Chapter 12 Salem
SALEM
I take Lou far from the Strip because I need a place that doesn’t scream about itself.
West, then south, then nothing but scrub and sky.
The hotel fades in the mirrors. The neon gives up.
The road is a line I can follow without thinking.
Lou rides behind me with her hands easy at my waist, not clutching, not careless.
She leans when I lean. It’s starting to feel like our language.
The diner is low and sunburned. Tin roof, chipped paint, a busted sign that still hums. Inside is cool and quiet. Jukebox in the corner, chrome stools, pie under glass. A woman with a pencil behind her ear waves us to a booth. I keep my shades on until the world widens again.
“Fries,” Lou says, like a prayer.
“Same here,” I tell the waitress. “Two plates, extra crisp. Coffee for me. Whatever she wants for her mouth.”
Lou smirks. “Milkshake. Vanilla.”
I raise a brow. “Vanilla is a flex.”
“It’s control. You can add anything later.”
“Like blindfolds?”
She snorts, and the waitress rolls her eyes and leaves us be.
I pretend to be good at this. I’m trying on normal. But it fits like I’m wearing someone else’s skin, and it’s two sizes too small. I’m terrible at it. My knee bounces. My fingers find a drum part on the table without asking me.
What do I even say right now?
Lou watches, amused, like she’s collecting data. “You’re not built for stillness.”
“I can do studio still. Live still isn’t my trick. Live is where you perform.”
“You can do anything but sit? Is that what you’re saying?” She smirks. “I thought you were the bad boy of the group. That’s what the headlines say.”
“Those headlines are mostly accidents and boredom. You throw me in a quiet room with nothing to chew on, and I end up juggling knives. That’s not my fault. And it was definitely not my fault when one of those knives ended up in the movie theater screen in Waco.”
“How was that not your fault?”
“The movie was boring.”
She laughs. “What else isn’t your fault?”
“The hotel fire alarm thing wasn’t me. Steam set it off. The ‘Salem kicked a speaker’ thing was me. It was humming, the ground was wet, and I was bored. The ‘bathroom fight’ was some guy blocking a kid from washing his hands.”
“And the stapler story?”
“True. But it was a tiny stapler.”
She snorts. “A terror with office supplies.”
“I contain multitudes.”
The milkshake lands. So does the coffee. The fries come after, hot and perfect. Lou dips one, considers it, then nods. I feel stupidly proud for having picked this place.
“So. You brought me to the desert to be normal. How’s it going?”
“Brutal. I’m trying.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
She leans back. “Okay. You look like a guy playing a character in a beige sweater.”
“I’m allergic to beige.”
“No shit.”
Small bites, small talk. Jukebox burbles out a track I know by muscle, some old soul song we used to cover before we could afford lawyers. The room smells like coffee and grease.
I can do this. I can do normal.
I wipe salt from my fingers and put the napkin down so I don’t shred it. “I don’t know how to be good at stillness. I’m training for it. Drumming on tables is my patch.”
“You don’t have to be good at it. You just have to stop setting things on fire to make the boredom go away.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Her phone buzzes on the table, face down. She flips it, sees a headline she doesn’t share, and flips it back. I pretend I didn’t clock it.
I’m hoping it’s not about me. “I didn’t handle it well.”
“Handle what?”
“What he said about you.” I keep my voice flat. “He said it like a dare. So I took the dare. That picture is me failing at stillness.”
Lou studies me across the table. “You don’t have to defend me. I’m not that girl.”
“I know. But I don’t know how to not take the gauntlet when he throws it.”
“Do you think that’s partly me, partly residual stuff from kicking him out?”
“Unresolved shit is my specialty.”
She salts her fries again. “I’m terrified,” she says, eyes on the plate. “Not of him. Of wanting three men at once.”
“Me too. The other way around, I mean. Different angle.” I blow out a breath to admit this thing that’s been gnawing at me. “I’m terrified to be worth wanting.”
She looks up at that. “You are?”
“I want to try something new with you. Something real. Not the stunt. Not the headline. Something that lasts longer than a photo op.”
She taps the booth with two fingers, thinking. “Okay. Then we practice normal until you stop flinching.”
“I flinch cute.”
“You flinch loud.”
The waitress drops more napkins. “You two need anything else?”
“Time.” I wink at her.
She grins like she’s heard that before and wanders off.
Lou takes a long pull on the milkshake, then sets it down. “Ground rules,” she says. “We say what we need. We don’t audition for the internet. We don’t promise each other things we can’t keep.”
“Deal.”
She nudges my ankle under the table. “Also, if I say stop, you stop.”
“Always.”
“And if I say more, you keep your hands steady.”
I laugh. “Yes, ma’am.”
She taps her screen again, thinking about the mess. “No heroics online,” she adds. “No replying to trolls. No DMs to strangers in my defense. Don’t take the bait.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I say. “But fine. I won’t.”
“Not even if it’s Troy.”
“Now you’re asking for a lot.”
“That’s what I do.” She grins.
I grin right back. “That’s why I like you, Lou.”
We finish the fries. I feed the jukebox so she can pick a song. She picks something from the early Weird Al catalog. We listen and laugh, and for once, I might have an idea of what normal could be.
Outside, the heat stands up when we do. The bike waits where we left it, chrome winking, seat hot enough to burn skin. I strap on my helmet, then hers. She swings on behind me, not shy. We take the side road past the dry wash and out where the land doesn’t bother pretending to be city.
“Where are we going?” she says over the engine.
“High ground. No neighbors.”
