AVA
As far as work went, after the night Bruno and I found Eddy, we entered the eye of a hurricane. Everything that seemed tumultuous and chaotic became calm. The storm continued to wage all around us but as a team, we floated above the fray. To be clear, as far as the outside world could see, that’s what Bruno and I were, a very professional, organized team.
We began each day with a morning meeting. Bruno would come to my office first thing in the morning to discuss his daily objectives. It was always the same. I would hear him say good morning to Lorelai, and then my door would open and before it was fully closed, he’d say, “Just want to run the day by you before I get started.”
We began the ritual of our morning meetings after we returned from California. This very visible structure to the day gave the office the impression that the dynamic between us had grown copacetic. The scuttlebutt was that Bruno was no longer hiding on the fourth floor because he had accepted the role given to me by his parents and was working hard to prove his worth to LSA. The gossip about our rivalry quieted and both the board members and LSA’s client list seemed to buy into the idea that maybe the ship was righted and Bruno and I could run LSA together. There was also newfound energy buzzing in the atmosphere. As word got around about the three singles in four months, many of LSA’s employees had become invested in seeing Bruno succeed.
And while I loved that our “morning meetings” were giving off the impression that we were very professional, planning and plotting together, I didn’t actually spend a lot of time thinking about what Bruno was saying to me at eight a.m., because while he might mention something like, “Sam and Delilah are in studio four all day today with Josh” or “Meredith is taking Eddy to Rogue Music to get a new guitar” or “Marcus wants to meet with you to discuss marketing strategies,” he also had me bent over the soundboard in the little studio, clenched and coming, so the things I remembered him saying were a lot more tawdry, like “Fuck, Ava, I want to die inside this pussy” and “Be a good girl and get on your knees.”
Every morning. Every single morning for two months.
It was incredible. I couldn’t be within ten feet of him without feeling slick between my legs. All I thought about was being with him, touching him, teasing him, irritating him. The girl I knew myself to be, the one who worked night and day and was focused on being the best, she was missing in action. Bruno would come into my office to discuss something serious and I would get lost thinking about what it felt like when he pressed his fingers into the flesh at my hip or how I could come just from taking his cock in my mouth.
Still, somehow everything was getting done. Bruno was right. His people were talented. Very talented. We were past the two-month mark and so far, so good. Sam and Delilah were in the studio recording, mostly with Eric. They basically had an entire album in the can, maybe two. Twenty years of singing and writing with no one listening didn’t stop Sam from being prolific. Bruno spent hours listening to songs Sam had written, hunting for his comeback song and they’d settled on something called, “Ribs and Roller Skates,” which sounded ridiculous to me. But Bruno kept calling it a ditty and saying, “You’ll see, this is the one they’ll be humming in the shower and singing in their cars.”
Eddy also came packaged with songs ready and raring to go, but her situation was more complicated. She needed coaching and legally, we had temporary custody of her while she was seeking emancipation. We had done everything we could to make sure she had good, unbiased legal representation. But there was no denying that the circumstances were sticky and rife with the potential for perceived impropriety.
At the moment, we were letting her record without a contract. Of course, that was an industry no-no; it left us unprotected. But if we were going to get her single out in the time frame we’d given the board, then there was no choice. So, she was trusting us and we were trusting her. I tried to push it to the back of my mind that she was a kid, and kids make messes and mistakes in ways adults usually don’t. Some mornings, after Bruno left my office, I had to take deep breaths and remind myself that there was no use worrying about it, but it never worked. And I wound up calling Harry Richards, head of our legal team, at least once a day to ask if there was any forward momentum on her emancipation. He always answered the call with the same lament, Nothing to report.
Bruno kept assuring me that Eddy would be eighteen just before his four-month time limit so worst case, we would release her song on her eighteenth birthday. His optimism was to be commended, but that would only give us a week to make her song popular, which seemed impossible. Still, Bruno assured me. “Marcus says a week is more than enough time.”
Despite my stress and anxiety, I found that mostly, I was happy, a smiling, glowing doofus, drifting through meetings, smiling at strangers, laughing on phone calls, and counting the minutes until I found myself back in Bruno’s airspace. I was in love. It was that simple. And love makes people stupid. It makes you blind. It makes you forget that even though everything seems clear and calm in the eye of the storm—the storm is still coming, pushing and punching hard and fast at your back, making sure you don’t even have time to consider what’s about to hit you.
So when the storm hit, I wasn’t prepared.
It was a manic day. At first, perfect and then terrible. Two weeks earlier, a recording of one of James’s songs was leaked. As far as I was concerned the leak was Marcus. It was clearly an inside job, footage from the fourth-floor studio taped on a cell phone. Could it have been a janitor or a food delivery dude? Sure. Did I think it was? Absolutely not. The footage went viral quickly, picked up by gossip rags, desperate to know what was happening inside the world of LSA Records. With the viral leak came tons of legit press and by the time James’s actual single was released, people were lined up to buy it.
