Blended Notes

by Lilah Suzanne

  “Okay, hey, let’s all take a breath.” Nico is in diplomatic work-mode, in a star-having-a-temper-tantrum-on-the-red-carpet-mode. He moves to the couch, facing Lillian with his body twisted toward Grady. “I have the advantage of emotional distance here, so why don’t I just—” He looks at Grady for consent to continue, which Grady gives with a glance and nod. “Lillian, you wanted to say something to Grady, and he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want to hear you out. However, maybe he’s earned the right to be wary, yes?” She nods several times, quickly and placatingly, no match for Nico’s wily charms. “And Grady,” He sets his folded hands beneath his chin, gives Grady his most serious-business arching eyebrow, and Grady doesn’t even try to stop the resulting warm rush of adoration. “If you could dial back the furious resentment just a skosh, that would be super.”

  Despite himself, Grady’s mouth lifts into a half-smile. “Fine.”

  Lillian crosses and uncrosses her legs, sets her wringing hands tightly between her knees, and opens her mouth several times to speak, then doesn’t. She was sixteen when Grady was born, and he’s always known that, but as she sits across from him still looking so young and lost, the lack of age separating them is more evident than ever. “I project when I’m feeling vulnerable,” she finally offers. “It’s a defense mechanism. It’s not your fault I left. I was afraid and I panicked and I left because that’s what I always do.” She looks from Nico to Grady. “I’m in therapy.”

  “Sounds like it’s helping,” Nico says. “And we’re all here now, so let’s try again.”

  Lillian blows a breath loudly through pursed lips, then presses them flat. “It was you—” She starts and Grady braces himself for another lash. “I’m sober, for the longest I’ve ever been. I got my GED and I have a job at a dental office and I’m even going to school to be a hygienist. I have my own place. I’m happy, really—finally. When Vaughn died, I thought, it’ll be me next. And it wasn’t just because I was afraid for myself, but because I thought of you and I couldn’t be the next person who left you forever.” Nico reaches for Grady’s hand, gently unfolding his fingers. Grady is surprised to find that he’s been clenching them. “I wanted you to know that I’m sorry and I’m trying and I wanted to be good enough for you. I hope it’s not too late.”

  Grady doesn’t know what to say, or if he can say anything. Nico speaks up, “Congratulations on getting sober and everything else you’ve accomplished. That’s admirable.”

  “Thank you,” she tells Nico, while her eyes dart to Grady. “You don’t have to say anything. My therapist helped me see that I owe you an apology, but you don’t owe me forgiveness. It’s okay. That’s— That’s all I wanted to say.”

  Grady gathers the photos she brought, and for now that’s all he can manage to accept from her. They look happy in the photo: Lillian and Vaughn and him in-between, as if for that snapshot in time they were happy.

  “Were you two ever in love?” He’s always wondered, would they have stayed in each other’s lives if not for him? Did they resent their lifelong forced attachment because of him?

  Lillian smiles, her eyes unfocused with a long-ago memory. “He was the cutest boy in school. All the girls wanted him, and he picked me. I couldn’t believe it. Me. Vaughn was— so handsome and charming; it was like I was under a spell.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” Nico says, rubbing his thumb back and forth on the inside of Grady’s wrist.

  This time her smile is for the two of them tucked close on the couch. “We loved each other. Maybe not always the way we should have; I’m not gonna pretend things weren’t bad, too. But a part of me never stopped believing we’d be a happy family someday.” Her voice cracks on the last word, and she looks down to gather herself, clears her throat, and wipes her eyes. Lillian’s grief for Vaughn must be at least as complicated as Grady’s own feelings.

  “I have his things, from Clay’s house,” Grady says, stopping to clear the tightness from his own throat. “Not with me, but next time you’re in Nashville. If you wanna stop by…” It’s the only offering he has for her.

  “I’d like that very much.” Her smile, this time, is only for him.

  24

  “I miss hotels,” Grady announces, bouncing on the end of the king-sized bed made up with snug hospital cornered sheets and about five times as many pillows as two people would ever need. Lillian left, and Grady made himself comfortable, stripping down to his underwear while Nico walked her out.

