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

but not cold. Spring is near and I start to fantasize about how awesome Ag Field Day is going to be this year. Last year it was mobbed for Green Day. The Seahorses opened for them and were signed to Kill Rock Stars within a year. You play a big show with a national act like that, and things start to happen for you. And that’s what I’m working so hard for—things to happen for Soft.
    So then, why am I going to see Travis right now? And why, specifically, am I wearing a Pixies tank top that makes my boobs look twice their normal size? I can only blame Travis’s penis.
    Down the hill to Lincoln Avenue I walk. I stand in front of his house for a while and it’s Saturday afternoon, so that means George is out running practice for the rugby team before Fester rehearsal. But aside from Travis, I don’t know who else is here. That’s what I’m about to find out.
    I go to the porch. This time I just ring the bell like I’m a Goddamned adult. I listen and wait. I don’t hear anything. I wait some more. I imagine Travis jumping out of the shower with a towel around himself, with Millie right behind, borrowing his robe. God damn it. I give myself a cramp thinking about it. I’m about to bang on the door like a psycho—I can hear
The Shining
soundtrack in my head—when I hear footsteps on the stairs inside, and then the door opens and there’s Travis, looking amused. Amused! He ushers me right inside, smirking.
    “What’s up, Emmylou?” he says. “What brings you here on this fine day?”
    I’m listening for a shuffle, footsteps on the ceiling where I imagine Millie is sequestered in his room, but she must be really good at stealth because I don’t hear a thing. Very sneaky, that Millie.
    “You never gave me that Archers of Loaf tape,” I say. Quick on my feet, that’s me.
    He turns around, picks a cassette off the end table next to the couch and hands it to me.
    “Thanks,” I say.
    “You’re welcome.”
    Great. Now what?
    “Are you busy?” I ask.
    “I’m working on a paper. Recall? The phone conversation we had fifteen minutes ago?”
    I glance up at a clock in the hall, and then back at his smart-ass mouth.
    “It was twenty minutes ago.”
    “I need coffee,” he says, and why is he being such an adorable dick, still smiling at me like that? “Want to walk up to Dunkin’ Donuts?”
    “What about Millie?” I say.
    “What about her?”
    “Does she want any?”
    “Should we call her and ask?”
    “Isn’t she upstairs?”
    “How hard did you hit your head last night?”
    Well, now I’m pink in the cheeks and I guess
I’m
the asshole because nobody is here but us. Travis grabs his jacket and we go back out the door and walk up the hill to Dunkin’ Donuts. He’s talking about this paper he’s writing about Bob Marley and he’s acting fairly normal and I’m so glad because things, for the first time since sexageddon, aren’t feeling all that weird. I hate when it’s weird with Bean because aside from Sonia, he’s my best friend, and by definition a best friend is someone you never have to feel weird around. I start to think, yeah, maybe I haven’t fucked all of this up between us. We can be—hell,we
are
being adults. We’re adults! We had sex, fine, and it was incredible, yeah, but it’s just sex. We can still be normal. It doesn’t change anything. Not changing anything is good, because things are really pretty great right exactly how they are.
    As I’m watching Travis pay for my iced hazelnut coffee (and I don’t know if this is a Nebraska manners thing, but he never lets me pay for anything, unless it’s guitar gear, because that shit’s expensive), the only problem I’m having now is that I can’t seem to take my eyes off his mouth. His lips, in particular, and his tongue when he darts it out to lick the wayward icing from his lips after he takes a bite of his coffee roll. I want to lick those lips myself, see if I can taste the sugar left on them. By the time we walk back