souls of black | fever in, fever out

chapter 150: the secret journal (part one)

Over the course of the summer and into the autumnal months, whenever there was no audition on either of their ends, and when Testament had not a single tour date on hand, and when she had the time outside of the gallery, Eric and Alex traded off visiting Sam in her apartment there in Hell's Kitchen, and she made sure that the latter never knew of the existence of that secret journal. She always kept it tucked away underneath her mattress in the instance of him sitting down too hard on the other side of the couch. Alex always kept his hands pressed his knees out of sheer grace and because of this, Sam always kept her eyes fixated on his spine and the base all around his hips.
She had no choice but to draw him after the fact. She always held back when it came to touching him outside of a hug, and even then, she always kept her hands up by his shoulder blades. Her best friend and yet she knew that she couldn't go any further than that when it came to touching him. On his twenty-fourth birthday at the end of September, she took him to the nearest bakery for a cupcake and then they took the subway to that old pho place where she and Aurora first had lunch.
Just the two of them there having a lunch of those big bowls of piping hot soup together. And yet, there was a part of her where she kept on thinking about Aurora: a part of her didn't even want to be there with him, especially since her very first best friend wasn't there with her. She hoped that Aurora could cope in raising three children solo while she acted as assistant and consultant to the whole grand scheme of things as she watched Alex pick up a rather large spoonful of soba noodles. Twenty-four years old and yet he still acted as though he was more than half that age.
There always came a point in which she locked eyes with him whenever they had something to eat together and she could feel herself growing closer and closer with him. She knew there had to come a time in which she had to find another notch in his armor, and one that didn't warrant the use of any sort of alcohol.
His eyes always softened and garnered the faraway look to them whenever something went down on the news cast. The older he got, the wiser he got with things happening in the world, especially once the election passed and he leaned back against the couch in relief at the sight of a White House colored blue. And yet Sam could still the flame in his eye. Still the fighter and the warrior within him.
"Still so much to do," he pointed out to her after the results finalized.
The gigs with the Spin Doctors as well as that jazz band The Urge came and went, as did the feeling of the utterly frigid New York winter all around them and her twenty-eighth birthday. Within time, the blossoms on all of the trees returned and a brand-new cycle of springtime started.
Meanwhile, whenever Eric called her up, she always took out the journal and showed off the new sketches of Alex to him. He was the only person could share those drawings with, especially since Marla and Belinda continued to work long hours up in Scarsdale. But then again, they were able to return home more and more often; but there was no way she could share those drawings with them, especially since Sam made it clear that she was far more focused on her artistry than finding a new relationship for herself.
The days were quiet and uneventful as she tended to her art and made sure no one broke into the gallery given Scarlett had found herself some new clients. All the while, her blonde highlights faded out with the darkness of her roots. And yet, Sam still felt as though something was missing. Twenty-eight years old and she could feel the time all around her slip up into the ether. There had to be something else to it. She itched to step away from the boundaries.
She was an artist after all. She had to peer beyond her horizons, even as she tucked some other, albeit stray drawings underneath the mattress as well, right next to her journal. She hoped that they would stay there for as long as possible, even though she knew in her heart that they had to be revealed at some point if Eric's words were anything to go by.
Alex had gone off to California with his guitar over his shoulder and there came a point later in the week after her birthday when Eric shared with her Testament's brand-new album.
"We've got the lineup down now, I reckon," he told her as he showed her the first pressing. Gone were the bright surreal yellow and red tones, and in their place stood more subdued orange and amber colors. Their logo had changed a great deal as well, gone into lowercase letters that looked as though they were made of vapor.
"It's called Low," he explained. "Chuck's been going for lower vocals lately. Lower, darker vocals. You know he tried to hone in Bob Dylan a little bit on The Ritual. He's been trying to hone in Chuck Schuldiner from Death lately."
"Chuck emulating Chuck," she declared.
"Exactly!" Eric chuckled. "And I noticed that you still don't have a record player in your apartment, either."
"It's just finding a good one laying around," she pointed out.
"Nah, you don't need a find one laying around," he assured her. But then again, she didn't really think about it that much in the past few years: she had her focus more on her artistry rather than music. It almost felt like a betrayal on her part, especially since her best friends lived and breathed music. She flashed back on Joey with his guitar and she wondered if there was that within her as well.
That time around, Eric brought his big black guitar with him, complete with the canvas bag with a Polaroid on the inside and right near the neck.
"What's that right there?" she asked him with a nod of her head; she thought of Marla right then.
"What, this?" He picked up the photograph and showed it to her.
"Yeah."
"This is a picture of my new girlfriend, believe it or not," he explained, and her heart sank at that. A part of her wished that she could have gotten together with him at some point over the past year or so, especially since she saw him in the buff and he was more than open with it all, especially when he confessed to her that he wanted to kiss her at one point. Sam swallowed down her jealousy and she carved out a little smile across her face.
