Ellison
Drix twirls his drumstick in his hand before pointing it toward me, then jerking it back toward him. I just got called out. Challenged. I sigh because I’ll hate myself if I cower back like a scared mouse. As if my ankles were shackled together, I cross the garage. Drix slides back on the bench and motions for me to sit in front of him.
I fold my arms over my chest and appraise the drums as if there were spiders scampering along them. “I’m going to make a fool out of myself.”
Drix bobs his head back and forth. “Probably.”
My mouth pops open, and when he flashes that heart-melting grin, I smack his arm and then straddle the bench to sit in front of him. Drix slides up the seat, his body pressed into my back, and air rushes out of my lungs with the contact. The insides of his thighs are touching the outside of mine. His heat penetrates through his jeans to my skin.
Drix reaches around, and his hands cover mine. His thumbs work open my fists I had no idea I had formed. I give, and he places a drumstick in each palm. His fingers skim my skin, and it’s such a beautiful tickling touch that my entire body hums. Then his large, calloused hands tenderly close my fingers around the sticks, and he covers my hands with his.
“Everyone thinks the key to playing the drums is a firm grip, but it isn’t.” Pleasing goose bumps form along my neck as his breath whispers against my ear. “You want a light grip. It’s not about muscle, it’s about momentum—the tighter you hold the sticks, the slower you’ll go. The sound comes with the opening and closing of your fists and of your wrists.”
He leans his head over my shoulder and raises our combined right hand. We hit a drum to the right and then a drum to the left. His deep voice drifts over me like smooth silk. “These are the tom-toms.”
He guides our right hands toward the floor and hits another drum. Every muscle in his arms flexes, and I’m quickly losing the ability to breathe. “This is the floor tom.”
Moving our left hands, Drix hits a smaller, thinner drum, and it has a quicker, snapping sound. “This is the snare drum.”
I shift on the bench in the desperate search to stay upright, and Drix somehow settles closer to me. Can he feel my heart beating at every pressure point? Can he feel the excited tremble of my body, the quick rising of my chest with my rapid breaths? Does he know, besides when he held me in the hotel room, this is the closest I have ever been to a boy?
His foot nudges the inside of mine and ushers it to a foot pedal. The touch of his leg twining with mine so intimate, I shiver. Drix gently pushes the pedal. “This is the bass drum, and these—” he moves his left foot to the inside of mine and delicately slides it toward another pedal “—are the hi-hat cymbals.”
I try to wet my dry lips without Drix noticing, but with his face so close, I had to be unsuccessful. “What’s the large cymbal called?”
Drix raises our right hands and strikes the cymbal with such force that I flinch and then laugh. The type of laugh that starts in my stomach and is so joyous in sound that it feels like I’m flying. Drix laughs with me, his body creating a fantastic pressure as it shakes against mine.
“That is the crash cymbal.”
Drix releases my hands and rests his hands on the top of my thighs. I briefly close my eyes at the gentle touch. The tip of his index finger brushes against the line between my top and inner thigh. On purpose, not on purpose, I have no idea, but oh my God, my heart is going to explode.
My hands begin to lower, but Drix removes his right hand from my thigh to force them back up.
“What do you want me to do?” The question barely a whisper.
Drix angles his head, his mouth so close to my earlobe I swear to God his lips brush against the sensitive skin as he breathes out, “Play.”
As if I had become weightless, a feather prone to the desperate breeze, I rise from the bench. Reverently shaking my head back and forth, and my grip on the sticks loosens. “I can’t.”
A strong and firm hand on my shoulder and Drix exerts enough pressure I return to the bench. “You don’t have to know how to play. You just play. No perfection here, Elle. Just you being you.”
Just me being me. But who is that anymore?
My hands quiver as I timidly hit the tom-toms. Other than their hollow sound filling the garage, nothing happened. No mother yelling. No slap of pain against my hands. No disappointed stares. No shame.
Handling the sticks how Drix had gently positioned them in my hand earlier, I strike the snare drum. The sound causing me to sit straighter, more determined, and everything within me lifts to a higher level. My spirit, my lips, my cheekbones, my hands.
This. I can do this.
As if through their own volition, my hands move the sticks, hitting them against the different drums. My feet stomping on the pedals. No beat. No rhythm. Just noise, dissonance and freedom. The sound fills the garage, fills my soul, fills me. It’s loud, it’s overwhelming, it’s chaotic, and it’s peace.
I finally pull back, my chest rising and falling rapidly, adrenaline coursing through my veins, and I angle so that I can face Drix. “That was fantastic!”
Drix’s dark eyes stare at my lips, and I draw in a shallow breath, but I can’t release it. That hunger in his eyes, I’ve seen it before in my direction, but never had I felt that same hunger inside me...until now. Do my eyes look as wild as his? Does his heart beat as quickly as mine?
Drix tugs the sticks from my hands and drops them to the floor. They tap several times before rolling to a stop under the bench. The only other sound in the room is the buzzing of the light and the pulse in my ears.
He cradles the back of my head and stares intently into my eyes. “Can I be your first kiss?”
A million butterflies take flight in my chest, and the sudden motion makes me dizzy or maybe it’s how fast I’m nodding. “Yes.”
Drix’s thumb brushes my cheek as he tilts his head and lowers it to mine. His lips so close to my lips. Just a breath’s distance, and when I inhale, I’m consumed by his dark, rich scent.
“Me and you, Elle,” he whispers. “This belongs only to me and you.”
Yes, it does.
And he kisses me. His lips pressing against mine, and careful of my glasses, his fingers clutch my hair. Drix’s other hand rubs gently along my back. It’s soft and sweet, and warmth floods through me, and there’s this need for closer, to press near, for more.
Drix draws my lower lip into both of his, and I part my mouth. My heart beats hard at the idea of going further, beating hard at how I never want to stop. Drix accepts the invitation, our kiss deepens and I lose myself in the haze of it all.
My skin tingles with his touch, my mouth burns against his, my mind reels with his strong presence and touch. A strange falling sensation in my head and I pull back and gasp.
Breathing. I was forgetting to breathe.
I rest my forehead against Drix’s, and we both scramble for breath. Because this was the most intense moment of my life, I whisper his name.
I don’t know why, I don’t know what I’m trying to say, but he seems to understand as he kisses my forehead and gathers me into him. My head on his shoulder, my arms wrapped around him, his arms wrapped around me. An embrace that is warm, that is safe. An embrace I could stay in forever.
“What is this, Drix?” I whisper. “What is this between us?”
“I don’t know,” he says against my neck. “But I’m not ready to let it go yet.”
Neither am I.