Above the Noise (4 page)

I stood and turned off the glaring overhead light, walked to the door, and turned back to see her sleeping under her twinkling lights. That’s when I realized I couldn’t lock her door from the outside without her key, and I couldn’t take her key with me. The space under the door wasn’t big enough to slip a key through from the outside. So, I couldn’t leave without waking her up to lock the door behind me. I didn’t want to wake her.

I chuckled to myself and flopped down into the well-worn, oddly shaped, pink overstuffed chair in the corner. I covered up with what looked to be a ‘Made by Grandma’ afghan and watched Becki sleep until my eyes forced themselves closed.

The sun pouring through her windows woke me the next morning. Becki was in the exact same position she’d been in when my eyes closed. It was daylight, so I felt better about leaving her alone with her door unlocked. Folding up the afghan and placing it carefully over the back of the chair, I knew she’d never know I’d stayed, which was fine. I’d stayed to keep watch over her, not to get credit for doing something thoughtful. My only intention had been to keep her safe.

CALON AND I
stumbled out of the bar and headed toward the elevators. I’d been hot for Calon for years. Gracie, Stacy, and I were technically Alternate Tragedy’s first groupies. We’d been going to see them play at Mitchell’s since the night we first tried our fake IDs. Stacy and I even lied to our parents and drove to Chicago to see them once.

Gracie and Calon’s musical connection had Calon closer to me than arm’s length for the entire summer. He and I started something the moment he winked at me back in June. I couldn’t explain our connection then, but there was no doubt we both felt it.

I liked music and all, I just didn’t ‘get it’ like Calon and Gracie did. I simply hung out with them to enjoy the view. There were times they’d speak in their special music lingo and discuss things like motif and tempo.
Whatever
. I just sat there thinking,
blah, blah, blah, lick those lips one more time, Rock Star, and I will be in your lap.

It felt like Calon and I had known each other longer than a couple months. Not to mention, I’d just travelled half-way across the country with him and the band. And now I was headed toward an empty hotel room with Calon
Fucking
Ridge. The thought made me dizzy.

“Let’s race, but no running.” Calon took off like an Olympic speed walker, wiggling his ass like a pro. It was all I could do to not piss myself laughing at how ridiculous he looked. I was so fucking tired I could’ve probably fallen asleep standing up, but I’d have to be able to stop giggling at the dork in front of me to do that.

We were exhausted. Spider had driven the last leg of the trip, which was the longest. We’d met with Greystar Management and checked into one of their hotels in Los Angeles. Mr. Barnes was a cheapskate and, much to our chagrin, put us all up in one room. We’d been down at the hotel bar since Happy Hour, and when it comes to drinking, I have a hard time with moderation. It’s usually balls to the wall for me, which was another reason why Calon should’ve gotten us our own room.

“Becks, shh!” Calon swiped the key card and aimed one finger toward his lips but completely missed, which made me giggle even harder. He turned toward me.

“Go! Dork!” I pushed him through the doorway, making him stumble backwards. When he fell, I tripped and landed right on top of him.

Oh, damn.
Our noses touched, and if we hadn’t already been out of breath from our race, we would have been at that point. His body felt hot against the weight of mine. His hair was splayed out under his head, and his hands were on my ass.
Fuck!
As much as I enjoyed our lengthy and sometimes deep conversations, I’d wanted to move past talking and, well, just fuck for a while. There was no doubt it would be mind-blowing. No man could be as panty-melting sexy as Calon Ridge and not know what he was doing in bed.

“Calon?” I tried to catch my breath.

“Becks?” He raised one eyebrow and started to smirk. I loved when he called me that. There’s no way he hadn’t pick up on how sexually attracted I was to him. Our relationship, if you could even call it that yet, had moved slower than molasses in January. We’d spent many nights in my dorm, snuggled up together talking about… life, really. We talked a little about our pasts and our beliefs and the things we stood for. I found out he believed in God. I told him all the reasons behind my choice to become a vegetarian. Our conversations were easy and sometimes very intimate. Intimate on a level I’d never been while keeping my clothes on. Getting to know each other on a deeper level had been great, but now I needed to cross that line with Calon, or my ovaries would explode. Boom! Done.

“Calon, I really need to be alone with you.” My hair feathered against his face, and he reached up and tucked both sides behind my ears.

“Becks, we
are
alone.”

“Yeah, but just until the guys get here. I mean
alone
alone.”

“Ohh,
alone
alone.” He chuckled and smacked my ass then pushed himself up so I was sitting in his lap with my legs wrapped around him.
Yeah, this was going to calm the fierce throbbing going on inside my panties. Not!

His eyes didn’t leave mine, and I could feel his hot breath on my face. He moved his hands up my back. One grabbed the back of my neck while the other cradled my face. He rubbed my nose with his, and we just sat there. Staring. He closed his eyes and licked his lips, then he sucked in a slow, deep breath. His eyes opened, and when his lips touched mine, the pit of my stomach clenched. I swear I felt my heart stop for a split second. His lips were full and soft but strong at the same time. He tasted the corners of my mouth, his tongue ran across my bottom lip, and he moved his hands to the sides of my head. He’d only kissed me this passionately once before; the night before we left Knoxville. Since then, we were conjoined with Thing 1, Thing 2, and Thing 3. We’d stolen a couple more-than-a-peck kisses over the past few days, but nothing like the way he was kissing me at that moment. What he was doing now—yeah, that’s what I needed.

