Caressa's Knees (22 page)

But she was right. His family would want to know the semantics, the cut-and-dried circumstances of their relationship. He would tell his mom and dad and brothers and sisters that Caressa was his girlfriend. Then it would make sense to them when he kissed her, when he couldn’t keep his hands from touching her. Lots of people met at workplaces and started romances, and that’s more or less what they had done. His family would understand it, probably better than he did. His
family were
salt of the earth people. What they would make of Caressa was anybody’s guess. If he was honest with himself, part of the reason he’d brought her with him was to see her as they saw her, however they saw her. He was still working it out in his head whether or not that was fair to her.

“How are your eggs?” he asked.

“How are eggs ever?
Fine.
It’s hard to ruin eggs, you know?”

The other people in
Loving’s
only diner were staring at her cello case propped beside their table. A summer tour meant concerns about horrors like wood warping and glue softening. He knew she would expect him to go out and acclimatize the car before she brought the cello back out again. She would never have agreed to leave it sitting over the folded down seats in the back.

“Listen, I just want you to be yourself around my family, okay? I don’t want you to be nervous or anything.”

She gestured at the trees beyond the grimy glass of the window. “I’m more nervous about the switches all over the place here.”

“You should be,” he said in a teasingly ominous tone. “And won’t it be embarrassing when I head out after dinner to cut one and call you into the woodshed?”

“Oh my God!
Do not do that!”

He laughed at her very real alarm. “I won’t. Jesus, Caressa. My family doesn’t know anything about the kinky stuff.
So
ixnay
on the
inkskray
if you catch my meaning.”

“You’re the one who brought up the switch thing.”

“Oh, I’m switching your bottom,” he said, leaning close to her under the curious eyes of
Loving’s
citizens. “I’m just going to do it where no one else will be able to hear your screams, moans, and begging.”

“I don’t beg,” she shot back under her breath.

“Ha! You beg every night. You beg for cock until you’re hoarse, you little slut.”

Caressa cracked up and Kyle laughed too. She could be so genuinely fun when she let her guard down. They passed the rest of the trip to Kyle’s parent’s home in similar good humor. His parents greeted her warmly and she did the same. He wondered how she saw them. His father was a tree surgeon, a little on the rugged side, and his mother a soft-spoken housewife with a Texas-sized physique—and heart.

She clasped Caressa into a welcoming hug and he saw Caressa stiffen but then respond, hugging her back in kind. They were led to separate rooms on the second floor.
Kyle, to his own old room, and Caressa to the room of one of his now-married sisters.
Being
Spur
, word had gotten around in a few short hours about his return, and family and friends were already arriving for a hastily-thrown-together barbeque.

Within an hour, Kyle’s brothers and their wives, his sisters and their husbands, young nieces and nephews and well-meaning friends all descended on his parents’ five-acre property. Even old Great-Grandma Winchell made an appearance, agreeing to be wheeled out onto the porch from her ground floor room in the back.

Kyle accepted their excitement and affection, but still felt self-conscious. He would always be the big time Hollywood boy in their eyes. Jeremy Gray himself had come to
Spur
a year or so after Kyle had started working for him. That had shut down the town completely. A few weeks later, Kyle had learned that Jeremy paid off his parents’ mortgage. There had also been a huge new playground built for the kids of Spur right near the center of town, aptly named Gray Park. Kyle had told Jeremy once, in passing, that kids had nowhere to play in Spur, that he’d played in abandoned buildings and train tracks as a young child. When he’d learned about the mortgage and the playground, he’d begun to view his powerful boss as someone akin to a God.

A fickle God though. Jeremy Gray had had his moments, just as his current employer did.
But not tonight.
As darkness fell and his parents’ guests milled in the backyard to shoot the shit and drink beer under the stars, his mother prevailed on Caressa to play for them.

He thought she might refuse, citing shyness, or the evening Texas humidity, but she had him bring out her cello and sat beside the birdfeeder in a weather-beaten chair. She played a few orchestral pieces, looking acutely self-conscious at the silent stares. They weren’t mean stares though, but admiring ones. There were no cellists he knew of in Spur, but one of his father’s friends was a fiddler and he went right home to get his instrument. Another man went for a trumpet. A friend of his sister’s had her guitar in the back of her car.

Thus began a singular exercise in existential dissonance. Caressa Gallo, world-renowned cellist, was playing at an impromptu Spur hoedown, and she didn’t miss a beat.
He realized with no small amazement that Caressa could play just about anything on her cello—to include songs she didn’t even know. She accompanied the musicians of Spur on familiar songs and songs he could tell she’d never heard before.
Country ballads and local traditional songs, even a rollicking polka.
People laughed and danced and the music went on and on, long past the time he would have thought her too tired. His great-grandma even responded, clapping her bony hands and smiling crookedly.

Kyle stared at Caressa from his place beside the porch, petrified by the depth of his love for her. Love, admiration, and awe at her effortless talent. So many people had spoken to him of angels, heaven, and
Caressa’s
“God-given” talent, and Kyle had shrugged it all off as pretty phrases. But now, under the Texas sky, amidst darkness and laughter, full bellies and joyful dancing, he saw God in her.

She could play anything. Every note in the world was hers, right there for the taking. She could produce any note like a card trick.
Ta-
da
.
Her fingers and that cello in cahoots with her, tucked between her knees. He realized in a flash of understanding that he never truly could come between her and that instrument. He could watch though, as he was now, and bask in the wonder of what she was.

