“I could play anything in the practice room but once I was out there in a monkey suit with an orchestra and an audience, I was a big meatbag of terror. It was like everything I knew, all the muscle memory was wiped out.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“I’d shake so bad, my hands didn’t function properly.”
She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her forehead to his.
“Jay used to get sick, technicolor yawn before every show. Sometimes after as well. This was different. I could barely talk, barely walk. I made mistake after mistake until the only thing I could do to make it better was stop. Afterwards I wanted to rip holes in the world I was so angry with myself.”
“That must’ve been frightening.” She kissed his cheek, gentle, forgiving.
“That first time, I thought, we all thought, I could overcome it. I tried, I really tried and so did my teachers. We changed up what we could, ditched the formal suit, let me be more me, programmed shorter, easier pieces. But it happened over and over again. I saw a therapist for a while, but even when I could get through a piece it was like I was playing with my toes.”
“Oh sweetheart, was it really that bad?”
“While they were still in my kicks.”
Mena rubbed the back of her knuckles against his cheek and he took a full breath. This was no picnic. He was skin on skin in a spa with a woman whose body he craved, and he was ripping his psyche apart for her instead of ploughing into her to their mutual satisfaction.
“I’m surprised you even own a piano now.”
“Took me time to work out I didn’t hate the instrument or playing it. I hated the performance. I didn’t want to be a soloist, the star, up front. I didn’t belong there.”
“But you’re a hell of a performer.”
“My drum kit is up the back and I get to run the show, the whole band from there. I don’t need to be in the spotlight. I don’t need people to remember my name.”
Mena rubbed her finger along the column of his neck. “You have lots of personal fans.”
“Yeah, but a way smaller number and they don’t make my life weird. Not like Jay. Abel had a stalker last year, it wasn’t good.”
“I remember the head nod at the beach.”
“That’s right. My fans are cool, laid-back. They’re no hassle.” He eased Mena closer and she curled into him, her arms draped over his shoulders. “I like my life this way. My music this way.” And if it sometimes felt too easy, he only had to remember the blinding fear he experienced on stage at the piano or Jay on his knees chucking at the side of the stage to know he’d made the right call.
“Thank you for telling me.” She kissed him; a soft kiss full of comfort. No judgment, no trying to tell him he was wrong, talk him out of it, or make him try again.
The next breath he took felt cleaner, sharper. “Wanted you to know the truth.”
“I need to te—”
He cut her off because he needed to kiss her thoroughly, deeply, over and over again, with her glasses on and then, when they got in the way, with them off. With her body pressed close, with his hands on her hips and his heart open so wide, it was dumb luck it didn’t fill with water and drown him.
He kissed her until he felt her shiver and then he got them out of the spa and rubbed her down with a thick towel. It was another excuse to touch her all over and it took some time. She kept getting wet from touching him. He kept encouraging her. She said they needed to talk more. He said they needed to talk less. They were both thoroughly dry and steamed up by the time the mosquitos discovered them and it was time to move the party horizontal.
He found her glasses and with her hand tucked in his, they went upstairs to bed where with the moonlight streaming into the room it got a whole lot more deep and meaningful and no one needed to see anything up close or far away, no one needed to say anything, no confessions, no questions, just to breathe into each other’s skin and feel the soak of pleasure.
Every kiss added meaning, layer over layer of it. Joyous, lazily seductive, sharply addictive, hungry. Every touch brought understanding: what she liked, what she needed, what made her shudder and want, sigh and cry out.
He was deep inside her when he came. She was deeply, happily sleepy after she did.
Great night. Ten out of ten. Would do again. And Again. And Again.
Next stop, sex-satisfied coma.
It was the sun that woke him, way too early, bouncing into the room with an entitled attitude like it had an official backstage pass. He fumbled for the remote to close the curtains before it woke Mena too, taking the time to drink in her sleeping form, only half-covered by the sheet. That’s when he noticed the mark on her exposed hip. Mottled, circular. Shit, he’d bruised her. Was that what she’d been going to tell him, when he’d cut her off, not to handle her so roughly? He looked closer, wanting to touch the spot, soothe where he’d hurt, horrified he’d not taken enough care.
He made out shapes in the dark stain. He peered closer and made out letters, a shooting star. Not a bruise.
E. X. T.
He knew the style of those letters, as if they’d been tattooed on his own skin.
Head full of discordant notes, he didn’t need to see any more. He hit the button to close the curtains and got out of bed. Snagged some cut-off
