Improvisation (24 page)

Jan stepped on the elevator when it arrived. “A lot of people care about you, Tina,” she said as she inserted her room key card and pushed the floor number. “I’m glad I could—”

Tina grabbed Jan’s elbow, spinning her around and pressing her against the wall the second the door slid closed. She was rough enough to startle a squeak of surprise from Jan, but not enough to hurt her. She noticed Jan’s immediate response—her darkening eyes, flushed chest, and hitched breathing—right before she lowered her mouth to Jan’s. After the coy dance in the bar, Tina wanted to take her, to claim her, to leave no room for doubt in Jan’s mind about how much Tina needed her.

Unfortunately, she managed to convince herself as well. The chime of the elevator as it reached their floor startled them apart, as if it signaled the end of a prizefighting round. They stood, inches apart, staring at each other, and only the quick slap of Tina’s hand kept the elevator doors from closing again, with them still inside. She stepped off the elevator with Jan, but she couldn’t make herself walk down the hall.

“I can’t do it,” she said when Jan turned to look at her, a confused expression on her face. She had thought she could. Sacrifice her tentative dream of forever for this one perfect night. Walk away in the morning, certain beyond question that her future would hold nothing but the memory of love.

“I don’t understand,” Jan said finally. “What am I supposed to do?”

Tina shook her head, frustrated. “This isn’t part of the game, Jan. I want you, and I’d like nothing better than to lock you in that hotel room and act out every fantasy you can imagine. But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Tina struggled with the truth. She had made a decision, and she knew she had to stick to it. “Because I love you. It’s all or nothing, Jan. Not one night, or one weekend. Forever, or I have to walk away right now.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Jan said, the same struggle written clearly on her face as she started to cry. “But I can’t ask you to stay with me…”

Tina closed the gap between them and tenderly cupped Jan’s chin. She kissed her, long and slow and deep. “Ask me to stay,” she said, her voice raspy with desire.

Jan shook her head. “I have nothing to offer, no idea what the future will bring. I can’t ask you to—”

Tina broke away. The first wrenching step was the hardest, and she had to fight against her body’s urge to stay, anyway. But she refused to settle now. She knew what she wanted, and she wouldn’t accept less. She turned her back on Jan and jabbed at the elevator’s down button.

Jan stared at Tina’s stiffly held spine, her tightly crossed arms. Nothing to offer. She repeated the words in her mind. Nothing but a sick father, an uncertain path ahead, debt, boring life in a small city. Love.

“Stay,” she said. She cleared her throat and spoke louder. “Please, stay. I love you, too.”

The words were barely out of her mouth before Tina was on her, holding her, kissing her, shoving her back until they collided with the wall. Jan laughed through her tears.

“We have a room, you know,” she said, arching away from the wall as Tina kissed her jawline, below her ear.

“A room, yes,” Tina said with a laugh. “Sounds good.”

She took Jan’s hand and started down the hall, looking back over her shoulder when Jan resisted.

“No second thoughts,” she said, a touch of pleading in her voice.

“Never. But the room is this way.” Jan pointed behind her. She headed in the right direction, Tina close at her heels. Time and again, Jan had imagined this walk down the hall to a hotel room, to a night of sex, to a night with Tina. But she had never dreamed the words
I love you
, much less the full emotions behind them, would have played any part in the scene. She had expected to feel this breathless because of excitement, arousal, passion. Not because she was so deeply in awe of the love Tina offered.

Jan barely had time to pull her key card out of the lock before Tina had her inside, the door shut and Jan pressed against it. Tina kissed her hard, not breaking contact while she unbuttoned Jan’s shirt and yanked it off her shoulders. Jan struggled to get enough air as she kicked off her shoes and fumbled with the buttons on Tina’s shirt.

Jan had expected Tina to turn slow and gentle once they were alone. Gazing into each other’s eyes after their declaration of love, not hungrily tearing off clothes as quickly as possible. She had no complaints, and she matched Tina kiss for kiss as they struggled toward the bed, until the emotions behind Tina’s feverish ardor finally penetrated her brain. Desperation. The fear of losing something so important she felt incapable of existing without it. Jan knew the feeling well, but she hadn’t realized Tina had been experiencing it, too.

