A single spotlight shines on him, and he’s singing a song I’ve never heard. It’s soulful and bluesy, and his voice vibrates through me, reminding me of how it felt to have him whisper in my ear at night as we lay together in bed. I stand, caught between the desire to run onstage and throw my arms around him and the need to flee, leaving the possibility of rejection forever a mystery.
As the song ends and the audience claps enthusiastically, I force myself to move forward, looking around for a seat that isn’t too conspicuous. As if I’m wearing a homing device of some sort, Joss’s head whips up and he looks straight at me. The smile that floods his face is so blindingly brilliant, so full of undisguised joy that for a moment I’m unable to catch my breath. I see him motion to someone on the edge of the room, and a moment later, a tall, dark-complexioned man approaches me.
“Ms. DiLorenzo?” he asks very politely.
“Yes?”
“If you’ll follow me. Mr. Jamison saved you a seat up front.”
I walk behind him while Joss says a few things to the audience and tunes his guitar a bit, as if he’s stalling, waiting for me to get seated.
Once I’ve been shown to the table that sits front and center before the stage, Joss smiles down at me again. Then he talks some more.
“Almost a year ago now, I met someone.”
The crowd gives him a hard time. Not rudely, just teasing. Some of the women yell that he’s broken their hearts. The men say, “Thank God too!”
“You guys know it’s been a pretty rough year for me, and I’m afraid I made it a pretty rough year for her too.”
This time there’s sympathy from the audience.
“But tonight is sort of a fresh start, and I hope it can be a fresh start for both of us.”
Then he starts to play, and with the first words that fall from his lips, I realize it’s the song about me. The Girl From Shangri-La. I sit raptly and listen as he sings about a woman who is his paradise on earth. How he fears that what they had didn’t mean the same to her that it did to him. How she taught him to fall in love and now he can’t fall out. I listen to his smoky voice sing what he feels about me, and I realize tears are rolling down my face and pressure is building in my heart.
As he strums the last dying chords of the song, I put my hands over my mouth, afraid if I don’t physically stop myself I’ll cry out how much I still love him. He looks at me from the stage, and somewhere in the corners of my consciousness I hear him say, “I’m going to take a five minute break and then I’ll do another set.” Everyone claps, some house music comes on, and Joss sets his guitar carefully aside as he stands up and hops off the stage, walking straight to my table.
I stand on shaky legs, trying quickly to wipe the tears away. He looks at me, reads me as if I’m a book.
“You came,” he says quietly.
“Yes,” I nod, my voice trembling.
“Did you like the song?” He seems genuinely concerned.
“How could I not?” I ask, feeling tears trying to squeeze out yet again.
“Aw, Mel, please don’t cry,” he whispers as he steps closer.
This causes me to break down entirely, and I shake with sobs as he wraps his arms around me and simply holds me, stroking my hair.
His lips are next to my ear, and he’s pressing me to him as if he’s afraid I’ll try to escape. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry,” he says over and over again. “I love you, Mel. You have to know that. I will always love you. Only you. It’s only ever been you.”
I try to catch my breath and stop the tears. The front of Joss’s t-shirt is drenched, and I’m sure I look like hell. He pulls away to look at my face, running his fingers gently under my eyes to wipe at errant tears.
“Talk to me, baby. Tell me what you’re thinking. Do I have any chance at all here?”
I finally look up at him, into those perfect, crystal-clear green eyes. He’s so scared, so vulnerable. I’ve never seen the rock god Joss Jamison look this way. I take his hand and hold it over my heart. “Do you feel that?” I ask.
He nods, his breathing heavy and his hand trembling.
“It needs you, Joss. I need you. Only you.”
There is no warning at all as his lips crash into mine. His big, warm hands cradle my jaw and his fingers dig into my hair. I feel the shock of the kiss from my chest all the way to my toes. There are no preliminaries, no gentle touches, just sheer, unadulterated need. His breath comes in gasps, his biceps under my hands are tensed, and his tongue invades my mouth with hot longing. I hear a small squeak come from me as he surprises me with the force of his onslaught. But then I give in to it and feel as if molten light is being poured through my body, warming all the places that have been so cold and dark without Joss.
