Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Keannen
TWO BANDS CAN REALLY cramp a single practice space, but we insisted on this arrangement. We sprawl over every surface. The guitarists form a huge cluster like a flock of brooding birds, picking at their guitars and trading riffs back and forth. Erin and Jacob harmonize in a corner, their voices louder than the instruments. And me? I cram onto a stool with Tim half on my lap, competing with him to tap out a rhythm on a single drum kit.
“It’s more like this,” he says, flying through a quick little rhythm.
To the untrained ear, it might not sound like much, especially muffled so we don’t blow everyone’s eardrums, but that quick patter of drumbeats sets my heart skipping. Such casual, unconscious skill lurks beneath every note .
“Mhm. Why don’t you show me that again?”
I lean closer, as though he’s not already in my lap, wrapping an arm around his waist and setting my chin on his shoulder. I can feel him smirking at me, but I’m too close to see it, so I get to play dumb and drape myself against him while he plays the rhythm again.
A few weeks ago, this would have been unthinkable.
When the tour started, I hated him. At least, I thought I hated him. I was covering up something scared and vulnerable, something I’d spent almost nine years refusing to face. But things changed as we made our way around the country, and not just for our bands. Things changed inside me. I let him in without realizing I was doing it. I won’t say it doesn’t still freak me out sometimes, but the joy is quickly overwhelming those pettier emotions. Waking up with him, falling asleep with him, casually touching him like this, living my life beside another human without being scared they’re going to betray me any moment — these are things I never thought I wanted, things I regarded as too scary and too dangerous because of the way others had hurt me in the past. Tim is changing all of that, one patient, freckle-filled smile at a time.
“You two ready to actually play or are we interrupting your date?” Erin says.
I look up to find everyone else watching us.
“Whatever,” I say. “As though you all weren’t screwing around too. ”
“We—”
Jacob starts to say something, but then that huge security guy, Seth, comes into the room. Jacob’s eyes fly to that mountain of a human as he leans over to say something softly to Erin, who sighs dramatically.
“The vultures are circling,” she says. “Guess we weren’t as sneaky as we hoped.”
Groans ripple through the room. The tour did its job — both bands look like they’re going to be almost uncomfortably famous very, very soon, but that comes with consequences. We thought we’d been discreet in booking this practice space, but somehow the paparazzi found out, and now Seth and his team are going to have to bulldoze a way out for us when it’s time to leave.
“Great,” Jacob says. “And here I am in sweatpants.”
Seth glances toward him. The guy’s face is like stone, so the flicker of his eyes is all the indication he offers that he disagrees with Jacob’s assessment of his appearance, but it’s enough that I have to bite back a smirk. Seth works for both bands now as the head of an increasingly large security team, so maybe Jacob’s man-climbing dreams will come true after all.
“We’ll deal with it later,” Erin says. “I’m sure Seth and his team have it under control.”
The big man nods in agreement.
“Let’s focus on practicing, okay?” she says. “We came here for music, not for whatever those vultures want. ”
We go back to doing what we all do best, and soon everyone forgets about the paparazzi waiting to ambush us…
Which makes the flash of several cameras and cacophony of shouted questions all the more jarring when we do leave the practice space and try to get home. Seth and his guys form a human wall around us, ushering us into cars, and I cling to Tim’s hand to drag him with me to the safety of the car.
“I’m never going to get used to that,” Tim says when we escape.
Me neither, but if it’s the price of making music beside the man I love, it’s a price I can live with.
I SIGH INTO THE quiet of my apartment. It still reeks of “single guy,” even as I lead Tim inside. I haven’t had time to do anything about the fact that I never decorated it, not with both our music careers blowing up at the same time. Before all this, I never thought about anyone being here for more than a night. I never thought about them hanging out, leaving a toothbrush in my bathroom, noticing the lack of art on the walls. I would drag a guy inside and kick him right back out without ever even turning on the lights.
Yet another thing in my life that has changed for the better because of Tim.
I’m not saying I didn’t have fun, but it’s different having Tim follow me into my tiny efficiency apartment and go right to the refrigerator to retrieve the leftovers he helped cook the night before. He knows where to find the utensils and how to work the microwave, and for some reason that sends a thrill through my chest that all those fun, exciting one-night stands can’t begin to compete with.
We take turns showering while the food heats, then cozy up on the couch with day-old Thai food and an action movie I’ve seen three times. We sit needlessly close, thighs pressed together, shoulders bumping when we laugh at the dumb action antics on the screen.
