The Villa(26)

“Not in my house they don’t.”

“It’s not your house,” she reminds him, but Pierce is already getting up from the bed, reaching for the pair of worn jeans crumpled on the floor.

He’s naked, but Pierce has never been the slightest bit modest. And why should he be when he looks like a marble statue come to life? All pale skin and hard muscle, and Mari’s eyes can’t help but drift longingly over him.

But when she glances back at the door, her face suddenly hot, she sees that Noel is also looking.

He doesn’t even try to hide his interest, his gaze frankly assessing, the corner of his mouth ticking up.

And when he notices Mari watching him, that smirk blooms in full.

Winking at her, he once again thumps the door. “Allons-y, Sheldon! I’m actually in the mood to make music for fucking once.”

Pierce finishes buttoning up his jeans and shoots Mari a sheepish look, pressing a kiss to her forehead before dashing out the door, guitar in tow.

Mari sits in the middle of the mattress, the sheets still warm from Pierce’s body, and wraps her arms around her knees, thinking about that look Noel gave Pierce, wishing the feeling unfurling in her was something as simple as jealousy or irritation.

It’s not, though. It’s something altogether more interesting and complicated than that, and Mari tucks it away, a thought to poke at later.

She showers and puts on one of her favorite dresses, a lilac A-line with a gauzy white scarf around the waist, then heads downstairs, expecting to hear music. She hopes Pierce plays Noel the song he played for her this morning. The melody was gorgeous, and what Noel could do with it, lyrically …

If Pierce could actually produce a song, or several, with Noel Gordon, if Pierce could be a part of Noel’s comeback, their entire world would change. There would be money, there would be opportunities, and there would be that precious commodity again, time. They wouldn’t have to hustle to simply make ends meet, and Pierce wouldn’t have to say yes to every gig on the off chance that the right person from the right record company might be in the audience.

Noel Gordon can do that for them.

But there’s no music playing when she goes downstairs. In fact, there’s no one around at all. She’s standing in the front hallway when she hears a distant shout from outside.

It’s a warm day, the sun blanketing the lawn, and Mari immediately sees the source of the noise. It’s Noel, standing up in a little rowboat out on the pond, declaiming something while Pierce sits on the bench, oars across his lap, laughing up at him.

So much for music, apparently.

There’s a small dock out over the pond, and Mari can see Lara sitting at the end of it, dangling her feet over the murky green water. As Mari watches, Lara calls something out to the two men in the boat, her hands cupped around her mouth, but either they can’t hear her or they just ignore her.

Lara’s hands drop. So do her shoulders just the littlest bit, and Mari feels that tug in her gut, that feeling that she needs to go out there, sit with Lara, make her feel less awkward and alone.

But Jesus Christ, she doesn’t want to.

It had become almost immediately clear that whatever Lara thought her relationship to Noel was, Noel did not see it the same way. They weren’t sharing a room, for one thing, Lara tucked away upstairs with Pierce, Mari, and Johnnie while Noel claimed the largest bedroom downstairs as his lair. Mari doesn’t doubt that Lara still occasionally finds her way into that room and into Noel’s bed, but she gets the sense that it’s more out of convenience on Noel’s part than any real desire.

And it makes her sad how even that seems to be enough for Lara.

“Mari!”

She turns to see Johnnie sitting on the lawn, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He waves at her cheerfully, and, relieved, she goes to sit beside him.

The grass prickles her legs through the sundress she’s wearing, and she shades her eyes with one hand, wishing she’d brought some sunglasses.

Reading her mind, Johnnie pulls his own pair off his face, handing them to her. “Here ya go,” he says, and she takes the glasses with an embarrassed little laugh.

“You don’t have to,” she says even as she slides them on her face, and he shrugs.

“Want to.”

She’s been at Villa Rosato for two weeks now, and Johnnie remains something of a mystery. He has a guitar—Mari has seen him with it, although she hasn’t heard him play—and she still wonders what Noel meant by “entertainment director.”

And while Noel has called him his friend, the relationship between them seems more contentious than anything else. Noel loves his barbs and quips, but the ones he throws at Johnnie seem especially pointed, that current of cruelty she picks up when he speaks to Lara shooting through each word.

She thinks again about Noel’s eyes on Pierce’s body this morning and feels her face flush. Is that it, then? Is Johnnie Noel’s lover?

But then she’s gotten used to these sorts of men. Boys, really. She used to see them at her father’s house, and she sees them in her flat now. Eternal outsiders, drifting on the edge of a group, but never firmly inside of it. Drawn to the lifestyle of art and freedom (and yes, also sex and drugs). There one week, gone the next. Johnnie has that air about him, that slightly hazy quality like she could blink and he’d suddenly vanish.

There’s another shout from the pond, this one from Pierce as the boat tilts precipitously to one side. Noel is still standing, his arms spread wide, his head tilted back to the sky. He’s wearing a pair of sunglasses with bright blue frames, a cigarette clenched between his teeth, his smile positively wolfish. Mari sighs.