Words Like Yours...

Copyright © 2008 by Crystal Barela
Have you heard the world is flat? Mine was until Rachel. Until she heard me.

I sat alone at the crowded bar, drowning my secret desires in shots of tequila and Rachel’s voice.
Rachel.

In this bar, on this stool, a year ago today, I’d heard Rachel sing for the first time. Hand-cut hearts taped to the doorways vibrated to the timbre of her deep contralto. That Valentine’s Day changed my life.

My attraction to Rachel wasn’t brought on by her boy-cut do, or her creamy pale skin. It wasn’t her full thick body, all hips and thigh. It was the smoky booze that poured from her throat – smooth mellow jazz mixed with raw passion and rough words like uncut diamonds. Hearing her voice was like taking a shower in sex, hot come caressing my skin from head to toe.

This bar had been my home every Saturday night since.

In the pre-dawn of each Sunday morning, night slips into day with me scribbling words onto scraps of paper. Rachel, a fever in my system; an ache between my legs.

When I finish, I write the lyrics onto red sheets of paper and slide them into envelopes the same color.

Rachel lives twenty minutes from my apartment. Red curtains in her windows hug a red painted door. Red like the missives I slide under her door while she sleeps.

Sometimes I wait. I sit in my car, smoking my Marlboros, my eyes heavy and tired. Her porch light flickers as I imagine her beneath her sheets, the cool white cotton skimming her body.

Another shot burns my throat.

Did she read my little notes? Does she know that it’s me?

I’ve never spoken to Rachel, just watched from my corner of the bar. My heated eyes caressing her skin in ways my fingers envied.

A year had passed since that first night, and hand cut hearts were taped to the doorways again. Rachel wore red for the occasion, her curves hugged by deep burgundy velvet. Tight velvet.

With each high note she hit, her breasts trembled, nearly spilling from the bodice. “Another shot, Teddy?”

I looked up at Rob and nodded. He had tended bar at La Vida since before Rachel’s band started performing.

“You gonna talk to her?” he asked setting the booze in front of me.

I shook my head. Maybe if I had a couple more drinks I’d get up the nerve.

I knocked the tequila back, shaking my head at the burn.

“You gonna talk to me?” he teased. It was Saturday night, and Rob knew where my thoughts lie. Against Rachel.

“Hey y’all!” Rachel called. “This one’s for my valentine. You know who you are.” She adjusted the mike, bringing her ruby red lips close, and sang.

When you gonna open the door?

I sobered.

It’s cold outside.

My words! Rachel was singing my lyrics, the same ones I snuck under her door.

My heart’s been empty and sore, since I saw you under the lights.

My words were rubbing themselves on her tongue, licking her lips before nibbling my ear. They were traveling on the perspiration that dotted her skin, sliding along her body, before evaporating out to the audience. I was all over her. Fucking her with my poetry, and being fucked by her song.

We’d close those red curtains and fall in love in our own sweet time.

Her green eyes were shut tight, and mine closed in response. My heart found her rhythm beneath my breasts. The bar disappeared and we were alone in my mind. Voice and words married beneath the beer lights. My heart swelled and my pussy moistened.

Rachel was singing to my soul.

My eyes opened as Rachel thanked her band for tonight’s performance.

Fans weaved between the tables and crowded around her. A blonde put a hand on her forearm, leaning in close enough to feel Rachel’s breath on her cheek. Rachel took her lip gloss from her bag, and ran it over her pout, nodding at what the woman was saying to her.

I shifted on my stool, my eyes darting away. Rob wiped down the bar.

People called out to Rachel as they left, pieces of their conversations fluttering behind them.
A man pulled her into his arms, hugging her. His hands skimmed her ass.

Did you feel that?

Rachel aimed a kiss at his cheek; he turned his head meeting her lips.

The drummer stepped forward, glaring at the man. He apologized, and backed away with a nervous laugh.

I wonder if she tastes as good as she sounds?

The bar cleared and Rachel’s band packed up their equipment.

“You okay?” Rob asked, waving a hand in front of my face. Okay? My world was no longer off-key, but in tune or the first time.

I waited. As always, the last one to leave the bar. I watched her laugh and joke with the band from under my newsboy cap; eyes gritty from the smoke and the fourteen hour days my obsession had created. No, it wasn’t obsession. It was adoration. Love.

Rob cleared my tab and I zipped my biker jacket to my throat. With a wave, I walked out the door to the parking lot. The band’s laughter followed me out.

Leaning up against the rusty door of my beater, I lit a cigarette. I’d get one more glance of Rachel when the band loaded up the van.

A few minutes later they walked out of the bar, the drummer’s arm around Rachel’s shoulders. The two of them had an easy way about each other that made me grit my teeth.

Instead of walking to the van, Rachel sauntered towards me, leaving little white puffs of frigid air in her wake. She stopped a few feet away. I had never been this close.

I narrowed my eyes, breathing her in. Musk, incense, cigarettes, booze, sweat…she smelled like I imagined a gypsy would.

“You stalkin’ me?”
I loved her rich masculine voice.