For a moment, this cozy scene wavers like a mirage. It sometimes feels like someone else’s life. It can’t possibly be my life, obviously. Keannen Summers, cuddling with a boyfriend like some sort of normal, domestic guy? That’s pure fantasy.
Yet when I set aside my food and wrap my arm around Tim, he’s warm and solid and real. I kiss the top of his head, and he chuckles and sets aside his mostly eaten meal as well.
“You okay?” he says.
“Do I not seem okay?”
“You seem ridiculously content and happy. That’s why I’m asking.”
I snort a laugh. If one thing makes this feel real, it’s that Tim perfectly understands how strange it is for me. He’s both the source of the problem and my tether back to sanity.
“Fair,” I say. “I was thinking that this feels really easy, and that’s kind of weird.”
“Of course you of all people would think of that as weird. Most people would call this normal, you know.”
“I know, but when the hell have either of us ever been normal?”
“I guess we missed the boat on that one pretty early on,” Tim concedes.
“We did, but it’s okay. I like you better weird.”
I tilt his head toward me so I can kiss him, our lips sliding from our greasy meal.
“But really,” Tim says when we part, “it’s okay if this feels weird to you. It is. It’s new for both of us. We’ve never had a chance to do something like this. We tried, but then it seemed like the world was going to get in the way. Not many people get a second chance like this.”
“No, they don’t.”
All the more reason to treasure every second of it. I gaze down at the man who is inexplicably my boyfriend, rubbing my thumb along the freckles scattered across his cheek. People see him as soft. Hell, I saw him as soft. But they’re wrong. Tim has gone through so much, but instead of turning bitter and broken like me, he held onto his belief that the world could be beautiful and kind. That takes far more strength than deeming the universe a lost cause and succumbing to nihilism the way I did.
“Is it weird that this almost feels too easy?” I ask. “Like I’m expecting it to be harder, so I’m constantly bracing for some sort of twist.”
Tim shakes his head. “No, that’s not weird at all. I get it.”
“You do?”
“Of course. The people who were supposed to protect and care about us failed us. The very first people we were supposed to trust, our parents, rejected us. Of course you’re constantly bracing for disappointment. It’s the first thing you ever learned, and from the first people who were ever supposed to love you. That makes love seem hard and brutal and like a thing you have to constantly earn, but it’s not. I’m trying to tell myself it’s not. I think it’s going to take us both some time, though, and that’s okay. We have time. And we have each other. You have me every single day for the rest of your life, Keannen, and if I have to prove to you every single day that I love you and that that’s never changing no matter what, I’ll do it. Whether you earn it or not, my love isn’t conditional like our parents’ was, and it isn’t going away. For as long as you’ll have me, I’m yours.”
His words stopper my throat like a cork in a wine bottle. His constant barrage of sincerity still gets to me like this. I don’t know what to do with someone who is so perfectly, earnestly himself all the time. Tim can never be anyone or anything but Tim, so even when he says something so sappy, I know every single word is absolute truth.
This stupid, wonderful man is really going to mess up my aloof tough guy thing .
I cup his face and kiss him, deeper, harder, pressing my words against his lips instead of trying to speak them aloud. I’ll work on getting better at the talking part. For now, this is the best answer I’ve got: Our mouths pressed together as our bodies sink onto the sofa. Tim falls onto his back, and I lie there atop him, refusing to part until we’re both breathless. Even then, I merely push myself up on my hands so I can gaze down at him, wonder blooming in my chest as he chuckles at me.
“That’s your answer, huh?” he says. “I give you a heartfelt speech and you pounce on me.”
“That’s my answer,” I say.
I should have a better answer for him, a prettier answer, an answer that’s more than hunger and physicality, but right now, this is what I’ve got. I’m a work in progress, but Tim’s fond smile says he not only knows that, but he’s perfectly okay with it. He takes me as I am, damaged and broken as that is, and I do the same for him.
He reaches up to stroke my cheek. “I guess that’s a fine answer.”
“Fine? It’s just fine?”
“It would be more fine if we were in your bed and not on your couch.”
I don’t need to be told twice. We’re every bit those kids kissing under the bleachers and fumbling around in the backseat of my car. We’re still those confused, scared kids trying to figure it out one sloppy makeout at a time. But as I tug Tim up into the loft, there is one big difference between those early days and how we are now.
No one and nothing will ever interrupt us again.
I throw Tim onto the bed, then strip off my shirt before following him. We have the entire night, we have our entire lives, and nothing in the world will get between us again.
For as long as he’ll have me, I’m his.