Chapter 48 Trouble
Trouble
I hear Will’s footsteps behind me and jump away from the bed, trying in vain to wipe the guilty expression off my face.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
His gaze slides down to the bed, and I quickly reach out and roughly shove the fabric peeking out a little deeper under the pillow.
It’s too late. He grabs what I’m trying to hide and gives it a hard tug.
A slow, soft smile lights up his face, making his dark eyes glitter. I feel my face color darkly.
“My hoodie?” He smiles.
“Yeah.”
“And Mat’s sweatpants?”
“Yeah. I-I just…”
He pulls me into one of those hugs that makes me feel like I’m drowning and being saved at the same time.
Big biceps. Solid chest. A warm body, long arms, and so, so much muscle and heat.
“It’s the last time,” he whispers. “The last goodbye, okay, baby? Eight days, and then you’ll be home.
No more packing. No more planes. Just home. ”
I cling to him, and to my horror, I start to sob.
This whole tour has been great. It’s been epic.
Most shows have been sold out and the reviews have been stellar.
It’s been one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that has the scope to change one fundamentally and provide one with a huge amount of personal growth and all that crap.
The first month was dizzying. The second month felt like it lagged a little bit.
The last month has been an honest-to-God fucking nightmare.
I’ve missed Will and Mat so much that I’ve hardly been able to pretend I’m having a good time.
Now, here I am with just over a week left to go, and I’ve finally cracked.
I’m standing here, sobbing, having been caught red-handed stealing my boyfriends’ clothes so I can smell them and curl up with them when I sleep.
It’s really scary what they’ve done to me. If I didn’t love them so much, I’d fully hate them for it.
“What’s happening?” asks Mat, peering out from the bathroom in a cloud of steam.
“Trouble’s sad.”
“Oh, baby,” he cries, taking my head in his hands and kissing me all over my face. “It’s nearly over. We’re nearly there.”
He glances over at Will, and Will looks at him hard for a second and then seems to concede. He gives a slight nod and says, “So, Trouble, you know how we’ve been saying we should take our relationship slow and one day at a time and not rush into anything?”
“Yeah…” I say cautiously.
“Well, that plan is shit,” Mat interrupts triumphantly. “We’re not doing that anymore.”
“No, we don’t want to do that anymore. We’ve decided we want to move fast,” adds Will.
“We want you to move fast.” Mat’s face breaks into an oversized smile. “That’s what we want. We want you to move your sexy little ass all the way into our place.”
My heart leaps. Yep, that’s right. I’m at the sorry stage where blunt instruments say things, and an organ formally used only for pumping blood and keeping me alive now does things like leaping in my chest.
“But how? Where will all my clothes go? Have you seen how many pairs of shoes I have? What about the bathroom? We can barely move around in there. You may not know this about me, but I tend to travel with a large assortment of products.”
Mat clamps his lips together so tightly his cheeks go red.
The left side of Will’s mouth quivers. He gives Mat a warning look and then says, “We’ll work something out.
The bottom line is we hate every single thing about life without you, and we want no part of it going forward. We want to be with you all the time.”
“Yeah, we hate every single thing about not being with you,” Mat agrees strongly. He looks at me and then trails his eyes down my body, coming to rest on my groin. “‘Cept the hot jerk-off videos you send us when you’re on tour.”
“Yeah, except those.” Will nods sagely. “We definitely don’t hate those.”
“But, but, how will it work? Who will do what? What will the rules be?”
“What do you mean?” Mat looks confused.
“I mean, like, what will everyone’s jobs be? Who cooks, who cleans?”
Will looks at me fondly. “We can discuss all that as we go. I’m pretty sure we can figure something out that works for all of us.”
“How does it work now?”
“At the moment, Mat does most of the cooking, and I do the groceries and sort out the bills. He cleans the surfaces, and I do the floors, and we take turns doing the bathroom because neither of us likes doing that. We each do our own laundry because Mat’s completely shitty at it, and it was causing a lot of fights. ”
“I’m not shitty at it, Will. You just don’t have to separate lights and darks. It’s not a law.”
“You do.”
“Do not.”
“I don’t mind doing the laundry,” I pipe up. “I actually kind of like it. I find it relaxing.”
