Lies and Lullabies Read online

  “Now let me see your eyes.” He smiled at me, and our bodies slowly connected. With one smooth push, he was inside. His face took on a more serious expression. I wiggled a little under him, wanting to revel in the beautiful fullness. But he held perfectly still. “Sweet Jesus, you are sexy, Kira. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  “Move, will you?” He felt so good, and things were going so well.

  He smiled down at me again. Then he pulled back at a speed so slow it was almost imperceptible. When he’d almost left me entirely, I grabbed his bottom and tried to bring him back.

  “Patience, sweetness.” Again, he eased forward, almost so slowly that it didn’t count.

  “The gentle treatment is nice, but I can take more.”

  He gave me a grin, still warm but also wicked, and picked up the pace from glacial to merely dragging. With long, languid thrusts he worked deeper inside me. His lips grazed mine, and I leapt for his mouth, pressing my tongue against his. I kissed him hard, trying to show him what I needed. “You’re making me desperate.”

  His chuckle sent shivers down my spine. “That’s the point.” He sat up a little, lifting my hips. Then, rising to his knees, he slung my calves onto his shoulders.

  “Oh my God,” I panted. I felt odd this way, my body half inverted. It was dirty somehow. But I forgot that thought as he began thrusting in earnest. The only sounds were our gasps and the slap of his taut body against mine.

  His hand crept around my hip, his thumb reaching down to stroke me. It was just like I’d imagined—his fingers working me like the fretboard of his guitar. And as he strained through each thrust, every perfect muscle in his chest and arms flexed too. With each forceful push of his hips, he bit out a breathy word of praise. “So. Hot. Baby,” he said. “Beautiful. Girl.” We were both slicked with sweat. And then he seemed to lose the capacity for words. His breathing became ragged, and the sounds falling from his lips were exquisitely unformed.

  I focused on his heavy-lidded eyes and on the sweet agony I saw there. It was then when I understood I was not the only vulnerable person in the room. Above me, he was coming apart bit by bit.

  And he was beautiful. This was beautiful. This was how it was supposed to feel.

  The start of his low groan vibrated through me. Then it grew, the sound of his climax thrilling us both. My own body pulsed in reply, gripping him as he shuddered above me. Waves of sweet sensation took me under, and I saw fireworks inside my eyelids.

  “Fuck.” Dropping my hips, he slid over my body. His hips jumped one more time and then were still. He buried his face in my hair, and I wrapped my arms around him, feeling the rapid rise and fall of his chest against mine.

  Our two hearts thumped together. There weren’t even words for the way I felt.

  For a long while after, we lay tangled and salty together, silent and speechless in the cool night air. I drifted in and out of sleep, too happy and emotional to completely let go of the night.

  But nothing lasts forever. A few hours later, a hired car pulled up in the predawn darkness to take him on the two-hour trip to the airport.

  Our goodbyes were necessarily hasty. He threw his clothes on, remembering to grab his toiletry bag from the bathroom and his suitcase from beside the door.

  Before he left, and even as the limo driver made a quick bump on his horn, he sat on the bed beside me. “Be well,” he said. His face was sad.

  I’d sat up, putting my arms around him, and he’d pulled me close. “I don’t like to say goodbye.”

  “Then we won’t,” he agreed. “I’ll just say this.” He pressed his lips to mine one more time, his tongue making a last slide against mine. When I responded in kind, he made a little sad sound in the back of his throat. He’d gentled the kiss, finishing it with a sigh against my lips.

  Then, he’d gotten up, opened the door and disappeared for five long years.

  It wasn’t until my own departure at dawn that I’d discovered his guitar sitting there, forlorn.

  And it wasn’t until two months later that I’d discovered I was pregnant.

  The moon had risen, lighting the dock and the little beach beside us. In the distance, a loon made its mournful cry.

  “Why do you think he didn’t tell you his real name?” my brother asked me suddenly.

