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“Yeah, I understand.” Felix glanced inside, where the brothers were still gathered in a conspiratorial circle. “Hey, I’m gonna try and slip in and get a coffee. You want one? You can stay out here, have your turn of peace and quiet.”
I nodded, grateful, and waited while Felix went to fetch the coffee. They’d have less to heckle Felix about than they did me. I certainly wasn’t Winston’s favorite person, and I doubted Forest nor Jude particularly loved me, since all of them had read Apollo’s book. I did feel a little teeny tiny pang of guilt as I waited on the balcony, but it was still teeny tiny. It was my job, like Sylvester had said. And I didn’t know everything was a lie.
I’d believed Apollo. And now, I supposed, the world had too.
Felix and I drank our coffees in peace. By the time we went inside, the Brock brothers had thankfully gone home, and we could breathe more easily. Felix retired to bed. The coffee had done little to wake him up, and he was going to look over some student essays before finally sleeping for the night.
Sylvester and I were then alone in the apartment. I wasn’t quite sure why I’d stayed for so long, except there hadn’t been much of a reason to leave, and everything had been quite exciting, what with the appearance of Apollo’s agents or spies or whatever they were, and the new revelation of Felix being Sylvester’s twin.
Sylvester walked over to the corner, where his guitars were propped up. I was surprised he even still had them. He’d not made music in years, to my knowledge. Still, when he tapped on the side of one of the guitars and looked up at me, it was like we were teenagers again, when music was fresh and magical and not yet linked to money and failure and loss. “Wanna play?”
I found myself nodding. “Sure.”
We tuned our guitars and settled on a song, one that wasn’t too romantic, one that didn’t remind us too much of our feelings, past and present.
Despite our careful song choice, as Sylvester’s voice started up, the low hum of it, and as I joined in with mine, harmonizing and taking over for some parts of it, I felt my chest beating fast, and my chest growing warm. The melding of our voices together was beautiful. It always had been – it had been one of the big losses of our break-up, that I’d never found another whose voice quite complimented mine like his did. I wonder if he’d found the same.
When the song ended, our gazes lingered on each other. His hair was slightly mussed up from the length of the day, and he didn’t look quite so picture-perfect as he usually did. It was sexier. He felt more like the man I knew.
I set down my guitar gently and crawled over to where he was sat. Then I took the guitar out of his hands, and placed it to one side, before swinging my knee over his lap and perching there, stroking the loose strands of hair from his face. It all happened so naturally, it was like there weren’t twenty years since we’d last been close.
His hands lifted to cup my face and pull me closer. He kissed me, softly and slowly at first. I melted into it, wrapping my arms around his shoulder and pushing my torso against his. He breathed shakily into my mouth and kissed me more firmly, more intensely, his fingers teasing the back of my neck and my scalp so that my skin lit up with pleasure. Then he pulled back, and I looked at him with curiosity.
“Do you forgive me yet?” His voice was surprisingly vulnerable, even a little shaky. Music opened us both up, emotionally raw, always had done.
Luna of the past twenty years wanted to say:no, never. But Luna of the present was more closely linked to teenage Luna before she had been let down by the world. I wanted to say:yes, of course I forgive you. I’m sorry for everything that you went through to try and protect me from the world. If you promise you’ll never make a choice like that for me again, put yourself through needless pain, I’ll stay by your side. If you want me at your side.
But I was both of those Lunas, not one or the other. What I said was a vague middle ground. “We’ll see about that.” I hated how coldly it came out. I wanted to offer Sylvester something back for what he had given – his secrets, his protection, and perhaps, his heart all along. “I want to.” My voice had dropped to a whisper. I was scared to say the things I held in my own heart. “I want to, but I need some time.”
Sylvester nodded, his face close to mine, his lips slightly parted. His eyes skittered over every part of my face, my shoulders. “You can have all the time in the world. I’ll wait.” His fingers teased at the straps on my tank top, somewhat hesitantly.
I bit my lip and nodded, exhaling from the tension. He unhooked the straps over my shoulders and ran his fingers lightly over the exposed skin of my shoulders, where I was sensitive. I hummed a small moan. He leaned forwards and brought his lips to my neck and I gasped as he sucked and nipped at the skin there, flicking his tongue over my sensitive musician’s ear, where he knew I was especially defenseless. I moaned again, louder.
Then, realizing where we were, I pulled back from Sylvester’s embrace, even though I wanted to press myself harder against him. “Your brother...”
“I know him, he won’t be leaving that room again until morning. He sleeps like a log. If you’re worried, we’ll hear him at least two minutes before he’d get here. He’s slow when he’s sleepy and he’s at the other end of the apartment.”
It was good enough for me. I nodded, and reached out to unbutton Sylvester’s shirt. He’d already undone the top buttons and removed his tie and jacket, but he still looked too much like someone’s accountant dad for my liking.
In fact, hewasa dad: the father of my unborn child. Whether I liked it or not, we were linked, biologically, by the life growing inside of me, unknown to Sylvester. We’d always been linked in mind, body and soul, when we had been together, except at the end.
In moments like this, when I could forget my grudge, being close with Sylvester seemed almost more natural than breathing.
Sylvester
The both of us partially undressed, I laid Luna back across the collection of blankets and cushions in the music corner of my apartment and teased my fingers across her body. She reached up to pull me in close for a kiss, but I shook my head, teasingly, and skimmed my fingers across her breasts, her tender nipples. She gasped, then moaned when I squeezed the soft flesh of her chest with both of my hands, then started exploring downwards with one hand, pausing when my fingers reached the smooth skin of her hips, and her inner thighs, dancing around the area where she was warmest and wettest.
In the dim light, she looked so beautiful, blissed out and partially nude, like a classic painting. Her eyeliner was smudged into a shadowy blur that usually highlighted the sharp intensity of her eyes – on this occasion, instead, her eyes were unfocused, except for when she would study my form, sweeping her dark eyes across my chest, to my groin, and back to my face. She smiled, and I leaned in to finally grant her the kiss she so wanted.
As our lips touched, and I felt my dick stiffen between my legs, I let my fingers dance across her pussy and clit, circling and tapping and pushing until she moaned into my mouth, breathing heavily, unable to uphold the required coordination of the kiss.
I pushed into her with my fingers, moving my tongue down to flick across her clit, and her muscles clenched around me as she cried out. I tugged with my fingers, reaching her g-spot, and she moaned even more loudly.
By the time I was done with her, she was laid on her back, thighs twitching, looking up at me in a slightly sweaty daze, entirely undone. I loved to see her like that – for all the harsh layers of her defenses to have peeled away, leaving bare the woman I was in love with, had always been in love with.
I knew that, now. The intensity of my feeling was so strong I was surprised I’d managed to hold it back all these years. But I realized now that, if I hadn’t, it would have destroyed me.
I hoped it still wouldn’t.
