Loud is How I Love You by Mercy Brown Read Free Book Online

here and made it. They’re who I want to be.
    “Go talk to him,” Joey says. “Maybe we’ll get that opener spot at Ag Field Day.”
    I look up and feel a burning in the pit of my stomach. I’ve been introduced to Mickey before—he and Aaron come back to New Brunswick often enough to hang out and Carl from the Court is their regular sound guy when they go on tour. They’re plenty approachable, not dicks at all. This is actually a good night for Mickey to catch our set but there’s nothing I can think of to say to him without sounding like an asshole.
    “Em, go see what he thought of our set,” Joey prods me.
    “How can I do that without being douchey?”
    “Just go sit at the bar,” he says. “We’ll get the gear.”
    But I’m not going alone, that’ll look so obvious. I ask Travis if he’ll come get a drink at the bar with me.
    “Why do you need me to get a drink with you?” he asks. “I’ve got gear to load.”
    “Please?” I say.
    Travis schleps our amps over to the gear lounge and then comes back into the room and points at the bar. I meet him there and he orders himself a Guinness and me a vodka tonic. He hands Greg the bartender our drink tickets, but Greg gives them right back.
    “You guys were on fucking fire tonight,” he says. “All drinks on the house forever.”
    That’s why we love this town.
    Mickey is deep in conversation with Billy Broadband. We don’t really know Mickey, we’ve just met him once and he’s an actual rock star and I for one am sweating, stinking, my hair is a mess, and I’m sure my eyeliner is all over my face so I’m not going to make a point of talking to him. Bean and I drink our round in relative silence. Travis isn’t even looking at me now, but looking around like he’s searching for someone else. I hope it’s not Millie, but I’m pretty sure it is. I’m staring at his profile, the bead of sweat he wipes from his brow with a cocktail napkin. I poke him in the arm and he gives me an annoyed look, so I raise my glass to him in toast.
    “For that feedback solo,” I say. “The best I may have ever heard.”
    He stares blankly at me. He doesn’t raise his glass. He just finishes his beer as he levels this stern sort of look at me. Then he orders us another round and damn, we must have played really well because my drink is strong as hell.
    Red Five has started to play and it’s louder than war in here. I lean over and yell in Travis’s ear so he can hear me.
    “What the hell is your problem?”
    “What’s
my
problem?” he says. “What’s yours?”
    “You’re so mad at me all the time now,” I say, and then I try to take a teasing approach and punch him in the shoulder and lean in. “This is the thanks I get for letting you fuck me?”
    “Letting me fuck you?” he says, and he doesn’t find it funny, that’s obvious. “Emmy, you begged me to fuck you.”
    I blush, bite my lip like a fool because this is actually true. And fuck him anyway because now I am remembering fucking him all over again, in acute detail. I was so thankfully distracted by all that excellent rock we just conjured up in this joint, but now in my mind I’m right back to last weekend, when I was fully naked on my bed, on my back with Travis hovering over me. I shoved his pants down, his boxers, felt the muscles tensing in his thighs, and then he was naked on top of me, hard against my leg.
    For a few minutes we did nothing but kiss, with him harder and harder against my inner thigh, teasing me with his tongue, breathing into me until I couldn’t take any more. I needed him and I told him, just like that.
    “I’m here,” he said. Then he took my hand and intertwined his fingers with mine and kissed them. “I’m right here.”
    “I want you now. Please, now,” I said, and then reached down and felt him in my hand the first time, and oh holy God he was so long and thick and hard I thought he was going to break me. But that only made me want him more.
    “Let me