31. Phoenix St. Pierre
PHOENIX ST. PIERRE
“She was wearing a Cartier watch,” my mom says over the phone. I almost didn’t answer the call for three reasons. One, I’m at Tom’s apartment. Two, we just finished writing another song (why ruin a good thing?). Three, I made him come from my hand again yesterday, and it’s occupying half my brain.
It’s been two weeks since our first kiss, and we still haven’t moved on from handjobs.
The slow pace is nothing I’ve ever experienced.
It’s devouring my brain in the best and worst ways.
My head space is literally Tom Cobalt and music, and there isn’t enough room for my mom to insert a grenade of worry.
I need her not to pull the pin.
If my red pen didn’t bust on me again, I would’ve silenced the call, but I needed to use the bathroom anyway. So I reluctantly answered it.
“The watch had diamonds,” she adds.
“I doubt Tom’s mom was trying to make you feel poor.” I scrub my hands with fancy sandalwood soap, listening to her on speakerphone.
“It’s not that,” she sighs. “It just made me realize how much more you have to lose than her son.”
My stomach clenches, and I try to fixate on the crimson stains on my hands and not her words.
I scan the dimly lit bathroom, the air smelling like cedar and pine from a diffuser on the black marble.
Just the soap looks like it costs more than my wardrobe.
The black-tiled shower has a humongous rainfall showerhead. The space, so clean.
Every time I come in here, I feel like I’m in a hotel that costs a grand a night.
“Phoenix?”
“I hear you,” I whisper, using my foot to open the cabinet. Tom and his brothers are neat. Towels stacked, skincare products organized, nothing out of place. I grab a navy-blue hand towel, monogrammed with the letter C. I rinse it under the water.
“I…I can’t give you…” Her voice trembles.
“Mom.” I look into the mirror. Red ink bleeds against the sharp lines of my jaw. “It’s okay—”
“It’s not though. Your dad and I…we will never be able to give you what his parents can give him, and I’m sorry—”
“You’ve given me more than enough,” I say strongly. “The orchestra…” Why the fuck am I bringing this up? “It’s a dream for a lot of kids…just that, and I’ve been able to do it.” It’s not my dream. “You and Dad helped me get there, even if it’s not where I am now.”
She sniffs back tears. “You really want to give it up? Phoenix, just please think this over…”
There is no safety net for me. I’m following a dream that most would say will pan out to nothing. To fight against people who love you and want what’s best for you is the hardest thing in the world, and Tom will never know what this feels like.
Birdie, though…Birdie gets it. Thank God I have my brother.
“This is all I want to do, Mom,” I say quietly. “I have to see this through.” She would absolutely freak if I even mentioned kissing Tom. Which I would not and will not bring up.
“Your dad is going to a distillery with Connor Cobalt tomorrow.”
“Tom’s dad?” I wring water out of the towel.
“Mmm-hmm, they’ve hit it off. He heard your dad likes whiskey, so he’s taking him to a private tasting.” There’s a frown in her voice. “I just worry he’s trying to buy his trust.”
“What’s not to trust, Mom?”
“They’re in another income bracket than us, Phoenix. We aren’t exactly people to some of them.” Now she sounds like Birdie, but they’ve had some bad experiences with rich assholes during private events, ones where they were hired to play.
I try to reassure her. “I don’t think the Cobalts are like that.”
“I do appreciate Rose not trying to be fake with me. She is very…”
I frown. “What?”
“Prickly?”
I smile a little. “You mean, bitchy.”
“I didn’t say that.” I hear her smile. “But maybe.” After a short pause, she adds, “Just think about this some more. You can’t feed yourself on a passion.”
“Not playing drums feels like I’m starving anyway,” I mutter. “I’ve gotta go.”
“Phoenix, wait. I’m sorry.” She rambles for a few seconds, trying to remind me she’s just being cautious.
“I know, I know. I love you too.” Once we hang up, I rub hard at the red ink on my tensed jaw with the towel. A fist raps at the door, and I call out, “If it’s Tom, you can come in.”
I don’t turn around. I see the door open through the mirror and Tom slip inside. It’s a soft, quiet entrance where he presses his shoulders to the wood, closing the door behind him. Our eyes meet in the mirror while I fist the damp hand towel. His expression is one of deep concern.
“Lock it,” I whisper.
Tom latches the door. “I might have some face wipes for the pen.” He nears while I grip the edge of the counter.
His gaze keeps latching with mine, even as he brings a basket of products to the sink.
“You always have this look after you talk to your parents.” He skims my features. “Like you want to scream.”
