Chapter 31
The next afternoon, Sam’s head lies on a pillow next to my thighs. I’m hunched over the computer on the couch, typing in a post. If I weren’t working, my lap would be Sam’s pillow. My elbow knocks into the book he’s reading. Instead of bitching, he adjusts the book from above his face to over his chest.
“Sorry,” I say, clicking open a picture file from the previous night.
He shrugs and keeps reading.
I’ve noticed Sam can block out the world when he reads. Like totally. The guys could be next to him shouting and playing video games, or Gabe and Justin could be in a heated argument, or a volcano could erupt. Sam would keep reading.
I look him over as he reads with his curly head on the pillow. He’s in one of his plain white T-shirts, baggy worn shorts, and a flip-flop teeters from his foot at the end of the couch. His chest rises with a slight shake. He does this often. Obviously, he’s reading another “funny” book.
An obnoxious thought enters my head as I watch him read. Don’t do it, Peyton! my conscience yells. If he ignores me, my ego might read too much into his dismissal, but my wayward fingers have already dug into his curls. My thumb brushes at his temple. My other hand moves to his jaw and caresses his scruff.
For several seconds, he continues to read, until he finally glances up, his lips forming a soft smile. “You bored?”
I shake my head.
“You done?”
I shake my head.
“You need a little attention?”
I smile slightly.
He carefully sets the book on the couch and lifts up on an elbow, reaching up behind my neck. He pulls me down gently. The kiss is soft, sweet, and filled with longing.
“Damn,” he whispers against my lips, “I’m starting to hate this bus.”
I nod, brushing my nose against his, then he lets go of my neck, settles back onto the pillow, and picks up his book.
I start clicking through pictures. Low music and snippets of conversation vibrate from the front of the bus but not loud enough to drown out the occasional turn of a page. I get back to typing again.
My little cave has become a place of contentment.
I wake up in the middle of the night to the rhythm of the bus moving and a tightly muscled body holding me. Gazing into the darkness, I recall falling asleep on the bus while the guys were stuck in interview after interview in Kansas City. Apparently, Sam skipped his bunk and came right to me.
For a nanosecond, I wonder what the guys thought of that.
Then Sam’s warm breath rushes over my cheek, and I realize I don’t give a shit.
I wrap my arms around the ones holding me and fall back asleep.
“So what magazine is your dream job?” Sam asks, bumping his elbow into mine as we stare out the window, gawking at the mountains on our way to Salt Lake City. After that, it’s back to California, where the tour had started before Luminescent Juliet even joined up, for the last concert in Fresno. “Vibe? Alternative Press? Or Rolling Stone?
I break my gaze from the view of endless mountains—the part of Michigan where we grew up is pretty much flat—to look at him kneeling next to me on the couch. “Any of those would be awesome. I mean, maybe if I land a job and build a big enough reputation to be picky, I’d probably go for something like Alternative Press, but with the way the Internet is screwing journalists at the moment, I’m not sure being picky will ever be an option.”
“Ah, the joys of technology,” he says, then grins. “I knew you’d give the Press special treatment, punk fan that you are.”
I roll my eyes. “What about you?”
He raises an eyebrow.
“What do you plan on doing with that English degree?”
“Maybe add a teaching certificate? Maybe write?” He gives me a pointed look. “Maybe edit you?”
Edit me? Please! I return his pointed look.
“Maybe I won’t need my degree.” He glances out the window. “Maybe I’m going to ‘Beverly Hills,’?” he sings, his pitch perfectly matching the song by Weezer.
“Is that what you want?”
“To play music? Write songs? And party until I’m fifty? Stop cutting lawns from April to October? Hell yeah.”
“Party until you’re fifty? Okay. I didn’t know Keith Richards Jr. was the type to run to the back of the bus to snuggle instead of hanging in the green room to party.” He laughs but my expression turns hard. “Unless you haven’t given that shit up.”
The lines of his expression smooth out as he becomes serious. “I didn’t lie to you, Peyton. I would never lie to you about that. I’ve been clean since that night.” He shakes his head as my features soften. “And you’re right, it’s not about the partying. But just like you, I love music, and I dream of being able to make it my real career. To be able to write songs and play onstage for years . . .”