As his hands start to wander from my face and skim down my sides, his thumbs brushing the undersides of my breasts and then working down to cup my ass and draw me closer, he breaks the kiss and rasps in my ear, “We should probably go home to finish this.”
I giggle, slightly embarrassed. “You’re probably right,” I gasp out.
“I have one more set. I’ll go fast. Will you sit right here and wait for me?”
I answer by wrapping my arm around his neck and rocking his world for a few more seconds. I leave him breathing heavily and quietly swearing as he tries to adjust his jeans so he can go back onstage. He gives me one more hard, quick kiss and then walks up to his stool, grabs his guitar, and sits down.
The house music stops and the spotlight comes back up.
“Portland,” he says, grinning. “Is this a great fucking night or what?”
When Joss is done performing, he asks me to come backstage with him. I wait in the hallway while he ducks into the dressing room, grabs his jacket, and puts his guitar in its case. Then he strides out, guiding me down the hall to the exit. We walk out into a cool spring night, moisture in the air creating a soft, filtered look to the lights in the parking lot.
“Did you drive here?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I answer, pointing to my little Subaru hatchback parked nearby.
“I’ll bring you back to pick it up later?”
“Okay.”
He leads me to a long dark sports sedan. I notice the hood ornament.
“A Jaguar?” I ask, squinting at him.
He shrugs. “Why not?” He opens my door for me, and I realize that I’ve never been driven in a car by Joss. We’ve always ridden with chauffeurs. It strikes me suddenly that, while we spent all day and all night together for months, I’ve never seen where Joss lives and I’ve never had him drive me somewhere. We’ve never been to a grocery store together or cooked a meal with each other.
I sit in the car and wait for him to walk around to the other side and get in. “Where are we going?” I ask.
“I’m hoping to my condo,” he says, one eyebrow raised.
As he starts the car and the engine literally purrs to life, I observe, “You know, I’ve never ridden with you driving.”
He stops for moment, thinking. “I guess that’s true. Are you scared to drive with me?” He winks.
“No, but you have to admit we had a weird relationship.” He turns out of the parking lot and heads toward downtown. “I’ve never seen where you live, yet I called you my boyfriend most of last summer.”
I quickly realize that the Jag is in fact the perfect car for him. It’s as smooth and sleek as Joss, and he drives it as though it’s an extension of him. He doesn’t respond to my observations, instead turning on some Bonnie Raitt. Her gravelly voice fills the darkened car as we speed along Portland’s urban avenues until we come to a medium-sized building, obviously a depression-era WPA project with Art Deco design details.
Joss turns sharply into the parking garage beneath the building and winds around until he gets to a row of stalls with doors. He punches the button, and after one of the garage doors opens, he pulls the car inside then shuts the door. We exit the car and he leads me through a small door into a hallway that ends at a set of elevator doors. He’s still silent, and I start to worry he’s changed his mind or I’ve made him question the whole thing by mentioning that we’ve never done normal things.
Inside the elevator, he punches the number three and up we go. When we get off, I see that there are only two doors on the floor. Joss leads me to the one on the west side of the building and unlocks it as he ushers me inside. Lights go on automatically as we enter, and I’m faced with a large open floor plan. A living room, a kitchen, and a dining room are all within view of the foyer. The floors are dark wood, and the walls range from taupe in the living room to a creamy white in the kitchen. All the rooms have high ceilings and thick white wood trim.
Before I have a chance to say how lovely I think it is, Joss’s hands and lips are everywhere. My face, my neck, my back, my hair, my skin.
“Mel?” he whispers as his fingers play with my hair and his lips brush across my collarbone.
“Yeah?” I squirm under the attack.
“Would it be okay if we talked about all the stuff we need to later? Like after I’ve been inside you for five or six hours straight?”
He starts walking me backwards. I have no idea what’s behind me or where I’m going, but I don’t really care as long as he keeps licking my earlobe and caressing my—Oh, dear God, that feels good. Before I know it, we’re in a room that’s dark, a sliver of light from the street outside peeking through the gap in the curtains.