Chapter 19 Bargains
Bargains
Gemiah
Ican’t sleep.
Partly because I only managed one drink before we left the club, but mainly because the hurricane of hormones has left me ravaged and spiraling, unsure if what happened was a travesty or a triumph.
I can’t sleep, but I must doze off at some point, because the next thing I know, the ash-cold light of a San Francisco morning filters through the vertical blinds, so different from the stark sunlight of the Southwest that I’m momentarily disoriented.
I swim free of half-remembered dreams—gel-crusted hair under my palm melting into softer strands, music like the beat of wings on windshields, wet, gasping kisses, and tires wicking along dark roads—to find myself alone in the shabby hotel room.
He left me.
But no, there are his scuffed boots with the electrical tape on the laces and his backpack on the chair, the zipper half open and the cuff of a faded pair of jeans spilling from the gap.
And there’s a strip of light under the bathroom door and a low murmur—a sound—coming through the thin barrier.
My half-hard morning wood twitches, and I give it a sleepy stroke.
As I claw my way back to consciousness, I realize he’s on the phone.
My first fuzzy thought is that the twink from the club somehow got his number, even though my rational brain knows that’s stupid.
Josha was with me the whole time. He didn’t even look back as we left the club—he said “always”—and he was…
softer, after. Still wary, sure, but the ever-present anger had subsided. Enough to kindle a spark of hope.
Because last night was fucked. Last night was a special kind of torture, and it’s a miracle I survived on only one lousy drink. But last night was also scorchingly, dizzyingly—
“I want to watch you choke on my cock”
—hot.
I have a new entry to add to my collection of Sexy As Fuck Sounds Josha Makes When He Comes, and I’m fucking ravenous for more.
I want to hear him scream, his voice wrecked with pleasure.
I want to hear him whimper when he can’t take anymore.
I want to know what my name sounds like on his lips when he falls the fuck apart.
He has a whole symphony of orgasms locked inside him, and I want to learn to play every note.
Starting now.
This time, when he comes out of the bathroom in those slutty, too-thin sleep pants, he won’t crawl into his own bed.
This time, he’ll come to mine, blushing and nervous, but with molten chocolate in his eyes.
He’ll straddle my hips and press me into the mattress, and I’ll put my mouth on that hummingbird pulse at his throat and—
“…taking him home today.” The sharp tone snatches me from the fantasy, and my hand stills on my oblivious cock.
He’s talking to someone about me.
And then, with a flash of fresh horror: He’s talking to my mom.
I bolt out of bed and wrench the bathroom door open. God only knows what my fucking plan is, but he’s lowering the phone, and there’s nothing but wide-eyed surprise on his face.
No guilt.
That’s my first thought. The second is that my fantasy, based on memories of a younger Josha, did not do justice to the pornographic vision before me.
The pants are the same—and honestly, at this point, he has to know what he’s doing with those—but the rest?
The light dusting of copper hair that trails from his chest down over his stomach, darkening to russet where it disappears into his waistband?
The muscles and the collarbones and the goddamn grooves of his obliques?
It’s immoral. Unfair.
“Hi.” My voice is raspy with lust and edged with lingering panic.
“I didn’t know you were awake.” He swallows, and a flush crawls up his throat to flame the tips of his ears, and Jesus fucking Christ, kill me now. “You can have the first shower.”
“Okay.” Brilliant conversationalist, me.
This is what happens when I’m too fucking sober, my brain leaping from one runaway track to the next while my nervous system scrambles to keep up.
After so many years of using—uppers for focus, weed and pills to blunt the manic edges, and always, always booze to beckon sweet oblivion—I’m out of practice at managing myself without a safety net.
He goes to push past me, turning carefully to avoid brushing against my bare chest, but I brace my hands on the top of the doorframe before he can escape. “Or we could shower together.”
“That’s not happening. Move.”
“That’s not happening.” I flash a grin and hold my ground. With a roll of his eyes, he backs off, leaning against the sink and crossing his arms over his chest. Now there are biceps and forearms in the mix. Fucking fantastic.
“Is this because of last night?” he asks. “You think that changed anything?”
