14. Chapter 14
PRESENT
HERO
Onyx has been at my place for over a week, but it still gives me a jolt every time I pull around the corner and see his car in my driveway.
Maybe some part of me is still half expecting to come home to find him gone, or to realize that the last ten days have been some kind of fever dream and he was never here to begin with.
His Mustang isn’t the only dented car taking up space in my driveway this afternoon though. My grin only gets wider as I weave around both cars and pull my bike up to the garage. As soon as I step inside, I can hear the unpracticed strum of guitar strings, followed by familiar laughter.
“My fingers are too stupid for this.” Milo’s laugh carries down the hall as I take off my boots and hang my jacket on the hook next to the door.
There isn’t any jangle of cat bells or patter of little pawed feet though.
“Deevs?” I call out and click my tongue against my teeth.
“She’s in here,” Milo says.
Huh, that’s different. To Onyx’s displeasure, my spoiled girl has mostly been ignoring him. The stilted strumming starts again. I follow the sound down the short hallway to the living room and stop in the doorway to take in the scene with a warm feeling blooming in my chest.
Onyx and Milo are sitting on the couch together.
Milo has Onyx’s guitar on his lap, his fingers stumbling over the strings, and he cringes with embarrassment every time he fumbles a note.
Diva is draped across Onyx’s lap, purring and happily thumping her tail while he scratches her chin and watches Milo play.
“Your fingers aren’t stupid, you’ve only been playing for an hour.
Surprisingly, it took me a little longer than that to master it.
” Onyx manages to be sarcastic and comforting at the same time.
“It takes a lot of practice to lock in the muscle memory. Learning is always the hardest part, because it forces you to consciously pay attention to what you’re doing, and it turns out our conscious brains are really stupid about how to do things. ”
“Oh yeah, I knew that. I’ve been binging this neuroscience podcast lately actually, and the host was saying—”
I clear my throat subtly. Not that I’m not interested in an hour-long info dump about neuroscience, but I’ve gotten to know Milo well enough to know that I literally won’t be able to get a word in edgewise for the foreseeable future if I don’t catch him before he gets started.
They both swivel their heads towards me and greet me with smiles.
“Hey, sweetness. I’d get up to kiss you, but it’s illegal to move a purring cat,” Onyx says.
“Against the Geneva Convention, I believe.” I chuckle, crossing the room and bending down to steal a quick kiss. “Hey, kiddo.” I greet Milo by ruffling his hair.
He stops strumming and bats my hand away with a laugh.
“Kiddo? I’m, like, the same age as your boyfriend,” Milo says.
I cringe, but Onyx throws his head back and cackles.
“Oh man, how weird would that be if we got married and your stepdad was the same age as you?”
My stomach jolts with a pleasant warmth.
I know he’s just joking around, but hearing the word “married” on Onyx’s lips, even playfully, makes me want things I shouldn’t even let myself entertain.
I decided I was fine getting hurt, but if I actually start picturing some kind of Happily Ever After with him, that won’t just hurt, it has the potential to shatter me when he drives out of town again.
“Not that much weirder than the fact that my boyfriend is the same age as my dad,” Milo says. “Sex with older dudes is the best .”
I cringe again and put my hands over my ears.
“Come on, I don’t need to hear that. As far as I’m concerned, you and Piston are saving yourselves for marriage.
” Never mind that I’ve been friends with Piston for years and am well aware that he had tons of sex before Milo.
I accidentally walked in on him going at it with past boyfriends once or twice.
“It really is.” Onyx smirks and shoots me a wink.
“For the sake of my sanity, can we please change the subject?” I plead.
“Fine, we’ll only swap sex stories when you’re out of earshot,” Milo promises.
I’m not sure it’s any better knowing they might talk about sex when I’m not here, but I guess I can’t do much to stop them. I’ll file that under “things I refuse to think about,” right next to Milo and Piston’s sex life and whatever the hell goat lingerie is.
“Great,” I mutter. “What are you doing here? Did I know you were stopping by?” I’m already thinking about what I have in the fridge so I can invite him to stay for dinner.
“I came over to bring you more fungal cream for Diva, but I didn’t realize what time it was and that you were still at work.
Onyx was here though, so he let me in, and we got to talking about guitar.
I played cello all through middle school, and the chords and fingering are the same, so Onyx said I should be able to pick up guitar pretty easily.
But I think my fingers forgot all the right positions, and strumming is weirdly trickier than using a bow,” Milo rambles, and I nod along.
“So should I put a guitar on your Christmas list or not?”
“Christmas?” He scoffs. “I’ll have either gotten bored with the idea by then or bought my own guitar.”
