Prologue #2
“You’re good, though,” I say. “Like, really actually good. Not just ‘guy at a bar’ good. Actual good.”
He turns to look at me fully then, and his eyes are definitely blue, I can see that now in the orange glow of the streetlight. Light blue, almost startling against the dark ink on his skin and the dark hair falling across his forehead.
“You sound like you know what you’re talking about,” he says.
“I don’t. I have no musical training whatsoever. I just know how it made me feel.”
“How did it make you feel?”
The question is quiet, almost hesitant, like he’s not sure he should be asking. Like the answer matters more than it should.
“Like you meant it,” I say. “Like every word was yours. Like you weren’t performing, you were just being. On stage. Where people could see you.”
“So the flower shop,” he says, gesturing with his taco. “You actually like flowers, or is it just a job?”
“Depends on the flower. I’m morally opposed to roses.”
“Morally opposed?”
“They’re the obvious choice. The I-forgot-to-think-about-it choice. Every guy who’s ever apologized for something has shown up with roses like that fixes anything.”
“Noted.” He’s grinning now. “What’s the non-apology flower?”
“Dahlias.” I don’t even hesitate. “They’re ridiculous and over-the-top and they look like something a kid would draw if you asked them to imagine a flower. They’re perfect.”
“Dahlias,” he repeats, like he’s filing it away. “Got it.”
“You want to get out of here?” he asks finally.
“We’re already outside.”
“I mean-” He stops, rubs a hand over his mouth. “I don’t… I’m not trying to… I just don’t want to stop talking to you yet. But we could go somewhere else. Or I could walk you home. Or-”
“My apartment’s six blocks from here.”
He blinks. “Okay?”
“That was an invitation, Eli.”
“Oh.” His whole face goes pink, which is objectively hilarious given the tattoos and the size of him. “Right, yeah. I… yeah.”
The walk takes twice as long as it should because he keeps stopping to look at things. A mural on the side of a laundromat. A cat in a window. A plant that’s somehow growing out of a crack in the sidewalk.
“How does that survive?” he asks, crouching down to look at it. “There’s like two inches of soil.”
“Plants are stubborn.”
“I kill every plant I’ve ever owned.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all.”
He looks up at me, mock-offended. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you seem like the type to forget things exist unless they’re making noise.”
He thinks about it, still crouched next to the sidewalk crack. “That’s… probably accurate.”
I hold out my hand to help him up, which is absurd because he could probably bench press me without breaking a sweat, but he takes it anyway.
His palm is calloused, rough in a way that tells me he plays more than just Thursday nights at dive bars, and he doesn’t let go immediately when he’s standing.
Just holds my hand for a second, looking at me with an expression I can’t read.
“This is weird, right?” he says. “Walking around Silver Lake at midnight with someone I met an hour ago?”
“A little weird.”
“But not bad weird?”
“Jury’s still out.”
He laughs again, still surprised by it, and finally lets go of my hand. “Fair.”
My apartment is a shoebox with delusions of grandeur, which is to say it has a small balcony that overlooks an alley.
I turn on the lamp in the living room and immediately regret not cleaning up before I left this morning, because there are dishes in the sink and a bra hanging off the back of the couch and approximately seven different pairs of shoes scattered between the door and the kitchen.
“Sorry about the…” I gesture at everything. “I didn’t exactly plan on having company.”
“It’s fine.” Eli’s standing just inside the doorway, his guitar case still over his shoulder, looking around with obvious curiosity. “It looks like someone actually lives here.”
“As opposed to?” I set my keys in the bowl by the door.
“My place looks like a hotel room. I moved in three months ago and I still haven’t unpacked the second box.”
“That’s incredibly sad.”
“I know.” He shrugs, sheepish.
I take his guitar from him, leaning it carefully against the wall by the door, and when I turn back he’s still just standing there, hands shoved in his pockets, watching me with that uncertain expression like he’s not sure what the rules are.
“You can sit down,” I tell him. “The couch is relatively clean. Ignore the bra.”
He sits on the edge of the couch, knees wide, arms resting on his thighs. He takes up approximately half the furniture. I think about sitting next to him, then decide that’s too much, and perch on the arm of the chair across from him instead.
“Do you want something to drink? I have…” I try to remember what’s in the fridge. “Half a bottle of white wine and possibly some orange juice that may or may not have turned.”
“I’m okay.”
“Water? I definitely have water.”
“Az.” He says my name like he’s still getting used to it. “Come here.”
My heart does something stupid in my chest. “That’s very direct of you.”
