Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sam stared at the menu like he’d forgotten how to read. He’d gone to brunch at the Crane Hotel before, so it wasn’t that he needed a lot of time to study the menu and make his choice. His brain refused to cooperate. The words on the page were simply letters arranged in non-alphabetical order.
Sleep had been elusive.
When they’d arrived home the night before, he and Lacey had gone into their nighttime routine. Lacey tidied up the kitchen and picked up Daisy’s toys, and Sam took Daisy for her bedtime potty break. It was while he was politely looking away while Daisy did her business that it hit Sam that they had a nighttime routine.
Their routine was such that when they got inside, Daisy started going down the stairs to the TV room. She got halfway down before she turned to look at Sam, like she was saying, “Hello, dummy, it’s time for television.” So he trooped down the stairs after her, turned on Midsomer Murders , and set the sleep timer for the TV.
“Come to bed when you’re done,” he told his dog, scratching her behind her ears.
Sam couldn’t believe this life now. One day he’d been an infinitely cool rock star without anything tying him down, and now he talked to his dog like she could understand him.
Upstairs, Lacey had been tucking herself into bed.
“Where’s Daisy?” she’d asked, frowning.
Sam had gone to his closet to change. “She’s watching her English murder mysteries,” he’d told her.
“Does it make you nervous that our dog could probably get away with murder?” It had given Sam the warm fuzzies to hear her call Daisy “our dog.”
That was probably what had triggered his insomnia. Trying to untangle the mess of feelings he was having, to sort them into perfectly understandable little boxes, then trying to shove them down and away. Next to him, Lacey breathed softly, sleeping on her side, oblivious to his turmoil. There was a space between them, reserved for Daisy, and Sam wondered what would happen if he invaded their No Man’s Land.
He never got to find out. Daisy jumped onto the bed and took her spot with the kind of tired, put-upon sigh that only a truly spoiled dog could make. It was like she was saying that being everyone’s favorite was such hard work.
When Sam finally did sleep, he dreamed that his feelings were different colors of paint on a palette, but they wouldn’t stay in their designated spaces and ran together. In his dream he was frustrated, and angrily swiped his brush through the paint and smeared it onto the canvas. It made a beautiful picture.
Then he was awake again, trying to scribble notes in his nightstand notebook by the harsh light of his cell phone flashlight.
“Saaaam.” Jordy’s voice pulled him back like he was a fish on a line.
Sam handed his menu to their server. “Tell Amara to surprise me.”
“Your food is going to be shaped like a dick,” Graham warned as their server headed to ring in their orders.
“She’d have found a way no matter what I ordered,” Sam said, picking up his coffee. The Crane Hotel was the only place outside of Stardust where someone could buy Sybil’s house blend.
The self-titled—despite Graham’s many protests—Brunch Bros hadn’t been able to get together in a little over six months. Their last brunch had also been at the hotel restaurant. Sam wondered if now that Jordy had retired if they’d be able to make it a little less than six months before their next get together.
Peter sat across the table, picking the leaves off the celery stalk in his Bloody Mary like a lovelorn poet picking petals off a flower. Something was off with him. Normally he’d be talking their ears off or interrogating them for updates on their lives. Sitting in quiet contemplation wasn’t a strength of Peter’s. It wasn’t a strength of Lacey’s either.
There she was again. Straight to the front of his mind with the barest hint of provocation.
“Sam? Are you okay?” Graham asked, frowning.
Sam nodded, a little confused by the question.
Graham’s frown deepened. “It’s just that you’ve been holding your cup in the air for thirty seconds without taking a drink.”
Sam took a gulp, draining half the cup. He set it back in its saucer, and his fingers were barely out of the handle before a roaming server filled it back up.
“I just had some lyrics I was bouncing around.”
Graham’s frown disappeared, instantly replaced by a curious and encouraging smile. “How’s writing going?”
Sam poured the smallest amount of cream into his coffee to get it back to the perfect shade, focusing on the swirl instead of the prying eyes at the table.
