my life as a pop album

by LJ Evans

  Eventually I pulled away again, and reached for a napkin to blow my ugly, runny nose. “I’m sorry,” I said again. It was a bad habit. He was right. But I was sorry.

  “If you ever say you’re sorry to me again, I’m going to have to find a lake to toss you in,” he said and this time, he grabbed my chin and shoved his lips against mine. They were hard and unyielding, demanding that I listen to him and what he was trying to tell me with his body and his words.

  And I responded. With hurt and anger and sadness, but at the same time with a deep longing. Longing to have someone up close to me who had nothing but me and my well-being in his mind. Someone who didn’t care about Jake or Mama or Daddy’s well-being. Someone who was willing to put me first. I’d never had that. Never. I’d always been second or third or last.

  His cell phone rang and he removed his lips from mine but didn’t let me go. He still held me tight up against his chest as he answered it.

  It was the vet. They’d finished and wanted to talk with us.

  Derek left some cash on the table and we walked across the street, fingers tangled in a way that allowed me to run my fingers over his guitar callouses. I wasn’t sure what to do with this gorgeous BB. I wasn’t sure at all, but I thought I might want to keep him, and I knew that was a dangerous thing to want because reality would invade our lives soon enough. In less than sixteen days. And as I’d found out the hard way, reality wasn’t forgiving at all.

  The vet said the kitten should recover completely with no long-term repercussions. Some cats couldn’t pee correctly after losing a tail, but because this one still had about a quarter of her tail left, she thought the kitten would be just fine. They wanted to keep her at least overnight. She was probably only about three weeks old. Probably should still be nursing on the mama. They wanted to make sure she’d eat from a bottle.

  “Were you thinking of keeping her?” the vet asked.

  We looked at each other. We hadn’t discussed the kitten again since we’d left. “Yes,” Derek said without removing his eyes from my tear-stained face. “I think we would very much like to keep her.”

  And I was back to the puddle of honey butter. Because I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about just the kitten.

  “Okay, then. Why don’t you come by in the morning and we’ll see if she’s ready to check out?”

  “I have to be in Denver tomorrow for a gig,” he told the vet.

  “That’s a long haul,” she smiled because Derek had that effect on people. He was smooth and charming. Sexy and disarming.

  “How early can we pick her up?” he asked.

  “Normally we don’t open till eight, but I’ll meet you here at seven?” she offered.

  “Thank you. That would be great,” he responded with full-on charm in his smile. “Is there a place we can stay tonight?”

  “We have a couple little places. Probably not what you’re used to, but they're clean. I’d recommend the Wooly Bison just down the street.”

  “Thanks. And please call and let us know if anything changes,” Derek said.

  We left with my heart still feeling raw and bloodied, but somehow also hopeful.

  He opened the Camaro passenger door for me and then got in the driver’s seat. Sure enough, just down the street was a quaint sign for the Wooly Bison. I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay at a placed called the wooly anything but I guess that old saying, beggars can’t be choosers, was true.

  Derek checked us in as he always did, holding both our bags and not letting me help, and we went to a tiny room with a wrought iron bed, and old but clean wallpaper and carpeting. It wasn’t a place I’d recommend as a vacation hot spot, but I also didn’t feel like I’d go to sleep and wake up with bug bites scattered across my body.

  Derek called Mitch and let him know what was up. I called Mama and Cam to give them an update and see how Cam was feeling. I chuckled for the first time in hours because Cam on bedrest was not a happy Cam. She said Blake’s grandmama had brought her a whole kit of cross-stich items to help keep her busy. Cross-stich! Because, really, who would ever think that Cam would do something as domesticated as cross-stitch!

  When I got off the phone, Derek was watching me. I had sunk down in the wing-back chair that was by the window, the sheer curtains diffusing the bright Oklahoma sunshine into a dream-like world.

