21. Avery
Avery
I ’m not sure where I pictured us going, but back to the stadium where we did a mic check this morning wasn’t it. He leads me through the cement-walled bowels that echo with each step we take, until we arrive in front of the door to my dressing room.
“You know we don’t have to be back here for at least twelve hours? Unless you’ve been sleeping here. Now that I think of it, I’ve never seen your place,” I joke.
“If you’re that curious, I could take you there after this.
” There’s a hint of suggestion in his voice, but only the usual amount.
I really thought I’d be immune to it by now, but if the zip of electricity up my spine is any indicator…
No luck. It’s only compounded by the fact that this is the longest we’ve spent alone, outside of sitting together in a car, in weeks.
“Pass.”
Wes moves so his body is positioned between me and the door, his playful expression turning serious. “I regret to inform you there’s been an infestation in this room.”
“And naturally you’re bringing me here to see it instead of adhering to any safety regulations.”
“It’s not just any infestation.” He taps the key card he’s been given against the black pad next to the door and the lock swishes into the unlocked position. With a twist of the handle, he swings the door wide. “You have a bear problem.”
Teddy bears. One hundred and five of them. I know this without having to count.
I step into the room, mouth agape. They clutter the vanity and are lined up on the couch. I pick one up, brushing my fingers over the impossibly soft fur.
“Please tell me you remember. If not, I’m going to feel like a complete idiot who should have just gotten you flowers or something to celebrate.” In the mirror, out of the corner of my eye, I see him scrape a hand nervously through his hair.
I clutch the stuffed animal to my chest, like if I squeeze it hard enough, it will push under my skin and lodge into my heart.
This thing that I joked about wanting because I never thought there would be a world where something so ridiculous would matter.
But if someone were to tear this bear away from me, I’d probably attempt to claw their eyes out, which would be impressive because of how short I keep my nails trimmed to effectively play guitar.
“I can’t believe you did this for me.”
“I wish I could have done it sooner. And after these last few weeks, you’re probably sick of me being the first thing you see every morning and then answering my calls after spending a whole day with me.
” He laughs nervously. “But the tour is about to start, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to make up for all the time we’ve lost before February.
” Regret etches in the lines of his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes and cutting into his forehead.
The papers. How at the end of this he thinks I might hand him a pen and say “It’s marked where you need to sign.
And remember, once you’re done, I never want to speak to you ever again.
” While I was comparing whether I liked maple or hardwood smoked bacon, he was sitting next to me with a countdown going on in the back of his mind.
I wish I could promise him forever. Permanent. Just like our tattoos. It was so easy back then to commit to him.
But I can’t. Not yet.
I settle on letting him in a little more. “We can make up for a little more time tonight. What if you come over?”
“You still have it.” Wes reaches out delicately brushing his long agile fingers over the neck of my first guitar, where it rests in my living room. He silently looks at me for permission.
“Go ahead.”
Gingerly, he picks up the instrument. It’s a touch out of tune, but he quickly remedies that.
I cross the living room and lean against the arm of the leather couch.
The one teddy bear I brought back with me is resting on the glass coffee table on top of a stack of decorative books.
The rest are in the back of Wes’s car, and he promises to donate them before we leave LA.
I’ve heard Wes play hundreds of times. But it’s always different with this guitar.
The wood that soaked up his blood from the time he played his fingers raw.
The scratch on the body from when we weren’t nearly as careful as we should have been, bumping it against the sandpaper-like roof tiles outside his room.
It holds memories that seem to tangle with the music. It’s hypnotizing, and I don’t know when, but I start to hum along. When he’s done, his fingers tighten before letting go, as if giving a hug to an old friend.
He puts the guitar away, and I show him through the two-bedroom home.
“It’s different than I would have imagined,” he says when we get to the back porch. He's seated in the rocking chair that I refuse to use because the first time I sat on it I rocked back so far that my stomach plummeted like I was on a roller coaster.
“You can say it’s ugly.”
“It’s clean cut. Simple. Serene,” he rushes to say, and I can’t help but laugh at the attempt.
“Clinical and pre-furnished,” I continue.
“I’d like to say it’s because I’m traveling so much that it feels like a waste of time to care about places I mostly use as crash pads.
But I think it’s more that if I try and it doesn’t feel like home, I’ll just be in this space where I’m disappointed and comparing it to the house in Caper. ”
“Have you ever looked into buying it? I bet if you gave a good offer the owners would take it.” There’s something unreadable in his face and he sounds physically in pain at the thought of me floating from place to place.
New owners. His neighbors.
It’s weird to think about how he probably knows their names. George has likely had them over for dinner and if they have kids I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been given horse rides out back.
“It wouldn’t be the same. Unless they managed to maintain all the furniture, I’d probably hate it. They’re doing me a favor. I find ways to bring a little home with me.”
I decide I’ll show him one final secret tonight. One last part of me.
Buried in my dresser, folded into a T-shirt and wrapped in headphones that I need to replace because of the fraying exposed wire, is my Discman. What I grab to feel like I’m at home even when I’m not.
Over the years, I’ve used it less and less, terrified that I’ll push it past its limit.
That one of the few things I have left from the happiest time of my life would break beyond repair.
I’ve transferred my old CDs into a new case, one with a hard shell.
I flip through the pages until I select the perfect one and click it into place.
The only one that would make sense for tonight.
I head out of my room on my way back to the porch, but Wes is standing in the living room.
“It started to rain. Not hard, but…” He trails off, spotting the device clutched between my hands, and my heart squeezes at how he looks at it.
Like an archeologist on a years’ long expedition finally stumbling across a treasure lost to time, when anyone else would probably be wondering what I was doing with something that’s become obsolete in the age of streaming subscriptions and wireless technology. “Is that?”
