Blended Notes

by Lilah Suzanne

  “It’ll be something like: Have you ever had a moment when you looked at someone and the whole world disappeared?” Hamming it up, he glances at the imaginary audience, then turns more seriously to Nico. “Even though we were on a red carpet in Hollywood with cameras and superstars—and their entourages and egos—” Nico laughs, but Grady doesn’t. “Even with all that craziness, all I saw was you. And I knew I had to meet you. And then after I met you, I knew I had to get to know you more. And after I got to know you, I knew I had to kiss you. And after I kissed you—” He pauses again, not for effect, but to cope with the swell of emotion in his chest. “After I kissed you, I knew that I had to find some way to keep kissing you for the rest of my life.”

  Nico’s eyes shine. “Grady…”

  “It was you. All along, I had been looking for you in all the wrong places, trying to find your face in all the wrong people. I can’t believe I found you. I can’t believe I get to keep you. And I can’t believe that I’m finally here, getting to marry you.”

  Nico releases Grady’s hands to swipe quickly at his eyes. “See? How am I supposed to follow that?”

  Grady smiles and winks. “I have an idea.” He bends forward, and Nico cups his face, sweeping his thumbs over Grady’s jaw.

  “I love you. So much. I want to keep you, too.” Nico whispers, closing his eyes.

  Grady kisses him, soft, tender—serene. “That’s all I need to hear.”

  Linden finds them at the altar still, bent together quietly. He waits until they untangle themselves. “I can show you the reception area now, if you’d like.”

  Grady glances at Nico, who dips his head in silent communication. This is the place; it’s intimate, private, beautiful. No one in the world can bother them here. No one can take away the moment when they’ll make a promise witnessed by family and friends and god and the universe and the trees to keep each other, for good.

  “We’d like to go ahead and put down a deposit.”

  Halfway back down the hillside, they leave behind the peace of the forest and the dead-zone of no Wi-Fi or cell service. As soon as they cross the line back into the real world, their phones blow up with missed calls and voicemails, text messages and notifications. Grady pulls his phone from his pocket to see that the newest text on the screen is from Spencer: IT WASN’T ME.

  “Can we just—” Nico’s hands flex on the steering wheel. “That was so nice, out there. Can we just ignore the rest of the world for a little longer?”

  Grady switches off his phone, then shuts it in the glove compartment for good measure. “Absolutely we can.”

  The ride back seems shorter than the drive in, easier, until they approach their street and both hold their breath until they can see that their driveway is free from press or photographers. Once safely inside the house, their only remaining sanctuary, the world disappears again. There is only Nico’s mouth, and Nico’s hands, and Nico’s warm skin beneath his fingertips. They stumble up the stairs, but then, instead of turning left to their bedroom, Nico detaches his lips from Grady’s and steps to the right. “Just one quick thing.” He points to the green binder tucked beneath his arm.

  Grady watches him disappear into the office and considers—he can go to their room and get a head start on the fun or they can just move the fun elsewhere. He follows Nico.

  “Need to transfer the venue info from the planning binder to the official wedding binder…” Nico spins the chair around and pulls a blue binder from the top of the desk. Grady pivots the chair to the side, pushes Nico’s legs wide, and goes to his knees.

  “Grady.” Nico looks down, blinking rapidly. “This really will only take a minute.”

  “Okay, go on then.” Grady hums, runs his palms up the firm, long muscles of Nico’s thighs, and adds, “I ain’t stoppin’ you.”

  Nico licks his lips, takes a shaky breath, and flips open his binders without moving the chair, and his lap, out of Grady’s reach. The wedding binder has tabs and zippered pockets and color-coded lists. Nico flips sections until he finds the one he was looking for, and Grady slides his hands higher to tease at the soft bulge of Nico’s balls. Nico’s breath catches briefly, then Grady hears the snap of the binder’s rings opening. He tugs the button of Nico’s pants loose and pulls the zipper down. As Nico stretches to grab something else, Grady pulls Nico’s soft cock from his briefs.

  “Grady,” Nico says, shaky and breathy and not nearly as chastising as he means it.

  Grady drags his open mouth along the shaft; it swells as he goes. He looks up at Nico without pausing. “Uh-huh?”