She squeezes my ribs once in answer. Good.
It’s late afternoon. The sun decides to take its time. The desert opens and keeps opening. I find a dirt pull-off where the scrub peters out, and the horizon is all we get. I kill the engine. The silence is the kind you feel in your teeth.
Lou pulls her helmet off and shakes her hair loose. Copper streaks catch the light. She looks at me like she wants to say a thing and doesn’t. I step closer.
“Noses clean,” I say, quoting Quincy without his voice. “But this isn’t a city.”
“No cameras out here.”
“No witnesses.”
“Boundaries?”
“Your call. I match you.”
She steps into me. I meet her halfway. The first kiss is simple. No angle. No trick. Her mouth is cool from the ride, then warm. I taste vanilla and salt. My hands land at her waist and stay there like I promised.
The wind lifts and drops a loose wave at her neck. I tuck it back, and she sighs like I hit a button. She breathes into me, and I take it.
“More?”
“Yes.”
The second kiss goes deeper. I take my time. I feel her fingers slide under the back of my shirt and rest there. Heat goes up my spine like a match. I keep my mouth on hers until she drops a sound into me that makes my knees think about failing.
She pulls back first. “Bike.”
I sit and steady the bike with both feet flat. She climbs on facing me, one knee on either side, careful of the pegs. The stance puts her close enough that our breath counts together. She rests her hands on my shoulders, grip tight for balance.
She kisses me again, slower now, like we built the tempo and can sit in it. She rocks once, exploratory. Heat spikes. I meet her the way she asks for it—pressure, not surge. She does it again, and I answer again, my hands firm at her hips.
The desert is a wall of heat. The sky presses down. We give it something to watch.
I kiss along her jaw. She tips her head to make space. My mouth finds the place under her ear that makes her gasp. I keep it light, then less light, careful of marks. She takes a fistful of my shirt and drags it, a wordless go.
“Tell me what you want,” I say, forehead to hers.
“Less thinking.”
“I can help.”
“Then help,” she says.
I slide one hand up under her shirt until my fingers find skin I haven’t earned yet. She nods against my mouth, and I keep going. Her breath hitches. I redo the motion more slowly. She swears under her breath and kisses me like we’re out of time.
“More?”
“Yes,” she says, voice rough.
Her hands move under my shirt now, tracing lines I didn’t know I needed traced. I feel ridiculous about how much that undoes me. I let it. I like being undone if I can still steer.
She grinds gently against me once, testing. I meet her exactly, no more. She makes a sound that tells me I got it right. The bike creaks under us. The world narrows to heat and friction and breath.
“Words. I want your words.”
She whimpers, “Don’t stop. Keep your hands there.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
I keep them there. I learn her rhythm. I don’t rush. I don’t get clever. I stay with what works and keep the pressure consistent. She drops her head to my shoulder for a second, then lifts it like she wants to watch my face when I get her spots.
The wind picks up and dies. The sky goes gold at the edges. A hawk cuts the air. The desert doesn’t care what we’re doing.
She reaches for my belt and pauses. I cover her hand with mine. “Your pace.”
“My pace would have you naked by now.” She finds me through the zipper and presses slow. My head drops back. I let myself be the one who makes the small sound this time. She smiles against my throat like she’s taking notes.
I get my breath back and pull her closer, the heel of my hand exactly where she wants it, the other hand keeping her balanced so she doesn’t have to hold herself up.
She takes me out, and I help her remove her clothes just enough, and she slides down my cock, tight, hot, wet, mind-blowing.
Nothing short of perfection. When she grinds down, I can tell when my piercing hits her clit—her dark eyes roll back and her breath leaves her.
I fucking love it when that happens. Lou bounces on me, chasing her pleasure with my body. Thing of beauty.
“That’s it, angel,” I murmur against her throat. “You take me so good.” I twitch myself inside of her, and she gasps, eyes wide. I grin. “Keep going.”
She bites her bottom lip, rolling her hips on me again. When I twitch my dick for her, it catches her off guard. “Oh my god, that’s so good. Go faster.”
So, I do. It’s not easy, but nothing worth doing ever is.
Between twitching myself inside of her and my pubic piercing, she’s pouring down my shaft by the time her body throbs on me.
She’s so close I can taste it. Shaking in my arms, begging god, begging me.
We climb together. My body aches for this.
For her. It’s messy in a way that feels right.
She shudders and leans into me hard, breath breaking, mouth open against my jaw. I hold her through it, doing what I said I would do. The sound she makes is small and yearning, and it tips me. I follow, hands locked, head tucked against hers while the heat drains out of my bones.
We breathe. The bike ticks as the metal cools. A truck drones somewhere too far away to matter. I put my forehead to hers and close my eyes for a beat to make sure the world still fits.
“You okay?” I ask.
“Yes.” She laughs, soft, surprised by herself. “Apparently yes.”
“Good.”
We sit until our pulses stop being percussion. I smooth her hair and she smooths my shirt like we’re both trying to make us neat for no one. She stays straddling me, her palms on my shoulders, her eyes on my mouth, as if she’s making a decision.
Wind moves across the scrub, and the world smells like dust and metal and whatever perfume she wore this morning after the shower.
We don’t rush. We don’t turn this into a pledge. We sit on the cooling bike until the sun slides one finger lower and the sky starts thinking about changing color. My hands stay steady where she left them. She stays where she is because she wants to, not because I’m holding her there.
She kisses me once more, quick and clean, then presses her forehead to mine again and smiles. We stay like that, breathing, until the heat lets us go.