June 2nd 2021

Can one night together be enough to sustain months apart?

Angie's attraction to Mike is instant and mutual and leads them to an evening full of heated conversations and even more heated night. It bursts open a deeper level of emotions Angie has never experienced and she is eager to spend more time with the magic Mike has wielded over her.

The minute Mike leaves, Angie receives news her dream job of opening for a popular rock group is becoming a reality and she has to start right away.That begins a long-distance romance that tests the physical, mental and creative limits of loving someone who isn't near you.

This novel is a lust to friends to love romance with a lot of music and some lyrics. But it also contains cursing, touches on alcohol and substance abuse, mental and physical wellbeing, and there is a mention of a car accident (not graphic or significant but present). Please do not read if any of these topics are triggering for you.

UPDATES once a week on Sundays.

Chapter 1

None of this would've happened if they would've let me live with them for another year, or three, who is counting? I know plenty of almost twenty-three-year-olds who live with their parents who did not kick them out or deprived them of free laundry services, fully stocked fridge, and regularly appearing cooked food. Why do I have to waste the rare days I spend in Chicago on the lunacy adulting in the twenty-first century has become? Even after discovering their present to themselves for the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary was a hasty conversion of my perfect teal bedroom into a boring beige exercise room, I presented my parents with all expenses paid week-long Caribbean cruise and plane tickets.

That earned me a few tears and a proclamation of having raised the best daughter in Chicago. I would've upgraded their seats to first class if I didn't have to spend the extra money on rent and utilities for the apartment my roomie Amelie and I now share. Why is any of it important? If not for my parents' insane belief in my perpetual inability to take care of myself, that triggered my buying them the fateful cruise tickets to prove the depth of my impressive savings account. If not for that, I would not have been alone for Thanksgiving for the first time in my life. If not for that, I would not have been invited to join Amelie's boyfriend's parents' Friendsgiving Bash. If not for that, I would not have been right here having the longest handshake in the history of humankind with this gorgeous hulk of a man, who must be a Greek God come to life.

"I'm Mike, by the way." His deep baritone is low and commanding. Is it closer to a cello or a bass? I long to hear more of his voice to find the right spot for him in the orchestra in my head.

His bearpaw-hand dwarfs my average-sized one, and believe me, I have wished for my hands to be freakishly large and grant me the ability to cover more than an octave on the piano. As a teenager, when other girls wished for bigger boobs, my secret hope was for my hands to hit a growth spurt and transform into Rakhmaninov's big ones with long fingers. How would I fly through his challenging pieces, my average-sized hands otherwise struggled to play.

Mike doesn't let go. I squeeze-shake what has become a hot charged tangle of fingers and send oodles of feromones through the palpable connection that has formed between our bodies. I have to learn more than his name. His thumb grazes my palm, and a wave of passion mixed with abandon surges in me. We have succeeded in turning this into the most obscene handshake of my life as well.

"Follow me, Angie." Amelie's boyfriend Ben is the one person in the room oblivious to the silent conversation between Mike and me. Ben succeeds in breaking our contact and leads me into the office to meet the rest of the musicians at the party.

"Hi, everyone." I wave at the five people gathered in a circle around me, eyeing a handsome guy in his thirties I do not have on the list of musicians Ben's Mom and the party host, Marguerite, sent me yesterday.

"I'm Angela Fisher. I sing and play the piano. Can you please introduce yourselves, and we'll jump right into practice."

The crazy idea Marguerite and I came up with was to select pieces from classical to contemporary music and combine the musicians attending the party into groups to perform together. The fifteen people in the audience will get to hear us after one or two partial run-throughs, which guaranteed loads of imperfections, but who cares. None of us could pass up such an artistic collaboration, and it's time to hear what we can create.

"My name is Ben. Cello." Amelie's boyfriend points at the instrument next to him.

"I'm Marguerite, Ben's Mom." This woman matches the room we were in: elegant, calm, and charming. "Thank you for humoring me and agreeing to participate in this music act. I hope we will institute a new tradition for my Friendsgiving Bash. I'm thrilled Angie's and my plan is coming to life. I will also be playing the cello." She gestures to the beautiful instrument in the corner of the room.

"Thank you for putting this together. I'm Shawna, I've known Marguerite here since college, and I've been part of the Friendsgiving Bash since its inception forty years ago." A cheerful petite woman with a grey braid that ended below her waist gives Marguerite a gentle hug. When everyone keeps looking at her, she adds, "Oh, I'll be on the keys today."

"Roger, last-minute addition here...was supposed to fly out to meet my band in Nashville but got stuck on a layover here in Chicago till tomorrow...and have known Marguerite here for...five years?... So she told me to come over. This is my acoustic guitar, and my electric one is in the case." The extra guy I couldn't account for earlier sounds British and a bit apologetic. If he is any good, we can add a guitar to several of the selected pieces.

"Hi, I'm Lara, and I play the flute in the same volunteer orchestra as Marguerite." A timid pregnant woman in her thirties has both of her hands resting on her significant bump.

The motley crew grabs the music sheets with their names on them I printed out the night before-all are pieces they've previously performed. Roger picks up the ones with my name on them.

"I can play these for you,"-he points at the first two popular songs-"but I've never heard about this 'Latitude' song." He strums a few cords, following the piano accompaniment.

"That's one of mine," I say.

