Out of Time (Face the Music Book 3) (12 page)

‘Would you like me to stop?’ But her fingers still danced along his hard length.

‘Do you want to stop?’

He was actually asking. She gave him a slow stroke and swept her thumb over the head. ‘How about hands only.’ That was okay … freedom to roam with no restriction on where. She wanted to be able to touch him and have him touch her without worrying about no go zones. And really, the only areas that should be no go were the ones she wanted him to be touching.

‘But I can do anything with my hands?’ He made it sound dangerous, not lame.

She nodded. ‘And so can I.’

‘Sounds fair.’ He removed his hand from her shorts and undid them, then gave them a tug. She lifted her hips and let him pull them off. ‘Hot pink? I had you pegged as a white lace kind of girl.’

‘Why?’ What did the colour of her lingerie say about her?

He looked at her. ‘You’ve never had sex, have you?’

In that moment she wished she could get lost down the back of the sofa so she never had to face him again.

***

Even in the dim light he could see her blush. It had taken him a while to work it out. He’d known something was up from the first time they’d kissed. The way he couldn’t get a good read on her or what she wanted. Tonight everything had clicked into place.

Or not, because she never had.

His balls were aching. He knew he shouldn’t have gotten his hopes up but he wanted her bad. And it wasn’t going to happen. He hadn’t thought that she’d be saving herself.

‘That is kind of true.’

‘You’ve kind of had sex?’ How the hell did that work … more importantly, what did that mean? She’d been all up for a little fondling. He was. And she was still touching him, but her hand had stopped moving.

‘I didn’t want this conversation. I just wanted to have some fun. Now it will be weird.’ Ava pulled her hand away.

He was about to lose her, and he’d been enjoying her hand on his dick.

‘It won’t be weird. I just want to know your boundaries. If there are things you can’t or won’t do.’

‘Can’t?’

‘This is a keep yourself for marriage thing, right?’

She closed her eyes and didn’t answer. Her expression was one of pained mortification. Of having to explain what she didn’t even want to talk about. He shouldn’t have said anything about her underwear, but he’d wanted to check that he was still on firm ground before doing anything.

‘I’m still here,’ he whispered in her ear as his fingers walked over her stomach. ‘I like you … in case you couldn’t tell, I would very much like to have some fun.’

‘Yes, but it’s not what you really want.’

‘How do you know? Maybe I’m tired of meaningless sex.’ He was definitely talking too much and saying all the wrong things. ‘I’d rather have almost sex with someone I like than sex with someone I don’t know.’ Saying it aloud crystallised what he’d been feeling … but it also sounded really bad. ‘Just pass me a shovel so I can dig a deeper hole, okay?’

She opened her eyes and looked at him, her body still tense instead of languid. ‘Since we are already in the hole, we might as well keep going.’

He nodded. At least she wasn’t grabbing her shorts and bolting out the door.

‘You don’t think I’m a freak?’

‘No.’

‘I was raised Catholic, it was drilled into me to wait … I’m tired of waiting. I don’t want to wait and waste my life because someone says I should keep it for my husband. While he’s also supposed to wait, it doesn’t happen. There is no way to prove male virginity so they lie.’ She looked at him as though he was living proof that men did whatever they wanted. ‘How old were you?’

‘Sixteen.’ He’d like to say it had been awesome but it had been weird and fumbly and awkward as neither of them had quite known what to do. But at least they’d got to do it together.

‘And did anyone tell you off for ruining your life?’

‘My mother reminded me to use condoms all the time. She bought them because she didn’t want me getting a girlfriend pregnant and ruining her life and mine. At the time it was embarrassing.’ However he used condoms, always—he was ninety-nine per cent sure. There was just those couple of times he’d been really drunk and wasn’t sure.

‘But you were able to have sex.’

‘Well, yeah.’ There had never been the assumption that he wouldn’t. He’d had girlfriends whose parents had tried to make sure they didn’t—and failed. Wasn’t it better to do what his mother had done and educate and accept?

‘Now imagine all your life you’ve been told not to. So I want to, and I’ve done everything but … yet it’s hard to shake the voice condemning me.’

