619. Joyride

God, my heart. Even now years later I can still remember how my heart tried to beat right out of my chest when I caught sight of him, and what he looked like, leaning against the cinderblock under ugly fluorescent light, teal shirt, white jeans, face blank but his eyes on fire.

Okay, maybe a lot of the heart-pounding was a mix of show adrenaline with worry adrenaline shooting my blood pressure through the roof, but insert all swear words appropriate to the situation here. Fuck. You can see why people say things like “I thought I was going to die.” Objectively there’s no way that’s good for you, right?

I didn’t care. He hugged me, pulled me close, and said in my ear–loud so I could hear it through the earplugs I was still wearing–“Antonio’s got a car warmed up.”

I think he could have said “I want to fuck you with a broomstick in that closet over there” and I would have said yes. There was no thought in my mind but yes at that point. So I followed him through the barricades, to the other side of our security line, to the loading dock, past the blue police sawhorses and wham, into a car parked across 31st Street.

The privacy divider was already up between the driver’s seat and the back seat.

“I didn’t think it was going to be that easy to get you away from everyone,” Ziggy said as the car began to move.

“Timing is everything,” I said, and took a large, deep breath, trying to calm myself down somewhat, but angst had turned to euphoria and who wanted to tamp down euphoria? Ziggy’s attention was the best drug ever. He’d got me hooked. I was fine with that.

“I want to touch your skin.”

“I’m all sweaty from the show.”

“I know. That’s why.” Ziggy started peeling me out of my clothes then, or at least peeling them open, until I had his mouth licking salt off my nipples while his hand worked my joystick (thumb on top). I wanted to be touching his skin, too, but I was mostly pressed against the car door and just letting my senses overload.

When I got close he clamped his mouth on. Then he swallowed. People describe the cocaine high: the racing heart, the intensity, the heat. I didn’t need that. When they make those descriptions, this time in the car is what I think of.

After I came, my heart finally slowed a little, and I pulled Ziggy on top of me in that pose we both knew so well now, his head on my chest, his body lying between my legs. He’d changed brands of hair product so he smelled different, but otherwise, same old Ziggy. If that can ever be said.

When I could actually speak again I asked where we were going and he said we could go wherever I wanted.

“Wait, you mean you kidnapped me without knowing where you were taking me?”

“I hadn’t planned past this,” he murmured, licking salty sweat from my neck.

I tried to get my hand on his crotch and he pushed my hand away. “But–”

“If you want to reciprocate I insist on a bed,” he said.

“Sure. Yours or mine? We’re staying somewhere by LaGuardia.”

“Mine. I have a little place downtown right now.” He knocked on the divider and it lowered slowly.

“Hey, Tony,” I said weakly.

Tony gave me a little nod of acknowledgement. He had his professional “cool cucumber” look on his face.

“Jane Street,” Ziggy said.

“You got it.” Tony nodded again and raised the divider.

Ziggy settled against me again for the ride. “I’m glad you’re not freaked out about Tony.”

He meant that Tony had heard us do unspeakably private things to each other. “A little late for that,” I said. Tony had heard too much more than once. “Tony’s like the big brother neither of us had.”

That made Ziggy laugh, a real laugh.

His apartment was small and so was the building, but it had a doorman, and he had turned the main room–what you’d normally think of as the living room–into the bedroom. In the center of the room was a large white modernist bed with black sheets.

We got in bed by way of the shower first, and then cuddled while damp. We hadn’t had shower sex but Ziggy seemed very…content. Relaxed. So relaxed he fell asleep on my shoulder without me getting the chance to actually reciprocate.

Pretty soon I was asleep, too.

Waking up in the morning is a pleasant thing when your lover’s hand is what rouses you. Even more rousing: his murmured voice saying he’d lubed up. He wanted to be on the bottom, literally, coaxing me to lay myself on top of his back and oblige. I did: slow, nerve-tingling, whole-body intercourse. I drifted in and out of a dream, which made it feel like each time I woke, a new jolt of pleasure washed through me. Like seeing him backstage all over again.

After we’d both come, we slept again. I should stop there to give everyone a rest. Everyone deserves some moments of contentment, right?

But I woke with a slight jolt of panic much later, wondering what time it was. He didn’t have a clock near the bed that I could see. I slipped out from under his arm and found the microwave in the kitchen said 11:00 AM. I’d just slept almost three times as much as what I’d been getting per night lately. I washed my face in the sink trying to get my brain going and trying to remember what time the bus to the venue was. One o’clock. I was 99% sure that’s what it had said on yesterday’s day sheet.

I was 100% hoping that was what it had said, anyway.

“Hey.” I leaned over and buried my nose in his hair, which was an incredible sex-tangled mess even though we hadn’t really been that vigorous. (Well, maybe my fingers had been sunk into it at a few points in the evening.) “I need to go.”

He rolled over and let out a long sigh. “What time is it?”

“Eleven. I think I’m supposed to be ready to go by one. It’s going to take me a while to get there.”

“Where?”

“Some airport hotel in Queens.” I didn’t know the address but I knew what it looked like.

“Mmmm.” He rubbed his eyes, still groggy, and blinked. He had the usual smudge of old eyeliner making him look fragile. “You might need to take a cab. Tony’s not picking me up until two.”

I picked through my scattered show clothes, realizing I didn’t even have clean underwear with me. “I didn’t happen to be wearing my jacket when you spirited me away, was I?”

“Not that I recall. You’d come right from the stage.” He sat up and a smirk bloomed slowly on one side of his mouth. “You don’t even have your wallet, do you.”

“Nope. Not even twenty bucks.” I rubbed my face, feeling too good from having slept and sex to let the mild irritation scratching at the back of my head bother me. I mean, there were all kinds of reasons why I should have felt shitty about doing something as stupid as waltzing away from a venue without even pausing to get my ID, but I found I just couldn’t get much traction for my ire. “Lend me some?”

He chuckled and picked up the bedside phone. A few minutes later and he’d booked a driver from some limo service he apparently used often, had lent me some dry, clean clothes–how handy that we’re the same size–and had brewed some kind of herbal tea. We stood in the kitchen sharing a package of frosted strawberry Pop Tarts (two in a package, you know) and not saying anything to each other.

But it wasn’t the heavy kind of not saying anything. It was the comfortable kind of not saying anything. I think. Or at least it was until I started thinking about yesterday, and his mother, and the paparazzi photo of him lying in my arms, and, well, everything. Everything.

But I didn’t want to talk about the money troubles, or whatever was going on with BNC, or any of the old crap that was going to make me push him away again.

“You coming to the show tonight, too?” I asked.

“Can’t.” The intercom buzzed then. He leaned forward and kissed away the crumbs at the edge of my lips. “Break a leg.”

“I will.” I pulled him close and kissed him until the buzzer sounded again, and then I hurried down to meet the car.

I know. We didn’t “talk.” We didn’t make any decisions or promises. We didn’t even discuss when we might see each other next. But we also didn’t fight. Didn’t tear at each other. Didn’t hurt.

So I counted it in the plus column.

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