AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I did. Trust me, I do. I remember you showing me one night how badly I’d behaved.” A naughty smile lights up his face and I feel it in every nerve ending of my body.
“Not everything is about sex.” I chuckle.
He shakes his head, grinning and waggling his eyebrows. “I don’t mean that.”
My cheeks heat when I think back to when I was the one taking him. Straddling him as I rode him on the couch when he was home in Los Angeles for one night from touring the UK. He had to leave again the next day for a month of shows on the East Coast, and I would be alone again.
I don’t know why, but I’m not as sad or mad anymore. It feels like something is slowly changing between me and him.
He almost topples over laughing. “No, I mean when you had me fix the plumbing in the toilet, taking all freaking night, when I’d forgotten to ‘call a guy.’” He makes air quotes.
I giggle. “Please don’t remind me. I feared for the hardwood floor.”
He shakes his head, grinning and taking a sip from his coffee. “And don’t worry, I do remember that time on the couch,” he says before poking his tongue into his cheek. “You’ve always had a wild streak.”
“And you’ve always had a way of talking with your eyes.” I flirt back, pushing his face away.
“My eyes?” He brushes his hair back behind his ears. I smile, noticing he’s growing it out again.
“Like Marlon Brando. Fuck, how many times did you make me see The Wild One?”
“That I did,” he says, raising his brows.
“Do you still write in your journal?”
“I do. I need to for AA.”
“How is it going?” I ask, trying to hide the curiosity in my voice.
Right on cue, he picks up on it. “I know I promised you before I would quit and I didn’t. This time, it’s different.”
“Is it?” Wiping my hands on my jeans, I don’t know if I can believe him.
“It is, babe.”
“Why?” I lock eyes with him.
“Because I knew if there was ever a chance for you to love me again like you once did, I needed to change. I swore off it all.” The sadness is back in his eyes. “Do you believe me, Al?”
I think about it. “I do.” When the words leave my mouth, I know they’re true.
His smile splits his face in two, as does mine.
“I remember you always leaning over your little blue notebook I gave you for Christmas. Writing down your poems, and you swearing when it didn’t go as planned.”
“Yeah, the fucking lyrics. Sterling and I do most of those. The boys chime in here and there. In the end, we’re a band through and through.” He looks around the studio. “The lyrics don’t come easy, to tell you the truth,” he says, resting his hands on his knees.
“You’re still a poet, you know. You sing the lines now.” I lay my hand on his. He stares at my fingers and I see the pain in his eyes when I pull my hand back.
We keep staring at each other, not saying anything until he gives me a shy smile and starts tapping a restless beat on the console.
“So, Outlaw. Jesse must love the name?”
He jerks his chin in agreement. “You know how much he likes those Westerns like Bonanza and the Clint Eastwood films. And of course he’s proud that I’m honoring his Tennessee Smoky Mountain farm roots.”
“Jesse also has a way with words. What was it he always used to say? ‘You never get the dirt off your boots, no matter how far you walk away?’”
He laughs wholeheartedly. “I’ll tell Dad you remember,” he says, grinning at me. “Grandad still doesn’t want to acknowledge he is living out in California.”