  For years I had pondered this question. “I have no idea. Probably it’s just something rock stars do.” Although he’d had plenty of chances after getting to know me to come clean about it. That small betrayal still stung. But now there were more terrifying questions in my heart. “What’s going to happen, Adam?”

  My brother squeezed my hand. “Nothing we can’t handle, Kira. I mean that. No matter what scary shit comes our way this week, we’re going to be okay.”

  “You believe me, don’t you?” he prodded. “I wouldn’t lie. We’ll get through this.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, my voice only trembling a little.

  Five

  Jonas

  “You look like shit, boy,” Ethan said as we stretched out after our five-mile run.

  “Thanks, Ethan. I love you, too.” I lifted my right foot, catching it behind myself and tugging upwards to stretch out my right quad.

  It was a beautiful, blue-skied morning, and we were completely alone. Most places the tour bus stopped, we couldn’t run anywhere except on a hotel treadmill. And even then, getting in a peaceful workout was a crapshoot. Fans interrupted me in the damnedest places. They chased me down the sidewalk. They followed me into the locker room at the gym—even the women. Especially the women.

  Maine was my idea of heaven.

  “Seriously, did you sleep at all? Those bags under your eyes are as big as my grandmother’s. Let’s do some abs.” Ethan dropped to his back on the lawn, his knees bent.

  I knelt, holding down Ethan’s feet with one of my knees. “I slept some. And it’s nothing that a little coffee won’t fix.” As Ethan began a set of oblique curls, I eyed the lodge, which was still quiet. “What do you think it would take to get Nixon out here with us?” I asked.

  Ethan grunted. “Don’t know.” He did twenty more curls before his set was over. “Whatever that guy is going through, it would take a hell of a lot more than a workout to fix.”

  “Couldn’t hurt, though,” I muttered. I couldn’t tell how much Nixon was drinking this week, but he didn’t look good. And he hadn’t for quite a while. He didn’t write music anymore, either. “Nixon needs a whole summer in Maine. This shit can cure anything.” It was my turn to curl. I assumed the position and prepared to torture my midsection according to Ethan’s ambitious specifications. I crossed my arms on my chest, engaged my stomach muscles, and began to crunch.

  Above me, Ethan shook his giant head. “See, that’s what I don’t get.”

  “What?” I huffed.

  “You talk about this place like it’s the best thing that ever happened to you. And I gotta think that girl you saw yesterday had something to do with it…”

  Shit. Obviously Quinn hadn’t kept her big mouth shut. I gritted my teeth and kept on, determined to make it through the set.

  “…And yet, you haven’t come back here in five years. Instead, I gotta listen to you moan about what a lonely fuck you are. I’m startin’ to think you like it that way.”

  I had three more curls to do, and it just about killed me. One… Two… I wondered if anyone’s stomach ever broke right in half? Three… done. I draped my arms over my knees, breathing hard. “Why are you trying to piss me off?”

  “I’m not.” Ethan lay back, readying himself for another set. “I’m just telling you what I see.”

  I brought my weight down on Ethan’s feet with a little more force than was strictly necessary. “Well, thanks for that. I’m not a masochist, Ethan. But sometimes a summer is just a summer. That’s all you get.”

  “What, did the girl turn into a pumpkin at midnight?” Ethan asked this question while banging out a serious of whip-fast curls.

  I felt tir
ed just watching him. “Something like that.”

  “Sounds like bullshit,” Ethan said.

  “Sounds like you don’t know a thing about it.”

  “So tell me. You loved this girl, and she turned you down?” Hell—the big man could do a set of sit-ups and still have enough breath left to break my balls.

  “Not exactly,” I said before I could think better of it.

  “So what happened?” Ethan put one of his giant hands on my shoes, and we switched positions again.

  I began my second set of abdominal agonies, thankful for once that it wasn’t possible to speak. To convince my body to finish the set, I promised myself a skinny-dip in the lake after this. Swimming, and then coffee. That was something worth living for.