“I’m not-” He stops, closes his eyes for a second like he’s recalibrating. “I just want to… can I kiss you? I’ve been thinking about it since the hallway and I feel like if I don’t ask soon I’m going to lose my nerve and just-”
I cross the room and kiss him before he finishes the sentence.
His mouth is warm and he tastes like spicy pork and something underneath that’s just him, and his hands come up to cup my face so gently it almost hurts, like he’s afraid I’ll break, like he’s not sure he’s allowed to touch me even though I’m the one who started this.
I climb into his lap without meaning to, straddling his thighs on the couch, and he makes a sound against my mouth that’s half surprise and half open want.
“Is this okay?” he asks against my lips, and I want to laugh and cry at the same time because he’s so big and so worried about being too much.
“This is very okay.”
“Good.” He kisses me again, deeper this time, and his hands slide down to my waist, pulling me closer. “Good, because I-”
My cat chooses that exact moment to walk across his back.
Eli yelps, actually yelps, high-pitched and startled, and nearly throws me off his lap. Whiskers meows indignantly and continues his journey across the couch like nothing happened, tail swishing, completely unbothered by the fact that he just used a six-foot-something man as a bridge.
“What the fuck-”
I’m laughing so hard I can barely breathe. “That’s Whiskers.”
“That’s a demon.”
“He’s seven years old and has no concept of personal space. I should have warned you.”
Eli stares at the cat, who has now curled up on the opposite end of the couch and is grooming himself with deliberate calm. Then he looks back at me, and his expression is so genuinely horrified that I start laughing again.
“He just…” Eli gestures at his own back. “He walked across me. Like I was furniture.”
“To be fair, you are currently functioning as furniture. I’m sitting on you.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
He opens his mouth to argue, then closes it. Then opens it again. “I have no idea what’s happening right now.”
“You got startled by a cat and I’m making fun of you for it. Keep up.”
The smile he gives me is different from the ones before. Bigger. Less surprised. Like he’s starting to trust that this is real, that I’m not going to disappear if he lets himself enjoy it.
“You’re kind of mean,” he says.
“You like it.”
“I do.” He pulls me closer again, and this time when he kisses me, I feel him smile against my mouth. “I really do.”
He kisses me again, and the smile against my mouth turns into something hungrier, something that makes my stomach drop in the best way. Whiskers has retreated to the opposite end of the couch with the dignity of a cat who has already ruined one romantic moment and considers his work done.
“Bedroom,” I say against Eli’s lips. “Unless you want an audience.”
“God, no.” He stands with me still in his arms like I weigh nothing, then freezes halfway to vertical. “Wait… is this… are we-”
“Eli.”
“I just need you to say it. Out loud. Because I will stop the second you want me to, and I don’t want to guess wrong.”
I cup his face. His cheeks are warm under my palms. “I want you to take me to bed. I want you to take off my clothes. I want you to fuck me until I forget how to make fun of you for the cat. Clear enough?”
His laugh is shaky. “Crystal. Filthy and perfect.”
The walk to the bedroom is six steps and somehow still takes forever because he keeps stopping to kiss me against the wall, against the doorframe, against nothing at all.
The room is barely big enough for the mattress and a thrift-store nightstand with a lamp that flickers when you bump it.
He sets me down like I’m breakable, then stands there looking lost, this huge tattooed man filling my doorway with his hands hanging useless at his sides.
“Hey.” I reach for the hem of his shirt. “Can I?”
“Please.” He lifts his arms. The shirt comes off, and Jesus, ink everywhere, lines and shapes crawling over shoulders and ribs and down into the waistband of his jeans. I trace a constellation of stars along his left side. He shivers.
“Ticklish?” I ask, tracing lower.
“No. Just… nobody looks at me like that.”
“Like what?” I look up at him.
“Like they want to memorize me.”
“I do.” I pop the button on his jeans. “This okay?”
“Az. You can have whatever you want. Just keep asking, because hearing you ask is-” He swallows. “It’s doing things to me.”
“Good things?”
“Very good things. Embarrassingly good things. Things that make me feel like a teenager who just discovered what his dick is for.”
I shove his jeans down, grinning. “Romantic.”
“I warned you I was bad at this.”
“You’re not bad. You’re careful. There’s a difference.” He steps out of the jeans, kicks them aside, and then he’s in black boxers and all that ink and looking at me like I’m the one who’s too much. I pull my own shirt over my head. His eyes go dark.
“Can I touch you?” he asks.
“Yes.”