Stalking? It’s not like I followed her home and sat outside her window. I just stopped by once a week. Sundays. In the morning.

“No, I….” I was stuttering like a fucking junior high kid.

Rachel held out her hand, a familiar red envelope in her palm. My throat went dry. She was guessing. She couldn’t know. I licked my lips nervously.

“What’s your name?” She asked.

“Teddy.”

“Like the bear?”

I nodded and she laughed, her smoky drawl dancing along my skin. She handed me the envelope and I swallowed hard.

“Read it to me,” she purred. I wanted to. I really did. But the lyrics were meant for her voice; her rusty, pussy-wetting sound. I pulled out the red slip of paper. My handwriting blurred.

“Perfect,” I told her, meeting her eyes for the first time. They had a cat-like shape. She had used eye-liner to turn them up at the corners, gold glitter shimmering on her cheekbones. “You were perfect.”

A smile curled, her glossy lips. My lips were dry, in need of Chapstick.

“Do you mind?” Rachel asked, snatching my cigarettes from my pocket. She took one between her lips and I lifted an unsteady hand to give her a light. She leaned against the car with me, thigh touching thigh.

“How long you been singing?” I asked.

“Since I was born.” She smiled and wrapped an arm over my shoulders. My cunt began to pulse.
“How long you been writing?”

The van pulled in front of us.

“Everything cool?” the drummer asked, an eyebrow climbing towards his buzz cut.

“Hot, my man,” she drawled and squeezed my shoulder.

The band waved out the windows as they drove out of the lot. We were alone.

“You’ve been coming to La Vida for what…a year?”

I nodded.

“Why didn’t you whisper me some of those sweet words you wrote?” She stood in front of me, and pressed her hips into mine.

I should have a few cool lines. I’m a writer. My mind was blank.

“Words like yours ... ” Rachel leaned into me, breasts meeting my own. Her breath was warm on my lips. “... would’ve had me on my back months ago.”

I didn’t know what to say. What to do. I felt asthmatic.

A car door slammed. Rob revved his engine and honked his horn as he drove by.
Rachel nibbled her way along my jaw, her hand dragging down my jacket’s zipper. Her lips hovered over my ear in the chilly air.

“Or did you want me on my knees?” She dropped to the ground and I protested. The pavement, the gravel. She had my fly down. Her short cropped hair sparked red in the moonlight, her skin pale as ivory.

“Rachel, I…” I gasped, as she tugged the elastic of my panties aside. My bush steamed in the cold air.

She yanked my jeans down, and my ass hit cold metal. I yelped and laughed nervously, my hips thrust away from the door. Rachel pressed me into the frigid steel. Her hands were firm on my thighs, widening my stance as much as she could with my jeans around my knees.

“Say my name again.” Her hot breath was on my clit. Her eyes held mine. I said Rachel’s name. Her tongue began to lick. Over and over her name was on my lips, her tongue playing with my swollen nubbin.

Cozying up to my hot cunt like she did the microphone, Rachel ate as passionately as she sung my words. Her tongue pulled sounds from me I had never heard before.

Making music.

I moaned.

Making love.

My knees went weak.

“Open the door,” Rachel said. I turned and grabbed the back door’s handle. It swung open with a squeak and she pressed me into the cheap vinyl, riding me into the car. Her hand was in between my thighs, dancing with my clit.

I struggled with my t-shirt, catching it around my neck.

A crescendo was building. Rachel leaned into my back. Her breasts fell from her red dress and pressed into my shoulder blades. One hand was on my tits, the other strumming my clit with the steady beat of a bass guitar. She bit my neck, mumbled my name.

Wanna dance?

My hips began to move, fucking her hand into the vinyl.
Wanna sing?

Moans poured from my throat, fogging the windows.

Come with me, baby.

My shouts echoed in the tight interior of the car and I shuddered as her fingers finished a duet with my pussy.

She crawled off me and into the front seats. “I knew you had a voice.”

Rachel had given me one.

I kicked off my jeans. She shimmied her dress down her body. My pussy began throb. No panties. Clean shaven perfection.

“Move to the center.” Rachel dropped the seats so they were flat, framing me on the back seat.

“Spread your legs over the seats.” I arranged myself with my ass hanging off the back seat, knees curling over the front two. The gear shift was inches from my wet pussy, the bulbous head rising from my cunt like a giant cock.

Rachel knelt over us…me and my gear shift. She rubbed her pussy against the cracked vinyl head and I swear I could feel it. She jostled and wiggled, tweaking her breasts. Her moans were like her singing, hot and sticky. She slid down its length, rocking her pelvis against the hard metal.

The paper pine tree swayed in the rearview mirror.

My fingers were in my hot hole. Words began to fall from my mouth. My lyrics in an untidy pile between us. Her movements became wild. My voice trembled.

She was beautiful. Her body glowing, breasts bouncing, thighs clenching. Rachel was my perfect secret love.

I shouted her name.

Our eyes connected and she came, her voice crawling over my skin and between my legs, slipping into me like poetry.

My muse.

My valentine.

My Rachel.