly angry before. Not even the time he’d hurt Miles.

  Emanuel wouldn’t unleash that anger on me. I knew him well enough to not be afraid.

  Please let something happen, let something change. I can’t go on like this.

  “You’re wrong,” he said. “All I can see anymore is you. You drown the world in your light.”

  I was dying. Time froze and splintered, stuttered into irregular seconds that wouldn’t match the rhythm of my ragged heartbeat. Breathe. Breathe. If the bass line was the heartbeat, the drumbeat was the breath. Let me be your song. My hands trembled at my sides.

  “Amy—” He touched my hands, folded them in his own. The word came out low and quiet, hypnotizing me with the richness of his voice and the rage in his eyes that I knew wasn’t for me. Maybe it was for himself. “You’re not unwanted. I’m sorry if I ever le
t you believe such a thing. You’re so much more than what you can do for me. How can I show you?”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I whispered. Pieces of my mind were dissolving like sugar cubes, melting into something sweeter. How could I respond to him with words? My body would know better, was already yearning to speak under his touch. I gripped his fingers, felt the nails and knuckles and calluses and oh God he was real and he was here for me.

  “You’ll speak to me, with or without words. You’ll tell me what you want.”

  He had a plan for me.

  Yes.

  “I don’t know how. But yes, I...I want that. I want you.” It was hard to voice my desire, but satisfying beyond my wildest, loneliest, stupidest dreams.

  “Then I’ll lead you,” he said, and smiled for the first time. “I want your first kiss, the taste of you when you come, your cries and screams and my name on your lips. I want them in my own order, as long as the order pleases you, and I know enough of your nature to think it will.”

  I’d taken a few steps toward rational thought in the last minute. No more. I was gone—couldn’t think. My skin blazed. My entire self was centered on the pulsing triangle of liquid heat between my legs.

  “And I like that you’ve been with so many other men,” he said, smile curling and becoming more wicked. “Experience attracts me more than innocence. You won’t miss those other men, when I have you.”

  “You’re that good?” I teased, and shifted my hips to increase the delirious sliding sensation. “Show me.”

  He pulled me forward so that our bodies almost, almost met. I don’t notice my breasts often—they’re just two areas on my chest, little toys that other people like to play with sometimes—but in this moment, I could actually feel them and enjoy them for myself, the tightness of my dress pressing against the hardened points of my nipples and promising sensuous torture to come.

  “I will.” His hand traced the curve of my hip, then he let go and stepped back, leaving me aching for a firmer touch. “Tomorrow. Tonight, I’ll explain to Miles that the nature of your companionship will change.”

  “So that’s the way it’s going to be?”

  “Yes. You always have a choice, but sometimes these choices are a burden. I can take that burden from you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I know what you mean. I respond to that. Being submissive. I trust you.” He was getting to me on all levels now, because even better than the slippery sinful feeling was the same feeling all through my mind when I thought of giving up control to his...his order. His rough, clever hands, his calm voice laying out a clear path for me. Oh God.

  I wondered if he’d at least let me suck his cock again tonight.

  I was so fixed on his eyes and his smile and his everything that I didn’t even hear the lawyer the first time. I’d forgotten other people even existed.

  “Hey, Emanuel, we need to talk to the director. He wants to use that first song in his title credits.”

  Emanuel made a dismissive growling noise and didn’t move his gaze from me. Me. I’m making him do that. I could get drunk off that sound.

  When the lawyer spoke again, he’d toned the urgency way the fuck down. “Um, I think you need to...I mean...We’re not talking killer bowerbird movies.” He listed off a name I instantly recognized, a guy who’d won Oscars for his twisty thrillers.

  “Go talk to him,” I said to Emanuel. I’m giving orders, I realized. How deliciously ironic.

  He gave me a salute, slipped his sunglasses back on and walked away with the lawyer.

  I leaned against the railing with soaking wet panties and a face that hurt from smiling. Tonight was going to be complicated. Oh, but tomorrow...

  Chapter Ten

  The rest of the night passed in a pleasurable blur of music and celebration. We moved through the night and nothing blocked our way.

  Miles was exhausted by the time we got home and barely managed to stumble into bed. I still had enough energy to pack my suitcases, wipe off his eyeliner with cotton pads and cold cream, and tell him what he already knew.

  “So you’re leaving but staying.” Miles grabbed a pillow and coiled his arms and legs around it like some kind of arboreal creature. The ambience of the space we shared had gone from porn set to slumber party. Tonight, being next to him was...nice. More sensual than sexual.

  “Yeah. I’ll still be your sober companion in the daytime. But I won’t be here for you at night. You graduated ahead of schedule. I mean, we could say that. And then we could make it true.” I turned to face him, plenty of room between us in the vast bed.

