See Her (Turn it Up #1)

Chapter 38

38

MAYZIE

J ack goes out of camera for a second as he shifts his body, the view on my screen jerking back and forth a few times before I finally have a view of him looking down at me, the long strands of his hair hanging in his face. He must be on his knees, hovering over his phone as I lay on the bed.

“Is your hand in your panties?” he whispers down at me, as if he’s really on top of me and I nod up at him. “Good,” he nods approvingly. “Now, pretend that it’s mine,” he instructs, as I see his hand go below view again. I see another layer of arousal fall over his face, and I can see his shoulder moving, presumably because he’s stroking himself, but it looks so much as if he’s doing it to me.

Oh my God, this is so amazing and sucks so much at the same time. We’re pretending to have sex with each other on video chat. The concept feels awkward, but it’s repeatedly erased by how convincing it looks.

“Ohh,” I moan out, closing my eyes for just long enough to mentally replace my slender fingers with his larger ones. They slide through my wet folds so exquisitely, and he groans in response when I open my eyes to see his arm moving exactly in time w ith mine. “What are we doing?” I breathe out, a shy smile on my face that he returns down at me, making my heart race.

“The best we can,” he answers, raising a tatted shoulder. “Just relax and pretend with me, baby. Let me make you feel everything I wish I could be doing if I was in that bed with you.”

“What would you be doing if you were here right now?” I ask.

“I’d be tasting every inch of that sweet skin,” he answers between ragged breaths, “while I push my cock in and out of you, hitting you right in that special place you love. And I’d be kissing the hell out of you.”

Like a Pavlovian response, I lick my lips at his mention of kissing as I keep stroking myself, feeling the muscles of my sex clench in response to the moan he lets out. My touch is no match, however, for the hard thickness I know that he’s thrusting into his hand.

Any awkwardness I might have felt at first has passed, leaving me so hot for him. “Oh God, Jack,” I mewl as his dark blue eyes penetrate my own gaze.

“Fuck, I love you,” he growls out, the tendons of his throat straining with the words as his body moves virtually above me.

“I love you,” the words come out raspy as I plant my heels in the mattress, moving along with him against the touch of my hand, trying so hard to pretend that it’s really him, sliding inside of me.

His chain swings back and forth above the camera angle as he thrusts into his hand, breathing heavily between groans.

I move myself against my hand harder, following his lead while I gasp for breath. The ache between my legs is building and mounting, making every skin cell of my body buzz with euphoria.

“Jack,” I barely wheeze out his name as I approach my peak.

“Baby,” he strains out in response. “Ahh… Maze, fuck…” His jaw clenches as he thrusts harder. “I’m going to take such – good – care – of you… next time I see your pretty face. ”

He’s losing control, and it’s what sends me barreling over the edge. “Jack!” I cry out when my climax hits and my body writhes to the sound of his grunts and groans, riding each perfect wave.

“Oh fuck…” he huffs out as his face falls out of view, likely into the pillow beside the phone, and I shiver, imagine him burying it in my neck. “Fuck…” he groans out again, though it’s muffled this time, as my orgasm ebbs, each wave weakening with each undulation.

I drop an arm over my eyes as I try to catch my breath from the mind-blowing orgasm.

Jack and I stayed on the phone while we both got water and resituated ourselves in bed for some pillow talk.

Jack relaxes against his pillow, smiling at first, but then his expression turns pensive.

“Are you okay?” I ask. God, this long distance thing can be hard sometimes. Even after having virtual sex, his tightened features have me on edge just a little bit.

"Baby, I'm ready to walk away from it all,” he admits, making my heart squeeze tightly on itself.

“Why? None of it’s gotten better?”

“It’s not that. I feel like we’ve gotten the hang of it, at least I have,” he explains. “For instance, I’ve found that when spontaneous interviews and meet-and-greets get sprung on us, it tends to happen in the late afternoon, so I try to stay alert and not wander too far. Plus, George tells me there’s only so many of those because we’re so new, that there will be fewer impromptu appearances after we go a little distance…”

I prop up my phone and adjust my pillow as he tells me more about tour life and the routine he and the guys have found. Apparently, the pranks have continued, which makes me laugh .

“Sounds like you’ve fallen into a groove and things have calmed down. And it will probably get easier with each tour.”

