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Twenty-One

"Kellieeeeeeeeeeee…." AJ whined.

"Ajaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy…" I laughed. "God, baby, you’re killing me with the whining."

"It huuuuuuuurts!" I giggled and smoothed more cream on his sun burnt back. "It’s not funny…" he sighed and pouted.

"I’m sorry honey…" he flinched slightly as I gently ran my fingertips over his sensitive skin. I leaned forward and kissed his bare shoulder, "I think I got it all… any better?"

"A little…"

I crawled around his body and sat between his legs facing him and smiled, "Your face is a little red too…"

He gave me a pitiful look that made me laugh, "Why didn’t you get burnt? You fell asleep with me…"

I smiled, "Because I use sunscreen? You know… that sticky lotion you loved rubbing into my skin all day?"

"Kel…"

I chuckled, "It’s true, honey. It has nothing to do with the fact that I’m naturally darker than you are. I burn just as easily as you do with my mocha skin, as you call it, as you do with your almond skin. I just know better than to sit outside all day in Orlando without sunscreen."

He rolled his eyes at me and then closed them as I smoothed cream on his face for him, "You’re enjoying this too much."

"What?" I giggled.

"All of this… me being burnt, you NOT being burnt, the cream, the whining, rubbing it in…"

"I’m not enjoying the whining, "I laughed and winked at him. "But yeah… I am enjoying this…" I leaned forward and kissed his lips gently. "Anywhere else hurt?" I asked holding up the tube of cream.

"Just the fact that I can’t make love to you tonight…"

"Baby…" I whispered. "Junior didn’t get burnt…"

He laughed and shook his head, "I wish you wouldn’t call him Junior."

"I could call him much worse things…" I laughed.

"True… and I know he didn’t get burnt, but I can barely stand to sit here without wincing in pain. There’s no way that Junior and I can… uh… perform."

I dropped my head against his chest and giggled, "Perform…"

"Kel!"

"Sorry…"

"So no nookie tonight."

"No nookie?"

He shook his head, "Nope…"

"Not even a little nookie?"

"Nope…"

"Now it’s my turn to whine…" I sighed and he laughed. "What if we’re really careful? I won’t hurt you baby… unless you ask me to."

He shook his head and laughed, "You’re too much. Sex sex sex! Is that all you want me for?"

I nodded, "Pretty much… that and your money. Maybe a little of your fame. Oh and your friends!" I laughed and he silenced me with a kiss pushing me onto my back on the bed as his tongue slid across mine and his body pressed against me.

"Smart ass…"

"I thought it hurt your back to move…"

"You know…" he smiled thinking about it.  "It doesn’t feel so bad anymore… maybe we’ll be okay."

I pressed my hips up into his, feeling his erection press against my body and licked my lips, "Oh yeah… we’re going to be just fine…"

*****

Packing for a yearlong tour is not an easy thing to do. I found myself standing in my apartment with Johnny rubbing up against my legs purring, as I looked around dumbfounded about what to take. AJ kept telling me how anything that I didn’t pack, we’d be able to get on the road, but I just wanted my own things. I bent down and picked Johnny up, holding him to my chest, "I wish I could pack you…" I sighed rubbing under his chin. "Mama’s going to miss you the most…"

Walking over to my bed I laid down with Johnny padding his way up my body until he settled on my stomach and curled up to sleep. I stared at the ceiling for a while as I ran my fingers though his fur, and then reached for the phone as it rang startling me from my thoughts. "Kel’s love pit…" I chuckled as I answered after checking the caller ID seeing that it was AJ.

"How’s my girl?"

"Emotional."

"Talk to me…"

"I don’t want to leave Johnny, and I don’t know what to pack."

He chuckled and I closed my eyes listening to his voice, "Baby, don’t worry about packing, you know how touring is, we learn to make do with what we have. Just pack the things you know you can’t live with. Anything else, we’ll replace, or have someone ship to you."

"What about my kitty?" I pouted.

"Grandma Denise will give him all sorts of love while we’re gone. Plus, we’ll visit him whenever we have a long enough break. The first leg is only forty-one dates and then we get to come back home for a month. It’s not like we’ll be gone for the whole year without coming home at all…" he paused and listened to the silence over the line. "You there?"

"Yeah…" I whispered and looked up at the ceiling again. "I just miss you…"

"I miss you too, baby. So much… I wish I could have gone up there with you."

"I know… but there’s no way you can miss the last week of rehearsals. I’m just being whiney…" I smiled.

"It’s okay… I whined enough last week with the sunburn," he laughed.

"Yeah you did…"

"You don’t have to rub it in…" he giggled.  "Yeah I was sitting here in bed thinking about you and I decided I just had to call. I want you back home…"

"I know, honey. And I’ll be back in a few days. Then you’ll have me non stop for months on end."

"But I want you right now…" he sighed. "God… I can’t even explain what I’m feeling."

"Try to…" I pushed gently.

