It’s music.
The best kind of music.
“You need your journal?” he asks after a while.
Huh.
I don’t.
Not at all, in fact. Not even to write down how amazing this has been.
I don’t want to vomit these moments out of my brain.
I want to keep living in them.
He plays with my hair. I trace patterns on his chest.
This, my heart whispers again.This is what’s missing.
We lie like this for hours, but eventually, we’re both starving enough to get up for real food. While we roast chicken strips over the fire with the longest silverware we can find, we make small talk until small talk turns to real talk.
I tell him a few of the shorter stories about why I hate the holidays.
He tells me he’s getting tired of Hollywood, and also that I should spend time with his family at weird holidays like Groundhog Day and Talk Like a Pirate Day since everyone deserves a holiday they love.
I tell him I’m afraid I’ll be a one-hit wonder.
While several of my songs have charted, they haven’t chartedhigh.
Not like “Forget Christmas.”
“You’ll hit with another song.” His voice is now rough whiskey, and I want to drown in it.
“Another Christmas song,” I mutter as I test my chicken. Not quite done.
He snorts in amusement. “So don’t record more.”
“What if that’s all that my audience wants from me though? What if I’m Mariah Carey but without the rest of her catalog?”
“Do you want to keep recording normal-time songs?”
“Yes.” I love performing. I love singing. I don’t care if there’s one person or a thousand in the audience. “But if I’m a one-hit wonder with a Christmas song, I’m done. I’ll go back to remote jobs and find a new hobby and squat in your pool house forever.”
“You are not a one-hit wonder.” He pauses in roasting his own chicken to tuck a lock of hair behind my ears, and I get a whole-body shiver at his touch.
The good kind of whole-body shiver. “I don’t think you understand the way my karma works in the universe. It’s so bad, I was probably one of those people in a previous life who lived to yuck other people’s yums and always left grocery carts in the middle of the parking lot even though I was able-bodied enough to return them to the cart holders.”
His gaze drops to my lips.
My belly drops to the floor.
I shouldn’t want him to kiss me again. We’ve already made this more complicated for when we go back to the real world.
But I feel so safe here with him.
Cherished. Appreciated. Adored.
“Some people get all of their hard parts out of the way early in life,” he says. “That’s you. You’ve gotten the hard things out of the way, and everything from here on out is clear skies and smooth sailing.”
