Loud is How I Love You (17 page)

“I’ll make it worth the wait,” he says. “I promise.”

As he hooks my leg over his shoulder, kisses the inside of my thigh, I am spread open. My legs shake from wanting him. I will do anything, anything at all to feel him against me there. There’s the slightest sensation of motion, his nose along the skin of my thigh, his tongue following, and I am moaning, pleading with him: “Please, Travis. Please, please, please now.”

His tongue is flat and strong as he starts to fuck me with it and I’m arching off the bed as he grips my hips. I’m crying, not the teary, sad kind, oh no. The throaty, “oh my fucking God what is this heaven I’m living?” kind. Three long fingers fill me as he flat-licks my clit and then sucks it into his mouth, and I am fisting the comforter so hard I’m about to tear it to shreds. As I come he opens his mouth on me and fucks me with his tongue again, holding me down on the bed until he’s licked me all the way through to the end and I’m pretty sure I won’t walk for a week now, if the complete loss of muscle control in my legs is any indicator.

You’d think that after an orgasm like that I’d feel pretty satisfied. I can see why you might think that if you didn’t have Travis on you, naked and looking like he’s a starving man and you’re the last rack of lamb on earth. He climbs back up and
kisses me with the taste of myself all over him. He licks into my mouth like he’s fucking it with his tongue, too.

I reach down between us, take him in my hand and he’s hard, hard, hard. He groans in delicious agony and kisses my shoulder as I stroke him. He drags his teeth along my neck and I position him against me, getting the tip of him wet. He’s right here now, all he has to do is move, but instead he goes perfectly still and stiff all over with the tension of holding himself back.

“God, you have no idea how much I want you,” he says, his voice shaking. “All the fucking time.”

“You have me,” I say. “I’m right here.” I shift under him and move my hips to try to get him inside of me, but he pulls back and lets out a long, strained sigh.

“Emmylou, you’re going to get fucked if you keep that up. I’m not going to be able to stop myself.”

“Then don’t.”

“I don’t have a condom,” he says.

“I don’t care,” I say. “I need you.”

“Oh fuck, Emmy.” I know how hard he’s fighting himself on this, and I know I shouldn’t push it. But apparently what I know and what I feel aren’t on the same team right now. I move again and manage to get just the tip of him inside of me. He shudders with the sensation, but when I try to thrust my hips up to get him deeper, he pulls back again and this frustrates me like I can’t even tell you.

“Travis, come on, please,” I say, digging my nails into his back. “Let me have you.”

His eyes snap wide open and that’s it. He keeps them locked on mine as he pushes all the way inside with a single thrust and I’m telling you, here and now, the feel of Travis inside of me totally bare, his skin to my skin, owns me. Outright. He stills inside of me, watching my face intently as I cry out his name. What must he see? How utterly lost I am without him? How lost I am in him? How this feeling right here feels like the whole damn point of being born human? Because this is what I’m seeing on his face.

He lowers his lips to mine again and then he starts to really fuck me. So insistently. So thoroughly and so very, very well.

Within a few minutes I come, just from feeling him fill me like that, stroking long and hard at just the right angle, groaning my name into my mouth. And when I’m done waking Sonia and Jeff and Adam up with the sound of his name cried out, he slows down, stays inside of me, touches me everywhere, puts his hand between us, rubbing my clit as he fucks me until
I come again, even harder and deeper this time. I’ve never felt anything like this and I know I’m all done with other guys now forever. No more Michael Bolton fans, that’s for fucking sure. I’m so far gone, so blown away by the way he makes me feel that if I’m not careful I might accidentally ask him to marry me. When he finally comes inside of me, he’s so overwhelmed I think he might even say yes. But I’m not completely insane so I don’t ask him to marry me. I’m only twenty-one, for heaven’s sake. Come on now.

When it’s over and the dawn is creeping in and I’m finally calm again, I nestle in his arms beneath the blankets and feel the warmth all the way down to my soul.

“God, Emmylou, what am I going to do with you?” he whispers against my neck.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Just . . . stay.”

“I’m trying,” he says. “I swear, I’m trying.”

