#Kissing (Rock and Romance #1) (6 page)

Chapter 14

I dream of feather light kisses. For one hopeful moment, I think the lips belong to JQ, tossing aside inhibitions and the fear that our friendship will fall apart. It did anyway, but not because of anything he did. It was all me.

It's Niko's lips on mine in real life, and I'm convinced the only thing he's afraid of is reality and not playing his guitar or singing. It's about fifty-fifty. He doesn't worry about breaking my heart or our friendship landing in pieces.

"My phone practically buzzed a hole in my pocket. Slade wanted us on the bus a half hour ago."

"He can wait."

Niko laughs. "That's what I'm thinking." He rolls on top of me.

I conveniently failed to get dressed before I got into bed earlier.

Niko shakes his damp head, sprinkling water over me before licking each drop off my chest, my nipples, and my belly. He heads down, down, down. I'm instantly wet. Or maybe I already was from the dream and the unmet desire those blue eyes bring.

Niko kisses and licks my skin. "Your smile is like a riddle. You're like candy. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" He sucks on my nipple, nipping the end with his teeth.

I nod with a sly grin and he instantly parts my thighs, his cock, finally hard, slipping easily inside. We press together feverishly after being put off and interrupted several times last night. The tingling heat comes quick and steadily. As my hips rock and he thrusts, fragments of tension chip away and the surge of pleasure mounts.

"Babe," he says in the way that's reserved just for me, for the bedroom, and not the stage or for his fans.

I moan as he continues to pump.

This is why we ride the roller coaster of argue and make up and argue and make up. Because the sex afterward tends to be outstandingly intense, extreme.

I understand all those allusions on TV and movies about make up sex. But all too soon, my mind wanders to a Sunday afternoon with
him
. Not Niko. I blink my eyes open and they meet a pair that aren't blue.

"Say my name," I command. I have to hear Niko's voice, or I risk going into memory, distancing myself from the potential to orgasm with him, here, now. More than anything, balancing on the edge of the past and the present, desire and denial, an orgasm is the exact release I need.

"Josie." His voice, on its own, is musical with lifts and dips in all the right places.

"Say my full name." But it's a trick. He doesn't know my full name.

His eyebrows wiggle for a moment and he says, "Josie Speedwell."

JQ knows my full name. First, last, and middle. He knows why I have a scar on my forearm, that I'm allergic to papaya, and that I prefer to be barefoot. I squish my eyes shut, but he's there, blue eyes and all—eyes that for one day looked at me with longing and love.

"Niko," I blurt, grasping, however tenuously, onto the present. "Niko, Niko, Niko," and in between each thrust of his name, I tell myself, I'm with Niko. I'm having sex with Niko. I'm fucking Niko the singer and guitarist of the Halos. Thousands of girls would like to be me right now and thousands of girls would have an outrageous orgasm in five, four, three, two, one.

I'm not that girl.

#Fail

He pulls out, and a burst of creamy white cum dots my belly.

"Babe," he sighs, satisfied. "There's no one like you. No one." He wraps an arm around me.

I know. And living with myself is the problem.

Chapter 15

We spend the next few days putting miles on the tour bus between truck stops. Little known fact: highway service stations are a bastion of fun waiting to be had, unless you're sober, which I am. Also, the food is a diabetic's nightmare, but a stoner's playground. I'm outnumbered at least thirteen to one on a routine basis. However, we lose a couple of the groupies somewhere in Oklahoma.

There are crazy people in the bathrooms trying to sell everything from beaded necklaces to photos of their coochies. There are clean showers and dirty toilets. Nasty mouths and grandmothers praying to save our souls. At one truck stop, there was a Trucker's Jamboree. Kat won the wet T-shirt contest. The prize, a dry T-shirt.

Kenji and his girls walked into a convenience store and walked out with five cowboy hats, six lighters, nine bottles of booze, and a box of fudge. They didn't spend a dime.

