Three Part Harmony (The Road to Rocktoberfest 2024)

7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Mike

We finished eating an amazing lunch and then Griffin and I walked around the pier for a while. We bought ice cream and goofed with each other while sharing more stories of our lives. It was so much fun. I hadn’t laughed that hard or felt that free in a long time and I didn’t want the day to end.

“What was your first job?” I asked Griffin.

“Mucker,” he answered and grinned.

“What the fuck is that?” I questioned.

Griffin burst out laughing again. “I worked on a farm near where I grew up in Pennsylvania,” he explained. “I was young and inexperienced, and low man gets the shit jobs—literally. I worked with a shovel every day and cleaned the shit out of the animal stalls. That’s what a stall mucker does.”

“Sounds gross,” I commented.

“It was beyond gross,” Griffin agreed. “It’s a stink that just clings to you and never washes off, no matter how many times you shower.”

I leaned in closer to him, moving my face right into the bend of his neck to inhale his scent. “I don’t smell shit,” I said next to his ear, and damn, I didn’t want to pull away. I wanted to lick his throat and suck until I marked him for all to see.

“I would hope not,” he laughed. “It’s been a long damn time since I shoveled shit on that farm.”

We continued to check out the various tourist shops on the pier before Griffin called for a car to transport us to the airport. Spending this time alone with Griffin made me feel full—and not because of the enormous lunch we’d just eaten. I truly enjoyed being around him. I loved who he was deep down inside, even the low register of his voice had a calming effect on me. It sucked we had to leave San Francisco today. It would have been nice to have another day or two to explore the city with him but I had rehearsals starting tomorrow and running every day this week that I absolutely couldn’t miss. This little getaway would have to end regardless.

I had a seat next to Griffin in first class which was something I was still getting used to. It was a luxury I hadn’t experienced in my life but I sure as hell was enjoying every second of it now. Griffin made sure to take the aisle seat and gave me the window seat. I didn’t really care either way. I was just happy to still be near him. While I was buckling my seatbelt for take-off I felt the keychains in my pocket and pulled one out to hold in my palm. Shortly after we were airborne I set the keychain onto Griffin’s muscled thigh. As it began to slide off to the floor, Griffin grabbed it and I watched his expression soften when he realized what he was holding.

“This is one of the keychains you bought on the pier,” Griffin said, stating the obvious.

I watched his thick fingers toy with the shape of the iconic bridge in his hand before I said, “I’m giving one of them to you.” My face flushed with the unexpected heat of embarrassment. “I’m keeping the other one for myself. I know, it’s cheesy as fuck but I wanted you to have something to remind you of the day we spent at the pier. It’s my way of thanking you for going above and beyond to keep me safe and entertained.”

I saw the confused look in Griffin’s eyes and his brows scrunch together and wondered if I’d made an epic mistake by giving him a gift—albeit a cheap one, but it was more symbolic than anything. I really did want him to remember this day, which in my mind was a pretty fucking amazing one—mainly because I’d spent it with him. It wasn’t like we’d done anything spectacular. It was simply us enjoying each other’s company. But if I looked a little deeper at this gesture, I realized I’d never given anyone such a personal gift before. Other than a few things I’d bought for Fletcher over the years, but he was my chosen brother. We had exchanged tiny presents since we were kids but they were mainly exchanged at holidays or on birthdays.

Griffin wasn’t my brother in the way Fletch was and he never would be because I wanted so much more with him. I craved him almost every minute of every day and wanted a level of intimacy that only lovers would have between them. This gift for him was personal and meant to give Griffin a piece of me or offer him a memory of something special we shared together.

Whatever significance Griffin might see in this keychain gift, I knew he could only be a friend to me. Even still, I wanted him to know how much I appreciated his time and friendship when I was frankly feeling kind of lost without a tether this morning after I left Oliver’s hotel suite. Griffin had an infinite way of making me feel grounded and safe and I was grateful for that, and happy to have a real friend in him.

“This isn’t cheesy, Michael,” Griffin whispered with his head tipped toward me. “This keychain is special and, maybe this will sound cheesy to you, but I will never forget this day. I don’t get to enjoy downtime very often, so today was…perfect. Thank you for this. It means more than you know.” He removed a set of keys from the front pocket of his jeans and attached the new keychain to the metal ring he had half a dozen other keys dangling from and then he turned to me and smiled brightly.

I wanted to melt in my seat or reach for him and taste the smile that looked like sunshine to me and lit his gorgeous face. The sparkle of emotion in his eyes when he spoke told me his sentiment was genuine. I felt like I was soaring above the clouds. My expression swiftly morphed into a smile so big I thought my face might crack. My chest puffed with pride that I had evoked something inside a man who was generally stoic and unreadable. It made me jubilant that I had somehow moved Griffin to this degree from this silly little gift. It felt like a victory to me.

“You’re welcome,” I said, feeling like I’d won the fucking lottery.

