All Strung Out (3 page)

"Don't worry about it, Sophie. It's done. I'm moving on. You should, too," I say. "Oh, wait, you already did."

Dammit, why can't I stop acting like an ass? I wish I could take back the words as soon as they come out of my mouth. I don't want to leave our relationship with this much animosity. The wound is just too raw.

"I really don't understand how this happened," she says. "I don't even understand
what
happened. Is this it? We're no longer friends?"

I struggle to keep my voice neutral. "It's over. That's all I know. I don't see any way to fix us."

Sophie starts crying. This conversation is going nowhere. Before I end the call, I say, "Goodbye, Sophie."

When I get back to my desk, Jen pushes her headphones off her ears. "Yes, I eavesdrop. Get over it. What's going on with Sophie?"

I stare at my keyboard for a moment, not sure what to say. What's going on with Sophie? I guess I never really knew. I'm insisting that she did this huge, horrible thing to me, but what if I was unclear? I thought she knew how much I love her. I didn't think the sex would be a deal breaker. I thought it would work itself out later.

Maybe that's where I'm so different, I can't grasp how normal people think. Sex hasn't been important to me, so I don't know how much other people require it. I thought it was enough to be a kind, loving, and supporting person. I didn't know I would ultimately be judged on my sexuality—or lack of it.

I look up at Jen and give her the most honest answer I have. "Sophie and I have gone our separate ways."

Scene 7 ~ Sophie

When Hondo hangs up on me, I lose it. It cannot be ending this way for us. After what we've shared, how can things be so damned cold between us? I sit on the floor in the middle of my closet and howl to let out the pain, not caring who hears.

I know now that Hondo was the one holding me together all this time. He made me get up in the mornings, no matter how hungover I was. He made sure we had food in the house. He slept beside me night after night, ready to catch me when I fell from a nightmare. Without him, I'm unraveling, string by string. It's pathetic—and dangerous—to rely so much on another human being to simply function every day. I know this. My heart does not.

Will my heart always be so fucking stupid?

After my sobs quiet down, I take a shower and put on fresh clothes. I study myself in the mirror. My blond curls look darker and even longer when they're wet. They're leaving damp streaks all over my t-shirt, but I don't have the energy to blow-dry it. My bloodshot eyes make me look hungover. It's comforting to know that I can achieve that lovely wrung-out look without taking a single sip of alcohol. That takes real talent.

When I can't think of anything else to do to make myself feel better, I head upstairs. I don't know where Mark is. His studio is empty. I feel relieved and disappointed at the same time. Nice. I'll probably never have normal human emotions, just these hybrid feelings that are more confusing than anything. Between the celebrity childhood, losing my mother, and going on a six-month drinking binge after losing my father, I'm sure nothing in my head is working the way it's supposed to. I was already damaged before I met Hondo. Now, I feel half-dead.

Hiding out in my closet for the rest of my life is not going to help me, though. It's time. If I want to survive this, I have to make my own way. Losing Hondo has shown me I can't afford to be so emotionally dependent on someone else again.

So, I'm going back to school. I'll take out loans if I have to, whatever it takes. When I finish, I'll be a school music teacher. Simple, straightforward, private. That's what I want more than anything: a private life. It has to be so much better than this overgrown monstrosity of a public one.

I sit down on the piano bench and play around with some melodies, trying to lose myself in the sound. I should undrape my keyboards and work on some new music. I've spent almost no time helping Mark with his, which was the whole reason I still live here. All we've done together for two weeks is have sex.

I leave the piano to fold back the covers on the keyboards. They are just as I left them, of course. I run my fingers over the keys, remembering the unique sound of each one. My most valuable one is the Clavioline from the late 1940s. Lang gave it to me for my fifteenth birthday. He even used it on his last album, the one he recorded in Austin only weeks before he died.

I jog downstairs and grab my laptop. When I come back, I set it on the stand to the right of the keyboard array and connect it to my favorite keyboard.

My fingers warm up quickly as I play around with different melodies and beats. I love this part of creating music. I call it finger painting with sound. Here, anything goes. I don't judge anything. I just listen.

