Walking Heartbreak (13 page)

I make out with this girl slowly. We’re already naked, and I’m dying to rush things so I can feel her around me, but we’re better off with me putting no pressure, no time constraint on this.

The slightest massage of one breast as we kiss changes the rhythm of her breathing, and I don’t move down her belly, don’t explore other parts of her until she’s arching into my caress with each hard inhale. When she does, I shift my hand to the delicate skin beneath her arm, touching her lightly, adding pressure with my fingertips. It’s not what she wants—she’s eager, goose bumps mixing with hot dampness.

Oh Nadia. She’s impatient. We’re getting there. I subdue my own need to groan. I wonder if I can make her beg? It might be too much too soon. Subtly, I rub myself along her hip in one stroke. She whimpers, a strong response to such a small move, and I pucker my mouth into our kiss to hide my pleased smile.

Finally, I lower myself. Slide my hand down her waist and find her hip. Just once, I grasp it firmly, showing her the control I could exert over her if I wanted to, and she lets out the smallest sob that goes straight to my cock.

“You’re destroying me,” I whisper.

“Why aren’t you…?” She doesn’t continue.

“Because I’m not sure you want it.”

“But…” her voice is a whimper.

“But what?”

“I—do.” Two small words that take effort for her to push out.

The headboard has stopped rocking in Emil’s room. Thank you, Lord. Just quiet murmurs and small giggles reach us now and then.

“Can I unwrap you from the sheets?” I ask, nuzzling her ear.

“Yes.”

I pull the blankets to the side one by one like I’m opening a gift. It’s how I thought of her the first time too: a fucking present. If she were a guitar, she’d be a custom Fender in comparison to the crappy Epiphones offering themselves up after every show.

I want to play this Fender the way it’s supposed to be played. I roll down her body, licking my way to that succulent flower of hers. Its light aroma causes that groan to finally vibrate from me, and she lifts her ass from the mattress, wanting my tongue deeper.

I’ll give you deeper.

“Oh goodness,” she sighs, surprised, a slight tremble in the muscles at the back of her thigh. I squeeze them and lap at her. “Bo…”

“Yes, darling?” The endearment just escapes, and I don’t regret it.

Oh darling.

“I think I need…”

Ah she’s about to beg.
My hard-on rages. I want her to continue.

“Tell me what you need.” I suckle, waiting, burying my tongue in her, tasting, loving her heat, and hoping she’ll do it.

Nadia undulates against my face, working with me, helping. She whimpers again, and I adore the understated sounds she can’t hold back. They mean so much more than any screams of pleasure.

“You don’t want to say it?” I whisper hot against her clit. “Ask me, darling, and I’ll give you whatever you want.”

She inhales sharply and holds her breath for an instant. There’s an internal fight going on, that much I catch. Then she exhales, and with the air she lets out comes what I’ve prayed for. “Bo, please… can we be… together?”

“All the way together? Joined?” I lash out a long stroke across her cleft again, making her jolt.

Her impatience with me is growing. Good. “Yes!”

“As in you want to feel me inside of you?”

“Oh God,” she says, squirming beneath me. She doesn’t answer, so I act like I’m going to lie back down again. “No, no! I mean—yes, please come inside of me.”

“Come. Inside of me.” Oh fuck me.

And so I do. I wrap myself in latex and press inside of her. I flip us around and stretch her out on top of me. She’s timid, barely moves, flat and tense against me—until I start rocking into her, pressing her hips down so there is no space left between us.

“Oh darling,” I mumble, “darling, darling,” and her body reacts to my pleasure and starts a rhythm, rubbing her sweetest spot against me. When we come, we do it together. I’m deep inside her, swelling, twitching, and she clings to me, arms around my body and thighs clamped around mine as her orgasm shivers free.

I don’t withdraw right after. The intimacy of the moment is too great, and I’m not going to lose it right now. Nadia’s face is buried deep against my neck, and I feel her heart skittering as she comes down from the heights I sent her to.