The other detail I kept ruminating over was that he’d used my full name again. Michael. Hearing it roll off his tongue with such tenderness and ease warmed my core. It was almost like a caress and it was achingly intimate. My eyes fluttered closed as I wondered how my name would sound on his lips while we were in bed and he was close to falling into orgasmic bliss. The harsh truth was, I’d likely never know.

“We didn’t have enough time for me to take you see the bridge up close this weekend but maybe one day soon we can go back to San Francisco and I can show you then,” Griffin said.

“I would really love to do that with you,” I said earnestly.

Our smiles lasted quite a while until Griffin began to doze. I slipped in my earbuds to listen to some of the demos we’d created in the studio last week. It didn’t take long before my fingers were drumming out beats on my thighs and eventually I was jamming on the drop-down table, arm rests, and the back of the seat in front of me. With my eyes closed and my fingers dancing over every flat surface I could find, I was fully in the zone and oblivious to everything else around me.

Until I felt Griffin’s big hand land on my thigh and all I felt was comfort, as if he touched me like that all the time. His fingers splayed open and then slid to my inner thigh and squeezed. I froze and looked at him in shock. His head was fully turned toward me where he rested against the headrest and his sleepy eyes were open and watching me.

“Shit. I woke you up again,” I sheepishly admitted while Griffin removed his hand from my leg. I wanted to grab it and put it back where it was. “Twice in one day. That can’t be good.”

“How long was I sleeping?” he asked.

“Maybe thirty minutes,” I answered. “I’m sorry. I can get carried away when I’m jamming.”

“That’s long enough for a nap, and besides, we’ll be landing soon,” he said and pushed himself more upright in his seat. “What are you jamming to?”

I handed him one of my earbuds to stick in his ear and we listened together while I played air drums beside him.

“Chaos,” Griffin commented and then grinned. “I’d know your band’s sound anywhere.”

“You are correct and I thank you,” I said while I continued to hit imaginary drums in the air.

“Have you always been a drummer or do you play other instruments?” Griffin asked.

“I’m mainly a drummer or percussionist but I can play a little piano, guitar, and bass. Plus, I also sing, although I’d be the first one to admit I’m not that good at it,” I answered.

“I really love watching you play,” Griffin admitted.

“Oh yeah? ”

“It’s really intense,” Griffin elaborated a bit more. “Watching your arms and legs just going crazy, each limb doing something completely different from the others, it just blows my mind. I don’t know how the brain can have each arm and leg doing a task separate from the others and somehow it all makes sense.”

“It is pretty cool and I don’t have any idea how it works but it does,” I supplied. “I don’t even think much about it when I’m beating on the skins. It’s almost an unconscious thing I do—something I feel more than anything else. My mother got me hooked on rhythms when I was around three or four. She’d pull her pots and pans out of the cabinets and give me a wooden spoon and I’d go crazy on them for hours.”

“I guess the noise didn’t bother her?” Griffin asked.

“Apparently not because she loved watching me play,” I remembered with fondness. “She tells me now that even then she knew one day I’d be a star.” I held my arms out wide in an animated pose and laughed at myself but when I glanced at Griffin, he seemed full of wonderment for some reason.

Our gazes locked and I sat back against my seat. My hands that were drumming the air slowly became still as my focus shifted to only Griffin. Now my heart was thundering for another reason altogether.

“You’re sexy as hell when you play,” Griffin said softly, his expression filled with a reverence I wasn’t sure I deserved, but I loved how it made me feel. “I become totally enthralled with your movements if I stare too long. It’s almost like you turn into someone else, like floating outside of your body. Every part of you is in constant motion. It’s amazing, like watching a wild mustang defy his handler and refuse to be broken.”

“Controlled chaos,” I said on an exhale, realizing in that moment just how much Griffin truly understood what it was that I did. Not many could lay claim to knowing what a musician went through while playing but somehow Griffin saw me in my rawest form—and he approved.

“Yes, but within the chaos is a vortex of calm that is utterly…beautiful,” Griffin sighed.

I leaned closer to Griffin and he shifted, too, until our shoulders nearly touched. His eyes kept dropping to my mouth. When I watched his tongue drag over his plump lips to wet them, the last thread of restraint I had snapped in two. I nearly dove at him but the timing of the flight attendant couldn’t have been worse. I stopped myself in mid-air which probably made me look like I was having some sort of a seizure but I was able to prevent my mouth from crashing into Griffin’s and that was my only objective by pulling back so harshly. I was able to correct the mistake I was about to make before it happened and no one would know how close I came to crossing the line with Griffin.

“Can I get you two something to eat or drink?” the young woman asked us with a bright smile.

As I jumped back into my own seat, Griffin did the same, like we were two kids getting caught with our hands in the cookie jar. In this scenario, Griffin would be the proverbial cookie jar, and damn, did I want to devour his cookies .