  “Nicely done,” Ethan said when I finished. “That will keep them screaming your name when you rip your shirt off during the set.”

  I flopped onto the grass. “At least I have that.”

  “So what happened with the girl?” The dude would not let it rest.

  I studied the impossibly blue sky. “She was meant to be somebody else’s girl, that’s all.”

  “Seriously? You threw down for this girl, and she said, ‘No thanks, I’m with this other schmo?’ Now I can’t wait to meet her.”

  Of course the truth was more complicated. When I’d met Kira, I’d been a very immature twenty-five. After my best summer ever, I’d returned to Seattle, and things had gone well for me almost immediately. The record label had loved the lyrics I’d written in Maine, and they’d set up a brisk production schedule for Summer Nights.

  I’d had to lay down a couple of the electric tracks first, because I’d left my favorite acoustic guitar in Maine. Ethan had called Mrs. Wetzle and asked her to ship it to the address on its luggage tag—my management company’s address in L.A. But when the guitar finally made its way back to me, the name on the return address had been Kira’s, not the innkeeper’s.

  Inside the case, I’d found a letter tucked under the strings, right over the sound hole. John, she’d printed on the envelope, and the name had already looked strange to me. The summer had begun slipping away before the jet had touched down at SeaTac.

  The letter inside the envelope had been short, and it had caused my chest to tighten.

  * * *

  John,

  You’ve only been gone a few days, but it feels like months. Maybe you won’t want to hear this, but I miss you terribly. I hope we’re still friends? Did I wreck that?

  I’d call you to say this if I could, but I no longer have your phone number. (Apparently indelible ink will smudge.) But here goes nothing: I love you, and I wish you hadn’t left.

  When you get this, I hope you’ll call me, if only to tell me that the guitar made it unscathed. And I’d love to hear your voice. If I don’t hear from you, I guess I’ll know I’ve overstepped. But I couldn’t not say it.

  Thank you for being the best guy I’ve met in a long, long time.

  Love always, Kira

  * * *

  PS: the store phone is 207.663.2774. I close on weeknights until mid-September. It’s just a lot quieter now that you’re gone.

  I had read the letter several times in a row. It seemed impossible that someone like Kira could love me. I didn’t trust it. After all, a night of really excellent sex could scramble anyone’s brains.

  Hindsight made me wish I’d reached for the phone immediately. But I didn’t call. I wasn’t sure I deserved that kind of love. She’d only seen the best parts of me. Not the drunk, insecure nights, or the sleazy things I’d done.

  So I’d tucked the letter back into its envelope, and then folded it in half. I’d put it into my wallet. It went everywhere with me—on visits to the record label, to jam sessions with Nixon and Quinn. Sometimes, during a quiet moment, I’d take it out and read a portion. Love always. Or Thank you for being the best guy I’ve met in a long, long time.

  I wanted to call. I wanted more. But I was so sure I’d fuck it up somehow. If I didn’t call, it was still perfect. Someone loved me just for me. That had never happened in Seattle. That had never happened anywhere.

  And then I’d become busy. Producing the album had been a grind. I’d promised myself I’d call Kira when things settled down. But a week passed, and then another. At some point I’d looked up and it had already become November. She would have gone back to college in Boston. I’d missed my chance.

  Still, I could have gotten her Boston number from her father. I didn’t try to track her down, though. I just… didn’t. At the time, I’d known it was a mistake, but we were three-thousand miles apart, and I didn’t know what I could possibly offer Kira from that distance. At the time, I’d felt letting Kira go was probably the right decision for both of us. That girl did not need to hitch her wagon to a fuckup like me.

  And anyway, my great big life had been distracting enough that I didn’t have time to sit around and wonder what might have been. The album I’d written went big, which felt good.

  It hadn’t felt as good as winning Kira’s love, although it would take me years to realize it. I’d carried her letter in my pocket until the corners of the envelope began to wear off. Then I’d tucked it into a safe place at home.