  I hoped he was ready. I was hoping so hard, I probably would have swallowed a lie.

  Miles just changed the subject. “I had a feeling it was going to happen. I saw the way he looked at you.”

  Sobriety still drifting in limbo, then. I wasn’t sure whether to be angry at Miles for not reassuring me, or grateful for his honesty. I didn’t have any room left to process emotions, not after Emanuel and what he’d put me through. “I know this is crazy, but I’m going to ask you for advice. What did you and Emanuel have together?”

  “I still don’t know.” He blinked rapidly. Poor sleepyhead. “Something happened. I’d never been with a man emotionally before.”

  “You didn’t know you were bi?”

  “I’m not. I don’t do labels. I’m just me. Hey, stop rolling your eyes.” He yawned and lazily shot me the middle finger.

  “Sorry. I’ve just heard the ‘no labels’ thing a lot from guys in the business. Continue. Please.”

  “I knew in the back of my mind about Emanuel, because why else would he put up with me? I was always pushing, testing the limits. Seeing what I could get away with. One day he called my bluff. Turned out I liked it.”

  “Mmm. Hand to the throat, that sort of thing?”

  “No, he bought me flowers and bonbons. Of course it was crazy sex, the fuck you think?”

  Miles, you bitch. I flicked him off and stuck out my tongue at him.

  “We were good together, as far as I could tell. For about a month. We kept it quiet. Even the fan sites didn’t guess. Then, just when I was getting used to it, he left to go to Colombia. I said I’d come along—he said of course not, people kill you where I’m going. Once Emanuel and Fausto flew off, the band imploded, and I started using again, what a surprise—stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before.”

  “So that wasn’t your first relapse?”

  “Not the first, not the last. Anyway, when he came back, we decided not to pick it up—to just stay partners, like creative partners. I got clean again. We talked about getting the band back together. Then Xiomara happened. Before her, we were getting along, as far as exes go. I don’t have anything bad to say about him. Some people think he’s a Machiavellian type, but once you get to know him, he’s all right. People are really out to get him. He never lets them. And if he told you he’s good in bed, which he probably did, that’s not a lie.”

  “What does he like?”

  “Everything. As long as he’s in charge. He doesn’t switch, not like you and me.”

  Confirming what I already suspected and sending little tingles through my skin. I wriggled lower under the covers. I decided to change the subject to Miles himself—I wasn’t quite bold enough to beg for more details. “How’s your sex drive doing? Is it...driving?”

  “Four flat tires and running on the rims, but still driving,” he said, and yawned again. “It’ll come back. At least I can sing. Sometimes I don’t feel like singing. I don’t want to do anything. Just sleep.”

  I took the hint and turned off the light.

  I wondered what kind of car my own sex drive would drive. One of those chopped-up tuner cars Chiho adored, too fast for its own good. I knew something was wrong with me, but I’d made peace with
that fact years ago. Something was wrong with almost everyone.

  I memorized the feel of the sheets, how the fine cotton rubbed against my back. This would be my last night in this bed with Miles.

  Unless, of course, Emanuel said differently.

  Every time I’d been with Miles, I’d been with Emanuel anyway, in the spirit if not in the flesh.

  My thoughts were drifting in incredibly inappropriate directions. Drifting all over the road. I wouldn’t mind being shared with Miles, if that was what Emanuel wanted. Wicked giddy, I smiled in the darkness. Then I remembered Xiomara and tried to steer my thoughts straight again. I didn’t want to step on her toes, even if she’d sworn off Miles. Despite knowing her for so little time, she meant a lot to me.

  Contrary to popular opinion, whores can be very loyal.

  Sometimes too loyal. What I felt for Emanuel and his circle was practically feudal.

  A warning sounded in my mind. Watch out for yourself, Amy. No one else in this country will.

  But I was tired of living alone, and maybe my luck was turning. Tonight had been such a strange mix of ordinary and miraculous. I’d told Emanuel what I felt—well, choked it out awkwardly, at least—let him know my decision, then waited for his decision. Done the adult thing. And it fucking worked. I couldn’t get past that. I’d run myself ragged getting ready for the fight, shown up, and had the prize thrown in my arms.

  Or I was the prize, right on the delicious verge of being claimed.

  I liked the sound of that.

  * * *

  Sex wasn’t supposed to happen on schedule if you were romantic, right? The idea was that when the love was strong enough and two people were alone, it surged like a wild wave, unstoppable by timetables or agendas.

  I wasn’t very romantic.

  At nine o’clock in the morning, I drove Miles to a tattoo parlor where he’d be under the gun all day. He wanted a gauntlet on his left forearm to cover up cat-scratch scars and the names of people who didn’t mean anything to him anymore.