“For me or for you?”
“Stop. I don’t trust you, Gem. Just because you…” He looks away, and now his whole body is blushing.
“Helped you get your cock sucked? Jizzed in my pants?”
“Jizzed? Jesus. You sound like a thirteen-year-old.”
“You loved me at thirteen.”
His eyes flash to mine, and I hold his gaze, willing him to relent. To remember.
And yeah, I know I’m avoiding the whole trust issue. But that’s a long game. Something to deal with when he’s less check-out-my-entire-cock-outline-while-I-stand-here-all-bronzed-and-bulging.
Something for after a nice, steamy shower.
Something for after a few drinks.
Unfazed by my overture, all he does is sigh and scowl.
“I need to get home, Gem. I need to get you home.” He glances at his phone as if making a point—maybe about the time he’s wasting dealing with me and my shit.
Maybe to remind me of who else is waiting in Mendo to rip me a new asshole and dredge up all my past mistakes in a “family discussion.”
Maybe because he’s built a whole life of his own to return to, while I was dicking around with rock bottom.
“Okay,” I say again, retreating. “But first we gotta get some weed.”
He lets me stop at a dispensary for a dab pen on the way out of the city, and when we grab gas in San Rafael, I buy three shooters of Cuervo and down them in the bathroom while he’s filling the truck’s tank. Then I go back and snag another box of orange Tic Tacs to cover up the smell.
It doesn’t help. The closer we get to Mendocino County, the more jittery I feel, fucking with the radio, rolling the window up and down, drumming my fingers on the dash, and generally driving us both crazy.
To be fair, Josha does his best to distract me, telling me about the changes he’s made to his family property since his dad died and his plans to build a tiny house at the back tree line for his mom to retire to.
He doesn’t mention how he’s supposed to accomplish all of this from Colorado, but even that faint wisp of hope isn’t enough to settle my racing nerves.
“Who were you talking to,” I blurt, interrupting his diatribe on the pros and cons of Douglas fir versus redwood for exposed ceiling beams.
“Um, you?” Raising his eyebrows, he shoots me a look. “How strong was that pen?”
“I mean this morning. On the phone. In the bathroom?” I sound totally normal, I swear.
He makes a face. “Rachael. She talked to Jeremy and figured out we might be driving up this way. She was trying to convince me to bring you by for brunch.”
“Oh.” Relief sweeps through me. “That’s not so bad. Although brunch with Rachael sounds vaguely horrible.”
He snorts and then, because of course he picks up on the shift in my mood, asks: “Who did you think I was talking to?”
I could blow it off and make some breezy comment about twinks with delusions of importance and steer the conversation back to somewhere fun and flirty. I could try to make him blush again or try to make him smile.
I could be honest.
The long game.
“My mom,” I confess. “I thought you were ratting me out.”
“Ratting you out?” The words drip with caustic disbelief.
“Because letting your parents know you’re alive and coming home to them would be what?
Some kind of betrayal of this fucked-up lost weekend you’ve fabricated?
” His knuckles whiten on the steering wheel and a scowl furrows his brow.
“Christ, you’re a fucking piece of work. ”
This is why denial and deflection are so much easier than the truth.
“I know, okay? I know I’m a disaster, and it’s not just about you and me. I get that my shit is all wrapped up in my issues with my mom leaving and Big Top and flunking out of ENC—”
“And the drugs and the drinking.”
“And the drugs and the drinking. But I can’t separate the symptoms from the disease anymore. All that shit’s so fucking tangled I don’t have a clue where to begin unraveling it.”
“You could start with therapy. Or a rehab program you actually finish.”
“I started with you, Rocket. Because you’re the only thing I can see clearly.”
“And you think that if you can somehow fix us, the rest of your life will magically fall into place?” He shakes his head in disgust. “Life doesn’t work like that, Quill. And this—” He gestures between us. “This isn’t something you can fix in three days.”
“Why do you think I’ve been angling for more time?
” I cry, my own guilt-laced frustration splashing to the surface.
“Once you dump me back at the lot, you’ll have a million reasons to ignore me.