“I’ve, um, written about fifteen songs. Fifteen that are basically ready to record, anyway. I’ve got more notes and shit floating around.” He waved his hand dismissively. “It’ll probably amount to nothing.”
The resonant silence at the table made his ears ring. Sam glanced up. Unsurprisingly, they were all staring at him.
“What?”
They all exchanged silent looks in a language he wasn’t privy to, and then Graham spoke.
“Sam, the last time I asked you how writing was going, you told me to fuck off. When Eloise asked, you said you had a few titles.”
“Yeah. So?”
“That was right after the Cranberry Festival.”
“I need to start having Annie ask him…” Jordy’s voice tapered off as Sam’s attention drifted away from the table again.
Fifteen songs since the Cranberry Festival in September. Except he knew he didn’t have anything written in September. He hadn’t really had the itch to write until October.
October.
When he’d spilled coffee on Lacey and gotten them tangled in his stupid lie.
It wasn’t that she was his muse. He wouldn’t call her that. The songs he was writing weren’t about her. Not all of them. Maybe two. But having Lacey around was inspiring. She was the much-needed oil to the stuck cogs of his brain. The way she talked, how she moved, how she twisted her hair into a bun when she sat on his countertop while he cooked and then continually had to tuck little tendrils behind her ears—it all inspired him.
Did that make her his muse?
“He’s gone again,” Peter said as sound filtered back into his senses. “Absolutely besotted.”
Sam frowned, unable to connect the dots of what he’d missed. “Hmm?”
“I said Lacey must be a good influence on you and you were off in la-la land again.” The soft, knowing smile on Peter’s face made Sam instantly suspicious.
“She’s a horrible influence,” Sam countered, leaving out that the horrible influence was that she encouraged his inner eighty-five-year-old homebody.
Was she still snuggled up in his bed with Daisy?
A young man in a suit that looked like he’d bought it hoping to gain several more inches in the shoulder department trekked across the dining room toward their table. Trekked was a generous word; it was the stiff-legged, “I’m-going-to-shit-my-pants” speed walk of someone who needed to deliver bad news.
He stopped by Graham’s elbow and cleared his throat nervously. “Um, Mr. Thatcher?”
Graham took a healthy swig of his breakfast cocktail. “Yes, Trevor?”
Trevor looked ready to faint. Sam wanted to tell the poor kid to unlock his knees.
“I know that you’re, um, busy, sir, but, um, you see there’s a, uh, problem with the, um, computers at the front desk?—”
“Did you try turning them off and then on again?”
Trevor wobbled.
Graham sighed and took a sobering drink of his coffee. “I’ll come take a look.”
Trevor nodded and practically fled the dining room at the same poop-pants speed walk pace he’d entered.
“He’s new,” Graham explained, “and would you believe he’s Kiki’s cousin? I think she’s been trying to scare him.”
“Kiki has a family?” Jordy sounded surprised. “I always assumed she beamed down from another planet.”
“She does. They’re nice.” Graham took another bracing drink of coffee. “I’d bet good money the computers will be fine by the time I get out there.”
Jordy pushed back his chair in unison with Graham.
“Did you have a strong desire to watch me play tech support?”
“I have to pee.”
“If you wouldn’t suck down mimosas like this is your last chance to get them…” Graham started as they left the table.
“Can I ask you a weird personal question?” Peter said as soon as Graham and Jordy had exited the dining room. “It’s okay if you don’t want to answer.”
In all the years he’d known him, Sam had never once known Peter to ask permission before asking a question. It was always “full speed, damn the torpedoes” with Peter. So, Sam was curious and nervous about what kind of question Peter could possibly have that invited any kind of caution.
“Um…sure?”
“What’s sex with Lacey like?”
Sam froze. The clatter of emotions in his chest almost drowned out the reasonable sound of his brain. “What?”
