Party of Four

Repaired Melodies - Cole

My stomach twisted as the word left my mouth. It felt like peeling a piece of skin off a fresh burn. I was giving her permission to touch the thing that had been broken. The thing that I’d buried beneath more than a decade of fryer oil and silent anger.

I watched Nica’s careful, silent movements. The snap of the case, the white dust of rosin against bow hair. It was all alien, gentle, and utterly separate from the memory that was already clawing its way up my throat.

She lifted the violin: a dark, gleaming piece of wood that sounded like a cat being strangled while she tuned it. It was so unlike my old Fender - the one that felt like it had been an extension of my own ribs. The one that had met the floor with a sound I would never forget.

My breath caught when she asked where the song started.

“Yeah,” I confirmed, my throat too tight to manage anything more.

Then the bow descended.

The first few notes were a punch to my chest. That was my song. A song I thought I had forgotten. It was a rhythm I’d found in my late teens. A melody I’d written for a life I never got to have. It was a little higher on the violin, even with her adjusting the notes. It was strangely beautiful though, like a memory filtered through a veil of sunlight and time.

It wasn’t supposed to sound like this.

It should be distorted, loud, electric. The sound of rebellion and youth. Instead, it was this pure, vulnerable ache.

The sound brought the scene back, sharp and immediate. Not the chords, but the shell of the garage, the shock of Amber’s rage, and the sound of wood splintering under a boot. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, fighting the wave of nausea.

When I opened them again, the garage was gone. I only saw Nica sitting there. I focused on the gentle curve of her cheekbone as she concentrated, the soft line of her jaw. The roundness of our unborn baby. The music was coming from a place of love and patience.

My song, which had been born in hopeful fire and died in violence, was being resurrected by this heavily pregnant line cook, that just two years ago, I’d been afraid to speak to.

It was too much. The notes blurred, my vision swam as my eyes started to burn. I couldn’t move. I was a statue, carved into the mattress, watching Nica perform the most secret, precious thing I’d ever created. The air felt thin and heavy at the same time, like holding my breath underwater.

Then the final note sang out, and silence crashed back in, heavier than before.

A single, hot tear escaped, cutting a line down my cheek. I still couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.

I was suddenly aware of Nica’s movements. The way she lowered the violin, then eased her way into my lap.

The weight of her body against me snapped the world back into place. I wasn’t in the past. I was here, in her room, sunlight filtering in through the sheer pink curtains that used to hang over the half-wall of her old loft. She covered the raw, exposed place where my heart hammered a frantic rhythm.

A shiver ran through me. I focused on her warmth and the slight pressure of her arms around me. She just held me, grounding me.

After what felt like an hour, the tremor subsided. I let out a long, shuddering breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. I brought my arms up slowly, reverently, pulling her tighter against me. I wanted to merge with her, to disappear into the present.

“I-thank you, Nica,” I finally managed to rasp out.

“It’s a good song, Cole.”

I just held her. The pain was still a deep, bruised knot in my chest, but the fact that she knew the song existed, that she had breathed life back into it, was a strange, fragile kind of healing. I just felt her, focusing on the slow, life-affirming beat beneath her ribs.

After a while, I lifted my head from her shoulder, capturing her lips in a slow gentle kiss. Even as my tongue slipped into her open mouth, there was a tenderness that wasn’t normally there. Our kiss that was normally driven by a hungry passion was calm and controlled. The tension had left my body, replaced by a dull, pleasant ache of vulnerability.

Her hands found their way into my hair, and I sighed against her lips. Carefully, I lifted her up and laid her back down on the mattress. She lifted her head off the pillows, her tongue wrapping around mine in a gentle promise of love. I hovered above her, my hand slowly sliding up her bare thigh.

“I love you, Cole,” she murmured against my lips when the kiss broke.

“I love you too.”

“Do you want to?” she smiled, her leg rubbing against my hip.

“If I ever say no, I’ve been replaced by a pod person,” I told her, my hand finishing its trek up her thigh and under her nightgown.

We didn’t fully undress. There was a strange mix of urgency and calmness coexisting in the moment. I pulled her panties down her legs and tossed them to the floor. She helped me push my pajama pants past my hips, and then her legs were around my waist, pulling me against her.

There was no foreplay. At least not the traditional kind. The music, the emotions, that had been our foreplay. I wasted no time sliding into her, drawing a gasp from her lips. Her legs tightened as she lifted her hips to meet mine.

Our lips met again as I thrust slow and deep.

This wasn’t our usual s*x. We weren’t just having fun in the bedroom exploring our kinks and each other’s bodies. As vanilla as this moment was in comparison to most of our s*x, this was us making love in a way that we never had before. It wasn’t just an emotional or physical connection. Our souls were entwined.

My lips broke away from hers and I trailed kisses along her jaw and down her neck. She rolled her hips against mine, meeting each thrust. My hand came up to cup her breast, gently squeezing while my thumb teased her n****e through the fabric.

She hummed softly, her eyes closing as she arched into my touch. My hand ran up along the strap of her nightgown and gently tugged it down off her shoulder. Nica clung to me lifting her shoulders off the bed to help me tug down the top of her nightgown.

With her breasts exposed, I continued to kiss across her collarbones. Soft moans slipped past her lips as I massaged her breast, my thumb brushing over her n****e to tease the sensitive nub into a hard peak. My head dipped further and her breath caught as I captured her n****e in my mouth.

More gentle whimpers and moans fell from her lips as my tongue flicked and swirled around her n****e. My teeth lightly grazed it, and Nica moaned a little louder, her legs tightening around me. I continued to kiss, lick, and suck, enjoying every little reaction I drew from her.

“What will you and Riley do when those actually start producing milk?” she teased, her voice breathy.

I grinned, tracing another circle around her n****e with my tongue so she could see it. Her breath caught again as she bit her bottom lip. “Then I guess we’ll get free milk,” I teased back.

She started to giggle, but it turned into another moan as I dragged my tongue across her chest. I showed the same attention on the opposite side.

Her hands slid along my body, her feet against the back of my thighs. Nica continued to meet each of my thrusts, no matter how loudly I managed to make her moan. I could feel my climax building. Nica’s was too from the looks of it. Her body writhed beneath mine, arching and bucking with each thrust. I started kissing my way back up, over her collarbone, along her neck.

Her moan was cut off when my lips found hers again. I nipped lightly at her bottom lip. Her hands were back in my hair, tugging lightly. “Nica…” I breathed.

“I’m almost there, don’t stop…” she pleaded, her voice raspy and thick from desire. “Harder.” The last word was a desperate whimper, one I was more than willing to oblige.

Her grip on my hair tightened, her moans growing louder. Her muscles started to tighten around me, her feet pressed against me. I could feel her toes curling. She clung to me like she was desperate, like I was pulling her up out of water and her orgasm was air. Nica cried out, but I didn’t stop, even after my own hit. We rode through it together.

I was careful as I rolled off of her. I didn’t want to squish her belly, and I was vaguely aware of her violin still resting on the other side of the bed. I pulled her back into my arms, our limbs tangling together as I closed my eyes.