  “Not me.” Nico drops down beside him and unbuttons the cuffs on his shirt to fold up the sleeves. “This bed is too hard.”

  Grady lies back, wriggles up the firm mattress, and stretches out. “Remember the one we broke in New Orleans?”

  “Oh, god, that was so embarrassing.” Nico turns and moves up to his knees. His gaze roams up and down Grady’s body as though he can’t help himself. “What did you tell them when you checked out, anyway?”

  Grady flashes a smoldering look at him when Nico finally looks at his face instead of everywhere else, making sure Nico knows that he noticed. “I told them my boyfriend was givin’ it to me so hard we broke the bed,” he says, then yanks Nico over top of him by the belt buckle.

  “You ass, you did not.” Nico arranges himself more comfortably; hovering on his hands and knees, then looks down at Grady with a dark look that’s probably meant to be a rebuke, but is really just hot as hell. Grady leaves him to glower and busies himself unbuckling Nico’s belt.

  “I didn’t tell ‘em anything. They’ve dealt with worse than a cracked headboard, trust me.” His own impromptu parties back in the day always got well out of hand. The belt jingles loose, and Grady moves on to the button and zipper of Nico’s pants.

  “Wait.” Nico sits back, ass landing snugly on Grady’s lap, and, despite Nico’s stern look, Grady responds with a pleased groan. “How are you feeling? This whole meeting was kind of major. We should talk about it, probably.”

  Hotels are like the road, an in-between space. He fell in love with Nico in a hotel room, when it was just the two of them, where the rest of Grady’s life didn’t matter in that liminal space where anything was possible. “Don’t wanna talk,” Grady says. He pushes the flaps of Nico’s pants open and the tucked in tail of his shirt falls to cover the front of his purple briefs; Grady slips his hand beneath and cups Nico where he’s hot and well on his way to hard. “And I don’t believe you really do either.”

  “We really sh—shit.” Nico’s head falls back, whatever he was saying lost as Grady curls his hand around the shape of him and jacks him through the thin fabric.

  “What was that sweetheart? Didn’t quite catch it,” Grady says, squeezing tighter and rubbing faster; he does love getting a… rise out of Nico.

  Nico’s hips stutter, and he falls forward muttering, “Oh, fuck off,” before crashing his mouth against Grady’s. This is what he finds most intoxicating about Nico; peeling him loose of the buttoned-up, coolly imperious outer layer. How quickly he sheds the detachment needed to do his job and cope with the way Grady’s public life bleeds into their private one. In bed with Grady, he’s filthy and unhindered; his lips and hands demanding, his tongue curls wickedly. He wraps Grady around one little finger with only a whispered, “Don’t move.”

  Grady doesn’t. Not a muscle. He watches with heady anticipation as Nico gathers a towel and lube and condoms. Grady watches him toss the items down by Grady’s hip, then methodically undress, fold his clothes and puts them in a neat pile on the couch, then stroke himself with a sideways grip on his cock that is meant to tease. “Hmm.” His head tips from side to side as he surveys Grady on the bed as though he’s an after-dinner treat; his dark eyes pin Grady to the bed. “How do I want you?”

  He never has managed to work out how to not be so obvious about wanting to be consumed and wrecked and ravaged by Nico, so he doesn’t hide his whimpers or the way his cock pushes hungrily against the
y-front of his boxer briefs. Nico hums, very pleased. He perches on the bed, peels Grady’s underwear off—finally, thank god—his tongue sweeps across his lips as Grady’s cock falls heavily to his stomach.

  “You are—” Nico starts, but whatever Grady is becomes lost in the hot slide of Nico’s mouth greedily sinking down on Grady’s cock. Nico looks up at him through his thick lashes. The sharp contours of his face are dramatic in the soft lamp light—cheeks hollowed and lips stretched—and Grady has never seen a prettier sight.