I gesture behind us to the bus. At this point, it’s starting to feel like a well-furnished prison on wheels. If it weren’t for him, I’d be pulling my hair out by now. “What about living like this?”
“Sometimes,” he says, shrugging, “you have to take the good with the bad. If the good is that freaking good.”
It’s obvious he loves to perform and play. It was obvious when I watched him in the Bottle Rockets. But songwriting? It’s kind of established that Romeo is the band’s songbird. I stare at Sam’s stunning profile against the almost equally stunning backdrop of mountains. “Exactly how many songs have you written?”
He turns slowly to look at me. “Well . . . um, I’ve helped Romeo a bit with the melodies, so maybe about twenty percent there, but more than half of the album’s lyrics are mine.”
“Why?” I ask, knowing he’ll understand that I’m asking why he’d hide his contribution.
He turns back to the scenery. “Like ‘Trace,’ most of them are personal. I don’t like the idea of people getting a peek into my soul.”
I’m thinking I’m going to have to figure out some more Luminescent Juliet lyrics when an awful thought occurs to me. “Are any about me?” My tone sounds pathetically fraught.
His lips twist into a frown.
“Sam?”
He glances out the window while I try to stay patient. He finally says, “There’s one.”
My teeth clench and grind until I let out a deep breath. “How bad is it? How bitchy am I painted? How—I mean I get it, I hurt you and you had every right to speak the truth, but . . .” My mind starts flipping through songs. None of them are about a heartless bitch. But I haven’t dissected all the lyrics yet.
“Hey,” he says, as his knuckle lifts my chin, “it’s not that bad. Really not bad at all. I wrote it remembering the sweet girl who’d filled my thoughts and spent time talking and joking around with me. Not the girl—”
“Who left you in the barn without a glance,” I say, finishing for him. “I’m sor—”
His fingers cover my mouth as he shakes his head. “No more sorry. You were right. The past is the past.” He scoots toward me, his knees sliding across the leather. “We’re here now. I want to live in the now, and let the past go.” His hands cup my face. “You were my first, and now you’re mine.”
Am I? When we’re intimate, there’s no doubt. Outside our passion, things aren’t as clear. I search his steady gaze, and drown a bit in the bright blue sea of it. Okay, fine. I am his. I rub a thumb over his bottom lip. “You’re mine too.”
He smiles softly and leans forward.
The swish of the curtain opening has Sam pausing.
“Hey, lovebirds,” Gabe says. “Lunch is served. Hot lunch. As in Gabe’s simmered steak and potatoes. The Crock-Pot with the battery inverter thing worked like a fucking charm.”
Sam’s gaze stays on me while he tells Gabe, “Great. We’ll be there in a second.”
“One last smooch?” Gabe says with a laugh, walking away.
“Several,” Sam says, reaching for my face so he can kiss me thoroughly. Standing, he grabs my hand. “One and a half more days, and we’re off this damn bus.”
“Wait,” I say, pulling him back. He looks down at me. I bite my lip, then ask, “When you said I was your first, what did you mean?”
A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “You were the first girl I ever slept with.”
I blink at him. “Really?”
He sits down. “Seth was the playboy.” He points to the book on the table. “I was the geek. We didn’t do the band thing for real until senior year, and, well, I wasn’t used to the attention.” He adds with a frown, “Yet.”
“You were my first too,” I blurt.
He cocks his head. “You and Seth?”
I shake my head a bit too violently. “No, never.”
“But he said . . .”
My gaze turns glaring.
“Yeah, well, it never mattered even when I thought that you two—” He slaps his forehead. “Fuck. How did I not know that you were a virgin?”
He looks so unhappy with himself, I reach for his hands. “Maybe because you were a virgin too?”
“Still,” he says, wincing.
“And we were kind of lost in the moment and drunk. I mean, we didn’t even use a condom.”
His hands tighten on mine. “I would have stood by you if you were pregnant. Seth falling off the deep end or not.”