His tongue slowly dragged across my bottom lip again. My hands shot to his head, and my fingers tangled in his hair when he crashed his mouth into mine. I could barely breathe. His mouth was so needy, so hungry to taste every part of mine. His chest heaved in the same rhythm mine did. We were lost—truly lost in a moment of passion that felt like an extension of the intimacy we’d shared during those long talks. It was a natural step; a deeply passionate connection that stemmed from our souls connecting so slowly.

He pulled his head back. His pupils were so big I could barely see the deep green irises that seemed to be exclusively Calon’s. He grabbed me around the backs of my thighs and maneuvered the lower half of his body so he could stand. He steadied himself slightly with his hand on the wall directly behind me. I laced my hands around his neck, and it only took one step until my back was against the wall. He rocked his body into mine and kissed me again but this time a little rough and hurried, like he was running out of time and couldn’t get enough of me.

“Becki. God, your mouth.” He spoke against my lips and slowly let go of my legs. My body slid down his, and I felt the excitement hiding beneath his cargo shorts. And, that’s where he stopped me. The seam of my jeans crushed against me where I throbbed the most, and just the mere thought of his huge hard-on being only a couple layers of clothing away from me drove me insane. I just wanted to feel him. Not his clothing. Him.

“Calon, I need to f—”

The door flung open and slammed against the wall behind it, and, at first glance, I thought it was a crowd of people that rushed in.

“Yo! Cal! Look! We just won a bottle of Jack Daniels in a bet! Whoa, you guys were gonna do it, weren’t ya? Sorry, man.” Nope, it was just Bones. He was the crudest of all the guys and always the drunkest. He fell onto one of the two beds, face down and hugging his bottle of Jack. Manny and Spider stumbled in, not as drunk and pretending not to notice what they probably assumed Bones interrupted. Using my body as a human shield to hide his giant boner, Calon backed me toward the door and called out, “Guys, we’re gonna go get some ice.” He grabbed the ice bucket from the shelf, and we rushed out the door.

Once in the hallway, I spun with my back against the wall and tried to catch my breath. Calon leaned in toward me with one hand next to my head. His curls brushed my face and tickled. I blew them away, making us both laugh.

“You were saying?” He tipped his head, resting his forehead against mine.

“Huh?” I didn’t know what freakin’ planet I was on, let alone what I’d been saying.

“You said, ‘Calon, I need to’ just before the idiots burst in.”

“I was going to say that I needed to feel you—closer, ya know?”

“Whoa, Becki Mowry, are you saying you want to move past first base? Wait. Is kissing first base?” he whispered it sarcastically as if second base would a huge step. I hoped it wasn’t a huge step for him, because I’d never even slowed down at second base. Shit, I’d touched Gracie’s boobs within the first week I knew her. Of course, I was drunk, and it was one of our middle school friend’s stupid dares. But it was faster than Calon was moving, which frustrated the piss out of me.

“Yes and yes.” I took my hairband from my wrist, threw my hair up into a messy bun, and then shot him my best puppy dog eyes.

“Are you propositioning me?” His eyebrow arched as his thumb brushed my jaw lightly.

“Yes, thick-as-a-brick rock star, I am. Geez. What’s a girl gotta do to get into your pants?”

“Oh, honey, what’s in
these
pants… we may need to work you up to it.” He kissed me on the cheek and grabbed my hand. “Come on, let’s go get some ice.”

Shit.

“I’M CLEAN. I’VE
been tested twice since Shawn and I broke up.” I reached up and turned the overhead light off, which left us snuggled up on my single bed, joined only by the moonlight that shone through the window. We were in the middle of one of our stream of consciousness conversations. I couldn’t even remember how the conversation of exes came up, and I was still trying to wrap my brain around something Calon said that made me think he wasn’t the typical groupie-slut rock star.

“Twice?” Calon picked his head up off my pillow and looked down at me.

“He said things were getting too serious, but I found out later he’d been cheating.”

“Well, I’m clean, too. Only been tested once, though.” He rested his head next to mine

“Slacker.”

“Yeah, that’s me—big ole slacker.” He pushed me in the shoulder, almost causing me fall off the narrow bed. He pulled me back into him, and I swore I felt something in his jeans that hadn’t been there before. It could have been wishful thinking, though.

I needed to calm the hormones that had me ready to strip for him down, so I changed the subject to something that was sure to deflate all boners. “What about kids?”

“Do I have them?” He sounded shocked that I asked. For a second it made me wonder if he did and just didn’t want to tell me.

“No, dummy, do you want them?”

“Umm… I don’t like to think that far ahead. I’m more of a ‘live each day like it’s your last’ kind of guy, ya know? How about you? You want kids?”

“No way. I guess I’m a little too selfish for that.”

“Selfish?”