  “I’m…” Nico starts to explain, looking from Grady to his task, and seeming to lose the thread of whatever sentence he was trying to utter. He’s struggling to slide a stack of paper into a three-hole punch; his hands fumble to get the paper into the tiny slot. Grady lifts his head, pauses deliberately, and Nico slips in the paper and slams down the hole punch. “Okay.”

  Grady sucks the head of Nico’s cock between his lips, then moves down as he hardens against Grady’s tongue, until he can hold him deep at the back of his fluttering throat. He loves this, loves being overwhelmed like this, focused only on the taste and feel of Nico filling his mouth and throat, fighting the urge to pull away by breathing slowly through his nose. It’s only when Nico yanks on his hair and curses that Grady pulls slowly back.

  “Fuck, Grady.” Nico has either abandoned the wedding binder or finished with it, because his attention is no longer divided; he looks, heavy-lidded, at Grady, as his cock slips free from Grady’s lips and stands fully hard and thick and flushed dark.

  “Mm, there we go.” Grady wraps his hand around the length and pumps a few times. “Look at you. Gorgeous.” Nico’s cock pulses in Grady’s hand. Grady bends to suck him down again, but he only manages a few slow bobs of his head before Nico is pulling at his hair again.

  “Shit—” He’s panting and trembling and gasps out, “too fast, stand up.” So Grady stands, and strips his shirt off as Nico takes care of Grady’s jeans while still sitting in the chair. Then he kisses across Grady’s pecs where the tattoos are inked. He works one of Grady’s nipples with his teeth and tongue; liquid desire zaps down Grady’s spine.

  Two restless nights alone have made Grady hungry for Nico’s touch, and now that his mouth and hands are all over him, licking and kissing his chest and stomach, hands greedy on Grady’s ass and cock, Grady gives in to it completely, gluts himself on it, runs his fingers through Nico’s glossy hair, and tips over the edge without realizing he was that close. He perches on the edge of the roll-top desk to catch his breath. “Sorry,” he says, wincing at Nico’s careful removal of his very nice, and now very soiled, shirt.

  “Are you really?” Nico replies wryly, setting the shirt to the side; bare torso-ed and rock-hard, he leans back in the chair with his legs spread and eyebrows lifted.

  “Nope,” Grady answers, dropping back to his knees to finish what he started. Truth be told, he’s not sorry about that at all.

  15

  “Thank you all for joining us today—” Nico rises, gesturing regally with a wide sweep of his arms to the group formed around the round table.

  “You’re welcome. This is my house, so I had no choice.”

  “Gwen.”

  “Anyway,” Nico sends a look to Gwen, then a nicer one to Flora, who is sitting next to her at the big round table in Gwen and Flora’s dining area. “As I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, the news of our upcoming nuptials has, most unfortunately, been leaked to the media—”

  “Does he think this a press conference?” Gwen stage-whispers to Clementine on Flora’s other side. Clem is typing on her phone, but gives a little one-shouldered shrug. Spencer is next to Clementine, taking notes on a legal pad, and Grady is next to him. Grady suggested that maybe they should have a press conference, or an interview or magazine feature. Now that the barn door is open and the cows
long gone, the easiest thing would be to go ahead and invite everyone inside. But Nico is convinced that they can still keep everything but the fact of the wedding’s existence a secret, and Grady does enjoy watching his clever mind in scheming mode.

  “Before we really begin, was anyone followed or possibly bugged before coming here today?” He glances suspiciously around the table as little Cayo toddles into the room, bringing a toy from the living room that he holds up for Gwen.

  “Nico, chill. It’s not like the mafia is out to get you.” Gwen takes a toy phone with light-up buttons from Cayo and pretends to receive a phone call. “Hello? Oh hi! It’s for you, Bubba!” Cayo takes the phone and toddles back to the living room. “No one was bugged.”

  “They’re worse than the mafia,” Nico retorts. “A relentless, privacy invading scourge.”

  “He ain’t wrong,” Clementine comments, still more focused on her phone than on Nico.

  “Is anyone hungry?” Flora says. “I made cookies.”

  Everyone mumbles a “yes” or “yeah” or “sure.”