Mat looks at me in amazement, and his eyes go so mushy that I’d laugh if I hadn’t caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and seen the same idiotic look plastered all over my face after I’d ended a call with them a few days back.
“This is important, Trouble. Yes or no: do you think you have to separate lights and darks?” Will looks at me as though our entire future hangs in the balance.
“Yes,” I say earnestly. “Separation is not only necessary, it is essential.”
Mat groans. Will raises a clenched fist in victory.
“So, what do you say, Trouble?” asks Mat.
Will looks at me expectantly. “You in, baby?”
What they’re proposing is completely insane.
Obviously. It’s one of the silliest ideas I’ve heard in a long while.
Our relationship is brand new. We’ve been casual or long-distance for most of it.
The very idea of moving in together is totally ridiculous.
Of course, it is. It’s absolute madness.
No one in their right mind would consider such a thing.
“I’m in!” I cry loudly.
Despite the jubilation that follows, by the time Mat and Will are packed up and ready to leave, I’m a mess.
I head down to the lobby with them to wait for their ride.
Once there, I find myself entirely unable to stop crying.
And I don’t mean the glamorous sort of weeping you see in the movies, where eyes look all glossy and a single plump tear rolls dramatically down a cheek only to be mopped up with a lovely lace handkerchief.
I mean the kind of crying that makes your eyes violently red and your lips twist into a grotesque sort of upside-down smile as sheets of various bodily fluids stream down your face.
When I try to insist on getting into the taxi and going to the airport to see them off, Mat has to call my backup dancer, Lez, to come and get me.
“It won’t make you feel better to come, Trouble,” says Will softly, holding me tightly against him.
“It’s awful at the airport, and then you’ll have to come all the way back here on your own.
That makes everything feel worse. Stay here.
Get a nice early night. I ordered room service for you, like always.
I got brownies and ice cream and everything. It’ll be in your room in ten minutes.”
Lez marches me to the elevator with a firm grip on my upper arm.
I have a feeling she thinks I may be a flight risk, and I have to admit, she’s not completely wrong.
In the elevator, an elderly woman with a shock of white hair and a string of enormous pearls around her neck takes me in, eyes narrowing for a second at the bedraggled state of me, and then says, “Never you mind, dear. Never you mind.”
“I-it’s my boyfriends,” I sniff. “They’re going home without me, and I’m not going to see them for eight days.”
“Boyfriends?” she exclaims, looking shocked and emphasizing the plural nature of the word. She sizes me up, and her expression changes from somewhat snooty to distinctly impressed. “Aren’t you a saucy one?”
It makes me smile from ear to ear because, yes, I do have two boyfriends. And yes, I am fucking saucy. I’m saucy as hell. And this time next week, I’ll be packing my things and going home.
“You gotta get back here. You gotta come home, Trouble,” rasps Will, angling the phone so I can see his face better.
“I’m dying here.” He’s still on his hands and knees.
His hair is damp, and there’s a shine of sweat down his neck and chest. His dick is lolling, spent, between his legs.
He blinks slowly. He looks completely exhausted.
“Oh fuck, here he comes,” he whispers urgently.
“I can hear his footsteps in the hallway. I can hear from the way he’s walking that he’s still hard. ”
“You can’t tell that from the sound of someone’s footsteps,” I tease. “There’s no way you can.”
“Mark my words. The man is still hard.” He closes his eyes, takes a long breath in, and then hisses, “Trouble, come home! I need you back here. I can’t handle him on my own. He’s out of control. He’s going to fuck me to death!”
“Hmm,” I say unsympathetically, doing my damnedest not to laugh. “Death by orgasm, huh? I’ve heard it isn’t the worst way to go.”
Mat enters the room and smiles buoyantly as he peeks his head into the frame. He grabs the phone from Will, looks me up and down, and then he angles the camera to his groin and shakes his rock-hard boner at me.
“See?” wails Will as I dissolve into screeches of laughter. “What did I tell you?”
Mat takes a seat on the sofa and Will flops down next to him.
“Only two more days,” I say once Mat and I stop laughing.
“Only two more nights,” says Mat, suddenly more serious.
“We’ve almost made it.” Will smiles, lazily resting his head against Mat’s.