Peter’s face turned scarlet. “That came out wrong. What I meant was…Lacey is the girl from the song you wrote. The Barcelona song. So you’d slept together before and now you’re back together and I was wondering how that’s going? Is it better? Worse? Different? Were you nervous?”
“It was—” Sam stopped himself. He didn’t need to lie about this. This was an opportunity for honesty. “We actually haven’t had sex yet. Not since Barcelona. How did you know that, anyway?”
“I asked Lacey how you met, and she said it was in Barcelona when you were on tour. And when I took into account the timing, the love song, and the way you are with her now, it was obvious.”
Heat crept up Sam’s face. “What love song?”
Peter sighed like Sam had asked him how to spell orange. “‘Barcelona.’ It’s a love song. I think you’re the only one that hasn’t caught on.”
“But I’d known her for one night at that point,” Sam pointed out. “How could it be a love song?”
“Do you not believe in love at first sight?”
Sam shook his head, even though the first time he’d ever seen Lacey immediately popped into his mind. “No. Do you?”
“Of course I do,” Peter said with conviction. “I believe in love at first sight, soulmates, true love, all of it. Love is too important to not take it seriously. What you wrote about Lacey went so far beyond sex. It was about connection and safety.”
Sam didn’t like the ache blooming in his chest. He needed to steer the conversation back to safer ground. “What does this have to do with my current sex life with Lacey?”
Peter flushed. “When I was younger, I met the love of my life, but the timing wasn’t right. We’ve reconnected, and I’m worried I’ll…” He waved his hand like he’d be able to pluck the right word out of thin air. “Disappoint her, I guess.”
“Did you used to disappoint her?” Sam asked, curious because this conversation was upending some long-held beliefs he had about Peter.
Peter shook his head, rubbing salt rim of his Bloody Mary off with his thumb. “No. It was transcendent. For her, too. I asked. A lot.”
Sam was having a hard time reconciling his assumptions with reality. Whenever they’d talked about sex as a group, Peter had not participated, and by some unspoken agreement, no one pressed him about it. “So you’re not a virgin?”
Peter laughed. “No. Just debilitatingly monogamous.”
A thought tickled the back of Sam’s mind.
“Peter…how long has it been? ”
Peter turned as red as his Bloody Mary, but Sam never got his answer because Jordy picked that moment to drop unceremoniously back into his chair.
“That was an Austin Powers pee,” he said. “I didn’t think it was ever going to end.”
“Why are you the way you are?” Sam asked, wadding up his napkin to throw at his best friend. “Does Annie know how gross you are?”
“She thinks I’m hysterical,” Jordy said proudly.
“I thought PhDs were supposed to be smart.”
“She is,” Jordy insisted. “She picked me.”
“They’re going to take back her degree,” Peter teased, but his heart wasn’t in it. How concerned was he about his sexual performance if he couldn’t give Jordy a hard time?
Should Sam be more concerned?
That nagged him for the rest of the meal. It never failed to amaze him that he could be engaged in a conversation with half of his brain, while the other half was off to the races worrying about something unrelated.
Was he afraid to take things to the next step with Lacey? Is that why he hadn’t taken advantage of the many opportunities he’d had to engage in good old-fashioned hanky-panky with her? Why had he been telling himself he was waiting for her to bring it up when he was capable of expressing his desires like a grown-up? He wanted her; that wasn’t in question. He wanted Lacey’s long, graceful, strong legs wrapped around his hips or his head. He wanted to reacquaint his mouth with every inch of her body, even her toes. He wanted to make her moan, and sigh, and gasp, and scream his name until she was hoarse.
When had he become a coward ?
That question loomed large in the forefront of his mind when he drove home, parked in his garage, and then sat in his car, engine off.
He could just talk to Lacey. Tell her that he wanted to alter their deal. If she disagreed, they carried on the way that they were and, in due course, broke up.
There was a painful, sour twang in his chest, like he’d touched the wrong string on his guitar. Sam gathered his guts and went inside.