How many cast members are already on-site?
How many jobs are waiting on your attention?
How many production meetings and tech calls and airport runs?
” My chest is heaving, and the truck has become a vacuum, sucking up all the air.
I crank the window down and lean my head on the doorframe, blinking against the sudden sting of tears.
“Fuck,” he says into the broken silence. “You’re really freaking out, aren’t you?”
“Do not be nice to me right now,” I warn, eyes glued to the passing scrub. “Unless you want me to start crying like a fucking kid.”
I loved you at thirteen.
“Look. I get it. About the lot, at least. Maybe it’s too much to expect you to jump back into all that right away.”
Risking a peek, I find him picking at a loose stitch on the steering wheel, and the nervous gesture soothes some of my own agitation.
“Got any brilliant ideas?” I resist the urge to beg.
“Maybe. But don’t get too excited. I have conditions.”
“More rules?” Shifting to face him, I offer a half-hearted smile. Despite his warning, tentative hope flutters in my chest. He ignores the crippled taunt and fixes me with a stern look.
“And you’ll fucking keep them. I’ve already lied to Cheyenne about where I was going this weekend. The last time I lied to Shilo, you left me on the side of the road, and we never saw you again. I had to explain that to her. I had to live with it. I’m not doing that again.”
I flinch back from the picked-scab pain in his voice, evidence of wounds I carved and abandoned to rot.
I have my own scars from that night.
“I came back.”
“Two years later,” he scoffs. “And technically, you’re not back yet.”
“No. I mean…I came back then. To look for you.”
You were gone.
He shakes his head, dismissing the wretched past.
“You want to hide out at my place for a few days? Ease back into things at Big Top? Fine. But no more stupid junkie shit. No alcohol. You work on getting your shit together, and you take it seriously. And we call Shilo right now and let her know what’s going on.
” With a few swift stabs of his finger, he pulls up his phone app on the console interface.
And there she is, at the top of his favorites. Before Jeremy or his sisters or his own mom.
My name isn’t even on the list.
But…he’s giving me a chance to change that.
For the not-so-small price of facing all the rest. His finger hovers over the call button, and I trace the tension up his corded forearm, over the swell of his bicep and the column of his throat, to his beautiful face and the question in those coffee eyes.
How badly do you want this?
“I stay with you for a few weeks.” Badly. “Days aren’t enough.” Desperately. “Until you head out on tour.” And if you think I’m not tagging along, you’re in for a fucking surprise.
“Fine.” He hits the button.
During the twenty-three days I spent in the Bernalillo County Jail, my days were ruled by the call of the buzzer—doors up, lights out, meals, and yard time, all marked by that lurch in my gut. Anxiety and adrenaline triggered in equal measure by harsh electric bells.
Josha’s phone ringing through the truck speakers sparks the same reaction now.
“Hey, Shilo,” he says when her voice comes on the line. “I’ve got someone here who wants to talk to you.”
“Gemiah?” No hesitation. Like she already knows and has been waiting for the call.
“Hi, Mom.”
And she bursts into tears.
Luckily, she’s on her way out with Milla for the next round of interviews, so I only have to keep it together for a few minutes.
Then she hands me off to my dad, and he starts crying.
By the time I manage to disconnect the call, my stomach churns with a toxic cocktail of resentment and regret, and there’s an ache behind my ribs that no amount of rubbing at my chest can relieve.
They don’t ask me a single question. Not about where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing or why I left. It’s all relief and tearful laughter and fucking love, like they’re afraid that if they voice the recriminations simmering right below the surface, I’ll ghost again.
I guess it’s nice to know I’ve lowered their expectations to mere survival.
“Was it as bad as you thought it would be?” Josha asks into the blank space that follows the call.
No.
And yes.
“I think you should let me give you a hand job.”
The truck swerves—a bare twitch of the wheel, quickly recovered, but it’s enough. And because the past is crowded close and I’m trying not to think about my parents, because of the truck and the trees, and because I’m the world’s biggest idiot with a kamikaze brain, I quip: “Watch out for the owl.”
He doesn’t speak to me for the rest of the drive.