Niko started a condom collection from the dispensers in the men's bathrooms: glow-in-the-dark, ribbed, extra-ribbed, tie-dye, all the colors of the rainbow, flavors, including cherry, studded, and ones that supposedly cause a tingling sensation.

Jill doesn't leave the bus.

Slade mingles with the truckers, no doubt acquiring speed.

As for me, I break the windows of two cars. We left the cool of the middle states behind while a heat wave, the last of the season, sweeps through the south. Some assholes left their dogs locked inside, one just a puppy, sweltering, with no fresh air. I've read the statistics; the dogs didn't stand a chance. One of the owners took off after me with a baseball bat, but Mitty took care of it.

We're only a day away from the festival site, and if Jill and Kenji battle over the video game console one more time, I'm going to put my fist through the machine. I considered stuffing it with coins or something else to jam it, but at least when they finally agree on a game, they're agreeably silent. Neither chooses to speak the other's language. When it comes to being in a band, I guess the sound of music is universal.

This afternoon the bus has taken on a cheese-like odor, which is but one reason I get off for fresh air. Lately, access to a deep, belly-filling breath is a sporadic thing. I should see a doctor. Maybe it's everyone else stealing the oxygen. Another reason could be boredom. My brain feels slightly starved. Though I suppose, finding creative ways to use Niko's condoms to entertain passing drivers has proved stimulating.

The sun marks my pale skin as minutes pass. I count my breaths as air attempts to enter my lungs. What would happen if I didn't get back on the bus? Where would I go?

I give up on breathing and wondering, instead venturing toward the building to use the ladies room. By the door, a woman wearing multiple shawls and a beaded headdress motions me over. She probably needs a light for her cigarette or wants to sell tacky kitsch. She sits on an overturned milk crate and calls me over.

I point at myself.

She nods.

Without asking, she takes my limp hand in hers and then turns it over to study my palm. I try to jerk it away, but her grip is insistent, her nails like knives. Her eyes are like coffee, milky and sweet. It's likely she's been sitting out here for at least a hundred years, and they just built the cement building and gas station around her.

Her voice is gravelly. "My dear, there is a long road ahead of you."

"Yes, that's quite clear," I say, glancing over my shoulder at the cars and trucks whipping by on the nearby highway.

"You currently live an interesting life, but it is not your fate."

She must mean my destiny because as I understand it fate is out of my control, meaning I have no say in what the cosmos or gods or whoever is in charge has in store for me. I'm half-Christian and half-Jewish, and I haven't quite figured out how or if it fits into my life. When I left home, I took back my fate, my destiny, and my sanity.

"What's my fate?" I ask.

She drags an irregular smile onto her face as though her lips don't see one often. "So glad you asked. Will you sit down?"

"If you're going to tell me that my fate is how I'm going to owe you twenty bucks in five minutes, just come out and say it." I'm no fool, except, of course, when it comes to Niko.

She snorts. "Pay me if you want, but when I come across hands like yours, my reimbursement is the simple pleasure of the reading itself."

Clever saleswoman. Entrepreneurs should take note. She could make millions with multiple streams of revenue: classes, webinars, books, and bonuses.

"My name is Josephina. It's nice to meet you. May I read your hand?" she asks more formally.

Josephina? Seriously? My laugh is the kind that comes from humility in the face of the fathomless universe. I ask, "Don't you want to know my name?"

Her expression suggests she already does.

She rubs her withered fingers along the lines on my hand, running a dirty nail along the crevices. "If you thought that perhaps I confused fate and destiny, the confusion was your own. They're more dashes than solid lines; a fine distinction really, one that can quickly veer in one direction or the other. Of course, there is always overlap. Us meeting for instance. I take it there are facilities on that bus?"

"Meaning I didn't have to come out here to the use bathroom?" I nod, amused.

She stares steadily at my hand. "Meaning you're in charge of your actions, shaping your destiny and it's as wonderful or shitty as you make it."

"Shitty?"