She pulled back, stiffening her arms to keep Tina away. “You really didn’t think I felt the same way, did you?” she asked softly. Tina shook her head, the vulnerability in her eyes enough to make Jan want to cry again.

“Tell me again,” Tina said, pushing Jan so she sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I love you,” Jan said as Tina hooked her fingers in Jan’s underwear and slid it off.

“Again,” Tina said, pressing on Jan’s thighs.

Jan spread her legs, and Tina knelt between them. “I love you,” she said, laughing a bit nervously at the hungry look on Tina’s face.

“Again,” Tina said, with a decidedly predatory smile, before she lowered her head and took Jan in her mouth.

Jan couldn’t say the words, but she knew Tina heard them in Jan’s sharp, climactic cry.

*

“What’s this?” Tina asked as she came out of the bathroom holding two empty wrappers. The sight of Jan nestling her obviously very relaxed body under the covers almost sidetracked her. Almost.

“Garbage?” Jan suggested.

“You ate
both
packets of peanut brittle?” Tina remembered the candy left by housekeeping on her dresser every night when she had stayed here, only weeks ago, although it seemed like a lifetime away.

“I was here all afternoon,” Jan said. “And I was nervous. I would’ve emptied the minibar if the room had one.”

“You know I have a sweet tooth,” Tina said, trying to sound menacing. She wasn’t doing a good job of it, distracted as she was by Jan’s naked body. And by the way she was patting the empty space in the bed invitingly. She felt a corresponding tug on her body with every move Jan made. Connected. In a way she’d never felt before.

“I think they sell boxes of it in the hotel lobby.”

“I don’t feel like walking that far,” Tina complained, tossing the wrappers aside and climbing onto the bed. She straddled Jan, one hand braced on either side of her head. “Gumdrop,” she added.

Jan grabbed her wrists and flipped both of them over, nearly fast enough to knock the wind out of Tina. “We have
got
to do something about those pet names of yours,” Jan said. She kept Tina’s wrists firmly anchored to the bed as she lowered her mouth and wrapped her lips around one of Tina’s erect nipples.

Tina struggled against her hold just a little. Not hard enough to break free. “Aw, Pookie Bear, you know you love it…Ouch! You bit me,” Tina said, as surprised by Jan’s teeth as she was by her unrepentant smile.

“I’d be concerned about your comfort if you weren’t laughing so hard,” Jan said as she turned her attention to Tina’s other nipple, using only her tongue this time. She let go of Tina’s wrists and dropped to her elbows, resting some of her weight on Tina as she slid her hand down Tina’s waist.

Tina tried to make up more names, but her brain was giving up the fight. All she knew was Jan. Jan’s hands and lips moved over her, making her flesh vibrate and sing at every point of contact. Ceding all control to her body, she arched her back and was rewarded when Jan sucked harder on her breast.

“Feels…so good, love muffin,” she said with a gasp, twisting away when Jan pinched her hip roughly, only to push toward her hand again in an irresistible desire for contact.

She felt Jan shift to one side, and then her fingers were stroking Tina, entering her smoothly. Tina cried out, unable to keep still as Jan’s palm pressed against her clit. “Oh, yes…baby, yes,” Tina cried as she came, throwing her head back against the pillow, offering everything she had to Jan.

When Tina lay quietly, trying to control her breathing, Jan slid up the bed, resting her head on Tina’s chest. “I called you baby and you let me come,” Tina said, unable to keep from grinning as she rubbed her thumb over Jan’s dove tattoo. “Does that mean we’ve found your pet name?”

“Definitely not,” Jan murmured against Tina’s breast. Worn out as she was, Tina still responded immediately to the caress of breath and lips. Brought to life by Jan’s touch. Sexually and emotionally. Heart and soul. “I was simply obeying a mindless and primal urge to take you. You’ll pay for the name later.”

Tina smiled, her lips pressing against Jan’s hair. She couldn’t wait.

