Then I’m back in bed, pillow covering my face, drowning out the sweet tickling fingers of rain on the glass.
Something about the sound of that rain, and I’m back in that filthy side lot outside the Horseshoe next to a dumpster. I’m trying to feel that voice again, how it reached out and took hold of me in such a painful moment and made me smile.
My fingers are on my phone before I know it. I tap through an app, find him (his face is a swirling flame with a cowboy boot—gag), and tap the first song I see. Then I stuff my earbuds in, rest my phone on my lap, and lay my head back on the bed.
Chase Holt’s voice.
Not through a ton of brick walls and plaster and nonsense.
Not while sitting wet and miserable outside by a dumpster.
Chase Holt, right into my ear.
And beyond. To my bones. To something even deeper than my bones, to the very essence that makes me aware of my existence as a human being among billions on this lonely planet.
His voice plays through a melody like a car on a winding road.
Finds my address without any words exchanged.
Shows up right there in front of me.
Joins me in bed, slipping in like a lover.
Arms wrapped around me so tightly, I belong to him, from the second the song starts and forever after.
I feel his breath in my ear every time he takes one.
God, how it crushes me, the way he takes breaths.
My hand slips under the sheets, and at first I’m sure it’s just to touch my heart. It’s racing. I hear even the tender parting of his lips between lyrics, knowing at once that he makes love to every microphone lucky enough to bear his kisses. My hand slips deeper under the sheets and finds something far more reactive than my chest. I enclose myself with my fingers, a big handful ofmyself. A soft pop of his lips at the end of a word, and I wince as I squeeze.
I’m throbbing.
He knows me. Listen to those lyrics. Don’t you hear them? The way he describes a tree, how it’s the only friend he’s known, how it’s watched him grow from the clueless boy chasing frogs to the man who wonders where it all went. I used to chase frogs, too. He gets me.Chase Holt gets me. And I listen to him sing sweet sadness and joyful longing, every lilt in his voice pulling me further in.
And my hand slips under my shorts.
Takes hold of me bare.
It could be him doing this. He’s right next to me, holding me in his arms—“So many paths to my heart,” he sings in my ear, draws an artful breath. “So many paths, why can’t you find a single one?”
God, and the way he strums that guitar, making it sing along with him, cry along with him, laugh along with him. “So many paths to my heart, but you took the one to my head…”
My hand moves, stroking, but not too fast. Chase Holt isn’t fast. He’s as smooth as a river you’ve known your whole life, water that’s carried you from childhood to adulthood, patient and wise. He’s the water that keeps you afloat, laughing and joyful, even as it rains. He’s the water you drink to stay alive.
“I could take your hand if that path ain’t clear enough…Guide you through my maze…Even if it’s just over a bridge … Or down a hall…”
“Or through my bedroom door…”
“See how easy that was?”
He grips me tighter, caressing my ear, stroking me.
“You’re in my head, oh, you’re in my head…”
“Playing with it to whatever end that path leads…”
“I think I could be okay with that, yeah, I could be okay with that…”