He couldn’t imagine that. He had a lot of freedom while growing up, but also a lot of responsibility because it was just him and Mum. He pushed away the thought that it would soon be just him. He wasn’t ready to deal with that. ‘Is that why you moved out?’

‘I was tired of being told how to live. It was never about being a good person, just about restricting what I did and who I saw. I realised that at uni.’

He had the sinking feeling that she wasn’t supposed to be around guys like him. ‘So where does that leave us?’

He’d just used the
us
word. That meant they were dating.

She looked at him as though she was trying to read his mind. If he couldn’t work out what was going on in his head, she had no chance.

‘You’re about to go away … let’s just hang out.’

There was no us. That should’ve been a relief. He wasn’t after a girlfriend, but he was half naked with his dick hanging out of his pants. It didn’t seem quite right. ‘I’ll be coming back.’

‘I know.’ She rolled onto her side to face him. ‘If I’m not ready to make any promises about the future, then I can’t expect you to.’

She didn’t trust him. As much as that stung, he wouldn’t trust him either … not to the end of the block, certainly not to the other side of the country.

‘So … we’re doing this, without doing this?’ In every sense.

‘Yeah … unless you’d rather not because it’s too odd.’

She wasn’t a girlfriend and she wasn’t a one-night stand and he wasn’t going to have sex with her. It was an absolute mind fuck.

He could hear the little voice in his ear telling him that he could get laid if he went to a bar. He knew how easy it was. Ed had warned them all to pull their heads in after last year’s antics. And he was right. He and Ed had carried on, a lot.

Being with—or not with—her could be fun. Instead of a less than memorable quickie he could do everything but. It was the crazy distraction he needed. ‘We get to come, right?’

Both her eyebrows lifted. ‘I hope so, otherwise what is the point?’

He grinned. ‘What were the rules again, just hands?’

‘Yes.’ A smile formed and she relaxed a little. ‘The last guy I was with wasn’t happy with not having sex.’

‘Obviously he didn’t know what else to do.’ And he was way out of practise. For him this was a chance to play without expectation.

She hooked her leg over his, and he drew her closer. He was going to discover exactly what made her tick so when he got back from over east, she’d want more.

Chapter 11

He’d left his mother a recording of him playing some of her favourite songs on the piano and he’d extracted a promise from Ava to keep him notified of any changes—the doctor would, but Ava’s would be more personal. Mike still felt like he was making a mistake and he wanted to throw up as he got on the plane

‘You okay, man?’ Dan sat next to him and clipped his belt.

‘No.’ His mother had wished him luck, but there was no pretending it wasn’t happening now. Every day there was a little less of her. She was less alert. There was just less. He pulled out his journal. He’d started keeping one last time and, while it had become patchy over the last year, it was filling up again. And not just with his thoughts on death.

Ava was in there too.

He didn’t want to look at those pages while Dan could peer over his shoulder.

He didn’t need to read it when it was fresh in his mind. The way she’d moved beneath him, been all slippery to touch. Tight. He hadn’t slept with a virgin since his first girlfriend and neither of them had known what they were doing.

The not-sex with Ava had been the best he’d had in a while.

And he was heading to the other side of the country.

He should be staying.

To do what? As his mum had said, he couldn’t die for her. And Ava wasn’t his girlfriend. She didn’t want that, because she thought that he couldn’t promise that.

The plane took off with a lurch and it was too late. He’d be back in two weeks. Less than two weeks. Four gigs over two weekends, and he was on the plane home … and flying back to Melbourne to record three days later.

He started scribbling in the notebook. After a while he became aware that Dan was looking. All he’d done was written about fading away. It wasn’t only about his mother, he’d been fading. Last year he’d let too many people take a piece of him without ever giving back. Some of that was his fault and he’d enjoyed it at the time.

Being with Ava was like performing; he could feel the static energy racing over his skin. Electrifying. And he knew how dangerous electricity could be.

Dan took his headphones off. ‘You have too many ideas for one song.’

‘It’s not meant to be a song.’ It was meant to be a distraction so he didn’t freak out during the flight. His edges were too frayed and he was only just keeping it all together.

Dan took the pen out of Mike’s hand. He circled a couple of lines and the measure of music Mike had written in the middle of the page. When he thought of music it was always piano first.

