Famous (A Famous novel) Page 21

  In the three days they’d been back from the fair, they had managed to weave in and out of each other’s routines seamlessly. They would wake up together. Evan was an insomniac, which Emmy hadn’t realized before, and he often got up in the night, but he always made his way back to her arms before dawn. Then they would eat breakfast together. Well, technically, they’d have sex and then eat breakfast together. Her face heated thinking about it. Then they would mostly go their own ways, she to her songs and her house tasks, he the kitchen table or to his office at the college. Then they would come together again for dinner on the porch, though she’d eaten without him this evening. After dinner, they would shoot the breeze until…well, until they had to take it inside. Evan had made good on his promise: they’d had sex in every room in the house. And then, if Mrs. Johansen was out on a date, they would come back outside afterward to wait up for her.

  “I’m glad you went ahead and ate,” Evan said, looking at his watch. “I got on a roll with…stuff, so I kept going.”

  And then he’d lifted weights. She knew his habits—after an intense session of professoring, he always went for a run or lifted in his basement gym. She took the opportunity to shamelessly ogle his naked chest—that was one of the “benefits” of this whole “friends with” arrangement—she didn’t have to be subtle about checking him out. Honestly, the juxtaposition of the big brain and the big muscles—it was almost too much.

  “Oh, you made it just in time!” Emmy said to Evan as Mrs. Johansen came out of her house. She looked up the street for IveGotYourBach, Mrs. Johansen’s latest suitor. Mrs. Johansen and Dave344 had parted ways while Evan and Emmy were in Minnesota, and the classical music enthusiast she’d replaced him with seemed to have really captivated her.

  “Don’t wait up for me tonight,” Mrs. Johansen called across the yards.

  “We never wait up for you,” Emmy said, though the lie was so obvious she cracked up as she told it.

  “Well, you’ll be waiting a long time if you do,” Mrs. Johansen said. “Until tomorrow.”

  “Holy shit,” Evan muttered. “Is she saying what I think she’s saying?”

  Emmy flashed Mrs. Johansen a thumbs-up and whispered to Evan, “She is indeed.”

  “Okay, no way.” Evan started to get up.

  Emmy motioned him back to his chair. “She’s fine. Honestly. She’s taking her own advice about enjoying life, and she’s pretty much the smartest person I know.”

  “Let me give you my phone!” he called, trying not to sound as discombobulated as he felt.

  Mrs. Johansen pulled something out of her bag. “I got my own!”

  “I gave her condoms, too,” Emmy whispered.

  “Well, hot damn,” Evan muttered. “I guess everyone’s getting some this summer.”

  Even though they didn’t have Mrs. Johansen to wait for—Evan was trying to be open-minded and not ageist, but honestly, seeing her off for her date had felt like sending his grandmother into a sex dungeon—they stayed outside, as was their habit, until the fireflies, and then the stars, came out.

  After an hour or so of sitting side by side in their usual spots on the swing, each working separately—him on grading some quizzes, Emmy humming to something only she could hear and scribbling what he assumed were lyrics, she set her notebook aside and sighed. He took it as his cue to stop, too, and closed his laptop and turned to face her.

  She didn’t even have to say anything.

  “Let’s go,” he said, offering his hand, which she took with a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin.

  His dick rose immediately to the occasion. He laughed at himself. It was like he was fifteen instead of thirty-three.

  He would have been embarrassed by his near-constant state of horniness, if it hadn’t seemed like she was right there with him.

  Which she demonstrated at this particular moment by slamming his front door behind her after he led her inside, shoving him back against it, grabbing the waistband of his shorts, and taking them with her as she fell to her knees.

  “Emmy,” he groaned, taking his glasses off and trying—but not very hard—to pull her back to standing.

  “What?” She looked up at him after she’d finished the business of taking his dick out. “I realized today that we haven’t done the entryway yet. Put your glasses back on. They’re hot.” She grinned. “Plus, you’re going to want to see this.”

  His next groan was an inarticulate mess of sound, because he was beyond language. The sight of her paused like that, looking up at him from her knees, knowing what she was going to do… Well, it was a good thing he wasn’t fifteen anymore. He’d learned some control—at least he had that going for him.

  Okay, he corrected himself as she took him into her mouth, it wasn’t the sight of her pausing, about to suck him off, that did him in so much as it was this sight, her lips in their natural, non-scarlet state, bobbing up and down on his cock while she sighed and purred deep in her throat like she was feasting on the most delicious meal. He had to close his eyes against it, to let his head fall back against his front door, so the fun wouldn’t be over before it started.

  He let her go on like that for a few minutes, losing himself in the warm wetness of her mouth. But when she stroked his balls at the same time she took him in as deep as she could, and the pressure in his lower back ratcheted way up, he gently pushed her off him. Then, in a repeat of her earlier move, he turned them, pushing her back against the door, reaching for her shorts and unbuttoning them.

  He only needed one exploratory touch to know that she was ready—when he stroked her with his fingers, she was as wet as her mouth had been, and she gasped, the big exaggerated inhale she always made when she was close to coming. So he positioned himself near her entrance, and, as she whispered, “Please,” drove home. But once inside her, he paused.

