Page 41 of These Secret Years

“Okay.”

“And you have my number,” I remind him.

He nods. I kiss him again, softer and slower this time, wanting to hear that whimpering moan again. After a few seconds, he gives it to me, and I pull slowly away. “You can use it whenever.”

The click of his swallow and the firmness of his latest erection are intensely satisfying in a way that I usually only find a perfect harmonic to be.

“Until then,” I say as I back off.

“Good night,” he says, voice husky and low.

It takes a lot not to drop to my knees, unzip his pants and take care of this one thing for him before he goes. It’s what I want. Badly. But I have to tell myself there will be a next time. If not with him, then maybe one day when my life doesn’t feel like such a nightmare, I can have whatever I want.

The next few days leading into the weekend are boring with the occasional spikes of adrenaline accompanying the handful of texts I get. Chelsea prefers to communicate with actual phone calls, so the texts are all from Adrian.

When I got the first one after that night at the abandoned house, my stomach sank when I saw it wasn’t from Knight, which confirmed the one thing I wasn’t sure about. I want him to text me.

It means, of course, that all Adrian’s texts are now met by my nervous system with anticipation and a rapid heartbeat at the sound of the chime, and then dread at the sight of his name.

Long story short, he’s on my ass about my algebra grade, which he finally saw once I left his house. Since he pays my tuition, he insists on access to my grades.

I sent him proof that I’d registered for an online summer course, and he confirmed I wasn’t lying by logging into my school account. The class starts next week, and it’s not six but four weeks long. My only hope of passing it is full on cheating. As brilliant as I may be about music, math has always shut off my brain, no matter how hard I try to focus. I get by in other courses because there’s almost always something interesting to latch onto, but I can’t find that with math, even when it’s very, very important to the big picture of my education. If it was required for my literal survival, I still don’t think I could muster the interest required to get me through it.

In the meantime, I’ve gone back to the old house every day once my mother and Emma leave ours for the day. I think about Knight intermittently, but my time there is mostly consumed with music. Occasionally, my mouth will water at the transient memory of Knight’s cock inside it—that silky-smooth, stone hardness on my tongue nudging down my throat, and I’ll stop playing whatever instrument is in my hand or set down my pencil to cup my dick and wait for the uncomfortable lust to pass.

The music is the point, though. I work like I’m on the verge of a breakthrough, which I may or may not be. I’ve had this fire in my veins before—this feeling that a revelation is at hand if I can just keep going long enough to reach it. Most often, it comes to nothing. And sometimes, it results in a piece that will make Adrian gasp.

This thing I’m working toward—a complete project—has yet to materialize. My brain is too crowded with theories and the work of all the composers who came before me. College has cluttered my mind. The more I know of the work of others, the less I’m able to distinguish myself inside it. Is this derivative? Has someone done this before? Am I unintentionally copying the work of greater musicians who came before me?

I understand now what I need from this summer—besides a passing grade in algebra. I need to remember my own point of view. To strip away all the work of dead men and find myself in the spaces between the notes.

It might not come easy. Nothing seems to anymore.

It’s Sunday, and it’s the day I’ll see my father. Depending on how the visit goes, it may be the only time I see him this summer. Depending on how he’s doing, it could also be the last time I see him.

Every time is like this.

He’s currently living in a trailer parked on the outskirts of town near the lake. Sunrise Point is a contradiction of a small town. It includes the second homes of the mega-wealthy who spend summers here. There are the slightly more modest residences of retirees and true lovers of the place who are also mostly rich and keep downtown clean, running, and thoroughly gentrified.

There are the people who work in the places the rich residents depend on to make them feel bougie enough to call a place like this home. My mother is one of those people, which makes us townies. And there are people like my father and his crowd. The people who can’t afford to live here and can’t afford to leave, squatting on land no one wants in tents or trailers, taking advantage of the proximity to wealth by doing odd jobs or selling drugs and illicit services to the kind of people who’ll pay top dollar.

A man I don’t recognize answers the door, and I’m instantly annoyed. I told myself on the way over not to be disappointed with whatever happens today. I won’t allow myself to be fucked up by my father or whatever I find here. The man is younger than my dad, and probably also younger than he looks. He’s thin and lanky with dirty hair partially pulled into a top knot. He might have been good looking once, but his skin is dull now, his lips are cracked, and his teeth could use some help.

His clothes are dirty, too. Wrinkled and reeking of weed, cigarette smoke, and that particular smell that lingers at the bottom of laundry baskets. It’s what my father always smells like, too, when he’s not in a treatment center.

Framed by the door, the man strikes a pose which I think is meant to look seductive. “Hey pretty boy. How can I help you?”

“I’m here to see my dad.”

The creepy leer disappears from his face in a hurry. “You’re Mike’s kid?”

“Yes.”

“Babe?”

Babe?

The man steps out of the way, and I enter the dim trailer. Most of the windows are covered with dirty, half-closed blinds, and there’s a haze of smoke lingering in the air with no place to go.