He paused and I listened to the silence waiting for him to talk. "I ache for you. It’s like my entire body, heart, mind and soul longs to be with you. I want to touch you and be next to you, and kiss you, taste you, make love to you, cuddle with you, talk to you… All the things we’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks. I know you’ve only been gone for a day, but it feels like an eternity. I can’t concentrate, I can’t sleep,  I keep screwing up in rehearsal. I swear Kevin’s about to kill me." He paused and laughed a bit and I smiled through the tears that were falling down my cheeks silently. "I don’t know, baby… I just feel like I finally got a hold of you, and I don’t want to let go. Not even for three days while you’re up there packing and getting ready to spend the rest of the year with me." He paused again and listened, "Kel?"

"You made me cry…" I chuckled as I wiped at my tears.

"I didn’t mean to make you cry… but you told me to explain so I did."

"I know. And you did a great job explaining it. I just…" I sighed and closed my eyes with my hand on Johnny’s back.

"Just what?"

"I never expected to ever hear someone say anything like that to me. Let alone my best friend in the world."

I knew he was smiling as he listened to me and I smiled too, "I just love you so much…"

"I love you too… and I’m hating the fact that I won’t see you for two more days now even more than I was before. I just want to hold you next to my body…"

"We can always have phone sex to tide us over while we’re apart…" he laughed.

"Sex sex sex…" I laughed mocking him.

"Oh please…"

"I wasn’t saying that I didn’t enjoy the idea… I just like saying the word sex. Sex sex sex sex sex…" I giggled.

"Uh huh… so what are you wearing?"

I looked down my body and laughed, "Dopey sweatshirt, flannel pants, a pair of your sweat socks and my cow slippers."

"Oh man… that’s so not sexy!" He laughed.

"Yeah but it’s warm…"

"How’s the weather up there?"

"Gloriously cold and snowy…" I smiled and listened to him groan.

"That’s an oxymoronic statement if I’ve ever heard one."

"Yeah well… this gloriously cold and snowy weather is exactly what you’re going to be living in soon. I do believe that just a few weeks into the tour we hit DC, Philly, New York, Chicago, Pontiac and Toronto… that means snow baby!" I grinned knowing how much he hated the cold weather.

"You’re evil…"

"I’ll keep you warm…" I smiled.

"You better…"

"You know what I just realized?"

"That you want my body?" he laughed.

"Well yeah… but I just realized that we’ve never had sex in my apartment." I chuckled and looked around the bedroom. "I’m lying on a bed that we haven’t christened."

"Damn… we’re going to have to do something about that when we’re in New York then aren’t we?"

"Perhaps…" I smiled.

"Perhaps?! Um what the hell is the ‘perhaps’ for?"

I giggled and my call waiting beeped at me, "Shit… got another call… back in a sec…" I switched over to the other line with a smile still on my face, "Hello?"

"Kel?" a quiet voice whispered.

"Yeah?" I asked rolling over to look at the caller ID only to find it to say Private. "Who…"

"It’s Nick…"

I immediately sat up in bed and Johnny raced away as I startled him out of sleep. "What’s wrong?"

"I… Well I wanted… Shit…" He sighed into the phone and I found myself with my hand over my heart listening to him as intently as I could.

"Nicky?"

He sighed again and began to talk, "I just wanted to talk to you. I was thinking about the fight we had last week and I wanted to talk to you. I was thinking about everything you said and how we… well I just… I didn’t want you to think that I hated you or anything. I just couldn’t understand. I never understood what happened. I mean I understood what happened but I didn’t understand why. And then you told me all of that stuff the other night and it just fucked with my head. You were right though… we need to really talk about this and I want to do that now, I’m ready to do that now."

I could tell by the way that his voice was coming across the line that he’d been drinking. The last thing I wanted was to engage a "serious" conversation with him while he was drunk, but I could also hear the desperation in his voice and could tell that he really did want to talk. "Okay, honey… I’ve got someone on the other line though okay? Let me get rid of him, and then we can talk…"

"Him?" He asked quickly. "Who are you talking to?"

"It’s just AJ… Let me put you on hold for a minute and I’ll get rid of him."

"No… you know what? Never mind. I shouldn’t have interrupted. I…"

"Nick…" I sighed.

"Kel, don’t okay? I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have called… I’m gunna let you go. "

"But we need to talk about this stuff…"

"Yeah…" he said somberly.  "I’ll see you at rehearsals when you get back to Florida."

"Nick, I…" the line went dead before I could finish my sentence and I laid back on the bed. "Fuck!" I squeezed my eyes shut and took deep breaths until I realized that AJ was still holding on the other line. I clicked back over, "Sorry…"

"It’s okay. I’m just fantasizing about what I’m going to do to you when you get back down here…" he chuckled.

"Cool…" I said quietly still running Nick’s words through my head.

"Who was on the phone?" AJ asked with concern in his voice.

"It was Nick…" I said shaking my head. "I think he was drunk…"

AJ’s voice was spiked with anger, "What did he say?"

"He wasn’t mean…" I sighed trying to figure out how to explain Nick’s call. "He was almost sad. Kept saying that he finally wanted to talk. But then he freaked out when he found out that I was talking to you. God I wish I were down there right now."

"So you could go talk to him in person?" he asked quietly.

I shook my head somberly and closed my eyes as I rolled onto my side hugged the pillow that I’d covered with a pillowcase carrying AJ’s scent on it, "No… so that I could be with you, and you could hold me right now."