"What's her name?" she asked him with a slight tremble to her voice.
"It's Rebecca—Kirk's ex-wife."
"Wow, really?"
"Yeah. When she and Kirk got divorced a few years back, I took her home after one of our shows and she and I just kind of got friendly with each other. There came a point where I asked her out on a date when she told me that she was headed back to the proverbial market. We've been dating for about a year now and I asked her to be my girlfriend a little while ago."
Sam licked her lips and she shifted her weight at that. He turned his attention to the Polaroid in his fingers and she took a better look at the picture for herself: Eric with his lips pressed against Rebecca's face in a tender kiss and his fingers were locked within hers, extended out right before their bodies.
"Do you still want to kiss me?" she asked him, and he turned to her with his eyebrows raised a bit. Granted, she had blurted that out but she still kept that firmly lodged within her mind. She still kept her eyes fixated on those lips. Never before had they looked smoother and silkier, and never before had she wanted to caress them for herself.
"You want the truth?" he asked her as he leaned the guitar against the arm of the couch and then he put the Polaroid back into the case. He lifted up and ran his fingers through his inky black hair, and he gazed into her eyes. It helped that he wore a heavy black leather coat over his body as well as matching black corduroy jeans. Black on top of black, as if he came to her from the very heart of the shadows.
"I do," she replied in a near whisper. Eric peered back at the guitar case as though the Polaroid was watching them.
"I do think about it," he confessed, also in a near whisper. He inched closer to her with his fingers fanned out from his palm like the arms of a starfish. He set a hand on her knee and he glanced down at her legs, and he licked his lips at the sight of her.
"What you thinking about right now?" she asked him.
"The space between your legs," he whispered. "I want to know what the sugar right there tastes like before I go any further with her."
"But you guys are official, though," she pointed out.
"Not necessarily," he explained, "I should tell you that I sort of—kindled things up with Alex right at the moment, believe it or not."
"Holy shit, really?" she yelped out. He waved his hands about so she could keep the tone of her voice down.
"It's kind of complicated," he said.
"Nothing can be that complicated," she pointed out. "Especially if our conversations in the past are anything to go by."
"It actually is, though," he told her. "I've hooked up with a woman and a young man at the same time. Part of it has to do with me being in control of everything that pertains to Testament. I guess I just like to be in charge."
"You like to hold onto the horns, if you know what I mean," Sam followed along, and that coaxed a laugh out of him.
"So, my point here is that I can find an opening in all of this and Rebecca won't know," he told her in a low voice. "Especially since I'm here in New York and she's back home in the Bay Area."
"Better hope you have a shower on hand," she pointed out with a slight gyration of her head.
"I'm staying in a room about a block from here," he explained, "so, don't sweat it. That's taken care of."
Eric inched closer to her still with his hand pressed onto her knee. She caught a whiff of his cologne there on the side of his milky neck. Pressed up close to her with his lips slightly pouted out for her. Sam moved in closer to his face and she closed her eyes all the while.
She awaited the feeling before her. A moment's anticipation and he finally did it. Smooth as silk and as soft as a pair of little pillows. He held back and she opened her eyes for a look into those smooth eyes. The feel of his lips on her sent a slight shiver up her spine.
Maybe it was all that had happened to her in her relationships but his very presence sent her. She threw her arms around him and she shoved him back onto the couch cushions. The crown of his head missed the arm and his smooth black hair spilled over the edge of the cushion like the trails of spilled ink. She loomed over his body and her hair dangled down towards his deep chest and his round, full face.
That warm and soft feeling between her legs. The pointed sensation from behind the cups of her bra. He was all for her at that moment. All to herself for real that time around.
"C'mere, you," she coaxed him in a husky voice.
"I'm coming alright," he told her with a straight face. She put her lips down onto his once more, that time with a bit of tongue down his throat. He set a hand on her shoulder and he slid it up onto her upper back. He lowered her body closer to him so she was right on top of him. It was nothing like the one night stand she had with Lars: it was heartier and more down onto the earth's surface. Where Lars never left the sky for a momentary glimpse, Eric never left the earth.
Her mind was gone but she could feel it all within her body. He was everything that she needed right at that moment. She could feel him, right in between his legs, right from underneath that patch of sleek black corduroy. Her mind flashed back to when she drew him naked and he suggested that he would go into black metal.
He described it as rough and a part of her wished they would go rough as well. She lifted her head and she gazed right into his face: a soft blush crossed his skin and he pouted his lips to her as if he wanted a bit of sugar like he said.
"I had no idea you were filled with such sexuality," he remarked in the huskiest voice she had heard from him up to that point.