I stroke her back like I’m her boyfriend. Soothe her until I realize she’s crying. I drape a sheet over us because I don’t want her to get cold.

“Are you all right?” I ask, because you never know with girls. Ingela cried a few times after a good orgasm. I hope that’s Nadia’s issue right now.

“Yeah.” She sniffles. Rubs her face against the pillow beneath us before she turns back in against my neck. “I liked it a lot.”

“So you’re crying because I was a good lay?” I want her to giggle.

“Many reasons. That. My husband. My life. You know, good and bad mixed together,” she says.

I roll her to her back. It’s time I look her in the eyes again. I’ve never run away from hardcore emotions, and I’m not about to start now that this girl might be cracking a door open.

“Uh,” she protests while I pick a strand of hair from her face and pull it out of the way. “You… slipped out.”

“Feeling empty?” I ask, and she looks up at me.

“How did you know?”

“I’ve had girlfriends.” I don’t commonly speak about my past. I sing about it.

“Do you have a girlfriend now?” she wonders, blinking. I can’t tell what she’d think if my answer had been yes.

“No, we broke up a year ago.”

“Do you miss her?” The question surprises me. Sure, this is pillow talk, but usually girls prod to make me say the sex was bad, that they’re better, etc. etc. I never bite.

“Yeah, I do,” I say.

“She broke up with you?” she asks too, and it’s such a high-school question it makes me chuckle. What does it matter who breaks up with who?

“Yes, she finally found someone better. Someone who had it in him to love.”

“To love
her
, you mean,” Nadia says.

“Yeah. That too. I don’t actually love though. I’m not made that way.”

A small frown appears between her eyebrows, and maybe it’s good we talk about this. I might as well lay it out in the open in case she, against all odds, ends up attached to me. What a shitty situation, right, to be married to a guy who doesn’t appreciate her, and then taking a lover on the side who’s unable to love her either. I laugh softly to myself.

“What?”

“No, I mean, really. I had the best girlfriend in the world. I meant everything to her, and she meant more than most things to me. But that was it. I’m a walking heartbreak.”

She smiles at me instead of being outraged. Tips her chin up as if she’s above me and looking down at me. “Nah. Hey, I believe the last part, that you’re a walking heartbreak to the girls at your concerts, but of course you can love someone. You’ll see.

“One of these days you’ll meet the right girl, and you’ll love her like crazy. I might not have much experience, but the way you listen to my needs without me even speaking tells me what an exceptional human being you are. Once you find that girl, the one you’ll love the way your ex loved you, she’ll be the luckiest woman in the world.”

I’m stunned silent. It’s the most I’ve heard this beautiful girl say in one sitting.

“Huh,” I muster in the end. I knew she had depths she wasn’t showing, that the mystery surrounding her is a big part of my attraction to her, but—wow.

“Sorry.” She hides against my neck again, and I have no idea what she’s apologizing for. “It wasn’t my place to go in and psycho-babble you,” she clarifies. “That just slipped out.” She pulls away enough to meet my eyes again for a split second and says, “I meant every word though. You’re a little bit… amazing.”

Oh no, and then there’s a sob in her throat again. She swallows it quickly, but she’s still in my arms so I feel it quaver before it disappears. “Nadia,” I say, sounding sterner than I am. “Just… ah. We need to talk. Can we talk?”

“I’d rather not.”

I wish I knew what triggers her sadness. Is it just her husband? The whole getting hitched too early and being stuck in a cold marriage? She’s too young and too special to deal with that. I can’t even imagine.

“Nadia.” I sit up against the wall and hoist her with me. She lets me, a small sigh of reluctance surging from her.

“Listen,” I murmur. “There’s this huge elephant in the room. I’ll be nice—I won’t pressure you into talking about it. I’ll just tell you what I’ve gathered, and I want you to nod if I’m right and shake your head if I’m wrong. Can you do that for me?”

It takes her forever to respond. She’s mulling it over. Her body rests on me, the weight of her head nice against my chest. I wonder if she hears the slow, steady thumps my heart makes, so different to the rhythm it jackhammered out while we made love.