  He hadn’t been waiting for her to give him the go-ahead, but she must have thought he had been, because she repeated her exhortation of a moment ago.

  “Please, Evan, please.”

  No, it was nothing so chivalrous as him waiting for her to stretch to accommodate him, to get used to opening her body to him. It was the reverse, actually. He needed a moment, as he so often had the last few days, to adjust to the idea that he was inside Emmy. That he was welcome here. That she trusted him so utterly. Sometimes, the enormity of it bore down on him so hard that he…well, he needed a moment.

  But he could not deny her, so he began moving.

  And when she said, “Harder,” he went harder. When she wrapped her hands around his neck and hoisted her legs around his waist, he went harder still, pounding into her over and over, never wanting it to end even as he knew it was going to, and soon.

  When she came, clenching around him and shuddering in his arms, he was helpless to do anything but follow her.

  And as they slid down the door and landed in a heap on the floor, he was helpless against the knowledge that later, much later, when she was asleep, he was going to go back up to the attic, where he’d spent the better part of the day, and paint her again. He’d been up half the night the last few nights, painting. And if the movement of him slipping out of bed disturbed her enough that she sleepily asked him what was wrong, he claimed insomnia.

  “Oh my God, poor Cheer Bear!” she said, suddenly.

  Huh? He looked between her and the bear, which she’d left perched on an antique bench on the side wall of the entryway, across from the coat hooks.

  She scrambled to her feet, and, naked from the waist down, loped over to the oversize cartoon bear. “You shouldn’t have had to see that, Cheer Bear.” Then she turned him around so he was facing the wall, drawing a laugh from Evan.

  “Come back here,” he said, too wrecked to get up but not willing to be without her. When she opened her mouth to form what was probably going to be an objection, he growled, “Don’t sass me. Get your pretty ass back here.”

  “Do you remember when you were teasing me about my nipples being like berries?” she asked
, pasting herself against his chest and laying her head on his shoulder.

  “Mmm-hmmm.” He nodded against her hair.

  “And do you remember when I was teasing you about what your penis would probably taste like?”

  “I do. I think you suggested corn on the cob.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, so I have enough experience with the matter now that—”

  “With the matter?” he interrupted, unable to resist teasing her. “You sound like you’re talking about a legal briefing.”

  “Well, what do you want me to say? I have enough experience with your dick in my mouth?”

  “That works for me.”

  “Anyway,” she said, nuzzling his neck, “I figured out what you taste like. Cheese curds. The most delicious state fair cheese curds. Tangy and salty and decadent.”

  He burst out laughing. “Did you just compare my dick to deep-fried cheese?”

  “It’s the most delicious thing in the world,” she protested, defensive. “And anyway, it would have to be a big curd. Like, a single, enormous one. On a stick.”

  Evan had no idea how this had all happened. How he had ended up here, sprawled on the floor of his house with Emerson Quinn in his arms, turning her writer’s eye for detail to the nuances of his dick.

  More critically, he had no idea how he was ever going to live without it.

  The next morning, it was too quiet in the house—Evan had gone to the college for a meeting. Emmy set down her guitar, frustrated with her inability to get the bridge right on the song she’d been working on.

  She wasn’t sure why she missed him so much. It wasn’t like they were together during the day much anyway, except of course for the occasional…quick interruption. She smiled, her cheeks heating at the dirty slide show playing in her head. But the point was that since they didn’t spend most of the daylight hours together, it shouldn’t have mattered that he wasn’t here now. But somehow, she felt his absence.

  Everything was flowing so smoothly this summer, song-wise. Hell, life-wise, too. It sounded so clichéd, but she could feel herself…blossoming. Part of it was learning to do the “real girl” stuff like driving and cooking. Part of it was the great big inside joke that she had managed to play on everyone by hiding in plain sight.

  But part of it, she feared—a bigger part than she was really comfortable with—was him.

  She worried that she had become too dependent on him, like a hockey player superstitious about not shaving during playoffs. In addition to being the giver of mind-melting orgasms, Evan felt like Emmy’s lucky charm.

  Which begged the question: what was she going to do without him?

  She shook her head. The answer to that question was that she was going to take her new songs, go back to L.A., and record them. That had been the point of her crazy jailbreak, right? So: mission accomplished.

  She was also going to go back to L.A. and press the reset button on the “no men” thing. At least this affair had not been conducted in the public eye.

  She sighed. What she needed now was a change of scenery, so she set down her guitar and headed for the stairs. On the second floor, she drifted from room to room, looking for something that could be a mini-project, maybe an hour’s worth of work to take her mind overtly off the song and allow it to marinate in the background. Evan was always telling her she didn’t have to work on the house, but she’d meant what she said about it being an essential part of the creative process. It was like when her hands were busy, her subconscious was free to churn away at song-problems. Maybe that was the answer to what she would do in the post-Evan era—maybe she should buy a fixer-upper. Become a house-flipping songwriter.

  She opened the door to the last room on the second floor—it was a guest room she’d converted into a little TV den. Not that Evan owned a TV. It was a theoretical TV den.

