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In fact, the piece began rich and full of mourning. It encompassed all the loss I’d felt stepping onto the plane and leaving my past behind. And then it morphed into anger as I struggled to find my way to the surface—the notes rising, a crescendo that was maybe a little too early on in the piece, but it was still meant to be that way.
My body bowed forward as my fingers held the strings. My arm was aching already, but the music kept flowing out of me like I’d opened a vein and was bleeding to death as my magnum opus.
As the piece twisted and turned into something new—a little terrible and a lot wonderous—I thought about him again. I had no face to picture, but I had everything else. I had his voice, and the rumble of his laugh, and the horrible guitar sounds, and the passion in his tone when he described what that music meant to him.
I had the whirr of his tools and the quiet snoring of his uninterrupted slumber.
And now I had the kindness of who he was as a person, and even a bit of the fear because it was obvious that I terrified him just as much as he terrified me.
It ended, a snowfall of sound, low and heavy until it came to a stop. The echoes of the piece eventually faded, then all that was left was the sound of my breathing.
And his.
“Jules.”
I hadn’t forgotten about him, but in that moment, I had forgotten he wasreal.
“Jules. Come here.”
I obeyed. I propped my cello up against the wall and set the bow down, then I set my knees on the bed before crawling toward the wall. My blankets were thin, but that didn’t matter now that he’d made sure my apartment was warm, so I curled up on top of them and laid my hand to the paint.
“Please don’t ask me to name it,” I said after a long silence. “I can’t just yet. I’m still working on that part.”
“I don’t need you to.” If there was ever a perfect answer, it was that one. “I’m…” He trailed off. “I’m sorry.”
“Forrest—”
“No,” he said. “No. I’m sorry because I’m a fucking coward, and I wanted nothing more than to throw that door open and pin you to the wall and kiss you until neither of us could breathe. And I was right there, and I had my hand on the goddamn door, and I just…I couldn’t do it.”
“Are you afraid of me?”
He laughed, the sound a little harsh, and I heard a soft thud. “Yes! Jesus, Jules, I’m terrified of you. I’m shit scared of every feeling you’ve given me because you’re the first person in my life that’s ever gotten past all this.”
I imagined him gesturing toward himself, and it made me smile. “You made me a cello.”
He laughed again. “I can’t even tell you how hard that was. Up until I met you, I’d heard them before, but I had no idea what their shape or anything was like. It probably looks like shit, but—”
“It’s the most perfect gift anyone has ever given me,” I told him. I was still reeling from the fact that he’d bluntly confessed he wanted to kiss me. My lips burned for it now, but I didn’t know how to cross the line in the sand he’d drawn out of his fear, especially because I was scared too. “No one has ever made me feel like this.”
“I believe you,” he said. Another perfect answer. He could have brought up my ex. Instead, he just accepted the truth of my statement. “I want to be ready, Jules. I want to tear down this fucking wall and be ready.”
“Me too,” I told him. “I want you to hold me. I want to kiss you. I want…” So many things, but I didn’t know how to go on.
“Tell me,” he murmured suddenly. His voice dropped an octave. “Jules, what do you want me to do?”
“Touch me,” I said. Desperation colored my tone, but I couldn’t bring myself to be embarrassed about how much I wanted him. It had been a quiet flame burning behind a heavy brick wall all this time, but I was too afraid to peer over. Now that wall was dust, and there was nothing stopping the blaze from raging. “I want to feel your hands on me.”
“Where?” he demanded.
My dick throbbed, growing hard behind my sweats, and I palmed myself. “My face first. I want your hands holding my face as you taste my mouth.”
“Yes,” he breathed. “God—just, yes. Where else do you want me to taste?”
I thought of all the ways I had been neglected in the past, all the places I’d wanted to be touched and worshipped and never was. “My neck,” I blurted. “I’m bad at this. I’m sorry.”
“You’re fucking perfect,” he countered. “Don’t you dare stop. I’m so hard right now, Jules. Keep going. Please.”
He was begging for me. God.