I laugh because now I get that it’s true. He really is trying not to leave. Now if only I could try to not push him out the door.

“I want you to know something,” I whisper.

“Tell me,” he whispers back, his lips resting against my brow. All his words feel like a kiss.

“I’ve never let anyone . . .” I start to say, but then I feel awkward. He pulls back to look at my face and suddenly I feel shy. He brushes the hair from my eyes.

“What is it?” he asks.

“I’ve only done it with a few guys before you but I’ve always used a condom. This is the first time I’ve ever done it without one. I just want you to know that.”

Travis lets out a long, happy sigh before he rolls me onto my back. He hovers and he’s so hard against me I think I’m already ready for him all over again.

“Emmylou,” he says, and he’s smiling as he kisses me, that super big, happy Travis smile. “You’re my first, too.”

When I wake up in my bed, Travis is holding me. We are completely naked under the covers. And he’s still here.

Several minutes later he wakes up and he’s still holding me because although I have to pee, I haven’t moved. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to be in that moment where his arms are no longer around me. I feel him tense with awareness and I’m hoping he will hug me or do something to let me know this is fine, we’re fine, even though there’s so much that needs to get worked out. I feel his arms tighten around me as he draws me closer, and I sigh in relief.

“Good morning,” he says, all sleepy, into my hair.

“Good afternoon,” I say, and pray my breath isn’t as dragony fresh as I feel. “Want to go out for coffee?”

He rolls over and looks at my clock.

“Shit,” he says.

“What?”

“I really need to get my paper done. What time are we supposed to meet Billy Broadband?”

“Eight,” I say.

“I should go,” he says. “I’ll come by at seven so we can run through ‘Loud’ a couple of times before we head over.”

“Sure,” I say, and even though it’s stupid, I’m crushed that he’s leaving. He sees me looking disappointed and stops.

“Fuck it,” he says. “I’m starving.”

I widen my eyes and feel the giant grin spread across my face and he asks if I want to go to the Hungry Peddler for pancakes and of course I do. Of course I do.

At the Hungry Peddler I’m watching Travis drink black coffee and eat a feta omelet, this one too brown on the bottom but he never complains about silly things like his eggs being overdone. He’s talking about Thomas Edison’s complicated relationship to Nikola Tesla like he’s giving a museum tour, he’s so interested in it. He’s the most original, talented guitarist I know (and I know a lot of guitarists), but he’s also the kind of guy who gets really fascinated by things like the rivalry between Edison and Tesla. And for the first time I’m seeing this quality of his as pretty awesome, not just adorably quirky.

“So, Eagleton, huh?” I say, trying to be understanding. Supportive.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m doing the fellowship concurrent with an MBA.”

“MBA?” My mouth falls open. “As in, master’s in business administration?”

He looks down at his plate and shuttles more eggs onto a piece of rye toast. He takes a swig of coffee before he answers me.

“Yeah,” he says, looking back up at me.

“Business? Really?”

“Yes, Emmy,” he says. “Business.”

“What about Stars on the Floor?”

“What about it?”

“Are you serious about getting a record deal or aren’t you?”

“Do you really have to ask me that?” he says.

“I never thought so before, but apparently there’s a lot I don’t know about you and your plans for a career in business.”

“Music is all business,” he says. “We’re already in business.”

“MBAs don’t get MBAs so they can play guitar, Travis. MBAs go work on Wall Street. I just don’t see you as a Wall Street kind of guy.”

“I’m not a finance major,” he says and laughs. “What’s your problem?”

My problem is that he’s planning on a future without Stars on the Floor, that’s my problem. And that’s a future where Stars on the Floor doesn’t exist, as far as I know.

“My problem?” I argue, my face hot with anger. “What’s your problem, making all these graduate school plans and never once telling me?”

“Look,” he says. “I’m not graduating Rutgers with a 4.0 so I can do lube jobs while I’m waiting to break my band, okay? You need to start thinking ahead, too.”

“I am thinking ahead,” I argue. “I’m the only one here who’s done any work to set up a summer tour, aren’t I?”

“Joey and I sent twelve demo tapes out last week, so I’d say not. And I’m not just talking about the summer, you know that.”

“Are your parents putting you up to this?” I ask.

