Page 6 of Echoes of a Muted Song

He stood when I was ready, and I grabbed his hand, giving it a little squeeze as we headed for the door. The way he strutted down the hall with me was like watching him when he was up on stage, head held high with a whole lot of swagger that didn’t stop all the way to poolside, despite some of the looks we garnered as we headed through the lobby. If anything, he just added a bitof sway to his step to go with the swagger and damn, I started trailing just a half step behind so I could check out his ass.

He knew it, too. That flirtatious smirk was back on his face when we sat across from one another on deck chairs to remove our shoes. He even winked when he caught me watching him.

“We turned some heads, didn’t we?” he remarked, giggling as he glanced back over his shoulder toward the door we’d just exited through. “Betcha half of them wanted to be you and the other half wanted to do you.”

I’d left my device back in the room so it wouldn’t get damaged, not that I had a comment to follow that up with. Snorting, I just doubled over and let rough, guttural chuckles roll up my throat and pour out. It made getting those sneakers off difficult, but man it felt good to laugh. I’d spotted two people in the pool when we sat down, but they were already out and heading for the hot tub several feet away by the time we headed down the steps and into the water.

“Ohh man, this is nice,” Johnny purred as he lay back in the water, floating as he stared up at the stars.

I happened to agree and sprawled on my back beside him, thrilled when he laced his fingers with mine while we floated.

Johnny did silences with a beautiful tranquility that I envied sometimes. It hadn’t been until my accident that I’d really come toappreciate how peaceful and soothing silence could be. I’d always felt driven to fill a space with sound. Humming, tapping, and singsongingly murmuring words as they reformed into song lyrics had been a part of my life for so long that at first, I’d feared that the accident had done something to my hearing as well as my voice, until I realized what I was hearing was the sound beneath the sounds I’d always made.

Talk about enlightening.

In the year since the event, I’d discovered the beauty of bird song and how rhythmic the plop of snow against snow could be during a heavy fall. The hush that came with it had been startling, too. A different kind of silence, it was almost like it could muffle thought.

Sometimes that was startling. In my darkest moments, when I really struggled with what had happened to me, it proved to be a true blessing and even a comfort.

“Have you ever wondered how many more there were, when the world first formed?” Johnny asked.

I turned my head to see his deep, honey-hued gaze studying me, and nodded, because I had thought about it a time or two. It didn’t surprise me for the conversation to end right there. In just one sentence, Johnny had clued me in about the mood he was in and what he was thinking about. I could already hear the melody in the words and wondered if they were part of the song he wasdetermined to untangle. I hoped so, I was curious to see where he was going with it.

The universe had a way of putting things into perspective and reminding us of how small we really were. It helped narrow my focus down to the moment and how freeing it was to just be a person enjoying a night with another person, free from the personalities we donned when we were onstage.

“Music, the stars, and Jagger were what saved me when I was a kid,” Johnny said as we drifted across the center of the pool. “We’d climb up the side of the balcony onto the roof of my aunt and uncle’s house and lie up there for hours, dreaming together because everything else in our lives sucked.”

Knowing what had happened to Jagger’s brother, I knew what he’d been looking to escape, but over all the years that I’d known Johnny, he’d hardly ever shared anything about his childhood. I hoped he would now, though.

Funny, but back when I could use my voice without limitation, I’d have been tempted to share one of my own stories of growing up. Now I found another benefit to silence. It allowed others the opportunity to fill it if they chose.

Hell, it dawned on me that I didn’t even know if he was an only child or if he had a passel of siblings hidden back in the Whaling City. I knew nothing of his life before I’d met him. I’d just been drawn to the man I’d seen on the stage.

“The roof was the only place it was ever silent and even then, there’d be a whisper of sound from someone’s TV show drifting out of an open window in summer, but in winter, it was the quietest place in the world, especially when it snowed.”

Sputtering, I sank beneath the surface, the image of him scaling a slick, snow-covered roof had left me itching to drag him over my knee so I could swat the hell out of that perky ass of his.

“You okay?” he asked, slipping an arm around me as I wiped the water from my face and scowled down at him.

“Yeah, I know, wasn’t the smartest place to be, but we were kids, and every kid thinks they’re invincible,” he murmured.

Narrowing my eyes, I had to concede the point. I’d have been up there, too. Hell, I’d been in so many trees, and fallen out, that it was a good thing I’d never wanted to learn an instrument. With how frequently the casts went on and off I’d have forgotten everything I’d learned by the time I could play again, and created a vicious, frustrating cycle that might have made me give up on music completely.

“We only had a couple close calls,” Johnny rambled, throwing my concession right out the window.

I held up my hand, slowly counting down on my fingers until he shook his head and pointed up. Growling low, I raised the finger I’d justlowered only to have him point upward again. Even adding them all back wasn’t enough, and I raised an eyebrow at him as I brought my other hand up in a fist. We were adding numbers this time, enough with that counting down bullshit. If there were more than two additional incidents, it was over with I tell ya, he was going across my knee right there in the pool.

One.

Grinning, he nodded, easing my frazzled nerves a little.

“Yeah, well that’s five too many,” I gritted out and sent a wave of water his way.

I should have known I was opening the door to the water fight to end all water fights, after all, I’d seen firsthand how devious Jagger could be in the midst of a game. This was his best friend and favorite playmate, I should have expected the same underhanded tactics out of him.

Not only did he send waves back in my direction, as in half the fuckin’ pool, but while I was blinded and staggering around, trying to figure out what damn direction it was all coming from ‘cause he seemed to be everywhere, the little fucker dove beneath the surface and yanked my trunks down around my ankles so I tripped on them the moment I moved.

I came up expecting another drenching while I wrestled to pull them up again, only he took pity on me, and when my vision was finally free and my trunks back to mostly covering me, Irealized why that was. He was lounging against the side of the pool, one arm hooked over the edge, laughing his ass off while he watched me struggle.

---