I stare at my reddened, angered eyes in the mirror. “Talking to them sometimes feels like screaming into a void. It’s wild that you can be loved so much that when you fuck up, it feels like you’re fucking up several other people—even if it’s my life to fuck up and not theirs.”
“Have you told them that?” Tom wonders.
“I wouldn’t even know how to begin to. I think it would be a circular conversation and just return to the usual. We love you. We care about you. That’s all this is.” I wipe at my burning eyes, then I rest my back against the sink. “They just want what’s best for me, I know that.”
Tom rips open a face wipe packet. “They don’t think I’m what’s best for you? Or just The Carraways?”
“Both,” I answer honestly.
He considers handing me the wipe, but I don’t loosen my grip on the sink. Then I tilt my jaw to him.
Tom rubs at the stain on my face with a measured slowness. It skips my pulse.
Quietly, I tell him, “I bet your parents would say the same about me. I’m not what’s best for you. The drummer with an arrest. Who your mom thinks is taking you to crack dens—”
“A joke. She knows it’s a joke,” Tom says, digging a little deeper at the stain. He cups the other side of my face for a better hold. My lips try to lift, even as he adds, “But yeah, I don’t think the arrest helps.”
I want to tell him about it.
I really do, but I just can’t manage the words right now.
My chest feels heavy, and his presence is the only thing that lightens this descending weight.
I’m worried if I describe the event, he’ll just…
end things on the spot with me. Maybe he’d feel like I’m a ticking time bomb. Worse even, maybe he’d be afraid of me.
“You might need something stronger,” Tom says, ditching the face wipe. He sifts through the basket.
I rake my fingers through my hair, watching his breathing shorten. He acts like I’m already up against him, but inches still separate us.
My body strains with a real need and an even greater want. I haven’t been able to stop replaying our kiss from two weeks ago. It was my favorite first kiss I’ve ever had with any guy, and maybe it’s because of all the lead-up and my feelings for him twisted around it.
The eruption I felt just seeing Tom unravel under me—I want that again and again and again. Like a song on eternal repeat. Yesterday’s hookup doesn’t even feel like enough. I wonder if I’ll ever feel sated or if I’m just hungering for more. For all of him.
Fuck it. I’m not thinking as I rotate toward him. As I come behind him. As I plant my hands on the sink and cage Tom against the black marble. His knees knock into the wood cabinets beneath the counter.
He releases a choked moan, a sound I need to hear again. “You won’t,” he says, a glint in his eye, daring me.
“I won’t what? Fuck you against the sink?” I slide my hand between us, my knuckles against his ass while I unbutton and unzip myself. “Didn’t we just write a song about the two of us not making sensible decisions? About how we don’t think before we react?”
“‘Level Headed,’” he names the song. “What we aren’t.”
“What I’m not when it comes to you.” I stare at him through the mirror. “You’ve severely underestimated the number of times I’ve imagined being inside you.”
“I bet it’s crested a million,” Tom begins to smirk. “I bet I’m the only thing that makes you hard anymore—” He cuts himself off, his mouth breaking wider open with a strangled, groaning, “Fuck,” because I’m unbuttoning him, unzipping him, sliding my palm against his erection in a nanosecond.
My cock responds with yes and more and fuck him. My mouth goes to his ear. “You really think I won’t? Or is it that you don’t want me to?” I have to be sure. “Red light?”
“No, no,” he forces out, catching more air in his lungs. “We’ve been excelling at a yellow light. We wrote three songs in three days, dude. I don’t want to slow down.”
“For the band?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He’s moaning under his breath while I rock my hips against him. “For the band. This is good for the band.”
I don’t care what he needs to tell himself for this to feel okay. I just need him to feel like this isn’t going to ruin The Carraways. I’ve already flown so far past that place myself.
“Still a yellow light?” I ask him.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just yellow.”
Okay. Our eyes meet in the mirror for a stronger beat. I can feel Tom growing underneath my hand. His nose flares. Silence strengthens the tension in the room. The air is taut. All I want to do is break it.
I’m shocked when he does first.
Tom rotates and shoves a fancy bottle of face wash in my chest. “This’ll get the red ink off.” He jerks his head to the shower. Flush has ascended his neck.
My lips inch up, and I set the face wash on the counter by his waist, just so I can pull my shirt off over my head and arms. I chuck it on the floor. “There are easier ways to get me naked, nepo baby. You don’t need to construct a huge ploy.”
“Not a ploy, dude.” He leans against the sink. “A demand.”