“Leave my parents out of this,” he says. “Please.”

“They hate you being in a band, I know they do.”

“Not any more than your mother does,” he says. “I’m twenty-two, not twelve. I can make my own life choices, thanks very much.”

“And what exactly are your life choices, Travis?” I am squarely confronting him now, even though I’m terrified I already know the answer and it’s not what I want to hear.

“When you’re a senior, you have to think differently, you’ll see,” he says and looks out the window. “You don’t have all the time in the world to figure the future out.”

I want to argue with him about what I know he’s really saying. I want to tell him that he just can’t make a safety net for himself, because a safety net is nothing more than a trolling net you trap your dreams in to die. This is the panic rising in my throat, on my face, that I can see he wants to say something about, but just then Ron and Dom from Red Five wander in and we stop talking. They help themselves to the two extra seats at our table and start talking about how damn lucky we are we got the Ag Field Day gig with Ween. Travis starts talking about that and asking Ron about his Seattle contacts because we’re thinking of heading out there over the summer, and I have no idea what to think. None.

When Travis and I get back in the car he plays Bob Marley on the CD player in the van and hums along to “No Woman, No Cry.” When he parks in my driveway he leaves the van running, and I know he’s leaving to go write his paper.

“Look, I just don’t get it,” I say. “I thought we were of the same mind on this.”

“On what?”

“The band, Travis. Come on, don’t be so dense.”

He’s gritting his teeth he’s so irritated with me, and he’s just not that easy to piss off—I should know, since I’m probably better at it than anyone.

“Is that all you ever think about? The only thing in the world you even care about?”

“I take it seriously. Don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” he says. “But maybe that’s not the
only
thing I take seriously. Maybe there are other things in life I care about, too.”

“Then that’s your problem,” I say. “Because those other things are going to hold you back.”

“Oh, right. Now I see,” he says, and turns to look away from me, dead ahead out the windshield. His eyes are cold and so far away. “I get it.”

“Get what?”

“Everything,” he says.

***

I go inside and curl up in a ball on my bed. I’m tired, I don’t want to do any schoolwork, I don’t even want to play my guitar because that makes me think about him and every time I think about him I just picture the moment he leaves, all pissed off at me again. I spend the day scribbling in my lyrics notebook, different crappy lines of songs I’ll never finish writing. I watch
Raising Arizona
and eat a bag of microwave popcorn. I look at the clock. It’s seven p.m. and I anxiously await the sound of van tires on my gravel driveway and get up to look out the window several times. Twenty-five minutes pass before Travis calls to say he’s still working on his paper so he’ll meet me at the studio at eight.
Here we go,
I think.
Here it comes. He’s finally done.

I drive my CRX over the bridge into New Brunswick and park behind the Student Center. At a quarter to eight, Travis is there and he’s taken a shower and he’s in a black button-down over a Girls Against Boys T-shirt and jeans and Converse and his hair is wet and he’s got his acoustic guitar. He’s so cold to me that I feel frozen enough to crack. Billy has left the outside door propped open with a brick, so we go in up the stairs and Billy hands us each a beer (which is illegal, by the way) while Ween’s new single is playing. We drink them, and after the single, Billy interviews us on the air.

“Emmy and Travis Soft from New Brunswick’s very own Stars on the Floor are here tonight, and they’ll be opening up the Ag Field Day show,” Billy says into the microphone. “For those who are either dead or unconscious, Ween is coming home to headline, so it’s going to be mobbed. Congrats to you guys for nailing a sweet slot.”

“That sounds so wrong,” Travis says.

“It’s a gift. That’s why I’m the guy with the radio show,” Billy says. “So how’d you end up getting it? You deserve it, of course, but there were about twenty bands jockeying for it.”

“Well, after our last show at the Melody I barfed on Travis,” I say. “But the catch is, I was lucky enough to do it in front of Dean Ween.”

“Who could pass up a class act like that?” Travis says.

“Remember this is showbiz,” I say. “It’s not how good you are, it’s who you humiliate yourself in front of.”

“Everyone loves a spectacle,” Billy says.

