Page 47 of Goode Vibrations
The things he didn’t talk about.
Like me and Dad.
I got it, and I didn’t care to have those particular bags of bones exhumed from their closets, so I didn’t push it.
We went into the room, and he rifled through the bag, came up from the very bottom with a small box of condoms.
But there was that chill in the air between us again. Unspoken, which neither of us dared breach.
I sat on the bed, wanting to ask, knowing I wouldn’t, knowing I won’t. We’re not like that. Shit, there’s no “we” to be like that. We’re strangers whose paths have crossed for a short while. There’s chemistry, sure, and attraction. But sharing the deep, painful things that form the shadows and edges in our souls? It’s not that. Can’t be, won’t be that.
He knows it, I know it.
“I was just curious, Errol. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not pissed off.”
“But the moment’s gone,” I said, sounding plaintive.
“Oh, I don’t know. Give it a minute, eh? We can make a new moment.”
The most awkward silence we’d experienced yet enveloped the room.
I didn’t know how to get the moment back. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to. If we got the moment back, we’d have crazy hot sex, and if we had crazy hot sex, I wasn’t sure my stupid heart—which remained stubbornly and firmly romantic despite my best efforts to squelch it—wouldn’t get involved somehow.
He was flipping the box in his hand, not quite looking at me, staring at me, but definitely aware of me. Waiting for a signal as to how to proceed.
“I’m…I’m tired,” I said. Lame excuse.
I mean, Iwastired. Sleeping on the ground hadn’t exactly been restful, and after a night on the bare hard ground, and then hours in the car, had me feeling sore all over, physically exhausted.
But wanting him, needing his touch, needing to filled by him, to taste him…that existed outside the realm of mere tiredness.
But the weight of the emotional baggage we were both carrying around and refusing to touch…was a stumble in the careful steps of our sexual waltz, where we took what we wanted from each other without giving away anything.
I mean, maybe it was just me.
His expression seemed to tighten with anger or disappointment, but then was quickly masked. “Yeah, no worries. Been a long couple days, eh?”
I groaned at the hurt in his voice. “Errol…”
He shook his head, turned away, tossing the box back into the open top of his backpack. “I get it, Poppy.”
I stood up, moved around in front of him. “You do, huh? What is it you get? Because I admit I’m a bit confused about what exactly is going on? Which one of us is upset here?”
He blinked down at me. “I don’t know thatI’mupset, exactly. I have a weird attachment to that fiddle, yeah, but it’s over three hundred years old and a family heirloom and the only thing I own that connects me to my father and that whole side of my family. So I’m a bit possessive of it, and maybe I overreacted to seeing you handling it.”
I shook my head. “Errol, you have every right to that. I shouldn’t have been snooping through your stuff. I was curious, especially after that whole thing with the playlist. You didn’t overreact. So I’m not upset either.”
He laughed, pawed his fingers through his hair. “Then what the hell is going on with us?”
I laughed, too. “I don’t fucking know, honestly.”
He let out a slow breath. “How about we just scrap the whole last few minutes? Let’s just lay down and turn on the TV and not have any expectations of each other or ourselves or the situation.”
I felt a small smile cross my lips. “I think that sounds good, actually. I just need to, um, get something on.”
He smirked. “I mean, don’t get dressed on my account.”