Blue
I’ve just jotted down the last note in the last song of the set I’m writing when I hear a car door slam and the squeak of the front door opening.
I set aside my guitar and shove my notebook into the desk drawer. I’m planning to record the whole set as a Christmas gift for Keegan, and I don’t want to give away the surprise.
A moment later, I hear her pounding up the stairs.
She’s been gone for hours, and I’ve driven myself crazy trying not to bug her. Trying not to think about all the shit I should be thinking about.
I tried to study for a test I have tomorrow. I killed a couple of hours doing laundry. I spent a long time cleaning the bathroom after I gave Max a bath in there that ended with me soaking wet and dog hair clinging to every surface.
Max of course ran straight to my room when I opened the bathroom door. He’s still on my bed, damp and unhappy, and sending me distinct fuck-off-and-die vibes. He hates getting a bath.
I even went to the frickin’ grocery store and cooked some kind of chicken thing, thinking I’d have a delicious meal waiting for my girl when she came home. But now it’s hours past dinnertime, and the dried-out crap I made went in the trash.
Keegan bursts into my bedroom, throwing herself into my arms and sighing in my ear. “I’ve been wanting to do that all day.”
I can feel the tension in her body. But I don’t immediately ask her how things went with her grandma.
Instead, I use one hand to loosen her ponytail and bury my face in her soft, sweet-smelling hair, letting out a pent-up groan.
After a moment, Keegan grabs my face and plants a long, passionate kiss on my lips that leaves me weak-kneed. Even with everything we’re facing, all I can think about now is how fast I can tear off her clothes and how many different positions we could contort ourselves into.
Being a guy—being able to let your dick mindlessly take over—has its benefits.
She pulls back slightly and gives me an odd look; she’s nibbling on her bottom lip, a gesture I’ve learned means she’s wondering whether to tell me something.
I run my thumbs over her satiny cheeks and then pull her over to the bed. Our happy place, even when it smells like wet dog.
“What is it?” I say. “Tell me what happened.” I want to hear all about it. And I fucking don’t. But I don’t really have a choice.
She lets out a heavy sigh. “She’s going to do it,” she says. “That’s the important thing. Virginia said she would get the charges dropped and take care of the whole Megz thing.”
I watch her throat as she swallows, noting the tension that skitters across her face. There’s obviously more to Virginia’s willingness to help us. And her granddaughter does not want to tell me what it is.
“And?” I prompt. She averts her eyes and takes a sudden interest in Max.
I pick up one of her hands, weaving my fingers through hers. “Keegan. What’s the catch? I know enough about your grandma to know there is one.”
There’s a weighted silence as she blows out a breath and does a little more lip nibbling. Then her eyes snap onto mine.
“She wants me to go to law school at OU after I finish my bachelor’s, instead of working as a journalist,” she says in a rush of words. “Just like she did. Then...” she shrugs, her mouth tightening as my jaw drops in surprise, “I think she wants me to follow in her footsteps or—”
“No. Way.” I leap off the bed, so angry I come close to punching the wall I’d managed to avoid punching earlier. “No goddamn way!”
“Blue—”
“Is she out of her fucking mind? How can she even think about trying to force you to do that?”
Max, alarmed by my yelling, jumps off the bed and runs around looking for whatever has set me off. He’s followed by Keegan, who grabs my arms.
“Blue!” she says firmly. “Stop. It’s done. I agreed to it.”
“Like hell it is!” I wrench my arms away. “You should have called me before you agreed to this!”
I see the flash of pain in her eyes and the tight set of her mouth, and I take a deep breath, trying to get myself under control.
Keegan covers her face with her hands for a moment before looking up at me.
“Virginia thinks she’s doing what’s best for me,” she says, giving me a semi-stern look that quickly wavers. “She said I’m capable of so much more than...” she pauses, shaking her head. “She always thinks she knows what’s best for everyone. It’s why my mother ran off and eloped so young. And why my brother...”
Her voice trails off without finishing that sentence.
