Hot and Bothered(21)
Now she was glad she was here by herself, because she wanted to be able to ogle him without a perceptive female friend catching her at it. She didn’t want to share the experience with anyone else, or process it out loud—she just wanted to watch him do what he was doing.
There was, of course, something inherently sexy about the guitar, about all that strumming and stroking, about the grip he had around its neck, sliding up and down while his other fingers worked in well-coordinated harmony. You couldn’t help thinking about other things. Especially when the guitarist in question was Mark, with the jaw and the cheekbones, with the biceps that bunched and forearms that corded as his fingers clutched string to wood. He wore a form-hugging old T-shirt and ripped-up jeans—they’d bought them pre-ripped during the shopping spree, a compromise between his desire for well-worn and comfy, and her need for him to look like he hadn’t dug his clothes from a Dumpster.
So, yeah, she was thinking about other things, but that was before he’d begun his solo.
She didn’t know the tune, and she didn’t know much about blues, but she knew passion. And the look on Mark’s face, the rush of synchronized motion that came from his big, beautiful hands, the way his whole body contracted and arched, rocked and swayed—that was passion. He could coax the guitar to make sounds she didn’t even know how to describe, crisp dots, sharp clenches, long wails of music. She bet he could make it say anything he wanted it to. She bet he could make it deliver a whole Shakespearean monologue.
Her mom and her sisters would love this guy, and she was sure he’d love them. Mark was a guy who lived big, lived out loud. Her mom gave whole workshops on this kind of thing—the authentic life, the artist’s life.
She tried not to think about the look on his face and failed. There was no way she couldn’t see it as a sex look. Her body was definitely reading it that way. It said he was following his bliss and following it all the way down.
It made her feel things.
For one, it made her wish she had something like that in her life, some creative outlet that could take her out of time, out of her body, and let her express herself the way Mark could. Her mom made pottery, and even though the bowls were misshapen and the sets never matched, her mom looked as if she was in heaven when she was up to her elbows in gray mud. Haven even owned a set. She just didn’t...use them when people came over.
Sometimes she convinced herself that the apple hadn’t fallen so far from the tree. Okay, she didn’t create poetry or shape pots or make music. But she created celebrities and shaped images and made people.
Haven loved her job, and that was what mattered. And there were plenty of men out there who would respect what she did, love her ability to contribute financially, and enjoy being part of her social scene. She just needed to find one.
Under the spotlights, Mark took another solo, and now he was grinning at the guy across the stage from him and trading licks, each of them feeding off the other. It made her realize something about Mark she hadn’t understood before. Why he resented the tour so much. Why he didn’t want to be a pop musician, even if it would make money and let him help his father. Even if it seemed like the sort of thing no one in his right mind would turn down.
This was Mark, pouring himself into his music, his inner self on display for the whole room, in people’s ears, throbbing in their skin, pulsing in their blood. Of course he didn’t want to package himself up like some eighteen-year-old boy and make forgettable music for money.
The exchange between the two guitarists rose in intensity, toward frenzy. Like—
Like sex, she thought, of course. Mysteriously, miraculously, Mark Webster had the power to make Haven think about sex all the time. For two years, she’d hadn’t felt much interest at all, and now...