DAMN, THESE GUYS ARE GOOD. THE band, Kilimanjaro, lives up to all of Marlon’s hype. And then some. I especially like the bass player. That’s one instrument I consider myself only adequate on, so I envy guys who can make it speak the way this one does. The bass has a soul, a musical undercurrent that, though subtle, anchors everything else. And the bass player is the soul of this band.
“What do you think?” I turn to study Kai, whose eyes haven’t left the stage since Kilimanjaro came on.
“They’re fantastic.” She turns to me, her eyes wide and a huge grin on her face. “The bass player’s sick, right?”
I nod, distracted by the peculiar and entrancing picture she makes. Sarita bought her some boy jeans, which fit okay, but I still can’t stop staring at her ass. The bulky, hooded sweatshirt does a good job of disguising her breasts, but that face . . . The delicate bones and striking lines, even under the baseball cap, with all her hair hidden, would still stop me in my tracks. Those full, pouty lips look completely kissable under the thin moustache I finally convinced her to wear.
I can’t believe she did this—came out in public like this with me. If I wasn’t convinced there is only one girl in the world for me before, this did it.
“Rhys?” She frowns and pokes my chest. “I said they’re fantastic. Are you listening?”
“Oh, yeah.” I force my attention back to the subject at hand. “Think I should sign ‘em?”
“Like yesterday.” She returns her eyes to the stage. “Before someone else snatches them up.”
“Yeah. I was feeling that, too.”
“They’re almost done with the set. Should we try to see them? Like get backstage?”
“Nah.” I grab her fingers, locking them with mine. It feels so good to hold her hand in public again, even if everyone does assume we’re just two gay guys in love, taking in the show. “I’ll have my people call their people.”
“You think they have people?”
“They’re booked for a festival this size. Believe me, they have people. They may be unsigned, but they’re not unorganized. Somebody’s running things.”
“So I guess now you have Prodigy’s second act.”
I push down my irritation. She should have been Prodigy’s second act. She would have been if John Malcolm hadn’t interfered.
“What exactly is your deal with Malcolm? And for how long?” I try to look harmless. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course.”
“I do mind you asking because we said we wouldn’t talk about any of that today.” She steps close enough for me to smell her mother’s soap. “If you’re not talking to the band, you have to feed me.”
I keep thinking about all the weight she’s lost.
“Gladly.” I place my hand at the curve of her waist beneath the sweatshirt, my fingers brushing the velvety skin of her back. “What do you want?”
She looks up at me, and I know what she wants because I want it, too. To be as physically close as possible every moment we have together. Since last night’s infamous piano encounter, we’ve been insatiable. It’s not just our bodies that can’t get enough. I’ve missed every part of her equally. Her laugh. Her kisses. The silences we fill up with all the things we don’t ever have to say aloud. And when I can’t find the words to tell her the world is less bright when she’s not around, my body speaks for me. Sometimes there’s no other way to say it.
And I love that everything I’m feeling, I see reflected back every time she looks at me. She can’t hide it.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Suspicion tinges her voice, even though she’s smiling just the tiniest bit.
“Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” She narrows her eyes at me. “Tell me what you were thinking.”
“I’ll sound like a dick.”
“Won’t be the first time.”
Oh, she’s got jokes.
“Okay. You asked for it.” I heave a longsuffering sigh, preparing myself for a ball busting. “I was thinking that I like seeing the effect I have on you.”
Pink crawls over her cheeks, immediately making my case.
“How you . . . what?” Her eyes slide down and to the side. “What do you mean?”
“Well, your cheeks, for one thing.” I brush a knuckle over the high slant of one cheekbone. “You blush.”
“I do not blush, Rhys,” she says unconvincingly.
“Yeah, okay.” I laugh because her cheeks just get pinker by the second. “And your breathing changes. Kind of catches.”
As if on cue, her breath hitches in her throat. It’s incredibly arousing knowing I’m doing this to her in a crowd, like my words are stroking her under her clothes.
“And then,” I say, leaning down so my words land right in her ears. “It’s like you don’t know what to do with your hands. You touch your throat. Put your hands in your pockets. You fidget. After months together, I love seeing that you still respond that way to me.”
She lowers her eyes to the sand under our feet, a wry smile crooking her mouth.
“You were right. You do sound like a dick.”
I recapture her hands, pulling her into me.
“But it’s the same for me.” I have to laugh at myself. “Maybe worse. I feel all of that when you walk into a room. Hell, I feel that waking up beside you.”
“Well, I can’t tell.”
“Guys just do a better job at hiding that shit. Only fair since we can’t even hide our erections. At least we can hide our feelings. Maybe it’s the male’s overdeveloped evolutionary response so we don’t look like pussies. A mating thing.”
