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We waited a beat to make sure we were really alone. Then, with grins smeared across our faces,
we leapt onto the platform bed, landing in a pile. I was happier than I’d been in a long, long time.
“This is so cool,” he said. “You are so cool.”
I noticed the iPod and speaker on the mantel of the fireplace.
“Any requests?” I asked, getting up and skipping across the room.
“Surprise me,” Mark said, echoing my instructions to S.E.C.R.E.T.
It occurred to me then just how well the organization had done that. They’d surprised me over and
over again. But this was by far the biggest surprise—my favorite musician singling me out in a
crowded room, pleasuring me in the back of a club, then bringing me to this beautiful place, making
me feel wanted, special, treasured, if only for a night. I wheeled through the iPod menu, stocked with
some of the best Louisiana blues and jazz, and chose Professor Longhair, which made Mark convulse
with joy on the bed.
“Yes! He’s the king!”
“My favorite’s ‘Willie Mae,’” I said, joining him again, working my hand under his T-shirt. “Don’t
you wish you could have seen him play at Tipitina’s?”
“Tipitina’s. Yeah. From now on, I can only think of it as the place where we met,” he said, pulling
me on top of him.
We launched into a luscious make-out session, the kind I hadn’t enjoyed since high school. Then he
flipped me onto my back, his kisses rich and deep, his arm beneath me as I arched into his tight body.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” he whispered. “I could talk with you all night long.”
“Me too,” I said, meaning it. “But there are lots of other things I could do with you all night long
too.”
My fingers aimlessly circled a strand of his hair as we lay together, just like that, for a few songs,
taking quiet bites of grapes and chocolate and cheese, nodding to the songs that he would play for me
and I for him. Rapturous with the music and with each other.