Just a Girl (20 page)

But after a few desperate rolls of my hips, Paul stopped me, with his hands firmly on my waist.

“Pres, I want this. Really a lot. But I just cannot with your parents right there.” He pointed to the wall between us and the stage area.

I pouted for just a second. “Okay, yeah. I get it.” Then I gave him a coy smile. “Any chance we could at least finish me off?”

“No.” He tried to look stern, but a grin broke through. “I swear, you are worse than a thirteen-year-old boy. Now get up.”

Reluctantly, I disentangled myself from him and got to my feet. He followed suit, taking a second to adjust himself. When he was satisfied, he looked at me. “So, is there any chance that everyone won’t stare at us when we go out there?”

“Very little,” I said honestly.

“Great.” He took a deep breath and patted the pill bottle, now back in his pocket. “Let’s just get it over with.”

“Paul, wait.”

“What?”

I scurried around to stand in front of him. “We can take this as slow as you need, okay? I just want to be with you.”

“Thank you. That means a lot.” He caught both my hands with one of his. “But also, you’re coming home with me tonight, so forget about taking it slow.”

It was several hours before Paul and I were alone again, though we were never far apart. By the end of After Hours, Nick had gone up to play a song, and James had played several. Kenzie didn’t, obviously, and neither did Paul, but that was okay with me.

The music felt fun again. I knew the difference was in me, but it didn’t matter. I hadn’t gotten the effervescent high since Summerfest, and it felt fantastic.

We even got a lead on a guitar player. It was another girl, which thrilled me. Maddy was young, only seventeen, but she had chops. She was the niece of one of the Gray Ghosts, and she was local. The only drawback was that she was still in high school, and wasn’t planning to stay in town once she started college. But that gave us nearly a year of part-time guitar help. And it gave her a much-desired outlet for her skills.

She’d have to pass muster with the rest of the band, but I had a good feeling about her. On the other hand, I knew exactly how hard it could be out there for a girl, and I could already feel myself becoming protective of her. I wasn’t going to let the guys mess with her.

When I told my parents I wouldn’t be going home with them, my mother actually squealed like a teenager and clapped her hands. It really was disturbing how excited my own mother could get about my love life.

If I was going to really make a go of it with Jukebox Bleu—and with Paul—it was probably time to move out of my parents’ house.

Paul and I got back to his apartment just minutes behind Kenzie and James, but Kenzie looked like she’d been waiting for us for hours when Paul pushed open the door. We both jumped back in surprise at finding her standing just inside the threshold.

“What the hell, Kenz?” Paul said.

“Okay, look, I love both of you.” Then she eyeballed me. “But I swear to God if you break my brother’s heart again…”

“Don’t threaten my girlfriend.”

I couldn’t resist smiling at the title.

Kenzie’s shoulders drooped. “All right. But seriously, please don’t.”

“I have no intention of hurting him ever again.” I put my hand on my heart. “But you better stop enabling him.”

She gasped, and I heard James laugh from somewhere deeper in the apartment.

“Oh damn, Kenz. She got you there,” Paul said, grinning.

Her mouth opened and shut like a fish twice, before she sputtered, “Holy crap, I missed you,” and gave me a quick hug.

“I missed you, too.” I squeezed her back.

“In retrospect, I may regret introducing you two,” Paul said, shutting and locking the apartment door behind us.

“You didn’t,” I reminded him. “We met while you were in the bathroom. I was naked.”

“Oh yeah.” He wove his fingers through mine. “Speaking of which, please imagine a giant force field around my door for the rest of the night, okay, sister of mine?”

“Ew,” she said, followed by a less sisterly, “As long as you keep it down.”

As we passed through the dimly lit apartment, I spotted James getting a glass of water in the kitchen.

“Thank you again, James,” I said, pausing with one hand on the door frame.

“You are most welcome. I’m happy to see you both happy.” He did a half-bow. “But Kenzie’s right. Keep it down. The walls are thin.”

“Yeah, trust me, I know,” Paul said sourly.

I gave James a final wave and followed Paul the rest of the way to his tiny bedroom. It looked exactly the same as it always did, and I got a rush of affection for the familiarity.

Behind his closed, locked door, we stared at each other. And like an idiot, I started crying again.