“Darling,” I whisper against her head. “That okay?”

This time she nods uncertainly.

I rake my hand into her hair and pull her back. Nadia’s face is innocent, open, and anxious. The mixture does it for me, my dick engorging lazily beneath her thigh. It’s been a long time since everything about a woman turned me on like this.

“So,” I begin. “Your husband might have made you happy at some point, but he doesn’t anymore.” Really, what does it matter today if he made her happy back when? “Am I right?”

I wait. Slowly, she nods against my chest.

“You wouldn’t have had sex outside your marriage if you got it at home.” Every silent inch of her screams that I’m right. I still hold my breath, steeling myself for her answer, because what if she does this often? She could patent that look, that gorgeous display of innocence and restrained carnal need. Who the hell wouldn’t want to please her right the fuck now with those eyes?

Yeah. I don’t want that to be the case.

“No. Never,” she says, and it’s fierce and open and so true my chest tightens with relief.

“Okay, down to the tiny issues. I’m curious. Bear with me.”

She groans, worried, but she doesn’t object. She snuggles tighter into me beneath the covers, a bare, warm embrace I haven’t indulged in for months.

“Your husband’s name is Jude.”

She nods.

“He was born… the same year as you?”

She nods.

“You don’t spend time together lately.”

She doesn’t nod. She doesn’t shake her head at me either. Is there an intermediate level to this? You either spend or don’t spend time with your significant other, right? Like when Ingela and I lived oceans apart. No time together. When we both lived in Gothenburg: tons of time together. Duh.

“No answer?”

She nods to that.

“Because it’s complicated?”

She nods.

“Okay. Here’s a new addition to your answers,” I improvise. “If the answer isn’t ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ just kiss my chest.”

Through the mist of sadness my questions bring, her eyes narrow in a smile. “I can do that,” she murmurs, and I kiss her lips, sucking a little on the lower one because I need to.

“Your husband is an asshole.”

She kisses my chest.
It’s complicated.

“He’s not currently appreciating you the way he should.”

She nods.

“It’s been like this for months.”

“More,” she responds without nodding or shaking her head.

“A year.”

“More.”

“Damn, Nadia. A year and a half?”

She nods.

“He hits you.”

She shakes her head, adding, “Never. And that’s it. I’m done talking about Jude.”

“Ah come on. We just started!” I exclaim, surprising myself. I get focused as hell—it’s why I’m a songwriter—but unless it’s my siblings, I lose interest in people’s dramas lightning fast. Not so with Nadia.

“Never mind. Sorry. You owe me no explanations. All we’ve done together is
not
play kites, suck at bowling, and… totally pull off slumber parties.”

She hides her smile against my chest, and it makes me smile too.

I should let this go while she’s okay, but instead I fire off another question. And while I utter it, I think,
What if someone had asked
me
that while Ingela and I were struggling?
I know what I would have done: I would have dodged the question like a cheap-stringed guitar.

“Have you considered leaving him?”

Her reply isn’t a nod. It’s not a shake of her head or a kiss on my chest. No. It’s enunciated clearly, her eyes right on mine. “There
is
no leaving him behind.”

BO

Opportunities float through your sphere,
and it’s up to you to seize them. Sometimes they stream back around, giving you another chance if you miss out, but that once-in-a-lifetime chance, you’ll never see again.

Troll calls me while Nadia is still asleep. I don’t release her from my arms when I grab the phone from the nightstand and answer.

“Bo. Radio One needs a fill-in. Tom Rocks was supposed to head up Luminessence on the night show, but they backed out last minute, and Luminessence’s artist manager called yours. Clown Irruption is in.”

Adrenaline rushes through my body. “Are you
kidding
me? Radio One?”

“Hell yeah, man. Radio Fucking One.”

I start laughing. My stomach rocks, stirring Nadia from her sleep. She
uh-huhms?
and I pull her close, kissing her temple way loudly for someone who’s still in dreamland.

