Breathe (Songs of Submission #10)

Breathe (Songs of Submission #10)
C.D. Reiss



one.

MONICA

I’d told him no. That was my first mistake, apparently. My mistakes had piled up after that. He stood behind me as the sounds of the gardeners working on our lawn came through the window. Hum, brrt , clip. I could see them below me, between my starfish hands. I knew the window had been treated so no one could see inside in the daytime. I knew my naked body was protected from their sight, but I was naked with my hands on the glass, bent over, my feet apart, and I could see them.

“I had a meeting,” I groaned. I’d groaned it a hundred times already, but he hadn’t wanted any excuses or reasons why the meeting was more important than a lunch with him. I’d explain when he asked for an explanation. No sooner.

“You’re a slave to this phone,” he said from behind me. He was in a suit and tie. He’d made no move to undress. Not a stitch. He was completely unpredictable when he didn’t want to get off or when “getting off” meant “dominating the f*ck out of Monica.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He was standing out of reach, I could tell from the distance of his voice, but he might as well have been sucking me dry. And he knew it.

“This meeting.” He stepped forward, his dress shoes tiptapping on the hardwood. “I hope it was productive.”

“It was.”

He didn’t touch me as he came around me and leaned on the window. He held my phone up to my face. “Don’t move your hands. Put the code in.”

I looked up at him. The blue sky of Los Angeles stretched behind him with buttons of clouds sewn into the afternoon. He’d started cutting his copper hair shorter and letting his ginger beard grow in for a week before trimming it. He was slim and taut in his custom suit, a creature built for the vicious hunt. The cruel f*ck. The tender caress in the night.

My thighs shuddered when I looked in his eyes and saw the power seated in his brutality and compassion.

“The code, Monica.”

This was the brutal side.

I pressed the code into the glass with my nose, and the phone clicked open. I looked at him as he fiddled with it.

“We had a lunch scheduled,” he said.

“I know, sir.”

“Would you like to explain why you cancelled?”

“My new agent—”

“Maura Conrad, yes, I know her.”

“She got me a gig.”

“That’s her job. So?”

“Singing the national anthem on opening day.”

He looked up from the phone. “Really?”

“Dodger Stadium.”

He smiled, stern demeanor gone. “Of course. If you sang in Anaheim, I’d welt you.”

He tapped the glass, and the phone vibrated in his hand. I stiffened. He tsked.

“It’s not a call, goddess.”

“Yes, sir.”

He got behind me and stroked my back, pressing my lower spine down and forcing my ass up. Then he put the flat glass of the vibrating phone against my skin.

“You’re forgiven, of course,” he said. “So consider this a reward, not a punishment.”

He moved the phone across my ass and between my legs.

“Quiet now,” he said, pressing it against my clit. “They can’t see you, but if you scream, they’ll look up here.”

I didn’t know how he got the phone to vibrate without a call, and constantly, for the two minutes it took for me to come silently, rising up on my toes and exposing my throat to the Los Angeles sky.

two.

MONICA

Mrs. Yuan paused. Or to be more accurate, she didn’t say anything. Shiny black chopsticks held a straw nest and a little blue bird held to the knot on top of her head, and the fact that she wasn’t saying anything made me feel as though I didn’t belong anywhere in her presence. Debbie had said Mrs. Yuan was the best voice coach in Los Angeles, and everyone from my new agent to the execs at the record label agreed. She was the Queen of the Vocal Cords.

I cleared my throat. Breathed. The huge warehouse windows had been closed against the street noise so she could hear me sing, and now I wanted to open them and jump to my death.

The girl at the piano didn’t speak either. She just stared at her fingertips on the keys, silken black hair hanging to her forearms as if she couldn’t bear what had just happened.

“What was that?” Mrs. Yuan asked, stepping forward in her red silk wrap, mandarin collar stiff against her throat.

“The ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’” I said, trying to not stare at the bird.

“I thought that song couldn’t get any uglier. Congratulations. You’re a rare person to prove me wrong.”

My skin stayed the same size. My body didn’t change on the outside. But inside, I shrank into a shriveled line of brittle glass. Normally, I didn’t care what anyone thought—I was too busy working my ass off. No one ever had anything bad to say about my skill anyway. Not since high school had anyone really pointed at the cracks in my technique and jabbed them.

I didn’t know what to say. I could have been defensive, but I didn’t feel defensive. I felt pretty sure that not only was she right, but I’d known she was right all along.

She glided over to the piano and opened a little box that had been sitting on the music rack. “I can hear your talent. Not your craft, unfortunately. I’m not quite sure I can teach you to sing in two weeks.”