"It's all been here, big boy," she teased him. "You've got the key."
"Can I open the door?"
"I dunno, can you?" she teased him again.
"Can I please open the door?"
"Do you have a glove on hand?"
"I'm afraid I don't," he confessed. "I can get you like the dirty dog I am, though, especially since you're already up above me like you're doing push-ups."
Sam lifted herself off of him and she crawled down onto the floor. Her jeans hugged her hips and the backs of her thighs; that was when she felt his hand there. A nice little caress before he gave her a hearty slap on the back. It caught her off guard and she lunged forward a bit.
"What's the matter? Did that hurt?" he teased her.
"I think it hurt you more than it hurt me," she retorted to him with a glimpse underneath her chest at him; he lingered behind her and even upside down, she could see him licking his lips at her. "Do it again, big fella."
He opened his palm and slapped her on the seat of her pants. The pain through the denim shot up her spine but it felt so good, though. So good to be so bad at the same time.
"Harder," she commanded.
He did and she gritted her teeth at the feeling. She could feel his fingers on the belt loops of her jeans. She could feel him on top of her. She could feel his hips as they gyrated against her.
He undid her jeans for her given she kept her hands on the floor underneath her. He peeled them back and let them fall around her knees. She ran her tongue along her top row of teeth and she braced herself for the impact.
"Jesus, you've got a nice ass," he told her. His hand caressed along her bare skin. He gave her a little tap there at the top of her thigh and she let her tongue fall out of her mouth like the dirty dog he had unlocked within her.
A knock on the door stopped them right in their tracks.
"Fuck!" he grumbled.
"Who is it?" she called out.
"It's Belinda."
"Maybe afterwards," she assured him in a low voice.
"Sam? What're you doing?"
"Hang on, Bel—I'm coming," Sam called out to her as she stood up on her knees and readjusted her panties.
"I was about to!" Eric groaned in a hushed voice.
"Shhh, put your pants back on," she scoffed at him. She fell back onto the floor with her feet extended out before her and then she tugged her jeans back on over her legs. Eric zipped up and Sam clambered back onto her bare feet. He took his spot there on the couch once more, that time with his arms up on the couch as she answered the door.
Belinda stood there with her purse slung over her shoulder and her blonde hair tousled a bit over her shoulders. That fine cut at the back of her head gave way to light, slightly coiled waves all around the base of her neck.
"I hope I wasn't interrupting anything," she confessed.
"Not at all!" Sam declared, and she didn't need a glimpse back at Eric to know that that was the wrong thing to say right then. Belinda took out a piece of paper from her jeans pocket.
"What's this?"
"Remember how all this time I wanted you to join me in the whole stained-glass thing?" she recalled, and Sam gasped at that. "Hang on, hang on—it's not going down until the summer time and it's only going to be for a few months, starting the first of June and then it'll go all the way to Labor Day weekend. But yeah, we finally broke down and filed in the recommendation for you right before Christmas, though. It was just today when we found out you got approved and I bounced down here as fast as I could. It helps that since it's Friday, I have tomorrow off, too. You're gonna be our apprentice, Sam!"
She threw her arms around Belinda and held her close to her body.
"Oh, my god, thank you so much, Belinda!" she declared.
"It's our birthday present to you," Belinda told her in a muffled voice. "The date just snuck up on us this year, otherwise." Sam then held back and Belinda showed her a big beaming smile for a few seconds and then she returned her attention to the room behind her.
"Hey, Eric!" she greeted him.
"Hey, Miss Grimes," he returned the favor to her with a smirk on his face. "Something I keep on thinking about is for you or Marla to make something in the light of Testament."
"Like the little window I have here in the kitchen?" Sam asked him. "Which the two of them made for me no less?"
"Kinda, yeah," he said with a little nod of his head. "But I also think about a more proper rendering of sorts."
"Like the album cover over here?" Sam asked him with a gesture to the coffee table.
"Uh, yeah? Yeah."
She could tell that he was feeling rather flustered, especially since they were about to ramp up and go nuts down there on the floor, and especially if the flushed rich pink hue in his face was anything to go by as well.
"Are you okay?" Belinda asked him. "You look like you just ran a mile."
"It's just kinda sorta—warm in here right now," he sputtered out, and he peeled off his black leather jacket right then and there. Sam returned to Belinda with her eyebrows raised.
"If Marla was home right now, we'd take that bottle of brandy out again," she confessed.
"You can't swipe the bottle right now?" Sam asked her.
"She's got it with her at the moment," Belinda replied in a loud whisper, and Eric shifted his weight in the seat. Sam brought her gaze to the crotch of his jeans: even through that black corduroy, she could tell that he was rising up there. With Rebecca and also sort of with Alex, and they almost got down and now he was face to face with two girls in the doorway: of course, she figured, that he had a hard-on going there between his legs.