So on the day the storm hit, a Tuesday, Bruno came barreling up to my office around eleven a.m. I heard him outside the door throwing his greeting. “Lorelai.”
In my mind’s eye, I could see the little tip of his head he gave her. His voice was high and filled with glee. And just the spark of knowing that he was happy about something made me bite my lip. He came barreling in without pausing, quickly shutting and locking the door behind him. Then, facing me, he grinned, “One down, two to go.”
Casually standing there in black jeans and a black T-shirt, his sleeves pulled tight across his biceps, strands of his chocolate hair slipped free from the elastic he’d haphazardly tied them back with. He smiled at me and the glee took over his whole face. The ugly dark chip he’d carried on his shoulder for as long as I’d known him was nowhere to be seen. He just radiated joy.
“Did you hear me?” he asked, tucking a strand behind his ear. “We have our first chart-topper, Aves.”
I was excited. But more than that, I was painfully aware that I fucking loved him. I loved him so much that it was bursting out of my skin, and without meaning to, that’s what I said, “I love you.”
Instinctually, he grumbled a little laugh, and then he said, “Wait, what?”
I got up from behind my desk and crossed the room so I was standing in front of him. I kept my hands by my sides, trying not to give in to how incredibly vulnerable and exposed I felt. And I said it again. “I love you.”
His face contorted, flashing annoyance and pain or maybe anger, and then Bruno kissed me. He grabbed me and pulled me into his arms, kissing me hard and fast, desperately. With a shove, he backed me up against my desk and started hiking up my skirt. Nothing about his behavior was soft or gentle but he wasn’t cruel. He was frenetic, pulling and pressing. While still groping at me, he unbuckled his belt and his pants, freeing his dick. Forcefully, he pushed and tore, until my bare ass was on my desk, my legs were split, and his thick, hard cock head was waiting at my core, perched and ready to bury deep inside me. Only then did he speak.
“Say it again.” He grinned.
I couldn’t catch my breath. My chest shook. I was trapped somewhere between fear and ecstasy.
He growled at me, “Say. It. Again.”
My lip trembled. He leaned forward, pinching it between his teeth and bit down, causing a tiny shiver of pain. Gently, he sucked where he had just bitten and then reaching down, he gripped his cock and probed the tip at the opening of my pussy, playing in the slickness there. He tried to be gentler when he said, “Please, Ava, tell me again.”
I couldn’t understand what he was doing, but I gave him what he needed. “I love you.” The words were softer this time, almost a whisper, laden with my utter compliance.
As soon as I said them, he pushed his cock inside me, driving all the way in until I rocked against his pubic bone. My body opened for him, unable to refuse the pleasure our connection brought. He pulled back, slamming into me a second, third, and fourth time as he smiled and said, “Fuck you, beautiful Ava. Fuck you for always winning. Fuck you for being braver and stronger and more capable. Fuck you for being everything I want, always. Fuck you for saying you love me when I should be saying it to you.”
He loved me. We weren’t just fucking. We weren’t just lusty. We were in love.
He shifted his hands, grabbing my hips, his fingers pressing into the fleshy cheeks of my ass as he pulled me flush against him.
“This is where you belong. Do you understand?” he asked.
I started to give in, to nod, bowing my hips against him, chasing the pleasure he brought, but it wasn’t right. I clenched around his cock, tightening every muscle in my body, and fought back. I wanted him to know everything between us was mutual. “No.”
“No?” he questioned, stilling our bodies.
“This is where you belong,” I whimpered, still desperate for his motion but unwilling to leave it unbalanced. It was time for Bruno to stop saving me. I wanted us to save each other.
He dropped my hips and brought his hands to cradle my face. “I know, baby,” he said reverently.
I couldn’t help myself, and I said it again. “I love you.”
Everything about him softened, and looking in my eyes, he cooed, “Fuck, Ava, I love you too. Always.”
Everything shifted then, the rough and ugly rhythm we shared often dissipated, and we made love for the first time, rocking gently against each other in a way that felt utterly unfamiliar. We kissed and coddled, our mouths like drifting clouds. Everything about the way we touched felt slow and languid but alive with sensation. Normally when I came I turned inward. I closed my eyes, got lost in the cosmos of my own sensation, but this was different. This time I looked at Bruno. I held his gaze and felt his pleasure rising with my own. I let myself feel the vulnerability of being open to him, letting him see me utterly out of control and on the brink. We stared into each other's eyes and we came, and the rush was like coming for the first time.
It was only when it was over that I realized what we’d done. For sure the whole office heard us. We hadn’t even tried to conceal the sounds of our lovemaking. Bruno was still collapsed on my chest in a state of postcoital bliss when the panic started bubbling in my belly like acid. And then both our phones started ringing and I knew. We weren’t going to keep the peace we’d found. The eye had passed and the storm had returned stronger than ever.