  I’d met other women, of course. But not one of them had made the same impression on me. I’d gone on the dates my publicist set up for me, always with actresses or models—people with their own publicists, and their own need to be Seen (with a capital S). The occasions were often awards ceremonies, or A-list parties. The girls had always been very beautiful, but compared to Kira, they’d been plastic—styled and painted and perfected within an inch of their lives.

  And even if they’d been awesome people underneath, I would have never known. It had been impossible for any real spark to penetrate the charade of an A-list date. The women who’d walked the red carpets with me were on the job, the same as I was. They’d needed their photographs taken with the right celebrities, and they’d needed those pictures to appear in just the right gossip rags.

  The encounters had left nothing to chance. They’d been almost entirely empty and rarely led to sex.

  For sex, I could always count on the fan girls trying to shove their way past the security staff backstage at my concerts. During the earliest years of my career, unfettered access to a quick fuck had been just as exciting as most red-blooded American men imagined it would be. All I had to do was scan the backstage crowd for the most appealing face. A nod to the bouncers would bring the girl—and often one or two of her friends—ducking under the ropes to party with me. For the next several hours, I would be fawned over, admired and fucked to my liking. There was no need to seduce these women, or even to be too interested in them.

  And that got boring fast. I’d discovered that sex lost something when you didn’t have to do anything other than show up. Most nights I’d found my pillow more appealing than a hookup, and I began to put less and less effort into my increasingly infrequent sweaty encounters.

  The low point had been when I discovered that even the most casual conversation was unnecessary to get a woman to undress me. One night, in San Francisco, I’d been drinking with a woman after the show, sucking back my rum and Coke, staring into space, and thinking of other things. When our drinks were empty, she’d stood up and taken my hand, silently offering to move the night along to the next stage.

  Amid the glitter and booze, the problem had become clear: once you’d looked into the passionate eyes of someone who loved you just for you, nothing else would do.

  But by then it had been too late. On a lonely night, I’d finally called the store. “They moved to Boston,” the old man had said when I asked for Kira.

  They.

  Kira had gone back to her army man. Of course she had. She’d moved on, and I would never get that perfect summer back.

  Even so, seeing Kira yesterday had caused my heart to spasm. I was dying to talk to her, and I’d been counting the hours ever since.

  Nothing wil
l come of it, I reminded myself every few minutes. She’d probably tell me just how far she’d moved on. Married. With kids. And that was going to hurt. Big time.

  The best I could probably hope for was to get another song out of it. A nice ballad of heartbreak and loss. And then what?

  More sex with strangers, probably.

  * * *

  One night last year I’d ground through the motions with another hookup after a show. Afterward, the band had climbed onto the bus for a six-hour drive. I had taken a couple of hits off of Nixon’s bong—which was something I never did, because drugs just weren’t my thing. High for the first time in years, I’d tried to have a conversation with Ethan about my sex life. I remembered it clearly, even though the voices in my memory sounded like a conversation from the bottom of a barrel.

  “Ethan,” I’d complained, “these women are always there, and they’re always ready. It’s like, it’s starting to seem normal.”

  “You’re living the dream, Jojo. What’s the problem?”

  Ethan had put his giant hands on top of his own shaved head, looking for all the world like Buddha. The stoned-up me had to stare at him a second before continuing. “But, dude,” I whined. “It’s like… they’re not normal. Who throws themselves at a complete stranger?”

  “You do, Jojo. Once or twice a week.”

  “Yeah, but I do it because they make it seem, like, normal. And that shit is not normal!”

  Ethan had laughed, shaking his big head. “See, Jonas, these women who throw their panties at you? They’ve been listening to you croon words of love directly into their brains, via their phones. They think they know you already, lover boy. It’s just like my grandma talking back to Good Morning America.”

  “Fuck me.” Ethan’s explanation had made it even worse. If what he said was true, the girls were at least half deluded into thinking they knew me. So that made me the biggest skank of all.