  He was sitting on the bed that was covered in a beautiful quilt that someone obviously handmade because you don’t get that kind of quality in a manufactured environment. I focused on the quilt because it was too hard to focus on him. It made it hurt to even breath.

  “Miss Mia,” he said quietly.

  “Hmm?”

  “I need you to come here.”

  His voice was so deep and sexy that it made my whole body tingle even across the room. And, for the first time since the hotel room in Oklahoma City, my body froze. Because… well, because I knew what he wanted. We were alone. We had the rest of the day and night until we could go anywhere. We had nothing scheduled. No plans.

  Except, I thought that Derek definitely had plans.

  I swallowed. But I didn’t get up from the chair, because, like I said, I was frozen.

  “Miss Mia,” he said but there was a demand to his tone that made me want to respond. Like a Good Girl would, to any demand. A command was meant to be obeyed, right? But I also knew what was going to happen once I obeyed this command, and I was still slightly afraid of his reaction if we did this thing right now.

  He crooked his finger at me. Another command. I swallowed and forced my frozen body to my feet and moved with a huge effort from the chair to the bed. I stood in front of him.

  He sighed and grinned as if I’d just given him a Christmas present. He placed his beautiful hands on my waist, and his fingers curled under my t-shirt to touch my bare skin in a languid swirl that quickly turned the frozen chunk inside me into a puddle of mush.

  He looked up at me, which wasn’t a very big distance because he was tall even though he was sitting, and I was short even though I was standing.

  “You’re so beautiful it hurts,” he told me sexily.

  Which, really, was my line in my head for him. “Right back at ya,” I said.

  “But I don’t think anyone has ever told you that,” he said, and my heart hurt again, but for another reason. It was an ache for something I felt like I’d missed.

  “So, Little Bird, I’m going to keep saying it to you until you know it’s true and not just a line I’m using to get you into this bed with me.”

  “You’re a moron,” I said, trying to make light of it, but he knew me better by now. He knew that really, I didn’t know what else to say to him.

  He tugged at the hem of my shirt and pulled it up where I reached for it and pulled it over my own head so that I was standing in front of him in my bra and my jean shorts. I fought the urge to cover myself and instead placed my hands on his shoulders as he pulled me closer in between his legs.

  He leaned forward and kissed my stomach and inched up to kiss the space between my breasts as he reached around me and undid the clasp of my bra. And when it was gone, he took my right breast into his mouth and sucked. And I moaned. My first moan of the day.

  As he progressed his way across my body, the moans came one after another. Each time he touched a new part of me with his lips and his tongue and his very able fingers, my body and my voice responded equally.

  I was his butter to mold into whatever shape he wanted, like those butter sculptures you see at state fairs. His to create into whatever he so desired.

  When my clothes were gone, all of them, he picked me up and laid me down on the bed while he disrobed. I wondered if he wanted me to return the favor of kissing every part of him like he’d kissed every part of me. I was really, ridiculously new to all of this. He didn’t know that yet.

  But then I told my brain to shut up as he joined me with a wicked smile that stretched his cleft and had me reaching for it with my finger.

  “Miss Mia, have
you ever come on a man’s hands?”

  It was hard to respond. Because my breathing was already out of control. “Is that number thirteen or fourteen?” I teased.

  “It can be one hundred if you’d like, I just want to know, has anyone ever given you that type of pleasure?”

  His eyes were stormy. So, God blessedly stormy. I felt like I might lose myself in just his eyes, and I wasn’t sure what would happen to me if I lost myself in the rest of him, but for once, I didn’t care. I wanted to lose myself. I didn’t want to be Good Girl Mia, or any kind of Mia.

  “Mia?”

  “No,” I croaked out.

  And he proceeded to show me with his long musician fingers, and his kisses on my lips and on my throat and on my body, just what it was like to come on a man’s hands. Slow and hard and oh my God, so achingly beautiful. I was gasping and moaning, and tugging at his shoulders, wanting even more of him and the peace he brought me. Because it was utter peace. More than in the quiet of the caverns. More than in the pages of a book.