“Fair enough.” I laugh. “I’ve got a whole bunch of pork chops I could throw on the grill. Why don’t you text Piston and tell him to spread the word. Cookout here tonight. It’s Arrow’s turn to bring the beer.”
“Cool,” Milo agrees cheerfully, handing Onyx’s guitar back and pulling out his phone.
Diva sneezes in annoyance at the mild disturbance, jumping off Onyx’s lap and prancing out of the room with a flick of her tail.
ONYX
In less than an hour, the smell of charcoal and grilling meat is filling the air and his friends are scattered around his backyard, along with their motorcycles, which they’ve pulled right up onto his lawn.
The sun is starting to get low in the sky, but it’s still an hour or so from setting, taking just enough of the edge off the early summer heat to make it a perfect evening.
Arrow and Lewis brought a fluffy white dog with them, and Piston showed up with a cat that’s almost as goofy looking as Diva, with one eye and a slightly crooked tail.
I didn’t think you could put a cat on a leash, but it seems pretty happy with its harness on, lounging in the grass, swatting at the dog every time it bounds over to try to make friends.
“So, you grew up here?” Lewis asks conversationally.
“Yeah. It was too quiet and boring when I was a teenager, but honestly I’ve been missing it,” I confess, casting a glance at Hero on the other side of the yard, standing by the grill with a pair of tongs and a funny apron that says “Hi hungry, I’m dad” on it.
I’m guessing it was a present from Milo, and seeing him preen when he came out wearing it was enough to make me terminally swoony.
“Really? So you think you might stay?” The question has ‘gossip’ written all over it, and Lewis leans in with his hand on his chin and a glint of interest in his big blue eyes.
I chuckle and shrug. “Who knows?”
His question sends my mind right back to my phone, turned off and tucked away in the nightstand next to Hero’s bed. I’ve been avoiding it since I got here, but eventually I’m going to have to charge it and return some calls. But doing that sounds about as appealing as a root canal.
“Sneak attack,” Jag shouts from behind me, and before I know what he even means by that, an explosion of white confetti blinds me.
“What the fuck?” I laugh, batting the tiny bits of paper out of my face. I catch a few in my hand, and upon closer inspection, they look like little white tadpoles or something.
“Cumfetti,” Jag announces, cackling as he raises the gun in his hand and blasts me with another burst of sperm shaped confetti.
“Mature,” Lewis mutters, batting the cumfetti out of his face too. “Didn’t anyone ever explain consent to you?”
Jag puts his hands on his hips for a second and screws up his face like it’s really costing him a fuckton of energy to give this topic some thought. Or maybe the scrunched look on his face is because his neon green pleather pants are blinding him. Hard to say.
“If I got you your own cumfetti gun, would you be more amenable to the cumfetti wars?” he asks.
Lewis seems to consider it for a second before he sticks out his hand to seal the negotiations. “Deal. I want a cumfetti gun on my desk by this time next week and a ceasefire in the meantime.”
“I can live with that.” Jag shoves his blaster into the waistband of his too-tight pants and shakes hands.
“You love to see diplomacy,” Arrow says blandly, coming up behind Lewis to wrap his arms around him and nuzzle his neck. He chuckles and picks a few more stray cumfetti out of Lewis’s hair.
“Can I get one too?” I ask.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Jag says.
“Did you just blast my boyfriend with your weird paper sperm?” Hero ambles over to ask.
“He was merely a casualty of war.” Jag holds his hands up in surrender.
“It’s okay, we’ve already negotiated a ceasefire until all sides can arm themselves,” I assure Hero.
“Sounds fair,” he says with a serious nod.
“How’s the food coming?” Milo asks, rubbing his stomach in an exaggerated plea for sustenance.
“Few more minutes,” Hero assures him, looping his arm around my shoulders and nuzzling my ear. The casual affection melts my insides and sets off the now familiar ache in the pit of my stomach.
All of this—Hero’s easy touches, his friends’ silly antics—it’s nice .
I stoop down to pick up my guitar, and start strumming it casually, matching the happy, mellow beat ringing in my ears while everyone chats.
Something no one tells you about doing something creative that you love for a living…
over time it steals the joy of it. I used to write music and play my guitar when I felt like it, when I wanted to take the music in my head and let other people enjoy it too.
Now I have to do that on demand, according to a schedule that everyone but me has control over. I missed this, playing just because.
Hero brushes another kiss to my cheek, and I switch up the notes to match the smoldering beats that fill me as his whiskers tickle my skin. He meets my gaze, and we share a quiet, simple smile that fills me with more joy than thousands of screaming fans ever could.
Would it be crazy to give up my dream job for all of this? Would Hero even want me to? What will it take for me to work up the courage to at least ask?