I spend the next two hours doing a whole lot of playing and a little bit of recording. It feels really good, like this is where I belong. If after Lang died I'd focused on school and my music instead of drowning myself in vodka, maybe things would be different now. Maybe I would have created something good rather than destroying everything in my grasp.

"Hey." I don't hear Mark come into the room until he speaks.

"Keyboards still work," I say. "No tuning required."

He smiles. "That's good. At least we have a few low-maintenance instruments in the house."

When I turn back to the keyboard, Mark comes up behind me. He reaches his arms through mine and plays the keys like a two-year-old. I laugh and join him, adding in the highs and the lows, while he covers the middle. It sounds horrid, but it doesn't matter. I nestle against his chest, his heat relaxing my muscles. When he stops playing the keys, he hugs me tight.

I sigh when Mark reaches under my shirt and massages my breast through my thin lace bra. At the same time, he sweeps my hair to the side and kisses my neck. This is the most erogenous part of my body. I swear it's my "on" button. I moan and tilt my head to give him better access. He moves one hand to my lower belly and pulls me back against him. I can feel how hard he is, how ready he always is. My body responds with a jolt of desire that leaves me breathless.

Mark unbuttons and unzips my jeans. When he reaches inside, I'm instantly wet, ready for his touch. He teases me, letting his fingers wander, but skipping the most sensitive places. I push against his hand, trying to lead him where I want him to go. I moan every time he rewards me by touching my hard bud and letting his fingers slip inside me. Without meaning to, I put my hand over his and push him to me. I'm on the edge, and he knows it. Already, he can read my body. I start to writhe under his hand as he speeds up, giving me more and more.

When I come, my knees buckle. He keeps hold of me, massaging me through the very last wave. I pant to catch my breath. When he leans over my shoulder, I turn my head and whisper in his ear, "What do you want?"

Without a word, Mark rips my jeans and panties all the way to the floor. He drops his loose shorts to free himself, too. He pushes against my knees with his to force us down on all fours together. The heat of his erection feels like a branding iron across my skin.

He carefully positions us the way he wants before guiding himself inside me. I gasp and moan at how his first thrust fills me from this angle. I almost come again as he pulls out and fills me again with his heat. I want him to do this for an hour, for a day, for a year. I need him to keep filling me, over and over, to push out the emptiness.

Now that he's inside, though, his patience has evaporated. He clamps his hands on my hips to control my movements. I'm helpless on this ride; all I can do now is hold on.

He groans low and feral each time he pounds into me, harder and harder. My teeth hit together in rhythm to his thrusts.

"You're perfect," he says, out of breath. "Just like that. Oh, fuck, that's incredible."

He explodes inside me. He takes several more thrusts, milking himself with my body before releasing me. I try to get up, but my knees are shaking too much. I sit on my jeans, well aware that I'll have to find a clean pair now.

Mark rocks back on his toes, still impossibly hard for having come thirty seconds ago. He's truly insatiable, the polar opposite of Hondo. And I never realized how much I love seeing nude men with erections. It's like until they're hard, they don't fully embody themselves. They carry their sexuality around all day like a secret.

When Mark stands up, he reaches down to help me up. I grab my clothes and let him bring me to my feet. Without warning, he crushes his mouth against mine, pushing deep inside with his tongue. He holds my head so tightly, I can't move, kissing me with such force, I can't breathe. I struggle for a few seconds before he lets me go.

On my way downstairs to take a shower, I touch my tender lips and wonder what Mark was trying to tell me with that kiss.

Scene 8 ~ Hondo

I don't know why I expected the first week to be slow around the office. Apparently, I was delusional. Jen and I have been here sixteen hours a day for the past two weeks. I've interviewed nine applicants. What a waste of time. The first two wanted to work fifteen hours a week and party for the other twenty-five, on my dime. The next five looked promising on paper, but when Jen showed each of them what we're doing, their eyes glazed over. The last two were late to the interviews. Automatic no.