He asks us to play our song, and I tell him the
Overnight Sensations
audience is getting to hear the debut of our latest tune, even before the rest of the band has heard it, which makes Billy super happy. He introduces us again and we start to play.

Even though we’ve played through “Loud” about four hundred times since last night, it’s not quite in my hands yet and Travis is mad at me so I’m distracted and nervous. The song is new enough that I still have to think about what I’m doing and what comes next. I worry if Travis has it down, but I shouldn’t because he obviously does. He glances up at me when we get to the chords and I start to sing. I close my eyes and try to lose that nervous wiggle in my voice, but I’m nervous, I can hear it. I hate that. We get to the chorus in one piece, though, and I sing it and it sounds even better than it did when I recorded it on the four-track. But the second verse comes, and as I’m about to sing the first line, I choke—I forget what the hell the words are, and for some stupid reason, I don’t have the lyrics out. I’m playing, so I can’t grab them from my guitar case at my feet. I just choke. And then I panic. I’m in the control room of WRSU and I’m dying up here.

I look at Travis with an apologetic look, and he just nods:
It’s okay.
When the riff comes back and I don’t sing, he starts singing the words for me and his voice is so good that even though I can remember the words now, I just play along and listen to him. He looks up at me, raises his eyebrows, and then I jump back in for the chorus, but he doesn’t drop out, he sings it along with me and breaks into this really cool-sounding harmony that he just makes up, right now, and it makes the song even better. It ends and Billy is on his feet, clapping and saying, “Bravo, bravo, magnifico!” in the control room, and I’m staring at Travis thinking he just saved my ass again. He’s my fucking hero. And he’s looking back at me with a reassuring smile that I really don’t deserve.

Outside in the parking lot after we’ve loaded our guitars, Travis is leaning against the driver-side door of the van, his arms folded across his chest, and I’m facing him, leaning against my car feeling sheepish.

“I’m so sorry, Travis,” I say, and I can’t look at him so I look down at the blacktop under our feet.

“For what?”

“A lot of things. Screwing up on air tonight, for one.”

“You don’t need to be sorry for that,” he says. “That was no big deal.”

“Well then, I’m sorry that I’m like this,” I say.

“Like what?” he asks, raising his eyebrows.

“I don’t know, bossy?”

“For starters?”

“Flaky?”

“As a county fair pie crust?”

I know he’s teasing me but it still hurts.

“I’m sorry I was a jerk today. I’m just so afraid of losing what we have together.” My voice cracks and I don’t realize until now how close I am to crying. I think I’m talking about Stars on the Floor and his MBA, but now we both know that I’m not. His face softens and he drops his arms and wraps them around my shoulders, pulling me into him, and I let him because I have grown very fond of the feeling of him holding me.

“Emmy, we could have a lot more than this, you know?” he says. “If you’d just relax and let it happen.”

I look up into his face, lit all soft and dreamy by the streetlamp. I do and don’t want him to kiss me. Like, I’m longing for him to put his lips to mine, to put his hands in my hair, and I’m terrified of it. It doesn’t matter because he’s not kissing me, he’s waiting for me to say something back. Unfortunately, I do.

“Yeah,” I say. “But we’d have so much more to lose.”

He lets me go and leans back against the van again, shaking his head at me.

“Bean, you’re my best friend and you know how rare it is to find someone you get along this well with and can write music like this with.”

“Of course I know that,” he says, his tone with me rightfully exasperated.

“You’re my unicorn,” I say, and I don’t even care how dumb it sounds. “You’re like this magical, mythical beast and I never had a horse so maybe I don’t know how to take care of unicorns very well, but I do know I’ll never find another one.”

“I’m your unicorn?” he says, giving me a funny look. “Really, Emmy? Your magic beast?”

“Well? Unicorns are awesome, aren’t they?”

“Of course they’re awesome—they aren’t real. Unicorns don’t have school loans to pay off or parents to deal with or an alcoholic boss or concerns about supporting themselves on eight dollars an hour, and they don’t have any expectations of you, either.”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“Yeah, well I’m not a metaphor. I’m real and I’m right here in front of you, waiting for you to figure your shit out.”

And I don’t know what to say, because it’s not like I’m not trying.