“I don’t know what I would have done if you’d rejected me tonight,” I admitted.

“I don’t think I could have.” He wiped at my cheeks almost absently, as if this were simply part of the care and keeping of Presley now. Maybe it was. Every emotion seemed to be only millimeters away from the surface.

“Seeing you every day, I just kept thinking, She’s the same. She’s exactly the same. Why aren’t we together anymore?” He shook his head. “It made no sense.”

“None,” I agreed. “I wish I had a better explanation for you than the fact that I was stupid. I was trying to protect myself from something that happened in the past. It had nothing to do with you.”

“But you’re here now.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m not your past.”

“You’re not. Though I do seem to have a thing for guitar players.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you going to leave me for Maddy?”

I burst out laughing. “No!”

“Okay, good.”

“I mean, she’s only seventeen. That would be illegal.”

Now he was the one laughing.

I braced my hands on his shoulders and stood on tiptoe until we were as close to eye level as I could get. “I only want you.”

Our lips met, lighting the fuse that would not be snuffed out this time. I pressed into him with my entire body, always wanting more. Thankfully, we were alone and in private now, so I could pull his shirt off with no hesitation.

The glorious colors of the tree glowed in the soft light of a single lamp. I put my lips to it, roughly tracing the undefined edges of the tattoo. Paul’s hands roved down my back and up my sides, tightening around my arms as my tongue passed over his nipple. He tugged me upright, catching my lips with his and the hem of my shirt in his hands. In a moment he had it over my head and on the floor.

“I missed you,” he said, unbuttoning my pants.

“Missed you,” I agreed, going after his belt.

He managed to step out of his sneakers while I made quick work of the button and zipper of his pants. They dropped to the floor with relative ease, but the same could not be said of my tight black faux-leather pants. We both laughed as Paul tried to shinny them off my hips, to little effect. Finally, he scooped me up in his arms and put me on the bed to get a better angle.

I giggled at the look of frustration he gave me while trying to tug them from the bottom.

“You should burn these pants,” he said.

“Don’t let them win!” I encouraged him, planting one foot on the bed to get my hips up and make it easier. Eventually he got them off and held them up like a hunting trophy.

“Ha!” He gave them a nasty look and tossed them to the floor, then turned his attention back to me.

The heat in his gaze was enough to make me squirm as he approached. With one knee on the bed, he bent low to kiss my ankle, then my calf, then my knee. My mouth fell open as he nudged my legs apart to blaze a trail with his tongue along the inside of my thigh. By the time he reached the apex I was holding my breath and fistfuls of the blanket.

He kissed me first through the soft fabric of my thong, and that would have been more than enough to set me off if he’d stuck with just that. But instead he peeled the thong off me and went back to work directly on my flesh. Only seconds later I was digging my fingers into his hair and trying to keep quiet while the pleasure peaked for the first time.

“That’s one,” he murmured against my belly when I collapsed and remembered to inhale.

“What?” I gasped.

“I have a goal. That was one.”

My eyes widened. “What’s the goal?”

He smiled. “I’m not telling.”

And just like that, my insides were liquid again. I whimpered quietly, and his smile widened.

Five. His goal was five.

We hit it.

My entire body was twitching when he was done with me. Exhausted though I was, I couldn’t stop the occasional jerk of one of my arms or legs, or my entire body; it was like the aftershock of an earthquake. My throat was sore from stifling my cries of pleasure.

Paul wrapped himself around me, a big spoon to my little spastic one. The weight of his arm across mine helped keep me a little calmer, but I still hadn’t recovered my breath completely.

“I think I broke you,” he teased, nuzzling the back of my neck.

“I think you might have.” A breathy laugh was all I could manage. “I guess you didn’t get one of those medications you were worried about. With the side effects, I mean.”

“Nope.”

“Might not have been the worst thing.” I twisted to gaze at him, setting off another minor tremor through my body. “Look at me.”

He went up on one elbow to do as instructed. Those long, dexterous fingers tucked my hair behind my ear, then brushed across my lips. “You look…spent.”

“Like a minimum-wage paycheck,” I agreed.

“But you’re still gorgeous.” He kissed me softly. “I could get used to seeing this face for a long time.”