Dan added a couple more lines of what Mike supposed were lyrics. ‘There it is. Chorus, and this bit is the bridge. You need to write some more music and a couple of verses though …’ He handed the pen back.

Mike looked at the page, glad nothing too personal had been there. Dan had, in a few minutes, turned scribbles into something. ‘How do you do that?’

‘Dunno. Maybe I can only hold one idea in my head at a time so it’s really clear. Your head is too messy.’

Dan didn’t know the half of it.

‘Your mum okay?’

Mike shrugged.
Fuck it
. ‘She’s never going to be okay so can we stop pretending that she’s going to get better. It would really help me if you could stop being precious.’ He gritted his teeth to stop himself from saying more. Dan had never faced a day of hardship in his life. Lisa dumping him was probably the worst thing that had ever happened to him. It was no wonder he didn’t know how to deal with it.

Dan shut the notebook. ‘There is such a thing as thinking too much. Not everything has to be examined in detail.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll buy you a drink and if you want, we can work on the song once we’re on the ground.’

‘Yeah.’ A couple of drinks and he might be able to forget about home for a while.

***

Ava heard the knock and opened up the front door. She stepped back in surprise when she saw her sister. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi. Thought I’d drop in.’

‘You’re lucky I wasn’t at work.’ She’d only been back half an hour. Long enough to shower after riding home, and wish that Mike wasn’t on the other side of the country. She was already missing going for rides with him … and she wished she’d squeezed in another visit to his place. But things had gotten hectic in the last week.

‘I know your shift times.’ Finishing midafternoon meant Ava had the house to herself for a couple of hours. ‘What’s it like being out?’

‘You make it sound like prison.’ She showed her sister through to the living room.

‘Prisoners have more rights.’ Rose dropped onto the sofa. Her handbag slumped on the floor. She unravelled her hair and shook it out. ‘There’s no one else here?’

‘No. Why?’ Now she was worried. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I’m asking you as a nurse.’

‘Oh God.’ What was wrong with her sister?

‘That’s what I was saying too.’ But Rose was scowling, not looking happy. ‘I wasn’t stupid, we used condoms—’

‘You had sex?’

‘Yeah … haven’t you?’

Ava’s cheeks started burning. She shook her head.

‘What? No. But you told me about oral.’

‘That’s as far as I went.’ And she’d gotten that idea from Mel. After all, she was still technically a virgin—fingers didn’t count. She didn’t think they counted. There was no magic tamperproof seal on a woman’s vagina, just a stretchy remnant piece of skin that had somehow been elevated to a level of importance usually reserved for major essential organs. So why did she still have the no access rule? Mike had been willing and able; she’d been more than ready, grinding against his hand until she’d come.

‘Oh.’ Rose looked away. ‘Well.’ She fiddled with the strap on her handbag.

She was going to clam up and she obviously needed someone to talk to and help her. ‘Was it good?’

‘Not the first time. It does hurt. Then there was the guilt … I’m past that now.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I looked online but that only made me panic more. Can you get an STI even if you use condoms?’

‘They reduce the risk … did he have a cold sore, or did his penis look odd?’

Rose lifted her eyebrows. ‘You have seen a cock, right? They look odd to start with.’

Ava shook her head and sighed. Rose was using that word to bug her. ‘You know what I meant.’

‘I know you still can’t say it.’ Rose gave her a tight grin.

‘This is about you. What are your symptoms?’ Hopefully it wasn’t anything bad. ‘And did he always wear one before getting in … or did you let him get it wet?’

‘Are you sure you haven’t done this?’

Ava nodded.

‘He always wore one. I’m not dumb. I know it only takes one wriggler to get pregnant. God, can you imagine if Grandmother found birth control in my room?’

Unfortunately, Ava could. Despite only having two children herself, she was against birth control. She probably thought her son abstained so as not to end up with more children.

‘Every time I pee it burns. Do I need to see a doctor and make him see one?’

‘It’s probably just a urinary tract infection, caused by all the sudden activity. It is recent?’ Or had Rose been having sex for years while she sat on the shelf, like the good girl she was supposed to be, to catch a worthy husband? What had Grandmother’s parents said when she’d married an Australian man? Had they been happy or railed at her? Grandmother had married for love, felt the sting of failure and was determined to make everyone else suffer.