“That’s what George and Erin say,” he nods, “but, baby, it feels wrong without you here, being a part of it, sharing it with me. I know being on the road is hard as fuck, but this," he moves his hand between himself and his screen, "is so much fuckin’ harder. I'm ready to say ‘fuck it’ and just come home."

“You can't do that, Jack. Think of the guys and what it would do to them. This is their shot, too, and although it may feel like the right thing to do now, down the road I think you'd kick yourself for not seeing it through, and it would wreck me if you didn't go with this as far as it will take you.”

“I know you're right, but I can't stand this,” he says with a downtrodden expression on his face that kills me. “We're man and wife for fuck’s sake, we should be together.”

“I know,” I say, trying to calm him. “Things happened differently for us. We had crazy timing and the chance of a lifetime thrown at us right out of the gate. This is new terrain, but we'll figure it out.” I realize in this moment that I've had enough of this, too. Naked FaceTime might be bringing me to my senses. Who knew?Jack just said that things seemed to have ironed out, as much as they can, anyway. Maybe I can adapt. The least I can do is go see him.

I’m about to open my mouth and suggest it when I hear a crash on Jack's end of the line, followed by some loud whoops, and Jack yelling “What the fuck?! Get the fuck out of here!”

I see a blurry struggle and catch glimpses of Chris's face peeking onto the screen as I pull the covers up tightly around my neck.

“Mayzthee!”

The commotion settles, and now the top corner of Chris's face and one of his eyes is visible. I can still hear Jack yelling in the background.

“Hi, Chris,” I say, still holding the covers tightly around me, trying not to show even a hint of skin .

“Mayzthee,” he slurs again. “Listhen. You gotta get back out here. Our boy Jack hasth been a mitherable pieth of thhit with you gone.”

“Chris!” Jack cuts him off. “This is so wrong, on a number of levels. You do not even realize!” I know that Jack's referring to the fact he’s naked under the covers.

Undeterred, Chris picks up where he left off. “But if you come back on tour with uths, maybe you can get histh head threwed back on sthraight. Because if he doethn't, I'm afraid the band will just im– PLODE .” The one eye I can see widens on that last syllable. For Jack's benefit, I'm trying to stifle my giggles at Chris's condition, and the entire situation. The phone is fumbled again, and then I see Matt's face filling the screen. He looks significantly more sober than Chris, and appears to be walking into another room. “Hey, Maze,” he says, with a friendly smile.

“Hey, Matt.”

I can hear Jack shouting in the background.“If you all don't get the fuck out of here, I will get out of this fuckin’ bed, and you will not like what's going to happen if I do!”

“Listen, real quick heart_to-heart,” Matt says, hurriedly. “Jack is playing fine, but…” he presses his lips together in thought before tossing his black hair out of his eyes. “I know my friend, and he needs you. I know you think you're doing the right thing by staying away, and I'll be honest, I thought you were too, at first. But if you come back on tour, you won’t hear any complaints from me.”

It makes me feel good to hear that Jack’s band mates are on board, although Josh hasn’t weighed in. Not that he has to; I’m not going to let him stop me from seeing my husband. Besides, he did apologize to me, so maybe he’ll be less of a shit.

“Okay, um, Matt?”

“Yeah?” I let my eyes dart down to indicate my lack of attire. “Would you mind giving me back to Jack?”

He blinks slowly and scoffs quietly at himself. “You got it. Let's go assholes, we're moving the party to my room!” I hear him sh out to the other guys as the phone is handed off once again. I hear more raucous laughter and drunken babble before the door slams closed.

“Hi again,” I say, when I see Jack’s face back on my screen. He's still in bed, and though he looks flustered, I can tell he's trying to get back in the moment.

“Sorry about those fuckers. See what I have to deal with?”

“Rough stuff.”

“I’m telling you, I need my lady,” he grins, shaking his head at his friend’s antics.

“How about I come see you?” I raise an eyebrow, relaxing the sheet around me again.

“How about you just come back?” he counters on a gust of breath.

The look on his face is my undoing. And after everything we just talked about and how the guys all seem at ease now, it could very well be time for me to join them and have my turn to adapt, not to mention my turn to be with Jack.

“Okay,” I beam at him.

His eyebrows draw together in confusion. “What?”

“I’ll fly down and meet you in Miami.” Their stop there is two days away, giving me enough time to square things away with work and the dogs.

I watch as a variety of emotions cross his face, from disbelief to hopefulness to elation. “Don’t play with me, baby. Are you really coming down? Are you coming back on the tour?”