The house smelled like childhood nostalgia. Tomato soup and grilled cheese. Daisy was sprawled out in her usual spot on the kitchen floor, waiting for Lacey to pay the cheese tax. After the dog’s rancid farts the night before, Sam doubted Lacey would be feeding her dairy anytime soon. Daisy’s tail thumped against the floor when she saw Sam.
Lacey was peeking under her grilled cheese with the aid of the biggest spatula Sam owned, wearing nothing but a very oversized hoodie he’d been sent as PR and some of his tall wool socks. The black sweatshirt grazed the tops of her thighs and made his mouth water. He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, and kissed the impossibly soft skin on her neck. Lacey sighed softly and leaned against him.
“How was boys’ brunch?” she asked.
“Good,” Sam said, his lips traveling up toward her ear. “I would’ve made you lunch if you’d waited.”
“I didn’t know when you were getting back, and you didn’t feed me breakfast. A girl might get the impression you’re sick of being her on-call chef.”
“You were sound asleep,” he told her, nipping at the shell of her ear, “and too cute to wake up.”
Lacey laughed. “You dirty, filthy liar. You just told me yesterday that I snore.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s not cute.” Sam kissed the tender spot behind her ear, and Lacey almost dropped her grilled cheese mid flip. “You and Daisy were harmonizing.”
Lacey tossed the spatula on the counter then turned in his arms so they were face-to-face. Her gaze darted from his lips to his eyes, but she frowned.
“What are you thinking about?” Sam asked.
“All the rules I want to break,” she admitted, her fingers playing with the hair at the base of his skull.
His heart jumped. So did his cock. “I’m willing to renegotiate if you are.”
Lacey chewed on her bottom lip while she thought.
“This is still a fake relationship,” she said right when Sam thought the suspense would kill him. “No getting cozy because we’re kissing and fucking.”
He raised a doubtful eyebrow and looked at her clothes. Exhibit A that they’d already crossed the cozy bridge. Lacey sighed dramatically.
“You know what I mean. We’re breaking up next year.”
Next year. Could be January first. Could be December thirty-first. Sam didn’t know her timeline, but he knew that he wasn’t in a hurry.
“Next year,” he agreed with no conviction.
“When were you last tested?”
“June. It came back negative.”
Lacey nodded. “Mine was in September. After Mitch and I broke up. It was negative, but I had a boyfriend give me chlamydia once and I’ve been Safety Sally ever since.”
“When was that?”
“About four years ago. Penicillin is a wonder drug.” She plastered a brave, cheerful smile on her face, then became somber. “I don’t want kids. If we have an accident, I’m taking care of business. ”
“I was also serious when I said I didn’t want kids, so I support that.”
Lacey nodded again, but it wasn’t an affirmative nod. She was buying time with the motion, the wheels in her head visibly spinning. Sam knew that look; he wore it often.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked as gently as he could.
“I’m nervous,” she admitted in a whisper. “What if I’m not song-worthy anymore? I’m not the young twenty-three-year-old you fucked. I’m old. Things creak.”
Sam unsuccessfully tried to bite down on a laugh. It was too ridiculous, though. Lacey believed she was over the hill with all the conviction of someone who had just crossed from their twenties into their thirties, and if Jordy’s aches and pains reports were to be believed, they hadn’t seen anything yet.
“We’re the same age, so I’m going to creak too.” Sam rested his forehead against hers. “When did you figure out the song was about you?”
“I didn’t. Peter told me yesterday. Were you ever going to tell me?”
“Not if I could help it. I didn’t want to scare you off.” Peter’s interpretation of the song replayed in his head. “It’s not a love song.”
“I know. It’s about a good old-fashioned fuck.”
Sam grinned. “There was nothing old-fashioned about that fuck.”
“I don’t know about that. The Greeks were kinky, and I’d call 700 BCE old-fashioned.”
He pressed her against the counter. “You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“You’ll have to keep asking questions to find out.” Lacey trailed her thumb down his racing pulse. “This isn’t going to ruin everything, is it? ”
A shiver slid down his spine. “I don’t think good sex has ever ruined anything.”
