Chapter 18 #2
“Just…don’t say anything, okay? Just listen.” Then I tell her everything. The show, Kelly, Eli’s face, and my idiotic self -volunteering to help. I tell her about our fake dates, and the real one the other night.
When she stays silent, like I asked, I blurt out the thing I wasn’t going to tell her. The thing that she’s already seen on my face in those videos. “He got me singing again, Michelle.”
Michelle gasps. Then, there’s a sound on the other side of the phone which I swear sounds like a choked kind of sob.
“Are you crying? This is why I didn’t want to say anything! It’s not a big deal, Michelle, just a little practicing.”
“No!” Michelle says. “Maybe. I’m sorry. I just… I’m so happy for you. But I’m still so mad at him for how things went down last time. Even if he didn’t mean to hurt you, he did.”
“I know,” I say, suddenly wishing I could take it all back. I used to tell Michelle everything, but now that I have, I feel like it’s too personal. Too raw.
I feel foolish, if I’m being honest, for letting Eli right back into my life when Michelle knows how hard I took the end of our stupid fling. “Listen, Michelle, I really need to get back to work.”
“Reese, you know what I found in this closet when I climbed in here?”
“What?”
“That box, full of all those letters from Simon when you were in college. The ones where he was, like, gushing about you in one sentence and then berating you in the next.”
Fuck. I knew I should have thrown those out.
“Eli’s nothing like Simon,” I say, so loudly I glance to the door, worried someone might have heard.
“I know that, Reese. It’s just…you’ve been through so much.”
I told Michelle about those letters a few years ago, when we were living in the same town. She’d been aghast. But she didn’t know how bad it had been. I didn’t know how bad it had been, until I reread one of those when I was out of his spell, years later, to my therapist.
Simon had been older; he’d come up to me at a bar where I was singing with the band I played with in college.
“You’re good,” he’d said. He wore a band shirt and had a buzzed head. A dangly earring. He’d looked me over like I was something to eat. “Need to work on those high notes though.”
That had stung, but he wasn’t wrong. That was his style—pay a compliment, knock me down a little.
Later on those compliments diminished, the negging taking the front seat.
But he always knew when he was taking it too far.
He’d pull me in and tell me he was helping me become the best version of myself.
That I needed his help. That he loved me.
When I read that letter to my therapist, she’d asked me to repeat one of the paragraphs in the middle.
I don’t deserve someone as beautiful as you, Reese. I’m worthless scum next to you, it said at the beginning. But at the end? I know it’s hard to hear, but you don’t have the looks for the big time, and you need those if you don’t have the voice. I say this because I love you.
I still had a photo of that one in my phone’s photo album. I used to look at it when I felt lonely, to remind myself of just how much better being alone was than being with him.
I press my palm to my forehead. “You should throw those letters away,” I say, my voice tight. “Please, Michelle. I don’t know why I still have them.” I should delete the one on my phone, too.
I rub my thumb along my wrist.
“Reese, I just don’t want you to get hurt again.”
“You think I want that?” God, how I wish I hadn’t said anything at all.
There’s a long pause before Michelle says, “I’m sorry. You’re right, Reese. This is your life.”
My chest hurts. “Yes,” I say, because I don’t know what else to. My life.
I look up at my wall, to the photo of Rufus, the photo of Michelle and her family.
“Tell me about the girls before we go,” I say, needing to hear something good, something pure. As Michelle goes on about each of their girls’ accomplishments and sweet things they said recently, my eyes drift to the big wall calendar called WOMEN SINGERS next to Michelle’s family photo.
I lift up a page as Michelle talks, then another. Each image on the calendar is a different arthouse photo of a woman singer-songwriter. Pietro sent it to me for Christmas last year. My brother never got the memo singing was a sore spot.
He also didn’t know that this calendar hits a specific pain point inside of me.
Because these women, famous as they were, aren’t pictured during the peak of their fame, or in the biggest stadiums or arenas.