  “Don’t stop—” He blurts, then Nico pulls off so fast Grady’s cock pops from his mouth, and Grady gasps from the sudden shocking loss. Whatever sense of propriety he had before, if any, he’s lost now as Nico moves up Grady’s body and settles languidly against the mound of pillows. Grady crawls after him, helpless as a moth to a flame. Grady finds his own reputation as a sex symbol ridiculous, though he’s certainly pleased with the muscles he’s sculpted and more than a little vain about his hair, and he is not unaware of the effect he has on people. But how anyone can look at the two of them and not be gobsmacked by Nico, who is gorgeous and sexy and commanding from his toes to the perfect swoop of his hair without any effort at all, Grady will never understand.

  Grady turns words into poetry into music for a living and still all he can manage is, “Want you,” when he spreads his knees wide over Nico’s lap.

  Then Nico is there, with one hand lifting his ass, then two blunt, slick fingers working Grady open. “I’m here,” he says, and Grady kisses Nico’s wet, open mouth as he relaxes into a yearning, aching emptiness.

  Nico issues more commands: “Up. Not yet. Slow.” And then Grady sinks down until Nico burns huge and full inside him, and neither of them has anything left to say at all. Grady rises slow, presses down slower, and rides Nico with his arms bent behind his head and his bottom lip pinched hard between his teeth. Nico’s eyes look blown-black as he stares at the shift of Grady’s thighs as he lifts and falls, at the straining lines of his abdominals, the knot of his biceps, the bob and sway of his hard cock. Grady certainly isn’t shy, but only for Nico does he love being so decadently on display.

  He can go for a quite a while like this; he’s strong and fit, and vigorous sex beats squats and lunges any day. Grady can focus solely on Nico’s pleasure, his hitching chest and dropped open mouth and guttural groans. He moves faster to make Nico swear and gasp, make his hips buck up and his hands grip bruises on Grady’s hips. He moves slower to watch Nico fall gasping away from the edge and writhe with desperation beneath him. Faster and slow, more and less, until Nico touches him, and then it’s all over. Grady comes helplessly, shuddering and hunched over and wheezing into Nico’s shoulder. “Mmph,” Grady says, wrung out and useless, as Nico flips them in a graceful arc.

  Grady floats happily, giving his limp body for Nico to do as he pleases; Nico leans over so Grady’s thighs are pushed back and out and slides back inside of him with one hard thrust, shocking Grady out of his floating, hazy bliss by hammering into him so hard the bed bangs against the wall. There goes the headboard. Grady wants to laugh, but Nico has a hand on Grady’s over-sensitive, still-soft dick, then he experiments with the angle and strength of his thrusts until Grady jerks helplessly when he hits just the right spot and keeps on hitting it. Then Grady is hard again, coming again, weak spurts of it over Nico’s hand, and they’re both gasping for air as if they just swam up together from the bottom of the ocean.

  Nico releases Grady’s cock and grips the backs of his thighs with both hands, drives in and in and in, with his head tipped back and the sweat-sheen on his skin glowing gold from the lamplight, with dusky dark nipples and long lean muscles pulled tight, a gorgeous wrecked mess, and Grady needs to see him get off so badly. Grady rasps, his voice sex-slurred and rough as gravel. “Come on, gorgeous, let me see. Come for me, sweetheart.” Nico pushes in once more, and his muscles lock up, a single cry spills from his throat, and Grady gets the extreme pleasure of watching Nico’s face shatter into a beautiful ecstasy.

  “How’s the headboard?” Nico asks later. The room is dark and cool now even with their warm bodies tangled together. Grady reaches over his head. “Not broken,” he confirms and puts his arm back around Nico’s naked waist. Nico hmms, sounding a little disappointed, then says “That went really well, I think.”

  Grady nibbles on Nico’s earlobe, because it’s right there, and it’s also early enough that he may be able to talk Nico into another attempt at breaking the headboard. “Well? I do believe you rocked my world once again.”

  “Not that,” Nico says, wiggling closer and sighing happily when Grady drags the pointed tip of his tongue up to the shell of his ear. “Your mother.”

  “Oh.” Grady pauses, head held awkwardly above his pillow. It went better than he expected, some of it anyway. Thing is, he’s heard similar sentiments before. She’s been sorry before, made promises before. The difference now is that Vaughn died, and she may well be all out of second chances. “We can invite her to the wedding, I guess. If you still want to.”