  “I need to repeat that I had nothing to do with this,” Spencer says, again. “I learned my lesson. I didn’t breathe a word, I sw—”

  “We know!” Everyone else replies at the same time.

  “Actually, yes, about that. Spencer, thank you.” Nico says, and Spencer’s mouth hangs open. “First order of business: Gwen can you track down who did leak it?”

  “Oh, it was the bakery. Uh, Sweetie Yums or Sugar Buns or something equally as godawful. They posted a picture on Instagram of the type of cake you picked out.”

  “Sweet Thang,” Grady supplies. Cayo appears at his side, offering a little wooden car with a peg person sitting in the driver’s seat. “Why thank you, kind sir,” he tells Cayo, who gives him a drooling, four-toothed smile.

  “Well, you really should have had Sweet Buns sign an NDA.”

  “I did,” Nico snaps, “I think I did… We were so rushed, I don’t… Shit, did we? And it’s Sweet Thang— Ugh, why am I defending them?” Nico presses his thumb between his eyes the way he does when he’s getting a tension headache. Grady spins the wheels on the tiny car and tags in to the discussion. “Everyone we’ve met with has signed a nondisclosure agreement. I remember.”

  “So, you gonna sue?” Gwen wonders.

  “Ah, well,” Grady rubs his chin and looks sheepishly down at the table. “My usual lawyer, uh, has declined to continue representing me.” At least that’s what Grady assumes, since he called Boomer Jenks this morning for advice about the situation—and his record company troubles, though Nico doesn’t yet know about that—and Boomer said he’d “sooner tussle with a hungry grizzly bear than piss off Stomp Records” and advised Grady to find someone else. He’d really liked Boomer, too.

  “That’s unfortunate,” Flora says.

  Grady shrugs. “It’s not the first time.”

  “That’s because you pick these small-time lawyers who are happy to take your money,” Nico interjects, “Then drop you instead of doing their jobs.”

  “I don’t want some slick, big-city lawyer,” Grady responds. “Like I’m some full-of-myself hotshot with a hotshot lawyer.”

  Spencer coos at Grady with mock sympathy, just like the old snarky Spencer that Grady knows and loves. “Aw. Isn’t he precious? Not full of himself.” Gwen snorts at that, and Flora, pressing a hand to her mouth, apologizes even as she laughs.

  “Thanks, y’all.” Grady says with a chuckle. Well, at least they keep him humble.

  “Sugar,” Clementine says, eyes still trained on her phone’s screen. “You aren’t playing dive bars in Shelbyville anymore. You need a hotshot lawyer. I got someone perfect for you; don’t you worry.”

  Nico holds up a hand. “We aren’t suing her. But we will take that lawyer.”

  After scrolling his phone, Spencer informs them, “She says in a comment that she did not tag either of you and did not know that you or anyone else could find it,” He scrolls farther, adjusts his glasses, and looks up. “She does seem to feel bad.”

  “An unintentional shit-storm is still a shit-storm,” Nico says through gritted teeth.

  Spencer leans back, defensive. “I am just the messenger.” Cayo strolls by and drops a stuffed bunny in Spencer’s lap; he looks at it as if he has no idea what to do with such a thing.

  “I’m aware, I’m—” Nico pinches the bridge of his nose, takes a deep breath, and releases it to say, “I know.”

  Grady fiddles with the toy car and frowns; Nico is getting upset just talking to their friends about what happened and how he wants to move forward, and Grady is becoming less and less confident that he can give Nico his private, peaceful wedding in the woods.

  “Spencer.” Nico tries again after several more meditative breaths; his tone is more even now. “If you could handle the rest of any in-person or over-the-phone meetings to finalize the wedding details, that would be very helpful. Put reservations under your name, or your mother’s name. Hell, tell them it’s for your dog’s wedding for all I care, just as long as it doesn’t have any connection whatsoever to me or Grady on paper or otherwise.”

  Spencer scribbles on his legal pad, then opens his phone to click rapidly on the screen. “Got it. Send whatever you need to me, and I can even link our calendars…”

  As Spencer slips into work mode, Grady beams, glad to know that Spencer is coming through the way Grady hoped— knew he would. Flora brings cookies from the kitchen and Cayo abandons his toy-sharing to climb in her lap and demand a cookie.