I like his interpretation, and my mind starts composing a drum line to punctuate some of the beats when, as if taken out of my head, the missing beat is plucked on a cello-it's Marguerite. The bizarro jamming session begins.

I wrote the song traveling from New York back to Chicago in the rear seat of my dad's old truck, a U-haul trailer with my belongings dragging behind. We were retracing the way we had arrived less than six months before, a different U-haul behind us, full of hopes and dreams of becoming a concert pianist.

I remember typing up the words with my thumbs on the phone and humming the melody into it. The noises of the road, the murmured conversations between my parents in the front, and my muffled sobs were there in this four-year-old piece of music. I was transported, like every time I performed it, to those days of searching for the new me, what my life had been before could not be, what my life would become from then on was unfathomable.

"You have more songs like this, kiddo?" Roger pulls me into a corner after we transform 'Latitude' into a quintet for voice, piano, guitar, flute, and cello.

"Maybe a hundred. Not all sad, mind you." Not that I've counted.

"You make it sound so easy." Roger's eyes search my face for something.

"It is what it is. Once I started, I couldn't stop."

Music has always been in my head, like a constant companion. I have heard it every night since I can remember. It was in the pounding of my heart, in the swirling of the fan above my bed, in the wind of the trees beyond the windows of my bedroom. Around six, at a playdate, I touched the piano for the first time. I was in my Alladin phase. I pushed the mysterious keys of the giant baby grand in the open living room of my friend's house and found the right sounds to match the melody in my head.

"A whole new world," I whispered as my index finger played the tune.

At the urging of my friend's mom, a piano teacher, I started coming over every week to take classes and then to play with my friend. From that moment on, the piano was my joy, a treat, and something to look forward to. Eleven years later, I was auditioning for Julliard, and a year after that my parents, crying and hugging me for the hundredth time, dropped me off in New York.

The rehearsal is over. We did everything we could, and it's time to eat. Music is my sole contribution to the Friendsgiving gathering, but other guests brought their favorite dishes from the cuisines from all over the world. An exotic array of food I have trouble identifying surrounds the traditional turkey, stuffing, gravy, and mashed potatoes. I look for my place at the table, and Amelie points to the seat opposite her and right next to Mike.

On my way to the chair, I examine my new obsession who is talking to a tall skinny older gentleman on the other side of him. Mike's voice is a cello. Its vibrations get more pronounced as I approach my place and sit. We are not touching, but I can feel the forcefield around his body seeping into my personal space, reaching my skin and making the hairs on my arms stand.

I have never believed in love at first sight-that's for fairytales, but I have never experienced lust at first sight either. And I'm sure this is what I'm swallowed whole by tonight. Desire surges. My hand that is not holding a fork drops under the table, first on my lap, and then passes over the gap between us and lands on his. Mike's conversation stills for a second, then resumes, while his hand repeats my maneuver, crosses over mine, and wraps around my upper thigh. I inhale in a series of tiny gulps, replenishing the air in my lungs.

A small brush of a finger, an innocent touch of our knees, our shoes line up toe to heel next to each other, creating a border of contact between us all the way up our legs. I turn my head towards him and breathe a long, cleansing sigh. He turns away from his conversation, throwing a heated glance at my eyes, then mouth. I move my lips to his ear and say:

"Go for it."

I inch my hand to his groin, look into his eyes to capture a minuscule nod of consent. And it begins for real. We attempt to keep calm above the table, no longer looking at each other, playing with the leftovers on our plates while our hands are on the hunt. I rest my palm on the hard khaki covered thigh. My mouth goes dry. I do not dare unbutton or unzip his pants. Instead, I go around and shove my fingers into his deep pocket, the thinner lining of it giving me much more satisfactory access to him.

At the same time, he has better luck on top of the leggings I wore under a long sweater and inching his fingers to cup me with confidence and know-how I'm grateful for. There is nothing timid about his touch. His gestures small, the pressure on my sensitive bundle of nerves is rough and rhythmic enough for my breath to pick up. I want him to go lower, but he stays put, intent on finishing what he has started. Like a dirty dream come true, we are getting each other off under the festive cloth of a long table where eighteen other people are chattering and gorging themselves on food and alcohol. We sit there, not looking up, not talking.

"Angie, come here-it's time." Marguerite waves me over from the other side of the room. I move Mike's hand off my lap. It's showtime.

The mini-concert in Marguerite's living room, which could fit Amelie and my entire apartment, reminds me why I love to be on stage. The energy a receptive audience feeds you is better than any drugs: their eyes full of wonder, joy, or tears, as you lead them through the emotional journey. Each piece tells a story that resonates with this a little drunk group of friends nearing a food coma. The elation Mike's hand has created earlier fuels my performance. My body shivers in anticipation of sex, and I sing to make him want me, smiling at everyone but him, taunting with the absence of my attention.

As soon as I finish talking to those who come over after the concert, I search the room for Mike. He's impossible to miss and is gathering the empty glasses around the room. I find Marguerite, and we embrace, gushing over the mutual admiration of each other's talent. All the while, I monitor Mike's progress from the corner of my eye. He approaches and thanks our hostess with the casual ease of someone who's been around for years. He then wraps his fingers around my elbow and escorts me to the hallway.

"I'm on a motorcycle, and I only have one helmet today," he says as he puts on a heavy leather jacket.

"I drove. We can take my car." We both know what we are talking about.

Twenty minutes later, I'm peeling that jacket off him in the hallway of my apartment, hoping Amelie stays over at Ben's place.

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