Somehow Griffin was able to get his brain back on track and ordered us two waters and an assortment of snacks. I was still stupefied as to how I was able to stop myself from falling into Griffin’s lap in a not-so-graceful face-plant.

“Fucking hell,” I said in a loud exhale once the woman disappeared down the aisle again.

“My thoughts exactly,” Griffin said with a sigh of relief.

I sat back in my seat and let my attention drift outside the tiny window. Griffin wasn’t giving any indication he was acknowledging what almost happened. Were we supposed to pretend I didn’t come close to kissing the life out of him? I had no idea what Griffin was even thinking at this point, and fuck, I wanted to ask him. Was he feeling the same pull I was? Was I imagining he almost kissed me on the pier? Jesus, maybe I was imagining all of this and Griffin was really just trying to be my friend.

“Michael…”

Damn, the way he elongated my name in his raspy voice gave me goosebumps.

“I love it when you use my full name,” I goaded. “You make it sound almost lyrical.”

Griffin chuckled somewhat under his breath. “And you can make almost anything sound sexual.”

I crinkled my eyes and nose at him in confusion. “I wasn’t being sexual,” I admitted.

“The way you walk is sexual,” Griffin said and rolled his eyes .

“Come on! That’s not true,” I disagreed while laughing around my words. “I have two left feet. Believe me, there is nothing appealing about the way I walk.”

Griffin shrugged. “If you say so.”

I let my head fall back against the seat rest. We sat quietly for a few moments while I mulled over the situation we found ourselves in, then I glanced at Griffin who was scrolling on his phone. I pushed the earbud back into place and let the music fill my head again. We were both completely comfortable sitting like this, each doing our own thing but enjoying the closeness of sitting side by side. I liked this a lot, sharing my time and pieces of my life with Griffin. It was incredibly easy to be with him and honestly, I couldn’t remember the last time I had a friend like Griffin. Fletcher and I used to be like this, until he found his forever with Dallas and since then I’d felt kind of lonely to lose that closeness with him. But life goes on and I would never begrudge Fletcher for finding happiness. He more than deserved it and maybe I did, too.

My eyelids closed as I let the music fill my head. I concentrated on the many different layers to the composition, where the pauses were, the crescendos, and how it all blended together. I tried to single out every instrument and allowed the fingers of the tune to fully wrap around me like silk bed sheets. It was heartache and bliss, pleasure and pain in its purest form. Sometimes what we created took my breath away and I struggled to believe I was part of this band—that I’d helped to make these sounds into what they were in the end. Hard to believe how far we’d come from the garage band Fletcher and I formed nearly a decade ago. I was fucking proud of what we’d achieved and the brand we’d produced for our band to represent.

I was totally inside my head. Feeling the music as much as I was hearing it. Sometimes in my mind I could see the song as if it were a living, breathing thing. I guess to us that’s what these songs were. In the middle of my reflection I felt a hand touch the top of my thigh. A tick later, it was followed by a slight squeeze, and then the fingers slid a tempting inch or two closer to the inseam of my jeans. My eyes sprang open and I watched as Griffin retracted his hand.

One then two minutes passed and Griffin said nothing to explain why he had his hand on me. To say I was stunned by this action was putting it lightly. I might have been willing to pretend I didn’t almost kiss him when the flight attendant interrupted us, but there was no way I could ignore the fact he’d touched me in a way that was well outside the bounds of friendship. I had to say something. It was as plain as that and anything less would be unacceptable.

“Why’d you touch my leg?” I asked in a soft voice.

“Because I could tell you were deep into your music and I didn’t want to startle you by shaking your shoulder just to talk to you,” he explained. “I thought squeezing your leg was a better option but now that I think about it, I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It felt a lot different from when you touch me as my security guard,” I said reflectively. “It was personal and somewhat possessive. It’s the first time you’ve ever done something like that.”

I held his gaze and felt the sting of emotion begin to fill my eyes. I turned away before Griffin could see how deeply his hand on my leg had affected me. It probably made me look incredibly desperate for his attention if my reaction was that intense.

“It was unprofessional and I’m sorry,” Griffin scolded himself.

“Christ,” I sighed and pulled out my earbuds in frustration. “I’m not sorry about being your friend or how close our friendship is becoming, and it kind of stings to know you are.”

The flight attendant returned with our water and snacks and we spent the remainder of the short flight eating and in our own thoughts. Once we landed Griffin had a car service waiting for us. He rode with me to the band house and even walked me inside to make sure the security systems were still activated. Once he completed his walkthrough of the house, he found me in my bedroom and stuck his head inside the open doorway.

“You have rehearsal at nine in the morning,” he stated all businesslike. “I’ll be here at eight.”

“Make it eight-thirty,” I countered with a smirk.

“Nice try, but you know how LA traffic is in the morning,” Griffin scoffed.

“Or any other time of the day.”

“Enjoy the rest of your night,” he said and then he was gone.