Lacey looked unsure, so Sam decided to ease her worries in the best way he knew how. He cupped the back of her neck with one hand, the other hand sneaking under the hem of his sweatshirt to grasp her hip, and he kissed her.
It was supposed to be a slow, gentle exploration, but she moaned against his mouth and the very thin thread that held Sam’s self-control together snapped. A low growl rumbled in the back of his throat, and their kiss quickly became frenzied. Her fingers dug into his shoulders while both of his hands went to her ass, squeezing and kneading the well-toned muscle.
Lacey sucked on his bottom lip and stars danced behind Sam’s eyelids. His cock was already so hard he worried it would bust through the zipper of his jeans, and all the memories his brain associated with Lacey sucking made it throb painfully.
She pushed his jacket off his shoulders and down his arms, and Sam let it drop onto the floor with a muffled thump. Then she tugged at the collar of his shirt, then the arms, and then the hem, unsuccessfully trying to undress him.
“Off,” she snarled against his mouth, and Sam obeyed. His shirt joined his jacket on the floor. “Good boy.”
“What’s my reward?”
The tips of Lacey’s fingers traced the lines of ink all over his skin. “Hmm…I’ll let you lick my pussy.”
That was a better answer than he’d hoped for and his mouth watered. Sam had no issues ceding control of this encounter as long as it didn’t stop. Before she could take back his prize, he boosted her up onto the counter and pushed her knees wide.
“Eager?” she asked, breathlessly.
“Practically starving,” Sam replied, bending down so he was eye level with the crotch of her panties. He hooked two fingers into the fabric there, was pleased to find it damp, and pulled it to the side. He licked his lips. “Perfect.”
There would be time for teasing a different day. He didn’t have the patience or willpower for it at the moment. Sam knew what he wanted, and he made damn sure he got it. The first taste of her on his tongue was salty sweet heaven, and he moaned loudly.
“Oh fuck,” they said in unison.
Lacey sank her fingers into his hair and tugged, pulling him closer. “More,” she demanded, like stopping had ever been an option.
Heaven was a place on Earth, and it was located between Lacey Finch’s thighs. Sam was just a gifted sinner who’d been granted access. For the price of her moans and her sighs, he’d worship the altar of her body for a lifetime.
“Clit,” she gasped, and Sam flicked his tongue across it. Lacey’s back arched.
“Fingers,” she groaned, and he slid two fingers inside of her easily, his tongue still working at her clit. “Oh, fuck, yes, yes, yes. ”
Sam was so desperate for his own pleasure that he wanted to crawl out of his skin. Both of his hands were busy with Lacey, and the angle he needed to be at to lick her glorious pussy meant he couldn’t even rub up against the cabinetry. The head of his cock was oozing precum, and his underwear was becoming increasingly wet and uncomfortable. He wouldn’t stop, though. Not until?—
“Oh, fuck,” Lacey whined, and she squirmed. Sam maintained his course. If she needed something different, she’d tell him. He wasn’t about to fuck this up by going rogue. “Please, please, please…oh, god, Sam…”
A breathless squeak announced her inner walls convulsing around his fingers and her thighs clamping around his ears. Sam continued until the tension in her body eased and the death grip she had on his hair slackened. Even then he allowed himself casual licks of her pussy until she pushed his head away.
“Stop before I die,” she panted. Lacey took deep breaths, and frowned, her nose twitching. “Is something burn—oh fuck! My sandwich!”
The forgotten grilled cheese was charred to a blackened crisp.
“I’ll make you another one,” Sam promised after he’d turned off the stove, careful not to say anything about the tomato soup that had bubbled away to nothing but a red mess.
“Orgasms and sandwiches. What more could a girl want?”
“More orgasms?” Sam suggested, unbuttoning his pants and sliding down the zipper for some much-needed relief.
Lacey held out her arms. “Take me to bed.”