Page 102 of Rock Me

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Jez

The next two days are spent in complete and utter bliss.

I didn't know life could be like this. I know I told Noémie that I've never been in love, and now I know it's true.

Nothing has felt like this. Nothing has come close.

At one point, I feel a little envious, a little jealous of her that she has felt this way in the past. With someone else.

But then she looks at me while we're making love, or she reaches out to me in her sleep, and I know, it was never like this.

We spend the days exploring Las Vegas; she's never been here. I laugh so hard when I hear that, she's lived in California for almost four years, and never been to Las Vegas.

"I never had a sugar daddy until now," she says, pouting.

"You don't now!" I reply, abhorred that she would think of me that way. "Sugar daddies are old and hairy and balding and live on a diet of vitamins and Viagra."

"Fine, sugar brother."

We both scrunch up our faces pretty quickly at that.

"Never mind. You can just be my sugar, baby."

And I try. To give her as much as my sweetness as I have, to offset the times when it's not so easy to be with me. Such as the hours of PT she forces me to do every morning before breakfast and every evening after we come back from a day of exploring. She’s a hard task master and sometimes I wonder if I’m working hard to help myself or to please her. Either way, I couldn’t do it without her.

"What do you want to do today?" I ask her the next morning, her body still hot and sweaty in my arms after she’s rewarded me for my PT exercises by a particularly vigorous fucking against the large glass window looking out at the Eiffel Tower.

"Hmmm,” she thinks, wriggling against me, getting comfortable under the sheet. “I want to do something you've never done."

"You mean, like work an honest day in my life?"

She laughs and tickles my stomach with her fingertips, which is quickly becoming my favorite thing she does to me. Favorite G-rated thing. Well, PG.

"Hey, you might not be sitting in a cubicle or standing in a factory line, but I bet you guys work pretty hard," I smile, no longer surprised every time she understands something without me having to explain it to her. "What's your favorite thing about it?" she asks.

"About what?"

"Your... work."

"That it's not work, I guess. As glamourous it might sound, as much money as we make, as many benefits as we get from the fame, if it felt forced or like work for a moment, I'd be the first one to cut loose, followed very closely by the rest of the guys. It wasn’t about the money or fame when we were thirteen years old and sneaking out of our houses to jam in any abandoned house, hall, side alley we could find. And even then we knew if we had to work ten hours shifts at the local fast food store so that the remaining fourteen hours of our day could be spent doing what we want to do, we'd do it. The important thing is that it never feels like we have to. I think it comes through in our performances, too.” I smile, in a rare moment of reminiscing that doesn’t plunge me into a pit of doubt about my future. “We're just lucky that there are people out there willing to pay us to do it. But we couldn’t do what we do if the end goal was the money. Our music doesn't work that way. Our creativity doesn't work that way. The money and fame kill it, really. It's important to not let it do that."

I take a breath.

"Huh, I've never really said that out loud before." I look down at her, and she's listening, her eyes closed, her head on my chest.

"I love listening to you," she says.

"Talk?"

"Well, yeah. What else?"

"I'm not really used to people wanting to listen to me talk. My cello playing, yes. Talking, not so much."

"That's stupid.” She crinkles her nose up and I reach out and touch it, making her yelp quietly.

"Maybe that's why they don't want to listen to me talk."