  Nico gives a little cheer, then drops a kiss on the knob of Grady’s throat. She still might not show, in fact, the odds are good she won’t, but he can give Nico this moment of victory. If he can’t give her a chance for himself, he can do it for Nico.

  “You know, with all the craziness lately…” Nico says, peppering kisses across Grady’s chest. “I’m not going anywhere, I, I know I’ve had my moments of not handling things well, but— You do know that I’m here. Right?”

  The rest of the world can only be held off for so long, that’s the problem with transitional places like the road and hotels and stages. They go away, and everything else doesn’t. Grady recalls the secret phone call, the things hidden on Nico’s computer screen he clearly didn’t want Grady to see. He remembers the lawsuit and the counter lawsuit and the threat of losing everything hanging over them, that he is stuck, but Nico isn’t, not really. He is here, but should he be?

  “Sure,” Grady says and he kisses Nico and slides their bodies together and makes them both forget for a little while longer.

  25

  The banana bread that Lillian brought smells delicious, and Grady doesn’t have to taste it to know that it’s his Memaw’s recipe. He puts it in the back seat and drops the pictures on top; the one of her and Vaughn and Grady slips down to the seat. He does look like him, Vaughn. His father. He’s not like Vaughn, no. If it wasn’t for Memaw and it wasn’t for music he would have been Vaughn—same life, same mistakes, same ending. Even with his grandparents and his music as a saving grace, he almost was Vaughn anyway, and no matter how deep down and packed away, part of him will always be that person. Now here it is, dragged out into the daylight again for everyone to see.

  “So there’s bad news and less bad news.”

  Yang, Zorn, and Howard: Celebrity and Creative Law Associates is one block from the “Mother Church” of country music, the Ryman Auditorium, and two blocks from the river. The law office is in a red-brick building on a block of red-brick buildings and red-brick sidewalks. The rugs are burgundy, and the furniture is all shining mahogany and dark leather. They’re on the fifth floor, yet it’s as if Grady is in a dark red subterranean cave. Nico and Gwen’s office isn’t too far away, but Grady is just at the lawyer’s office to get briefed about how the preliminary hearing with Stomp Records went, so he told Nico not to bother coming.

  “Less bad news first, I reckon,” Grady says.

  Tanisha Howard is a powerful name in the industry; she’s gone to bat for many artists over the years and won, but in person she’s soft-spoken with a wide, sweet smile, is pretty and young, and wears shiny silk shirts with bows and gold broaches shaped like butterflies. Her opponents probably underestimate her every single time.

  “An optimist. I can appreciate that,” Tanisha says, with her big, friendly smile. Going forward—if there is a forward—Grady would be happy to keep her on
his team permanently. He does quite like Ms. Tanisha Howard, Attorney at Law, even if she is bringing him bad and worse news. “Stomp Records is not budging on either the breach of contract claim, or the lack of contract fulfillment assertion,” she says in one breath.

  Grady rubs at his chin that’s itchy with a few days’ stubble. “That’s the good news?”

  “The less bad news,” she corrects. Grady twirls his hand in a “go on” gesture and she adds, “The bad news is, they’ve filed another claim, stating that your contract is now void and you are obligated to restart the seven-year exclusivity agreement as well as produce three additional albums within the confines previously agreed upon in the violated contract.”

  Grady furrows his brows and squints one eye and chews on that. “You gotta be kiddin’ me,” he says.

  “There are two things I don’t do, Mr. Dawson.” Ms. Howard closes the file folder on her desk and folds her hands on top of it. “Kid anyone and lose cases. Don’t give up hope; I certainly haven’t.”

  It’s not hope that’s the problem. Grady’s always had that in abundance; he’s had to. It’s the ultimate betrayal of the thing that saved him, of music, his music, being what could now bring him down for good. Grady knows exactly who he is without music.

  On his way to his truck Grady is greeted by cameras; this part of downtown is prime for celebrity pickings. He keeps his head down and pushes through; he doesn’t care what he looks like or what they shout at him or what salacious lie will be published about him. He drives to Nico and Gwen’s studio because he promised he would.