  He was smiling as he felt my body shake and shiver into him, a smile that was so damn cocky, and yet so damn loving at the same moment that I felt any last wall I had crumble away, leaving me as bare and open in my soul as I was right now in my body.

  “I want to show you just how non-yucky oral sex can be, Little Bird, but I’m going to have to save that for later tonight, because right now, if I don’t put myself inside you, I might just explode,” he said with another cocky smile.

  He reached for his jeans on the floor and pulled out a condom, and I eye-rolled. He kissed me quick. Kiss for an eye-roll.

  “Why are you eye-rolling me?” he chuckled.

  “Do you really carry condoms in your pocket?”

  His smile was wiped away, and he looked at me with all seriousness. “Only since I met you,” he said huskily.

  He hovered above me, and looked into my eyes which were, oddly, still open. I wanted to see him and everything he was doing to me and everything that I was doing to his body. With Hayden, I’d had my eyes closed the majority of the time, afraid. Afraid of losing my virginity and afraid of losing him. I’d just been afraid.

  Now, with Derek, I wasn’t afraid. I was longing. I was aching. I was hoping. And he seemed to see that in me because he was so slow when he entered me, and so slow in every move he made until we were both moaning together, and I felt like every part of me was now entwined with every part of him. And he fit inside me like that perfect puzzle piece should even though it hurt briefly because I’d only done this once before.

  And then we went beautifully over the edge together until there was nothing but us and our hopes and our torn souls reaching for each other.

  It was life altering. The books were right. Hayden had been wrong. All wrong. There was nothing about this time that was like that time with Hayden. When he took, and I gave and nothing was left after. Now, I felt like we both took and we both gave and what was left was more than what we had started with.

  I lay curled up against him, head on his shoulder, and I felt myself smile for the first time that day. A real smile. A smile I still was getting accustomed to because it had never been a regular part of me. I don’t think my whole life had seen me smile like this.

  He kissed my forehead and pulled me closer against him.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Umm. I think that should be my line,” I giggled. Mental head thunk because it was me, giggling.

  He chuckled. “I knew you’d been doing it wrong.”

  “Or at least he was.” I smiled against his chest and was rewarded with another deep rumble from deep inside him.

  “Thank God,” he sighed out. “Now I get to be the best sex you’ve ever had.”

  “Conceited much?”

  “Your words, not mine.”

  I slapped him playfully and went to pull away, but he tugged me back up tight against him. “I’m not done with you yet.”

  It was meant to be sexy. And, holy potato peels, it was, but it also triggered memories of the only other time I’d done this and the guy had left me the following week.

  “Why not?” I said into his chest.

  “Why not what? And does that count as your thirteen?”

  “I think I’m only at ten,” I told him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “I’m pretty sure that I can make you ask a very different question,” he said as his hands started to twirl at my hip and then in between my thighs. And, he was right. My why went straight out of my head, and all I could think was please, please Lord, will you take me again.

  And he did.

  Over. And over. And over. As the light faded and the sky darkened. I’m sure the stars were out there twinkling but I never saw them. I didn’t care if I ever saw them again. I only cared about seeing the storm in his gray eyes as he reached for me, and I reached back.

  Because Ed is so right in “Firefly.” It was all about teaching my skin new tricks and warming me up with his lips. Our hearts together. Our lips and faces and cheeks meeting in a wild beat. Making sure I held on tight as Derek quietly sewed my broken heart back together.

  PHOTOGRAPH

  Together

  “Loving can heal. Loving can mend your soul.”

  -Ed Sheeran

  MUSIC WOKE ME UP. “Little Bird” was playing, and I slammed the home button with as much might as I could, and next to me Derek chuckled.

  “You really don’t like mornings.”