A different kind of pleasure shivered through me now, originating in my heart. “I love you,” I said.

“I love you, too.”

There was still a lot of uncertainty ahead of us, but this felt like an awfully good place to start.

O
NE
Y
EAR
L
ATER

The headphones were hot against my ears after so many hours, but I couldn’t hear the guys in the booth without them on. The recording engineer keyed the mic, and his voice went straight into my ears.

“Okay, that was good, Presley. You wanna do one more take?”

“Yeah. Let’s go again.”

The prerecorded instrumental track started up in the headphones, and I waited for my cue once again. The track sounded good, and damn it was nice to hear Paul back on guitar. Maddy’s rhythm tracks were awesome, too, and I was sad to be losing her to college in a few weeks, but she just didn’t have what Paul did on lead guitar.

He was watching me from the booth now, nodding along with the track. He looked amazingly calm and happy. The studio agreed with him. All the pleasure of playing with none of the anxiety of the audience.

I winked at him, and he flashed me a grin.

The new album felt like it could actually be something. I was a bundle of nerves at the thought of releasing it to the public. But the songs were good. A real melting pot of everyone’s talents from the band. I even had some lyrics in there. Pretty amazing for the girl who’d given up on her writing skills years ago.

Over the last year we’d lost Rob when he and his wife had their first baby, but the new drummer—another Nick, but everyone inexplicably called him “Rabbit”—was a friend of Spence’s and he was working out great. Ronnie had decided to re-up for another tour in Afghanistan, though we all promised him the door was always open if he wanted to come back. We’d also gotten something of a cult following on YouTube. We were best known for our covers, but we had high hopes that the audience would at least try our originals.

And there was a tour on the books for the fall. A tour of our very own. It wasn’t arena-sized venues, but it was twenty cities and an actual tour bus. No seedy motels and drawing straws for who had to share beds this time. Nope. Instead, we were all going to be stacked like canned goods in the minuscule bunks on our bus.

Kind of ironic that the last time we’d been “on tour” Paul had gotten stuck with me even though we were broken up. This time, we couldn’t sleep in the same bed even though we were definitely not broken up.

I finished the second take on the song and waited in silence for the engineer to give me the all clear. Paul gave me a thumbs-up through the many layers of glass between us.

The tour was going to be his official return to live performance, and everyone was cautiously optimistic. He was doing really well these days, and I thought he was ready. It was going to be a trial by fire, but at least now everyone was willing to try. I couldn’t wait to share the stage with him again.

“Okay, I think we got it,” I heard the engineer say through my headphones. “Unless you want to go again, I think we can break for dinner.”

“How’d it sound?” I peered through the glass at the other members of the band.

Spence approached the board and keyed the mic. “You sucked. Like always.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Spence laughed, the sound cut off abruptly when he let go of the Talk button.

“That’s dinner then,” the engineer said.

I left the headphones hanging on their hook and stepped out of the booth, making my way through the empty studio to the main door. The others were gathered on a clump of couches, flipping through a stack of delivery menus. We’d been recording for two days now, and I was sort of wishing we could get out into the fresh air, but time was money when you were making a record.

“What are we eating?” I asked, perching on the arm of the couch next to Paul, and leaning on his shoulder to get a closer look.

“Pizza,” Nick suggested.

“No more damn pizza,” Karl said. “Chinese.”

“We’ll be hungry again in, like, twenty minutes if we have Chinese,” Rabbit retorted.

I listened to them bickering and hashing it out, not really caring about the outcome, and feeling a strange rush of affection for them all. They were still basically the same relatively straitlaced, talented, nerdy goofballs who had somehow found one another among the egos and ambition of the music industry, and they were making a go of it.

We might not be destined for a Number 1 record, or the Grammys, but we had loyal fans and one another. And the joy.

And I was the luckiest one of all, because I also had the love of my life beside me in this adventure. There were bound to be some hiccups as we reincorporated Paul, and I didn’t expect that he’d love every second of being onstage, but the very fact that he was trying made me fall in love with him all over again every time I thought about it.

My parents were right: You couldn’t keep your heart out of music. And now that I had the other half of my heart with me, I had a feeling the music was going to be better than ever.