This is discouraging. We're in Dallas; we should have thousands of qualified people flooding my email inbox. I expected to have our pick of candidates. Despite her mad skills, Jen is falling a little further behind every day. It's too much work for one person, and I'm useless when it comes to coding. She looks tired from the moment she shows up in the morning until we leave the office in the evening. I feel bad that she's working so hard.

"I think we should get some cots," I say, yawning for the hundredth time.

Jen looks at me like I'm the genius in the room. "Why the hell didn't I think of that? Now, I'm annoyed. It's a great idea, nonetheless."

She stands up to stretch her long arms and legs as far as she can. She's tall, close to six feet. She doesn't wear make-up, but she has this high-tech geek model vibe. I would guess her weight is fifteen pounds too low. Despite her lean figure, though, she has round cheeks that make her look years younger than twenty-five.

"It's super cold in here," Jen says, rubbing her hands on her upper arms. "I need an electric blanket."

"You got it. It's on my shopping list. Maybe my jacket will help in the meantime, sw—" I keep having to stop myself from calling her "sweetness" like I did Sophie. It was a silly habit, anyway.

I stand up, grab my jacket from its hanger, and drape it around her shoulders. She looks like a skinny kid playing dress up in her father's closet. She gets up and dances around to make me laugh.

"Wait, wait, we need music," I say. The first song that comes up on my laptop is one of Sophie's dance mixes. Is everything in my life tied to that girl? I turn it off after thirty seconds.

I lean back in my chair and rub my eyes, too close to falling asleep on my keyboard. "I require food and caffeine soon. Do you want to order in?"

"You know," she says. "We've been working our asses off here. I think we should pull a bit of that two mill from our bank account and treat ourselves to a nice restaurant tonight."

"At 10 p.m.?"

"Yeah, why not? It's Friday. At least, I think it's Friday. Is it Friday?"

"OK, you convinced me," I say. "I can't have my co-founder running around not knowing what day of the week it is. You must have sustenance immediately."

We pack up our laptops, lock the office, and walk down the crowded street in Deep Ellum. It feels odd to be among people doing something other than staring at a computer. It's too easy to fall into the habit of working sixteen hours a day, forgetting that there is still a world beyond your screen.

It doesn't take us long to find a place that serves gourmet homestyle food. The hostess seats us at a small, intimate booth. Even at this hour, the restaurant is full of people.

"Don't be frightened, but we're dangerously close to doing what regular people do," I say.

Jen laughs and looks around. "You're right. I'm impressed with us."

"Wine?" I say.

Jen scans the wine menu and then taps her fingertip on one of the listings. "Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir. That's what we want."

"I would say you have excellent taste, but I know nothing about wine."

She laughs. "Don't worry. I'll remediate you. My parents are major wine connoisseurs. They started teaching me when I was twelve."

"You probably did everything early," I say.

"Guilty."

"When did your parents realize they'd given birth to a genius?"
 

"Well, when I was ten, I corrected the financials in my dad's business plan," she says. "So, yeah, my cover was blown after that."

The image of the younger Jen hunched over a business plan with a pencil cracks me up.

"No one ever mistook me for a genius. I was the too-artistic, too-tall kid. The other boys didn't know whether to beat me up or run away from me," I say. "I ended up with a group of girls as my friends. Then, the guys were jealous."

Jen laughs. "That's awesome. I would have been your friend."

"Nah," I say. "After five minutes with me, you would have declared me unfit for a girl of your intelligence."

"You make me sound so serious. It's possible to have a high IQ and a sense of humor, you know."

"True. You got me."

When the waitress brings our food, it looks incredible. I'm so tired, though, I can hardly taste it. Jen looks like she's at the same point. We sip our wine and take one bite after the other, but talking and chewing at the same time would use up too much energy. By the time I finish eating, Jen is already analyzing the dessert menu.

"Dessert," she says. "It's the most important part of the meal. You should know that now before this working relationship goes any further."

I laugh. "That's why you're so smart. You feed your brain a continuous supply of the sweet stuff."

She orders an apple crumble with ice cream. After the waitress brings it out, Jen digs in right away, like she hasn't had anything to eat all day.