"You feeling okay?" Belinda asked him.
"Yeah, yeah. I assure you, Belinda, that—all is—" He cleared his throat once the words left his lips. "—all is well over here."
Sam and Belinda took a glimpse at one another.
"I've got to check on Genie right now," the latter told them as she padded across the hallway to the front door of their apartment. She took her key out from her purse and unlocked the door.
"She's doing fantastic, by the way," Sam replied with a smile across her face. "I just filled up her water bowl so she should have plenty on hand." The door swung open and then she returned to Eric there on the couch.
"I should probably go," he admitted to her.
"Why, you don't wanna hang out some more?" she asked him as she closed the door part of the way.
"Nah, it's not that," he promised her. "I just think of Belinda standing there in the doorway. If we fool around some more, she'll want to butt in again."
Sam pressed her hands on the seat of her pants and she realized just how sore she was back there.
"She'll want to butt in or ass in?" she asked him, and he burst out laughing at that.
"Both," he replied, and he picked up his guitar case and he slung it over his shoulder.
"So, I can keep this copy over here on the table?" she asked him as he neared her, and she could smell his cologne once more.
"Absolutely," he told her with a sly smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. He ran his tongue over his lips again and she thought of kissing him there again.
"I can still taste you," she confessed to him.
"At some point, I'll be able to taste you, too," he vowed to her, complete with a wink. She opened the door for him and he padded out of there and back down the hallway. Sam ran her fingers through her hair as she watched him all the way to the very end. All the while, she kept her eyes fixated on the backs of his thighs. She bowed her head and swallowed down the nervous sensation in the back of her throat, and that was when Belinda stepped back out of her apartment.
"Where'd Mr. Peterson run off to?" she asked her.
"He had some—pressing matters to tend to," Sam sputtered. "Yeah, he had to go."
"Aw. Well, the next time I'm back down here again, I'll make sure that Marla has the brandy with her."
"And I'll make sure that one of these boys are with us," Sam vowed with a wink.
"Man, you really still are the art vixen," Belinda joked as she closed the door behind her and locked it again.
"I always was," Sam told her. "And where are you going?"
"Going to get some cat treats," she replied with a flippant raise of her eyebrows. She watched Belinda go off herself and then she doubled back into her apartment again. She returned to her bedroom for that secret journal for another erotic drawing. She thought about Eric and Alex together and she couldn't resist the temptation.
It was another thing she hadn't done before, anyway.
All of that long black hair wrapped around their bodies like the tentacles of an octopus. Their lanky fingers around their bodies and down each other's pants. She couldn't resist the further temptation, either, especially after Belinda's comment towards her. Sam flipped back to the front of the journal for that very first drawing.
Careful not to upset the paper, she erased Alex's jeans at the top of his legs in favor of bare skin. Nothing but shadow covered his hips and his crotch area. She licked her lips and kicked her feet back to the top of the bed.
But she vowed that, of all the drawings in that journal, she would not share this with another person as she stood up and then tucked it back underneath the mattress.
The next day, she was greeted by yet another knock on the door. She tugged it open and was greeted by a sleek and slender Alex with his hair pinned back over the crown of his head.
"Hey, you," she greeted him, taken aback.
"Hey!" He greeted her with his arms around her. "Did you get my message?"
"I didn't, no."
"I called you the other day on your birthday," he told her.
"I think I missed you," she recalled, "because I don't remember that at all."
"Aw. Well, uh—I actually came here to New York to visit, but do you wanna hang out?"
"Now, now, you know that when you wanna hang out, I'm not gonna want you to leave and go back to the Bay Area."
"And that's a bad thing?" he teased her with a little twinkle to his deep blue eyes.
"Not at all," she assured him. "I'm not doing anything right now. Just let me get my purse."
She returned to her room for her purse and she hesitated next to her bed. Her journal there but she knew that if she was to hang out with Alex that day, then she pictured them coming closer to each other. Most of the drawings so far in that journal involved him. She knew that, wherever they went, they would come on back to the apartment and thus she decided to leave it there underneath her mattress. She slung her purse over her shoulder and then put her sunglasses on her face, and she doubled back out to the front room for him.
His sensual little lips curled up into a sweet little smile. Because his bangs had grown out enough for him to pin them back over the crown of his head, she could keep her eye fixated on the full, round shape of his entire face. Perhaps it was the fact she had officially entered her late twenties and looked down thirty years old, but if she had the chance to kiss Eric, then she wondered if she could score a kiss with Alex at one point.
All the kisses she could experience from him. Those lips were smooth like the outside skin of a pair of ripe little cherries. All the sober kisses she could experience from him.