“Better make it, son,” Troll grumbles, grouchy-sounding as usual.

“Of course, Captain. We’ll be there. Are you emailing us directions and times?” It’s a redundant question. He’s always on top of the details, and he’s snippy as hell about being second-guessed.

“Yeah, unless you’ve got
Internet
,” he counters. “Ooh it’s so hard to locate Radio One in L.A.”

I bite my lip, suppressing my amusement. “What time?”

“Dude, I am going to email you, okay? God forbid you girls get lost.”

“Thank you, Troll. I appreciate it,” I say, and he muffle-growls something indistinguishable before hanging up.

The girl in my bed looks up, big, beautiful eyes bright with anticipation for me. “You’re excited. What’s going on?”

She smiles when I tell her. Rolls slowly over my body and on top of me the way she lied last night, nudges her nose against my throat like a sleepy kitten. I get to see this other Nadia before she veils herself in sadness again. This early morning version of her is addictive.

I kiss her before she rethinks shit. Slide my fingers in between her butt cheeks and caress her rosebud. Then I move down, finding a warmth I already crave, slickness from yesterday, and I whisper my plea in her ear.

“Again?”

Still sleepy, she relents, her body awake enough to tremble through a climax with me, but as her mind clears fully, I watch her retract again, her eyes dimming as she gets dressed. Nadia sits through breakfast with us, that small wrinkle between her brows reappearing.

When she stands, getting ready to leave, I don’t give a damn that I look pathetic when I say, “Hey,” catch her hand in passing, and entwine our fingers. I don’t get up from my seat, but I pull her close enough to latch around her waist. “Can you make it to the show? I’d like to have you there.”

“I want to go so bad!” Zoe sings. “Emil invited me, right you did, Cupcake? Nadia, we’ll talk to Scott—figure something out. This is the awesomest reason ever to bail in the middle of our shifts.”

Nadia tenses in my hold. She doesn’t withdraw, but it’s clear that she wants to. Instinctively, I kiss her stomach the way I used to back when I had a girlfriend. Our small kitchen goes dead silent at my move, and it dawns on me how intimate that was. Much more intimate than casual sex.

“Tell me you’ll try,” I say. My voice is raspy. “We’ll kick ass if you come.” That releases the tension around the table, and with a half-hearted nod, Nadia leaves my house.

BO

We’ve been at the radio station
for a few hours. They’ve provided us with a rehearsal room, we’ve been briefed on the two questions they’ll ask, and how we’ll be introduced before Luminessence. We get one song only. Troll is pissed, because he wants us to do our almost-hit,
Never Ever
, but I’m pretty sure we’re doing
Fuck You.

“They’ll censor the crap out of your damn song,” he says.

“It’s live, isn’t it? How can they?” I retort. “Plus, it’s college radio, not FCC-governed commercial radio.”

Troll’s great, but tonight he’s not helping. I’d much rather get in my pre-show groove than deal with his BS. I end up making a run for beer to get away from him. On the way back, I make an executive decision: we’ll play
Fuck You
if Nadia comes. If she doesn’t, we’ll appease Troll and go with what Emil refers to as our “sad-as-shit” song.

“Dudes,” I call as soon as I’m back. Pop a few bottles open while I toe the door to the rehearsal room shut. “Get ready for extremes: it’s
Never Ever
or
Fuck You
, depending.”

“On what, man?” Troy is juggling drumsticks, his only tell of being anxious.

“We’ll be in the mood for
Fuck You
if we get a female audience,” I say, take a swig of beer, and start fiddling with my guitar. Yeah, fiddle. Because I need the attention off myself.

“Perfect!” Emil exclaims, insisting on a high five. “If the chicks come, I’ll be good to go. You’re right—if I don’t have a set of killer jugs to eye-fuck, I’m better off playing safe with an oldie-but-goodie.” And thus Emil’s narcissism saves me from making a lovesick fool out of myself.

