Page 14 of Best Friend Burden

“They're bland as hell.”

Ugh, I knew it. It wasn't just my Tejano taste buds. Kiefer wasn't going for them, either.

“Where did you get the supplies?” he asked.

“It was a farmer's market in Santa Monica.”

“Santa Monica?” he asked. “For Mexican food? That's practically a crime. No, you want to go to Pershing Square. That's where you get the authentic stuff.”

I ran back to my room to grab a pad and pencil, where I scribbled down the information.

“They're not open now, are they?”

“Nah,” he said, “LA's a big city, but everything but the bars close down by 9 or 10. Sometimes the movie theaters are open a bit later, but that's it.”

“Tomorrow then,” I said. “In the meantime, let me take care of your kitchen.”

My heart sunk as I said the words. It truly was like a war zone in there. I wasn't about to leave a mess, though. I created the disaster, so I was going to fix it. Starting with the counters, I removed all the cut up veggies and tossed them into the trash. When I turned around, I saw Kiefer had brought a broom and was getting to work on the floor.

“I've got it,” I said. “Seriously.”

“Nah, I'll help,” he said. “Just this once, though.”

“You don't have to,” I insisted.

“I shouldn't have snapped at you like I did,” he said. “Consider this an apology. Sometimes I have a bit of a short temper. I'll help you clean up. But just this once.”

“Okay,” I said, “but don't start with the floors. Start from the top going down. Otherwise, we'll knock more stuff onto the floor in the process and just have to do them over again.”

He moved over to the sink and began running the water.

“You know,” he said, “it's funny because it seems so obvious, but nobody'd ever taught me that before. I sort of taught myself how to clean once I moved out. That's the problem with self-teaching. You miss the obvious lessons.”

“You're self-taught on bass, though, right?”

I seem to remember him saying that back in high school when we were close friends.

“Kind of,” he told me. “You know, everybody thinks it's about the fingers, but it's not. Playing an instrument, I mean. Your fingers will figure out what to do and where to go if you've got the ear and the heart for it.”

Looking over at his hands as he scrubbed the dishes, there was a clear dexterity to them. A precision and muscularity that most men didn't have. He was the first man I had ever noticed something that detailed about. I knew what my heart wanted and what I wanted his fingers to do.

As I handed a pot over to him so he could scrub it, I intentionally brushed against that hand, hoping that it was light enough that he either didn't notice or assumed it was intentional. It did so much for me, that brief skin on skin contact, but at the same time it wasn't nearly enough.

That image of him in the other room touching himself wasn't about to leave my mind anytime soon. Or at all. And I needed to take care of it before I did something stupid. Well, stupid but fun. And probably worth it.

Who was I kidding? It would definitely be worth it. Feeling his body below me as I rode on top of his cock, which was hitting me right where it needed to. I shivered with pleasure just thinking about it.

“You cold?”

“No,” I said. “Someone must have walked over my grave or something.”

But it would still be stupid. Very stupid.

“Anyway,” he said, “my dad taught me how to play standard acoustic guitar. How to tune it and stuff. My mom signed me up for lessons, but I didn't want to play the classical exercises my teacher was giving me. Instead, I'd figured stuff out from listening to it on my iPod. But it was the bass lines that I thought were the coolest things and I was basically teaching myself to play bass on the nylon six string. My parents got me a real bass guitar when I turned 14 and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“So I guess your parents supported you?”

“It took time,” he said. “They didn't really get the indie rock stuff I was listening to. Spoon, Hole, Smashing Pumpkins. That sort of thing. They wanted me to be more folksy like Arlo Guthrie or Willie Nelson. Or maybe Johnny Cash. But when they saw me play with the band, I think that was what finally convinced them that even if they didn't get what I was doing, I had talent, and other people were enjoying it.”

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