“I thought you might want to listen to something?” My words come out as a question.
“Please,” he breathes out.
If it weren’t for the limitation of the headphone cord, I’d opt for sitting a few feet away, but that’s impossible. We sit close. Thighs pressed together. My back straight as to not lean back against where his arm is draped across the back of the couch.
I press play and his brows pinch. He mouths the words to “You and Me” by Lifehouse like an incantation. It ends, and the infectious distorted bass line of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” plays.
His head whips to face me. “My mixtape.”
But his movement pulls my headphone free. I catch it, and half a second later he moves to do the same, his hand cups over mine as I replace it in my ear. His fingers skate down my face, cupping my cheek. My hand slips to his wrist, not to pull it away, but to anchor myself against him.
“I listen to this CD the most,” I admit.
Because ever since I left Caper, I didn’t have a physical place to call home. No four walls that I claimed as my own. But whenever I listen to this mixtape I feel like I have a little bit of home with me.
“Listen not listened,” he notes.
“I wasn’t going to change my music taste out of spite. You used to have good taste.”
“That was all you, always showing me something new. I’ve suffered without you.” It’s there in the depths of his eyes.
He looks at me like religion, salvation. So many have lost me in acts of selfish translation, but all he offers is devotion.
“I would be cruel if I let that continue.”
His thumb shifts, rubbing over the seam of my lips. “Please, Avery. Tell me what you want me to do.”
There’s only one thing I can think of asking for. “Kiss me.”
I expect it to be like being hit by a train. Full force. Crushing.
But he slowly takes the headphones out of our ears and sets them aside. A startled giddy laugh passes my lips when he hoists me up and places me on his lap. I brace myself on his biceps, firm and corded.
He takes me in for a heartbeat and then, finally, his mouth meets mine.
My lips to my jaw to my neck over my fluttering pulse.
I shiver and grind against him. He moans and I feel him growing hard under me.
Heat coils in my belly. The soft caress on my neck turns into a bite. Teeth skating tentatively over my skin.
He could tear out my throat and I’d let him. I’d bleed out here staining the white couch and be happy for it.
“Don’t leave marks where people will see,” I say faintly, remembering the makeup I’ll have to wear tomorrow. The cameras and the giant images of us that will be projected over the heads of ten thousand people.
It’s an effort, because when it’s us, it feels like it’s just us. Dangerous to not think of the consequences. Freeing to pretend they don’t exist.
“God. I want them to,” he murmurs against me. Hot breath feathers over my throat. “But because you asked, I’ll just have to be creative.”
He shifts, twisting us so I’m no longer on his lap.
I’m on my back with his fists planted on either side.
His body is slotted between my legs. As he hovers his silver chain pops free from the collar of his shirt, the ruby ring attached dangling so the warm metal just barely touches my chest. That wicked, wicked mouth of his dips lower.
Over the heaving swell of my chest. With no bra, my nipples press tight against the fabric of my shirt.
He holds himself up with one arm and his free hand pulls down the fabric by the collar, exposing me to a flash of cold air.
He pinches my nipple, sending a shock straight to my clit, the same moment his mouth lands on me.
I writhe, bucking, squirming, desperate to relieve the ache between my thighs.
My hips bump against his, but I need more.
“Please,” I beg, and he moves a thigh between mine, bunching up my skirt that feels as light and unnecessary as tissue paper. I roll my body in urgent frantic thrusts until I’m panting. Closer and closer. Muscles pulling taut as I reach a breaking point.
His mouth is everywhere. Sucking. Biting. Licking.
“Wes. Wes. Wes.” His name, but also the only thing that my mind can wrap its mind around.
Has it ever been this good? How can it be this good and we’re barely doing anything?
Because it’s him and because it’s you . Because everything is better when it’s the both of us. Music. Sitting and watching a sunset, even miles apart. This. God. This is the best.
He presses harder against me, and I snap. A strangled cry crawling out of me as an orgasm fizzles through me.
His thumb brushes over my cheek. “Avery, are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” And then I see it, the tear he caught. “Oh. I’m good. So good.” I sniffle. “I’m just so happy.” A laugh quakes through my body at the realization. Another tear slips and this one he kisses away.
I’ve filled the space where happiness lives with feeble substitutes. Now that I’m experiencing the real thing. It’s like a damn has broken and all the joy I’ve been depriving myself of is spilling out.
“I’m just so happy too.” A soft smile on that wonderful, tortuous mouth of his. All for me. He flushes. “So…do you, maybe…” He pauses, cheeks growing a shade darker. “Have pants I could borrow? I. Shit. The sound of you. It just...” He stumbles over the words. “I came.”
“That easy?”
“When it’s you.”
“It was easy for me too.” To feel, to allow my body to melt and enjoy without a thudding pressure to look a certain way. Pleasure was just one more thing in my life that had started to feel choreographed, but this was messy and perfect. And like so many other things, he’s helped me reclaim it.
We slowly get up from the couch. I fish out a pair of my gray sweatpants.
The beauty of being the same height is that they fit him pretty well.
After he’s done, I clean up and change in the bathroom.
In the mirror I see where he’s left marks around the curve of my breast, touching the spots tenderly.
“Nice shirt,” Wes says from the foot of my bed as I reenter the room.
My gaze falls to my body and the age-softened T-shirt that falls to my thighs.
Fool’s Gambit is written in red block letters over my chest. “It was on top of the stack.” I step forward so I’m standing between his spread thighs.
“But it’s good to know you like it.” His face tilts up to me and I brush my hand over his hair.
“Let me stay for breakfast. We can watch the sunrise, and it will be so good,” he says, and I see the rest of what he means in his eyes. We’d be so good if you let us.
“Stay.”