  What could I say? I didn’t, but waking up next to him, the feel of his body next to mine, somehow that made it okay. I couldn’t help but smile at him and then reached over to kiss him. I kissed him not like a Good Girl but just like me. Like I wanted to kiss the guy who fixed my heart that I had thought was broken beyond repair. I kissed him like I wanted to give him something.

  He smiled against my lips and reached down to touch my nether regions, and I couldn’t help but flinch because I was painfully, wonderfully tender down there.

  “Are you sore?” he asked with a cocky smile.

  “Duh?” I said back with an eye-roll that earned me a quick kiss.

  “But, it’s a good sore, right?” He was still laughing at me.

  “You’re a moron,” I said. I went to get out of bed, but he pulled me to him and tickled me until I went limp in his arms, staring up at the face that was so gorgeous it could stop a zillion hearts.

  “So, the oral sex? Ew or not ew?” He was still enjoying himself way too much for my liking. I flushed a thousand shades of red because thinking about what he’d done to me and what I’d done to him in the darkness of the hotel room was much more than even this Mia could handle in the morning light.

  I pushed my forehead into his chest. I didn’t want to respond. “I think you’ve reached your twenty-question limit.”

  “I’m assuming that’s a ‘not ew’ then.” I smacked him, face still hidden.

  He kissed the back of my head and then bounced out of bed with so much impossible energy that it couldn’t help but remind me of Cam. And Jake. But mostly Cam. But today, the thought of them didn’t force the guilt to bubble up. Instead, I got to keep it hidden away.

  “Let’s go, hot shot,” he said, tugging at my foot while tickling the bottom which had me bolting upright to remove my foot from his grasp.

  “You’re awful,” I told him.

  “Liar.” And then he disappeared into the bathroom, showing me his naked parts that made my very sore body hum with delight anyway.

  * * *

  True to her word, the vet showed up early. She gave us a checklist of things to watch for, a handful of bottles to feed the kitten with, and a list of other supplies that we would need. Then we were on the road.

  It wasn’t even eight by the time we headed the Camaro towards the highway and Denver. It was going to be a long haul. And Derek had rehearsal this afternoon. Thank God their show wasn’t until the following day, but it was still goi
ng to be exhausting.

  I had the kitten bundled in my lap while Derek drove. I looked over at him. We hadn’t really slept much in the last couple days. Hardly at all on this trip. “I should drive,” I told him. “You have to have your energy for tonight.”

  “We’ll switch halfway, and I’ll try to nap,” he said with a smile that made my heart and body zing.

  And then we rode in silence. Happy, peaceful silence.

  I felt content. A feeling that I didn’t know if I’d ever had.

  “What are we going to name her?” I pondered aloud.

  “Jane,” he said.

  “Jane?”

  “After Jane Austen, of course.”

  “That’s so bland though,” I told him unsatisfied.

  “Calling a kitten Elizabeth seems too much.”

  “Definitely not Elizabeth!” I agreed. “We’ll have to think about it.”

  “You may have to think about it, but she’ll always be Jane to me,” he smirked.

  I cuddled the kitten as it slept, and somewhere along the way, I fell asleep too, because I came awake as the car stopped in a Target parking lot.

  “I’m sor—” I started to say, but then stopped. Derek grinned at me.

  “Good thing you stopped. Was going to have to find a lake to toss you into.”

  “What are we doing?”

  He pointed to the store. “Supplies for Jane and supplies for us.”

  “Supplies?”

  “We did use all my condoms, and I have a feeling we are going to need some more.” He grinned that devilish grin.

  “Who says?” I couldn’t help but tease back.

  “Best sex you’ve ever had and now you tell me you’re done.” He shook his head in mock exasperation.

  “It's kind of hard to say it’s the best when there was only that one other experience to compare it to,” I said without thinking.

  He was halfway out the door, but slid back into his seat to look at me. The shock on his face got me more than anything. I busied myself with Jane the Kitten.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  I felt the heat creep into my skin. I shrugged. What was there to say? I shouldn’t have said anything.