They’re all singing in small, intimate venues.
Wooden stages with just them and their mics and occasionally, their guitars.
Each month I’ve flipped the page and felt the weight of failure.
But I’ve also felt the old, dusty weight of longing.
Whenever I used to picture “making it,” that was how I saw it. Close. Connected. Just my music and some people to hear it.
Okay, maybe a lot of people to hear it.
On the other end of the line, Michelle sighs. “Reese, just one more thing about what we were talking about? Please?”
“Okay,” I say, still staring at Janis’s hand wrapped around her mic.
“Reese, you were my personal life coach when my life was going sideways over here. You helped me when I couldn’t help myself. So, I trust you know what you’re doing, okay?”
My eyes well up at her kind words. But I feel like I don’t deserve them.
November’s picture is Janis Joplin on stage at some small venue, well before Woodstock.
Her eyes are closed as she sings soulfully into the microphone, the audience before her enraptured.
It’s like Pietro dipped into my dreams and saw the old, stupid one I used to have, of singing on a stage just like that.
“That’s the thing, Mich,” I say. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
” Who am I to hope? To dream? But I trace the lights on the image with my finger, and a note plays in my head, strumming all the way down to my heart.
It’s a note in a new song that won’t leave my mind.
My lips curl up in the faintest smile. “But going to that studio, singing into that microphone, it’s like…
it’s like a piece of me I thought died has come back to life. ”
When you’re a green shoot, poking up through the decay of the forest floor.
I don’t realize I sang it until I hear Michelle sniffling on the other end of the line.
And a creak behind me, followed by the sounds of the kitchen, which has gone up in volume.
I turn to see Eli standing in my doorway, his face frozen in a way I can’t describe. He’s wearing a blue button-down, sleeves rolled up to reveal his thick, corded forearms. Arms that were wrapped around me only a few days ago.
My heart gallops in my chest.
I was just thinking about you.
“Mich,” I whisper, “I’m going to go.”
Just then there’s a bang on the other end of the line. I hear my mom’s voice. “Michelle Franco Archer!”
“Oh shit,” Michelle whispers. “Me too. Love you, Reese, so much.”
“I love you too,” I whisper, my eyes on Eli’s.
I hang up the phone, cutting off the stream of sound on the other end of the line.
For a moment, Eli says nothing. I say nothing. We just stare at each other, heat sparking off some invisible cord that’s snapped to life between us.
Then he closes the door behind him.
“Sing it again.”
“Eli, I—”
He comes over to me, lifting me off the chair, holding my hands. “Please.”
I swallow, glancing back at Janis.
Then I close my eyes.
And I sing. Softly, so no one outside can hear, I hope.
I sing the new song I’ve been working on, about the seed that fell from the sky.
I can’t tell you where I came from
Maybe it doesn’t matter
But I can tell you where I’m going
I’m reaching high, toward the sky, and all I can see is you…
When I open my eyes, I’m only inches from Eli.
His hand slides out toward my jaw as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, and a moment later, I’m wrapped up in him, his clean-laundry scent, his hair brushing my forehead as he dips his head to kiss me.
“Reese,” he says against me. He slides his hands down my back, pressing at my lips with his, coaxing mine open.
I moan as Eli strokes my tongue with his. Heat rushes through me as his hands slide down my ass, cupping me and hoisting me up to press against him.
There’s something hard between us. Something urgent.
I break the kiss, looking up at him. “I can’t believe you made me sing.”
“You’re beautiful when you sing, Reese.” He brushes a strand of my hair from my face. “You’re beautiful all the time, but when you sing…you look like a goddamned angel.”
I kiss him again, only this time, my lips go to his ear.
Eli groans, his hands in my hair, loosening the knot I’ve got pinned up at the back. “Reese—”
“I can’t stop thinking about the other night,” I say. I feel emboldened by having sung. That heat expands, filling all of me. “I want to finish what we started, Eli.” I reach past him and flick the lock on my office door.