I pause, tilting my head to consider my little Southern Baptist girl.
“You do believe in evolution, right?”
“I’m a Creationist, actually.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I shake my head, grinning and on the verge of laughter. “Pep, that’s basically a fairy tale.”
“Says you.”
“Says science.”
“I believe that science and faith can peacefully co-exist.”
“But you must have questions. I mean, half of it makes no sense. Doesn’t even compute.”
“Is something less powerful because you have questions about it? Because sometimes you have doubts or you’re unsure?”
“Are we still talking about creation?” I frown a little, her question provoking me.
“Among other things. Is it really faith if it doesn’t require you to stretch yourself beyond the rational? Past your questions?” The intensity of her eyes holds me completely. “Mama always said faith requires at least a little bit more than you think you have. You should be glad I was raised that way. It may be the only thing holding this dysfunctional relationship together.”
“Oh, really?” Now that grabs my attention by the horns. “How do you figure?”
“I was raised with the capacity to believe in something that I can’t see and always have questions about, but have no doubt is absolutely real.”
She tips up on her toes and hovers over my lips.
“Like us.”
She comes in the last few inches to lay those sweet lips on me. I open for her and lose myself in that kiss for long seconds. She draws my tongue in deeper, until with a groan, I squat to grab her butt and lift her up. When my moustache starts slipping and sliding around our lips, she laughs, pulling away.
I catch the eye of a lady over Kai’s shoulder watching us intently, who gives me two thumbs up.
“Love is love, my man,” she says. “You and your little guy look great together.”
I smile and adjust my moustache. I glance back at Kai, whose eyes are still a little dreamy and glazed from our kiss.
“Pep, you keep looking at me like that, I’m dragging you over to one of those ships in the harbor to play rock the boat with my little boy toy.”
“No rocking any boats.” She pulls back pouting. “Your little guy’s hungry. You promised me food. And, no, I’m not having public sex with you.”
“Spoilsport.” I laugh down at her while we make our way toward a row of food trucks not too far from the main stage.
A few minutes later, I must concede that her weight loss is probably not from lack of food. We’ve spread a blanket as close to the ocean as we safely can. Kai is chomping her way through a fried feast that would daunt a linebacker. French fries topped with crab meat. Yuck, by the way. Not to mention the pork belly chips, a monster burger and deep fried Oreos. This meal should come with a pacemaker, but my girl, barely able to get her little hand all the way around this mammoth burger, is halfway through hers before I’ve even dented mine.
“What?” She glances up from her half-empty, grease-laden plate, sauce all around her lips. “You’re not hungry?”
“Obviously not as hungry as you are.” I reach over to wipe her mouth with my napkin.
“You’re not supposed to tease a lady about how much she eats,” Kai says, mouth full. “It’s impolite.”
“Not even when this delicate flower eats me under the table?”
She falls back on the blanket, chewing and laughing, looking up at a cloudless sky. Even after the laugher stops, her smile lingers. With a parade of boats in the harbor, music drifting from the main stage, the sun warming our faces, and the people around us clueless about who we are, I can’t think of one thing I wouldn’t do to make her smile this way every day. She blurs everything. Erases every line I’ve drawn in the sand. Forces me to rethink the boundaries of right, wrong, acceptable, never would, and couldn’t ever. She’s my absolute. It should scare me, but I’m just too damn grateful to have her. I’m just too determined to never screw things up so badly again that she walks away.
Speaking of . . .
“So back on the road tomorrow, huh?” I keep my tone casual, but the voice in my head; that overgrown spoiled boy who wants his way 24/7 stomps around my brain throwing a tantrum. We’ve only had a few days together. A hundred and one excuses swirl in my head to keep her here with me instead of going back on the road. With Dub.
“Yeah.” All traces of her smile evaporate. Her eyes, when they meet mine, are cautious. “Bright and early.”
“Can you stay with me tonight?”
“The car’s coming at five in the morning to pick me up from San’s.”
“I could take you to the airport, or the car could pick you up from my place.”
“Except.” She bites her lip and looks out at the ocean instead of at me. “That kind of defeats the purpose of us keeping our relationship on the low.”
My lips clench over the words that want out so badly. That I don’t give a damn who knows. That Dub and everyone else should know she’s mine. That I hate her being out on the road unclaimed. I adjust my Dodgers cap and smooth two fingers over my fake stache.
“Stay with me tonight.” I put on my “hear me out” face. “I’ll take you to San’s as early as you need me to. Unless you don’t want to stay?”
Her eyes jerk back to me, a small frown on her face.
“You know I want to stay. I want as much time with you before I leave as possible.”