“In her mind, though,” she goes on, “she’s being protective, taking care of all of us like she always has.”
Max whines, and I look down at him, putting a reassuring hand on his head. It gives me something else to focus on for a second.
“That’s not being protective, Keegan,” I say slowly, gritting my teeth, trying to keep my voice even. “That’s a narcissist, trying to control everyone around her.”
I search her face, trying to gauge her reaction. “I grew up with a narcissist. Trust me, I recognize how they operate.”
Keegan thinks that over, clearly debating how to answer. “Yeah, maybe,” she finally responds. ”Probably. But it doesn’t matter what Virginia’s motivation is. It’s what we have to do to make sure you’re safe.”
I’m shaking my head before she finishes. “No.” I try to say it calmly. ”No. This is not happening. We’ll figure something else out. You don’t want to go law school. You want to be a journalist, Keegan. You told me that the day we met.”
My voice wobbles then, and out of nowhere, I’m tearing up.
For fuck’s sake.
“You’re going to do what you want to do,” I say. “Not what Virginia Cooke dictates. What you fucking want. She can’t take that away from you. Not because of me. I won’t have it!”
Keegan’s eyes shine with a couple of tears that she quickly blinks away as her jaw sets.
“This is my decision, Blue.” She lets out an ironic chuckle. “Virginia is even having her lawyers draw up an agreement for her and me to sign. Everything cut and dried and in writing.”
I can barely make my mouth work. “Did you sign it yet?”
“No.” She shakes her head, then levels me with a look. “But I will.”
“This is not just your decision!” I burst out. “I’m involved here, too. This is all happening because of me. You are not throwing away your dreams because of me!”
“Blue.” Keegan takes my face in her hands and gives me a soft kiss. “Things have changed since the day we met. The dreams I have, they’ve changed too.”
I can’t stop the couple of tears that course down my cheeks. I’m fucking trembling.
“What I want, more than anything else,” she goes on, “is you. Nothing else will be any good if I lose you.”
I’m trying to shake my head, but her hands hold my face in place.
“Blue,” Keegan says, urgently, “the alternative is that you probably get arrested. You probably get court-martialed. I talked to Virginia’s lawyers about it.”
“What the—” I don’t know why it irritates me that she told a bunch of pitbulls-in-suits what I did, but it does.
“They were the ones drawing up the NDA for Megz to sign,” she goes on. “I had to explain it to them. They won’t tell anyone. They can’t.”
She lets her hands drop from my face. “It took all day long to get it done, between all the other politician shit Virginia was doing. So I had plenty of time to talk to them. They told me what would most likely happen.”
Her voice starts to quiver. “They told me you would be arrested and court-martialed, Blue. And then, if you’re found guilty, sent to a military prison. Possibly for years.”
The words send a foreboding chill through me.
Because that’s what’s been lingering in the back of my mind ever since the moment I heard the rescue choppers coming. That’s the fate I know I deserve. It’s what I’ve spent three years shoving into the dark corners of my conscience, chasing out of my thoughts, running away from in my dreams.
“Blue,” Keegan whispers, “if I don’t have you, I don’t want any of the rest of it. I don’t want to be a journalist, without you.”
I shake my head again and squeeze my eyes shut. There’s a roaring in my ears.
“Blue, look at me.”
It takes me a second to open my eyes.
“If all I have to do to keep you is let someone pay for me to go to law school, why the hell wouldn’t I?” She flashes a bright smile I know is contrived. “I’ll probably be a damn good lawyer and who knows, maybe someday I’ll run for office. I’ve watched my grandmother for years. I know how the game works.”
It takes what feels like forever for me to find the words to respond. I feel sick to my stomach. “I can’t let you do this,” I say, shaking my head again. But I hear the defeat in my voice.
“It’s done,” Keegan says decisively, wrapping her arms around my neck. “And I’m grateful. I never thought I’d say that. But I’m grateful to my grandmother.”
I open my mouth to say something else, but she puts a finger on my lips to shush me.
