We Have Till Dawn

I let my fingers slide over the strings and glanced across the aisle. Anthony had his head bowed when he played—when he sang from his heart. It was a sign. I knew this wasn’t “just some song.” Nonna would see it too.

His voice never failed to capture my attention, and with the choir in the background, it was shivers all around. He sang of having nothing to say, having nowhere to go, and I wanted to say there was; he just needed to get up and dust himself off and try again.

The music quieted down until it was just my guitar, and that was when Anthony raised the tempo and sang louder. It was his thing. Ending one verse with peace, beginning the next with force.

The harmonies from the choir gave me goose bumps, and I looked out over the pews to see the response from the people watching. And my gaze landed on the strange man in the suit who remained standing in the doorway.

Feeling trapped…

Nothing to say…

Nowhere to go…

Anthony wasn’t the only one hiding, the only one settling.

I was an idiot. There was no way it was him.

Right?

Gideon had told me he was six-four or something, hadn’t he? He had a lot of money and could afford all things bespoke. Dark hair, brown eyes. I’d become intimately familiar with his body type. I’d heard the sound his dress shoes made on the hardwood floor in the apartment. But he wasn’t standing in the doorway of a small church in Brooklyn right now. Not after the spiel he’d given me on not sharing personal information with him.

I lowered my gaze and closed my eyes, willing myself to concentrate on the song and nothing else.

We had five or six weeks left before the concert.

My fingers itched to put words to paper.

There was a reason I was so invested in Anthony’s life, even in Gideon’s life, and I was afraid it was to distract myself from my own sorry love life. Or lack thereof.

I couldn’t worry about that right now, though.

As the song drew to a close for the second time, I opened my eyes again.

The man in the doorway had left.Get back up, get back up again.

I hummed to myself as I prepared my, oh…third ice cream sundae for the day. I went with strawberry this time, along with enough chocolate sauce to cover the ice cream, then a dozen maraschino cherries and a couple chocolate-filled wafers.

Then I went back to my keyboard and sat down. I had another half hour or so to develop the song I was working on before I had to get ready for Gideon’s arrival. I’d been at it all day, unable to get Anthony’s song out of my head. It deserved a response.

You’ll find strength in the fight.

“Hmm.” I stuck the ice-cream-filled spoon into my mouth and jotted down the words in my notebook.

I wanted to believe that the best kind of love was worth burning for. A flicker of a flame wasn’t enough. It had to consume you. I wanted the blood, sweat, and tears kind of love. The unpredictable, the wild, and the hard love.

Hard love.

We were always proud of hard work. We stood taller next to our biggest achievements.

Hold on tight.

The music swept through me, and I played until the perfect melody emerged. I’d continue working on it tomorrow, though I suspected my mind would be preoccupied with it all night. Hey, Gideon wanted me passive and motionless; he was gonna get it. I’d just wander off mentally instead.

Or, I was gonna get through to him somehow. I kept going back and forth. He’d texted me the instructions for tonight, and he wanted me lying naked on my side when he arrived. Sleep mask on until the lights were off, and then he’d remove it. He’d thought of me all day, he’d said, and he wanted to be inside me within a minute of his getting here, so I had to prepare myself too.

He was taking the excitement out of this arrangement mad fast.

I was officially nothing more than a sex doll, and it made it difficult to motivate myself to help him.That rock made a comeback in the pit of my stomach tonight, and now I knew it had nothing to do with my job as a sex worker. It wasn’t about sex, it wasn’t about selling it, it wasn’t about feeling “dirty.” It was because of clients like Gideon. Every now and then, someone had rented my services to treat me like an object, and that did it. That was the reason.

Gideon hadn’t been lying. He’d been inside me within a minute of his arrival, and he’d been different. He hadn’t spoken a word until he’d gotten off about two minutes ago. And then, he’d only said, “I’ll be right back.”