  “They’re sugar-free banana flaxseed,” Flora says. She hands Cayo one. “Sorry.”

  Nico takes one, but doesn’t eat it, just uses it to gesture to Clementine. “Clem. Clem? Clementine.” Grady sends his car zooming across the table. It lands in Clem’s lap, and she finally looks up from her phone.

  “Just a sec, hon. Trying to scramble and get some studio space.” She swipes and types and sends off messages, then sets the phone down in front of her. “Apologies, go on.”

  “I don’t suppose you have any ideas for how to get the heat off of us for a while?” Nico puts the cookie down and brushes crumbs from his fingers. “Any scandals you’ve been cooking up recently?”

  “Sorry, sugar. I’m out of the scandal business these days.” She casts a chagrined look at Gwen, then Flora. “But I’ll see if I can come up with something else. Not like they’re hard to distract, that lot.”

  Nico presses his hands flat in front of him, nods his head, and sits. “Well, that was all I had on my agenda. Grady?”

  Grady shrugs. “That’s it I guess.” He takes a bite of the sugar-free banana, something-seed cookie. Not bad, actually. His Memaw made the most incredible homemade banana bread and these cookies are—well, also banana. And not bad.

  “Hey, I have a thought,” Flora says, helping Cayo climb down to the floor so he can go back to his toys. “I don’t know if you’re comfortable with this, Grady, but you said your mom is in town?”

  Grady chews slowly. “Yes.”

  “I bet if the press were aware of that, if she’d be willing to give some interviews or… I don’t really know how all that works, but I’d have to imagine that’s a more interesting story than a wedding somewhere on the horizon and all they know about is the cake.”

  The cookie is dry and tough going down. “I don’t know, Flora.”

  She looks away, cheeks pink. “That’s fine, I understand why. I guess I was thinking, if nothing else, she can say whatever she came here to say, and you get to keep a safe emotional distance. And if it gets the press off your backs a little, maybe a win-win-win?”

  Grady exchanges a thoughtful glance with Nico. Clem and Spencer are working away on their phones, and Gwen pipes up with, “My wife. Smart and pretty.” Cayo wanders in and gives Grady a plastic toy tambourine, then grunts to be picked up, and Grady bounces
him on his knee.

  “It’s totally up to you,” Nico tells Grady. “Whatever you want.”

  Grady wishes he hadn’t been so insistent on making decisions himself instead of letting Nico decide his life for him. He doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know what she wants. His chest is tight, like a steel cage around his lungs.

  As they leave Gwen and Flora’s house later that evening, fireflies flicker across the yard. Nico comments on them; he always does, because they don’t have fireflies in California. Nico used to say they didn’t have fireflies “at home,” but it’s been a while since he’s spoken of Nashville as a place where he’s stuck for Grady’s sake. Still, sometimes the guilt of Nico sacrificing so much for him lingers anyway. Hoping the stick shift and sporty engine will keep his mind occupied, Grady drives Nico’s car. By the time they reach home, the stars have shimmered on to join the fireflies.

  He stopped catching fireflies in jars when he was seven, or somewhere around there, whenever he became old enough to realize that they’d end up dead in the morning, no matter how many holes he punched in the lid or how many leaves and sticks he dropped in to keep them happy. Of course, an old jelly jar with a twig and a leaf isn’t a substitute for the great wide open, but for a long time he thought it was his fault alone, as if he was a curse or menace, as if he was rotten somewhere he couldn’t see. He had to be.

  Look at them he was made up of them.

  It makes him melancholy even now to see the fireflies light up in the summertime when he remembers that incredible, fleeting light that he wanted to keep for a little bit.

  “We can just as easily lay low for a while,” Nico says as they turn off a main road to the darker, slower side streets. “The gossip mill is brutal, but at least it’s fast, like hives, or a bout of explosive diarrhea.”

  Grady glances over when they reach a stoplight. “It’s just that my mama’s kind of a loose cannon. I don’t know if I can trust her to even read some simple canned statement that Vince cooks up.” He looks back to the road when the light changes. The closer they get to their house, the more far apart and hidden behind rows of trees the houses become.