She looked up and over at him, found him in the darkness somehow. She must have seen what he was thinking. It must have been clearly written on his face, because she looked shaken. Soon after she deferred to the other musicians and excused herself, citing exhaustion. He helped her carry her cello inside and stow it in her room upstairs so it would be safe from any guests coming in and out. He looked at her, tired and lovely, and knew he was in the employ of another God. First Jeremy and now
her
, glowing slick with the sweat of a
bonafide
Texas country party.

His mother wouldn’t be in for a while, until every last guest had departed, and so Kyle stripped Caressa naked with trembling hands and fucked her there against the wall of his sister’s room. She clung to
him,
licking him, biting his neck as their sweaty bodies slid together and his unsheathed cock impaled her. She wrapped her legs around him and he held her ass cheeks hard, squeezing them and lifting her up and then down again.

Each time he slipped inside, his whole body shook from the maelstrom inside him, the pleasure building into a monument of desire.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
A boyfriend was nothing, mere child’s play. He was a worshipper, a disciple. He was a zealot at the altar, holding a miracle in his hands.

* * * * *

Kyle woke the next morning with a start, reaching out for her. She was gone. He’d had some alarming dream about forests and thunderstorms. He’d lost Caressa, and he woke up grasping for her, his heart pounding fast and hard until he remembered he was in his parents’ house. He’d had to tuck her into bed last night, after they’d fucked and showered together. Even in the shower he hadn’t been able to resist her, kissing and finger-fucking her while warm water sluiced over them.

Afterward, when he delivered her to her own room, he’d stayed and kissed her for almost an hour more, tasting the sweetness of her lips and reveling in her response to him. The smell of his mother’s favored lavender soap had clashed with the sharp tang of dying fires outside, and that deeper scent of desire. He hadn’t been able to leave her until he heard his mother puttering around noisily in the hallway. His mom wasn’t a fool—she would know that Kyle and Caressa were lovers. She was just obstinate about old-fashioned morality.
Not in my house.

He sat up now and stretched in his narrow twin bed. His room had changed a little since he’d occupied it, but not much. He’d changed a lot more. He smiled at the old baseball and football trophies his mother couldn’t seem to part with, and the worn blue quilt that still graced his bed. He hit the bathroom and peeked into
Caressa’s
room to find her still fast asleep with the shades drawn. His phone rang and he pulled the door shut quietly, taking the call back in his own room.

“Jeremy! I was just thinking of you. How are you?”

“I’m good. Where in the world are you right now with that cellist of yours?”

“Believe it or not, we’re in Spur.”

“Good old
Spur
.”

“They still talk about you here.
Every time I come home.”

“That’s why I do things, you know.
For attention.”

Kyle smiled.
“Yeah.
I always suspected that.”

“You’re headed to Europe soon, aren’t you? I thought you told me August?”

“Yes, we go from Spur to London by way of Dallas in a couple days. Where are you? Still want to take in one of her performances?”

“We definitely do. Is she coming to Paris?”

“You’re in Paris?”

“Just for a couple weeks, and then we’re back to the States.”

“We head to Paris after London. How about tickets for next Friday? It’s
Caressa’s
birthday, and we’re planning a private dinner party after the concert.”

“For a party, I’ll make it work.” Jeremy laughed. Then he added, “Nell will be with me.”

Kyle could still read Jeremy’s tone, even over a cell phone. “Yeah, Jeremy…it’s okay. It would be great to see her again. How’s motherhood treating her?”

“Jesus, I don’t know who to adore more now, her or little Rhiannon. They’re both doing great. You know Nell. She took to motherhood like a champ.”

“What about you? Holding up?”

Jeremy made a soft noise. “I love being a dad. The love part is a lot easier than I thought it would be. Even when she’s wailing, shitting in diapers, the bad stuff. She’s impossible not to love. But it’s a big responsibility.
Keeping her safe.”

“You’ve got people on it, I’m sure.”

“Even so, it’s a constant worry. You
know,
the fans.
The papers and
paps
.
But it’s worth it in the end. I wouldn’t give her back for the world.”

Jeremy had thought the same thoughts about Nell when he’d first met her. Kyle wondered if he even made the connection. “Everything will be fine, Jeremy.”

“Oh yeah, I know. You’ll have to meet the little bug while you’re in Paris. She’s her mother’s daughter. She has all this wispy red hair.”

“You guys should bring her along to the party. If she gets tired, I think the hotel we’re staying at will have sitters. I can check into it—”

“Kyle, you don’t have to work for me anymore. My people will handle everything.”

Kyle stopped, feeling foolish. Of course Jeremy had new staff now, probably an army of nannies, although Nell didn’t strike him as the nanny type.
Probably one nanny and an army of baby bodyguards.
Kyle wanted to see Nell again more out of curiosity than anything else. He was curious about seeing her as a mother…and curious to see if he was really as “over” her as he felt.

“So what about you and this lovely cellist?
Still making beautiful music together? I assume things are pretty serious if you brought her to Spur.”

“We’re working things out,” Kyle said cautiously. “You know how it is. She’s really focused on the tour right now.
Her music.
But yeah, we’re having a lot of fun.” He stopped, thinking of last night.
Thinking of the thoughts going through his mind every time he looked at her.
Fun
seemed like a crude belittlement of what they had. “God, I’m crazy about her,” he admitted at last. “I’m barely holding on to my sanity. But for now, I’m going at her pace.”

“That’s all you can do sometimes. In the meantime, keep having fun, for fuck’s sake. It can’t hurt.
Sober fun though.
Still sober?”

“Yeah, Jeremy.”

“One hundred percent?”

“One hundred percent, Master,” Kyle said sardonically, to laughter on the other end of the line.
“Speaking of which…Jeremy…about the party.
It’s just a vanilla thing. I won’t be able to…you know…me and Caressa are pretty…monogamous at the moment.”