“I’ll become a hot-shot lawyer, and you’ll be famous musician. And maybe at some point, we could...” she pauses as a blush steals across her cheeks.
I kiss her, knowing even as the words slip out how ridiculous they are. “Get married?”
Keegan pulls back, a teasing smile on her face. “Why, Blue Daniels,” she says in a breathy drawl, “is that a proposal?”
“Not the kind you deserve,” I whisper, curling a tendril of her hair around my finger. It’s just crazy talk; I know that. Both of us are out of our minds right now.
But I don’t care. For the moment, I just want to bask in it.
I kiss her tenderly, loving the way her body melts into mine. Then I wrap my arms around her, burying my face in her hair and closing my eyes to keep any more damn tears from spilling out.
I’ve cried enough.
~~~
It’s after midnight when we curl up together on the roof. It felt like the right place to be. I’ve got my guitar. That seemed right too.
It’s a clear night and mild for early December, with a full moon. I start playing the theme from Somewhere in Time. I taught myself the song because I know how much Keegan loves it, how much she loves that old movie.
I’ve never seen it—and I’m pretty sure you need a vagina to really appreciate it—but I kind of dig the song. Keegan told me once that she and her mom used to watch the movie together over and over.
I play slowly, watching the emotions at play on her face, trying to make each note a caress.
“Oh, Blue. It’s beautiful.”
Her bottom lip falls open slightly as she listens; just looking at those lips gives me a hard-on. It’s all I can do to keep playing.
When I finish, I stretch the guitar through the open window and place it on the floor of Keegan’s bedroom. She nestles into the curve of my shoulder, her hair tickling my neck.
We lay there for a while, looking up into the stars.
“You should have seen the way Megz looked at me, Blue,” Keegan says, surprising me by bringing up her treacherous former friend.
The memory is obviously still fresh in her mind.
“You should’ve seen the hatred on her face.”
I hold her a little closer and kiss the side of her head, hating Megz even more for inflicting pain on my girl.
“In high school,” Keegan goes on, “Megz told me some of the stuff that had happened to her in foster care. I felt so sorry for her. But I admired her. I thought she was so strong, so smart. I thought she could handle anything.”
After a moment, she adds, her voice trembling, “And look what she’s done. Look who she really is.”
I don’t know how to respond, so I stay quiet. Then something occurs to me.
“Has Megz signed the NDA yet? Does she know the charges are going to be dropped?”
Keegan’s drawing circles on my chest with a finger. “Not yet,” she says. “At least I don’t think so. It’ll probably go out tomorrow to her. The lawyers told me not to have any further contact with her. They want to handle it.”
I’m staring hard into the bare branches of the oak tree. “Yeah, that’s probably a good thing.”
We lay there a while longer, listening to the night. And to our own thoughts.
Finally, I lift Keegan’s chin and stare into her eyes. I want to change the subject. And I want her to understand exactly how I feel.
“I don’t think you have any idea what you’ve done to me, what you’ve done for me,” I whisper, my voice hoarse. “How you’ve changed me, even in the short time we’ve been together. I just want to be sure you know that, Keegan. I want to be sure you know how much I love you.”
She sits up, her fists in my shirt, and gives me a long, passionate kiss. Then she takes my hand with a smile and pulls me through the window.
We fall back on her bed and slowly remove each other’s clothes without saying a word.
And we make love. No other way to describe it. It’s love, brought into existence sigh by sigh, kiss by kiss, heartbeat by heartbeat.
Keegan falls asleep soon after, but I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, comforted by her slow, steady breathing, memorizing the feel of her skin under my fingertips.
I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to. My mind is spinning, veering back and forth between choices. Between what I want to do, and what I know is right.
I lay there for hours, thinking.
The first streaks of dawn are lighting up the room just enough for me to see when I edge away from Keegan, sliding one knee and then the other over the bed.
I stay like that a few minutes, on my knees on the hard floor, watching her sleep. It takes everything in me not to start sobbing.
But I stand up and creep out the door.
~~~
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