Now his groan expands to something like a growl, and Eli grips my hips, spinning me around so I’m up against the wall.
“This could get messy, Franco,” he says as he bends his head down and nips at my collarbone with his teeth.
He’s got me pressed up against the thin strip of wall between the couch and the door.
Someone could come to my door at any moment.
It’s not likely—most of my staff aren’t in yet; it’s mostly crew out there.
Still, a moment later, someone walks by outside, as if I conjured them.
They’re just a shadow, their walkie chirping.
But they’re there, reminding me of how risky this is.
But instead of dissuading me, the riskiness only sends more fire through me.
“It’s already messy,” I say, breathing hard as Eli’s hands slide down my front, cupping my breasts through my shirt. My nipples contract under his touch, and I know he feels it, because he sucks in a breath.
But before he can do anything else, I let the boldness take over. I want to be in control here.
So I drop down to my knees, my hands on his belt.
“Jesus, Reese, I—”
“You don’t want me to do this?” I cut him off, unbuckling his belt.
Eli presses his hands against the wall, looking up and saying something I don’t hear under his breath. Then he says, “Reese, you don’t have to—”
But once again, I cut him off. Only this time, it’s not by my words. It’s my hands, releasing his pants to the floor in a dull thud. I hook my fingers over the waistband of his shorts and tug them down, freeing his cock.
We both suck in a breath as I wrap my hand around his length. Then it’s only him as I take the tip of him into my mouth.
He tastes salty-sweet, his pulsing head throbbing against my tongue.
“Fuuuck,” Eli breathes, his hands going to my hair, now fully loose.
I take more of him in, filling my mouth with him.
“You know what I think about when I’m not around you, Reese?”
I murmur against him, my hand reaching up to cup his balls as I slide off his cock, lick my lips, and look up. “What’s that, Eli?”
Eli slides one hand in my hair. “I think about all of it. The past, the present”—he grips his cock with his other hand, coaxing my mouth open like he did with his lips earlier. Only now he’s running the tip of his shaft over my lips, over the pad of my tongue—“the future.”
I open my mouth wide, an invitation.
Eli slides himself in, using his other hand to grip the back of my head. His body’s taken over now. He tilts his hips toward me, encouraging me to take more. “I think about all the ways I want to be with you, Reese.”
His cock hits the back of my throat then, sending a shiver of pleasure through me. I’m wet for him; I can feel it. And though I didn’t intend for anything more—hell, I didn’t intend for this—I realize I want him now. I want him to take me right here in the office.
“I want you like this,” he says, echoing my thoughts as he slides himself out of my mouth, then thrusts back in. “I want you naked. I want to see your tits shake as you bounce on my cock. I want to hear you cry my name when you sit on my face.”
He’s pulsing in my mouth now, to the rhythm of his words.
“But it’s not enough, Reese,” he breathes. He presses one hand to the door to keep it closed, the other on the wall to brace himself as he fucks my mouth.
Just like I need him to.
I make muffled moans, my pussy so wet, the sensation of him filling my mouth turning me on so much I wonder if I could come like this, from thought alone.
“I want more,” he rasps. “Will you give me more, Reese?”
I voice my agreement, but my words are muffled with my mouth full of him.
“Oh Christ, I’m going to—” He tries to pull out, but I won’t let him.
I grip his ass, keeping him as deep as I can take, until he grits out the words, “Yes…God, yes, take it, baby girl.” I feel him tighten. A strangled sound escapes his lips as he empties himself down my throat.
I shudder, so close to releasing myself knowing I’ve undone him like this.
Eli pulls me up a moment later, holding me against him, my head tucked in under his pulsing throat. “Reese, I didn’t come in here for this…”
“I know,” I breathe, tipping my face up to him. He bends down, kissing me tenderly, stroking my hair from my cheek. “I’m just…remembering what it’s like to have fun.”
He grins, and now it’s my turn to come completely undone.