Six months later, Tina walked up the steps to the church altar and stood quietly, off to one side and flanked by mammoth arrangements of white lilies and roses, until the church fell silent. She lifted her acoustic instrument and settled it under her chin, immediately sensing the connection she felt with her father every time she played his violin. Her electric fiddle would have sounded great in the church, with its vaulted ceilings and deep alcoves, but her dad belonged here today. She tapped a rhythm with her foot before drawing her bow over the strings in the first notes of the Irish jig “Haste to the Wedding.” Later in the ceremony, she would play more serious and traditional songs, with her quartet and alone, but Peter and Chloe had chosen this lively tune as the perfect beginning for their wedding celebration.

Tina needed to play through the short song several times while the families were seated and the wedding party came down the aisle, so she’d add some ornamentation and variety to keep the music interesting. Last night, she had sat down with a paper and pen, ready to organize her thoughts and plan how to vary the tune. She knew Andy would have been proud of her intentions, but less than impressed with her results. Tina had left the paper blank, choosing instead to improvise during the ceremony. Partly because she truly believed the music would be a better gift to Peter if it was heartfelt and spontaneous. And mostly because Jan had been kissing the back of her neck in the most enjoyable way. Tina had opted to throw her pen aside and let preparation be damned. Any time she had to choose between her lover and another task, Jan
always
won. And she always would.

Tina let her violin sing with quiet simplicity the first time through the jig. The sound resonated through the finely varnished wood and filled the church with its joyous rhythm as Peter and the minister came through a side door and stood in front of the altar. Tina smiled at her cousin, awed by the expression on his face as he waited there for Chloe. She blinked back tears as she realized how much his happiness meant to her and how close she had come to shutting him out of her life forever. Over the past months, they had grown closer, bound by family ties and by music and by a simple fondness for each other’s company. She and Jan spent several evenings a week with Peter and Chloe, no longer needing them as buffers or bodyguards but simply as friends.

The two families were seated while Tina repeated the tune. The sight of her grandmother stirred those old resentments to life—and maybe always would—but Tina was learning to deal with her anger over the past. Jan helped, listening and always steadfastly taking Tina’s side, but injecting reason here and there. And Tina had never realized how much a mere touch—a hand on her knee or a brush of Jan’s shoulder—would calm her when Francine pushed her buttons. Simple touch, but the emotion and love ran deep enough to soothe.

The percussive finger rolls and staccato bowing inspired by her grandmother colored the second iteration of the song. She slid through her chords, moving from a minor seventh to a major. Creating a slight dissonance before resolving the tone. She came to the end of the darker, more shaded variation as her aunt and uncle were seated. Uncle Nick winked at her, doing a few steps of a jig before he sat down. Tina laughed along with the rest of the congregation, feeling the tightening in her stomach ease. The nuances of the music had affected her more than she expected, and she felt tears sting her eyes again, mingling with her laughter, as she recalled her uncle’s reverent expression when he’d held his late brother’s violin before the ceremony.

Tina nearly dropped the precious instrument when she saw Jan start down the aisle. Wearing a silky pearl-gray dress, her blond hair held off her elegant neck with a pearl clip, and a bouquet of lilies dripping from her arms, she was gorgeous. Tina pulled herself together and played the third version of the song for Jan. Legato bowing, bending and sliding the blue notes into chord resolutions. She let her fiddle sing of love in an almost human voice, slowing the tempo of the jig and creating her own combination of Celtic music and blues. Jan waved subtly at her dad before turning her attention back to Tina. Jan, loving her and being loved by her every day and night. Meals with her and Glen, quiet talks and bursts of laughter, family and home. Tina’s entire life was walking up the aisle toward her. To stand by Chloe today, but on another day? Maybe she’d be walking to meet Tina at the altar.

Jan took her place as Tina finished the bluesy variation. One more time through, as Chloe came up the aisle. Tina glanced at her quartet. David had been tapping his fingers on the body of his cello and his feet on the floor, as if unable to resist the tune’s infectious rhythm. Andy had sat through the music with her arm draped over her viola, her fingers twitching over the strings as if she was longing to play. Even Richard had been rocking back and forth along with the song. Tina had planned to play the entire piece as a solo, but she changed her mind when she saw Chloe standing in the back of the church with her parents. Tina gave her quartet a short nod, and they moved their instruments into playing position as if on cue, joining her in the final variation of the tune.