“Then it’s settled.” I stand, reaching down to pull her up to her feet. “We have tonight.”
“And the rest of the day.” She leans up, resting her forearms on my chest. “What do you want to do now?”
“Let’s walk for a while. It feels good to walk around and not be recognized, bothered for an autograph, have some camera shoved in my face.” I bend to grab one end of the blanket, meeting her eyes across it as she takes the other corners and we fold it up. “But you’ve gotten a taste of that now, too.”
“Some.” She shakes her head, taking my side to finish the blanket in a neat square she stuffs it into our backpack. “Not anything close to what you deal with.”
“It’s only a matter of time.” I wed our fingers, looking down at not just my girlfriend, but soon-to-be one of the hottest stars out there. I’m struck again by how proud I am of her, despite the fact it isn’t the route I would have chosen. Despite the fact I wouldn’t trust John Malcolm as far as I could toss his lard ass. She’s doing it. Her way, not my way, but she’s doing it. And, as hard as I fought it, it kind of makes me love her that much more.
We explore every corner of the festival, abusing our anonymity any way we can. We ride the Ferris wheel bordering the water. At the top, I take her mouth in a kiss as light as meringue and as rich as cream. Kai gets her face painted, sunrays on one side and rainbows on the other. We devour our combined weight in funnel cakes. To the world, just two guys in love. To us, it’s everything. It’s every date we never got to go on. Every moment we’ve ever had to steal all squeezed into one sunlit day.
The sun is going down when we come across a guy busking on the boardwalk, guitar slung across his shoulder, hat on the ground. Attention isn’t the only thing people aren’t paying him. His hat sits empty, which gives me an idea.
I look down at Kai, who’s now starting to fray around the edges some. She’s held off the exhaustion revealed by the faint lines bracketing her mouth and the shadows under her eyes as long as she could. Now it’s starting to show. I want to get her home so she can rest before the tour restarts tomorrow. One last thing will seal this day, and then we’ll leave.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I ask, knowing damn well she can’t be.
“I doubt it.” She laughs, reaching into her pocket to pull out a dollar and drop it into the busker’s hat.
“Hey, dude.” I gesture to his guitar. “Lemme hold that for you while you take ten.”
“My guitar?” By the look on his face, you’d think I just asked for his kidney. He may not be a great musician, but he definitely loves his guitar like one.
“Ten minutes.” I shrug. “I’ll be right here. You can even stay and watch to make sure I don’t leave. Just give your fingers a rest.”
“Man, I gotta make rent.” He shakes his head and flexes his fingers. “I’m nowhere close.”
“What’ll get you there?” I reach for my wallet. I know he’ll probably bloat the price, but I don’t really care right now. I’m past smart and am pretty much just determined.
“You serious, man?” His wide eyes go from my face to my wallet a couple of times. “My share is two hundred.”
“And how much have you made today?”
“Around thirty.”
“Like I said, take a break.” I offer him two hundred dollar bills. “Ten minutes.”
That guitar is off before I’ve put my wallet away. He hands it to me, a huge smile on his face. I slip the strap over my shoulder, plucking a few strings to see how badly out of tune it is. For my purposes, it’ll do. Kai’s standing off to the side watching and grinning, arms folded across her chest. I dig around in my mind for the lyrics I want to sing, hoping I don’t screw this up since Kai is an expert on this song and this artist.
“They say we’re young and we don’t know,” I sing, strumming the familiar chords. “We won't find out until we grow.”
I sing the rest of the first verse and then nod my head, encouraging her to sing what comes next. To my surprise, she darts over and tips up on her toes until she can whisper in my ear.
“That’s actually Cher’s part. Cher goes first. Then Sonny.”
When she pulls back, I expect at least a smile, but no. If there is one thing Kai’s serious about, it’s her Cher.
“Sooooo . . .” I keep playing and roll my eyes. “Let me guess. You want to sing Cher’s part?”
She nods, an infectious grin stretching between her cheeks. So we start over, her singing Cher’s part, me singing Sonny’s. Our voices tangling up at the chorus, declaring I got you, babe. A small crowd gathers around, and a few dollar bills land in the hat. Some even start to sway with the music we’re making.
It is, without a doubt, the simplest, goofiest song maybe ever written, but there is something about the lyrics. Something about the defiant, doubt-us-if-you-dare, naïve hope of a love like the one we’re singing about. It grips me. Our eyes hold, and before I know it, our smiles fade. There’s no one on this boardwalk but us. The sunset is ours alone, and I’m singing a promise to the only girl I’ve ever loved. And miraculously, after all I did to destroy it, everything about her says she loves me back. If there’s a moment more perfect, I’ve never had it.
And unless it’s with Kai, I don’t want it.