NADIA

Zoe watches me,
eyes soft with compassion as I sling clothes around in my closet. “I don’t know what to wear!” I yell.

“Sweetie, it’s not a big deal. Bo—”

“Don’t! Mention him here,” I shout. One of my candles has extinguished in the den. I rush out to light a new one.

I press air out through pursed lips, trying to gather my wits. Waking up with Bo this morning, hard-bodied and smooth-skinned, warm and enveloping me. It rattled me more than the sex did. Because it’s how things used to be with Jude and me.

Jude and I had issues—serious issues that disappeared with our flight from Payne Point. He saved me from the rest of my life, from old husbands and ten children. From religious extremism and painful submission. I can never pay him back for what he did, for the new, compassionate, generous world he brought me into.

But here I am, searching for an outfit for a radio show Clown Irruption has been invited to.

“How ’bout you wear one of your ankle-length skirts from your Payne Point days?” Zoe asks. I snort while rubbing my eye dry of liquid and old mascara.

“Yeah, right. I don’t have any of those left. Jude helped me burn them in the backyard as soon as we’d moved into this place.”

“I beg to differ.” She holds up a burgundy flannel skirt.
Flannel.
Do you have any idea of how much flannel sucks in a place as warm as Payne Point?

And suddenly, I’m giggling. Zoe joins me too, making pole-dancer moves with the living-room-drapes-worthy chunk of fabric she’s carrying.

“Mother would have had a heart attack,” I manage, pointing at her dancing.

“She’d deserve it,” Zoe quips, and that makes me laugh harder. Crap, I might be having a panic attack. Jude isn’t here, and I’m about to head off to Bo’s gig. Radio One is the biggest college station in Southern California, serving eight campuses at once, and the honor of playing live is beyond belief for the guys.

“Sexy, sweets. You can do it. Come on. Blow Bo’s mind, will you? He’s so freaking into you I’m jealous.”

“What, of me?”

She rolls her eyes. “Bah, I’m into the
Scandinavian
rocker thing, not the whatever metro-sexy, worldly, mysterious musician thingy. Though, hey, judging by the itty-bitty squeals you couldn’t hold back last night, sounds like he’d be worth a trial ride.”

“No! Oh Lord, Zoe. Please.” I slump on my bed. I’ll never put myself in that situation again. Never will Zoe and I have a single, thin wall between us when we… when we’re with…

She giggles merrily. Tosses out a small, red skirt she bought me a few months ago. “You’ve never worn this one. You’ve got ahmazing legs, all curvy and stupid, so wear it.”

“Too short.”

“Said Nadia’s grandmother.”

“Okay, fine!”

She keeps rummaging in our closet, and I’m worried.
I don’t have any daring tops
, I have time to think before she finds one and chucks it at my face.

“White. Super-pretty with the red skirt, and look at the cuuuut!” She drags out the last word like bubblegum.

I recognize the only item shipped to me from my family in Argentina over the last few years. My favorite aunt,
Tía
Rosa, sent me this sexy, half-transparent, pearly white top with a neckline so plungy it commits suicide between my breasts. I never put it on for Jude.

“No way,” I say. “I didn’t buy that thing.”

“Yep, I figured. Now, put it on. It’ll be gorgeous.”

Because Zoe doesn’t give up easily, I try it on, hating the way her eyes grow into saucers in front of me. “Dayumm,” she says. “What a rack, girl.”

“No, it’s just the top.”

“Yeah, whatevs, and done deal. It’s what you’re wearing, although Bo might be in trouble. Here’s to hoping they play their newest song.”

“Which song?”

“The crazy sexy one. The porn song? Emil says it’s about me, but Bo wrote it, and I’m purrty, purrty sure it isn’t about me,” she says, grinning.

And when I leave my house, with Jude nowhere to hug goodbye, I’m somehow wearing the short, red silk skirt,
Tía
Rosa’s stripper top—with a pin at the center keeping it from kamikaze-diving—and Zoe’s mile-high red Loboutins.

I don’t know
me
anymore.