  There was really nothing more to do house-wise. She was rather proud of herself, actually. The work itself had been so satisfying. Like her revelation about cleaning the kitchen on her first day here, it had been gratifying to do something concrete, to expend effort and create a real, physical outcome. And she’d truly transformed this house. It retained its original character, but having cleared out boxes, applied a fresh coat of paint in rooms that needed it, and rearranged the furniture and added a select few new pieces, the place felt like it had undergone a gentle face-lift. It was usable and cozy and…there was really nothing more to be done.

  And there wasn’t any more work to be done on tomorrow’s art show, either. Everything was ready.

  She eyed the stairs to the attic. Evan had never told her explicitly not to go there, and she hadn’t dared since the night she’d caught him painting up there. But why was she so gun-shy? Whether he wanted to paint or not was his business. She thought he was wasting his talent, but she’d made her views clear, and it was his life. But for heaven’s sake, it wasn’t like this was Jane Eyre. There was no crazy wife locked up there. She could take a peek, and if there was anything up there that seemed private, she’d turn back. But if it was more boxes and junk, that would give her a task. The completist in her would get a thrill out of the idea that she’d cleared out the whole house.

  Emmy opened the door and ducked under its smaller-than-average frame, shoving down any moral twinges. The stairs were creaky, and her heart pounded even though there was no one in the house to hear her trespassing. At the top, she reached blindly for the string attached to the overhead light bulb.

  She found it, pulled it, and blinked again, this time in shock, because the space had been totally transformed. Big pieces of furniture had been pushed to one side. Gone were the boxes and clutter, and they’d been replaced by a worktable littered with paint, brushes, knives, and bottles of stuff she couldn’t identify.

  And there were paintings everywhere.

  Oh my God. He wasn’t an insomniac. This was where he’d been disappearing to at night.

  Struggling for breath, she walked to one side of the room, where finished canvases rested against a wall. She counted ten of them.

  Many of them were of her.

  And they were gorgeous. Exquisite. Her hands started shaking. His signature style seemed to be to put his subject in a fantastical or unlikely background, which made for an interesting juxtaposition, sometimes hinting at the supernatural, sometimes introducing a sense of unease into the beauty he captured. There was one of her in a forest, another where she was surrounded by rows and rows of corn. There was one of her and Mrs. Johansen, floating above their neighboring houses and sporting matching red lipstick that really drew the eye against the blue sky background, and one of Mrs. Johansen by herself against a backdrop of barbed wire and rubble, which must have been intended to evoke her World War II experience. You only had to look at any one of them for a lump to grow in your throat. It was hard to say why, exactly, just that there was something beautiful about them, made more so by the touch of terribleness they also possessed.

  She moved aside the last one in the row to reveal the painting behind it.

  It was her, and unlike many of the other paintings, her hair wasn’t its harsh dyed black and she wasn’t wearing baggy clothes. She was back to her normal look. In fact, she looked more like…herself than her own reflection in the mirror did. That should have been impossible, but it was like he’d captured the essence of her somehow, latched onto some inner part of her that was beyond naming, and painted it. She pulled her real gaze from the intense blue painted one that stared back at her, and examined the rest of the painting. She was standing in…a meadow? It was hard to say because the bottom of the canvas was a riot of flowers and they were almost up to the top of her thighs. But, no, it was actually water. A lake covered with flowers, and they were on fire.

  I will wade out till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers.

  She burst into tears.

  Chapter Twenty

  Evan had managed not to think very much about Larry and the whole tenure thing since they’d come back from Min
nesota. He’d reached a kind of peace with the whole process. He’d done the best work he’d been capable of, had put together a pretty damned good tenure file. The rest was out of his hands. Maybe all the talk about Zen had actually had some impact.

  The other thing that had made some impact? That party Emmy had given where she’d gotten everyone drunk. Not on the outcome of his tenure, he hoped—he didn’t like to think the process was so vulnerable to outside influence—but on his day-to-day life. To wit: he’d just spent an hour chatting in the faculty lounge, which was usually a pretty barren space, with Ken and Melissa, whom Emmy had charmed at the party. They’d commiserated about college politics, but then they’d started talking about projects they had in mind for the future, and had actually found a promising avenue on which to collaborate. It was astonishing, really. It was like the department was Narnia during the thaw. People were coming out of hiding, making academic and social connections. Which he supposed made Larry the White Witch and Emmy Aslan in this little analogy. Hmm. An idea for a painting popped into his head.

  His phone buzzed. Ah, speak of the devil. Or the magical Christ-surrogate lion.

  I’m going early to make sure everything’s looking okay.

  He’d spent so long talking to Ken and Melissa that he’d lost track of the time. He needed to get home and change for the art show.

  I’m sure it’s all great. But, yeah, I’ll meet you there.

  He’d stopped in yesterday, when she was done with ninety percent of the hanging, and, as with everything she touched, she’d done an impeccable job. He’d decided to go with a show featuring contemporary artists from the Upper Midwest, so there wasn’t a lot of thematic coherence, but she’d hung everything exactly as he’d instructed and had even made a few suggestions that were spot-on.

  I think it’s better if you come, say, at seven? Make a grand entrance of sorts.