Page 20 of Ring My Bell

Not unless he was into that, and the idea of walking in on me was something—

“Stop it, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered to myself. Pushing up to grab my laptop from the nightstand, I forced myself to focus on things not related to my very sexy, very wet roommate. Creating a website for him would be a good distraction, I decided, and set up something basic. I grabbed some old pictures I found online (poor guy—I had to go down like five levels on Google for him) and what I’d snapped on the road trip so far. “Doing the best I can,” I sang to myself, “making things work with what I have…”

“What’s that you’re singing?”

“Shit!” I jumped, slapping my laptop closed and staring back at Mathis, wide-eyed and totally not at all guiltily. At all. Nope.

“That tune, what was it?” He scrubbed at his hair with a towel, wearing worn joggers and nothing else, judging by how the fabric lay across his groin. Lord help me if I didn’t lose my power of speech entirely. “Okay.” His expression fell. “Never mind then. Guess I’ll go fuck myself.”

“Let me do that for you,” I muttered, and his head snapped up. “I mean, here, you’re going to make a rat’s nest out of your hair. Don’t you know how to deal with curls, Mathis? Give me that towel. And your comb and leave-in spray.”

“My what now?”

“Seriously? Oh my god…” I got to my feet, shoving the laptop under the covers, and hurried to my own toiletries bag (case, it was a case, okay?). “Sit.”

With surprising obedience, Mathis perched on the end of the bed, and I smirked as I climbed up behind him. “So all it takes is the threat of beauty products to make you obey?” I plucked his comb from atop his own bag and brandished it at him mock-threateningly.

“That comb is awfully pointy. I didn’t want to get shanked by an angry pop star. Not the kind of fame you’re going for either, I’d think.”

I spritzed his hair down with the leave-in conditioner and carefully teased the snarls into submission. “Would you believe,” I mused after a few minutes of quiet, “I’m not necessarily after fame? I mean, I won’t turn it down, but… I just want to perform. Hell, I spent literally my entire life training, practicing, learning. Can I tell you a secret?”

He twisted to look back at me, wincing when the comb tugged on a tight tangle. “Ow!”

“I’m afraid to nod. I’d like to keep as much hair as possible by the time this night is over.”

“Hush. The thing is I’m a great violinist. If we’d have had the money, I’d probably have gone to conservatory. That,” I tapped him very lightly with the comb, “was my first dream. But I can also sing. And I love singing. And dancing.”

“Triple threat,” he murmured.

“Something like that. I still play violin.” I glanced over at my large suitcase, as if I could see my violin tucked in its own case inside. “And I’d love to do it professionally. But when my mom saw an open call for one of those TV talent shows, she pushed me to try out. We needed the money, and I was naïve enough to think if I won, I could use it for that conservatory I’d been dreaming about.”

As I finished detangling and moved on to just idly playing with his curls, Mathis was quiet. I hadn’t spoken of this to anyone other than Raymond in the past ten years, and that was only one time. He’d laughed at me, told me no one would buy a generic twink pop tart. Why would they want to see me playing the violin? My fingers itched to grab it from my case, pull the music from the strings and flood away Raymond’s voice, the sneers, my mother’s greedy grasping.

The loneliness. The faking it.

“I love singing,” I said firmly, giving Mathis’s hair a firmer tug than I’d intended. “I love it. And this.” I gestured with one hand at my person, how I was dressed and everything that implied about my sense of style. “I love being flashy, being seen. I don’t love being used. Being tossed out like garbage just because I didn’t give Raymond a quick return.”

I paused. He’d moved on so fast, before I was even gone. Hell, he’d done the same to Mathis and who knew how many others before me. And whoever after Sonny, too. My mom didn’t contact me unless I was in the rags, and so I hadn’t heard from her in months besides my pathetic phone call. Had she finally married that hanger-on who’d been sniffing around when she bragged about her ‘famous son’ on television? Of course, she always neglected to mention it had been one time, for one awards show, for two minutes.

“Forgotten. I don’t like being forgotten.”

Mathis leaned into my touch, the two of us existing in the same quiet space for several long moments before he spoke. “Can I hear you play?”

“My violin?”

“No, cribbage.”

“Ass.” I tugged his curls again. This time, his ears turned a little pink, and his breath hitched. Blood started a determined march southwards in my veins, so I shifted, hoping nothing became obvious. “And how do you know I even have it with me?” I hoped my disbelieving tone would distract him from realizing I was turned on from nothing more than that little gasp and blush.

“Because I’m a pianist. And I love to play. I love it more than anything.” Gently disengaging my fingers, he got onto his knees in front of me. We were both balanced rather precariously on the edge of the bed, but we were so motionless it didn’t matter. We weren’t going anywhere unless one of us chose to move. “If I could play all the time, I’d be happy, I think. I would forget everything about Raymond if I could get my piano back from him, if I could get my master’s back…”

We were swaying towards one another, two plants looking for sunlight, I thought with a hint of wildness, of near-desperation. We both understood what the other was going through professionally, but more, we both knew what the other was needing, was feeling, personally.

I wanted Mathis, and not just because I was alone. Not just because I was hurt.

Because he was amazing. And wonderful. Because he didn’t see me as some shiny pretty thing with no brain. At least not now—probably at first. But he didn’t try to force that image to stick. And he was real and beautiful and vulnerable and a thousand other things I couldn’t find words for but fell into place inside me when I thought of him.

The missing parts of him fit the found parts of me, and I think—I hoped—it was the same for him.

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