"There's much to be gained by surrendering to the guidance of the universe, fate, instead of being so bossy about making poor decisions."

I snort. "#Bosslady, that's me," I say.

She studies my hand a moment more. "We both know that isn't quite true. You're meandering, Josephine, in a petulant kind of way. You left something behind; perhaps it was for the best, but not all of it. You're not taking hold of the gifts you've been given and using them. You see, my biggest concern is the Mount of Venus."

"Concern?" I ask, stifling a childish laugh because if nothing else the Mount of Venus calls up vaginas.

"That and the shape of your hand. It's round and square, suggesting you're a musician, but—" She holds my fingers at length. "Not lately."

Josephina tilts her head. "But back to the Mount of Venus." She studies the space between the base of my thumb and my wrist. "People think palm reading is all about fate lines and heart lines, but the texture and color is important too. Your mount confirms your musical skill or potential, but what it doesn't contain is happiness, which is different, than pleasure as I'm sure you know." She levels me with her gaze. "Do you understand?"

Of course I do. But I answer with a hesitant nod because understanding and acceptance are two vastly different things.

"My job isn't to tell you how to manipulate your fate, change the course, fall in love, find marriage, or resist tragedy. So many people want instructions. How do I live? What do I do? Only you can answer those questions. I'm just here to tell you what I see. You seem to be handling things fine. However," she runs her finger over my lifeline again, "if you want better than fine, you might consider giving your Mount of Venus more attention."

The big
O
, masturbating, and making myself come pops to mind, but that's not what she means. I part my lips to ask the question she won't answer.
How?

"The answers are all here," she says, running her fingers over my palm. She digs into her shawl and produces a green string.

"May I?" she asks, gesturing to tie it around my wrist. "Venus deals with love and matters of the heart, but the color associated with Venus is green. For fresh starts. Now you won't forget. Also remember what I said about fate and destiny if you want to breathe better."

I pull apart everything she's said. I try to draw a deep breath to make my mind still, to accurately record her words, and commit them to memory as a facsimile, but the trouble with alcohol and lack of sleep make recent manifestations of thought fuzzier than older ones.

For example, what I wore to my first day of kindergarten: a plaid dress with an apple on it.

My soccer JV soccer coach's name: Coach Dole.

My SAT score: 1594.

My first crush: I know his name, but my heart aches to think it.

All of that information is solid, in the vault. Newer experiences are amorphous, some sticking, others not. Recent conversations, forget it. I lose what the person said almost as soon as the words spill from their mouth. Maybe I'm the one who needs to listen better.

I pull out a green bill to thank her for her time, but she shakes her head, refusing to take it. "Thank you," I say.

"No, thank you. Good luck," she says.

As I walk away, my comment
fuck luck
echoes in a lonely way.

Slade hollers for me from across the lot. "Getting on?"

Arms lasso me from behind, picking me up off the ground. I startle, but Niko purrs in my ear, "I'd like to get off. There was live porn in the bathroom."

I playfully slap his hand, "You're a perv. I didn't see you leave the bus."

"Who was that old lady you were talking to?"

"She told me life isn't a fairy tale," I say in summation.

"Harsh. Does that mean you won't live happily ever after?"

"I guess that's up to me."

Niko passes me a plastic bag. "Got you some goodies."

I peer in at condoms and candy.

"What were you saying about happily ever after?" he winks at me.

Having sex on the bus requires dexterity. Having sex with Niko when he's not high requires athleticism. Fortunately, I have ample amounts of both. Having sex with me requires creativity, because even after we do it several times as the miles pass I still can't find that orgasm of mine. It's there. I can make it happen on my own and he can bring me to the edge, but never over.

I moan with pleasure anyway. It feels good, but it doesn't feel good enough. I cry out at the right places, but I can't help but wonder what I'd sound like if I actually came, would it be the howl of a wild animal? A cry of victory? A low, intense groan? I'd desperately like to know. Maybe when I do I'll be better than fine.