“You’re right; this has gone on long enough.”

“I don’t believe this,” he says, scrubbing a hand over his face and then smiling ear to ear. “You’ve just made me so happy, sweetheart.” He lies back, gazing at me with one arm lying over his head, giving me a good look at his sexy bicep.“I can’t wait to see you.”

“I can’t wait either.”

Jack

I’m on top of the world the next morning, showered, and the first one at bus call.I’m sitting back in one of the armchairs in the bus’s lounge area, picking at my acoustic when Matt and Josh come on board, stashing their bags in their bunks before joining me, each sitting down in the window seat.

Josh and I still aren’t completely on the level, but with the efforts I’ve seen him make, we’re getting there. At least there’s no friction in the air when we’re in the same room now.

“Where’s Chris?” I ask, staring down at my guitar, trying not to give anything away.I kind of messed with him this morning while he was sleeping, before I got on the bus.Hey, I never said I was mature.

“He’s coming,” says Matt. “He’s moving slow. He’s all kinds of hungover and pissed off. I think we need to cut that one off, at least for a couple of tour stops.”

“Oh, I think he’ll turn it down a notch,” I say, still trying not to look up, and really trying not to smirk.

“Why?” asks, Josh. “Did you do something? What did you do?”

Before I can answer, Chris stomps on to the bus.His hair is wet, and his clothes are stuck to his skin – probably because he had all the towels removed from his bathroom. He throws his bag in his bunk and trudges into the sitting area, trying to be intimidating.

“Who. Made. Me. Piss myself?!” he demands.

Matt and Josh erupt in laughter, their heads tilted back and shoulders shaking. I’m trying to hold back my own laughs, but it’s not working. Chris’s head immediately whips in my direction. “Jack? What the fuck?!”

Still casually resting my head on the back of my chair, I swivel to face him and speak to him the way a sensible grownup would to a disgruntled third grader.

“Chris, I was in the middle of an intimate conversation with my wife. You came clamoring in like a drunken man-sized toddler and interrupted us.” Not to mention I was post-coital , I don’t add.

“Come on, man, I was totally hammered! Did you really have to put my hand in a bowl of water while I was passed out?!”

“It was one-thirty in the morning. I was naked in bed and sporting a semi. You busted in and sprawled yourself across my bed,” I say, looking down and plucking at a few strings. “I want you to take a moment and let that scenario sink in.” Josh and Matt are still howling with laughter and holding their stomachs. “Besides, I’ve had to go commando twice this week because you keep freezing my boxers.”

“You fucked with me while I was passed out! That is so wrong and fucked up, Jack! I woke up hungover, in my own piss no less, and had to shower without drying off!”

“I felt it was important to make sure you got the message that last night’s behavior was not acceptable,” I conclude calmly, with a drawn-out strum of my strings.

“You,” Chris points a threatening finger at me, his bloodshot eyes going wide, making him look like a cracked-out cartoon, “better watch your ass! I mean it, Jack-ass,” he continues when I start laughing. “Watch your ass. Like, you better have an electric fence and guard dogs circling it the next time you sleep!”

I admit that one chokes me up a bit as he grunts, turns, punches the wall, and stomps to his bunk to sleep off the rest of his hangover.

“You’re in a good mood,” Josh acknowledges when the laughter dies down. I smile and keep lazily strumming.

“Good talk with Mrs. Krasinski last night?” Matt asks with his eyebrows raised. I play it cool, but I fucking love it when people call Mayzie that. Her having my last name really makes me feel like she’s a part of me, that we’re always connected .

“She’s going to meet us in Miami,” I say, punching my fist in the air.

“Yeah!” both Matt and Josh exclaim at the same time, and I laugh. I feel so much relief at the idea we’re going to be together soon, and the guys can tell I’m much lighter and more focused.

Before we hung up last night, Mayzie told me she was going to look for flights and try to get Ian and Tina to come to our house to dog sit for the next few weeks, which is what we have left on the tour. The bus starts rolling, taking us to Tampa where we’ll do a show tonight, and then get back on the bus and drive through to Miami. There, we’ll sleep and have a sound check before putting on another show.And hopefully, somewhere in the middle of all of that is when my wife will show up. Matt and Josh get their guitars out and start tuning them up, and for the next couple of hours, we jam, we brainstorm new lyrics, we bullshit, and act like a band again.