“I know. I knew it then,” I say, realizing that I did. Sam would have been there for me.
He nods, but his eyes are troubled.
Probably because I’m slowly seeing the past through a different, more mature lens, my emotions are as troubled as his gaze.
“Hey, assholes!” Gabe yells from the front of the bus. “I didn’t peel potatoes for nothing!”
I stand. “We keep saying it, but we really need to let the past go. We’ve got now and the future,” I say with a bright smile, and tug him out of the room before Gabe loses it.
After performing, signing a few autographs, and having pictures taken with fans, Sam leads me to the bus. He drags me past snoring Gary to the back of the bus, which is parked behind an arena in Salt Lake City. And after shutting the curtain to our little cave, he drags me to the couch and pulls me onto his lap.
“We’ve got about forty minutes,” he says, pushing his hands under my shirt.
He goes to kiss me but I turn my head. “We’re not having sex with Gary sleeping in the front room,” I whisper.
His lips slide along my cheek. “Who said anything about sex?”
“Sam,” I warn.
“Just want some semi-alone time.” He tugs my head down and kisses me.
Though the kiss pulls me into the passion his mouth always creates, I push at his chest. “Wait, wait,” I gasp. “I need to tell you something.”
Sighing, he falls forward, his forehead against my shoulder. “What?”
“Well . . .” I say slowly, trying to collect my thoughts, even though the topic I’m about to bring up has been on my mind all day. During their sound checks, while I ran the booth—and as I shot photos of them performing, of Sam performing—that was when the lightbulb clicked on and everything made sense. “I know we both said to leave the past in the past, but . . .”
He looks up at me, his lips turning into a thin line.
“I slowly came to realize something today. I didn’t ever truly like Seth. I was in love with the idea of him. The idea that the lead singer, the guy all the girls wanted, wanted me. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t a total airhead, there were times that Seth was charming—”
“I don’t want to talk about my brother and you,” Sam says, interrupting in a tight tone.
I put my hand up. “Wait. Let me get to the point. Seth and I were superficial. He’d call and text me all week, then ignore me until the end of the night at the parties I rushed to.”
Sam groans against my shoulder.
“During most of those parties, I was with you. Until today, I’d forgotten about the party at the lake, where we lay on the dock, looking at the stars, talking about music and college. Or the time you drove me all the way home when Jill took off with some guy. You introduced me to the Violent Femmes and Moby. Remember that night we lit those firecrackers—”
Sam leans back and looks at me. Despondency lines his features. “Peyton, are you telling me that until now you didn’t remember any of our time together?”
“I had . . . maybe not forgotten, but I tried to block everything after the fallout. I felt guilty because why would I sleep with you but not my boyfriend? I didn’t understand myself at all. I know that now.”
He grabs my shoulders. “We need to leave this shit alone. We were kids.”
I shake my head. “I was superficial, Sam. I’m certain, looking back, I was falling for you, but I was blinded by what Seth represented—the attention, the other girls being jealous of me. It went to my head.”
“I’m okay with the past, Peyton. You don’t have to do this.”
“It was always you.” I grab his hand and clasp it to my heart. “You were here even then,” I say, leaning toward him and making our gazes level. “No one else has ever been.”
He stares at me, lets the truth of my words settle. His other hand trembles slightly as he pushes a strand of my hair back. “It’s the same for me. The girls between then and now are a haze. It’s always been you for me too.”
I can’t help smiling as I press my lips to his.
We’re content to hold each other, kissing softly and sighing into each other’s mouth, until Sam pushes gently on my back. His hands settle on my thighs. “Your boots are hot,” he says in a whisper, bending to kiss a knee. His hand slides up my thigh, brushing the edge of my panties. “And I love this skirt.”
As his mouth, warm and sweet and soft, slides up my inner thigh, I pant out, “Sam?”
“Shh,” he says as his fingers push my underwear out of the way. “No sex. I’m just kissing you. Just kissing,” he murmurs, and his hot breath warms the flesh quivering beneath it.
“Um,” I whisper nervously, but when his mouth finds the center of me, I gasp, “Oh! Oh, okay. Just kissing . . .”