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“There,” Karen says, pushing the door of the hotel room with her hip. “This looks good,” she says in a low voice, walking towards the windows and drawing the curtains to reveal the shoreline. The sky is pale pink, turning to dusk, carving out the shapes of palm trees and buildings.
“What a view,” Graham echoes, dropping their bags near the entrance and joining her. The suite is bigger than the ground floor of their LA house, with a huge king size bed, a sitting area with two couches and a balcony that some would call a terrace. Everything is blue and white, as if the designers had tried to capture a cloud or a wave.
Karen opens the French windows. The humid, ocean-scented air of Florida fills his lungs. “I could get used to this,” she says, scrunching her nose with delight.
Graham kisses her cheek. “Do you miss us being a secret?” he asks. They don’t request two rooms anymore. “Mr. and Mrs. Sirko. Room 1011. Here are your keys.”
“Sometimes,” Karen says, still looking at the sea. “I enjoyed sneaking around,” she laughs. “I hadn’t realized how skillful you were,” she says and he can hear the humor in her voice. She grabs his hand and squeezes it.
Graham trails her neck with kisses, reaching her favorite spot near her collarbone. “Skillful you were saying?” he whispers when he hears her moan softly under his lips.
“Your capacity to find closets and corridors and bathrooms -,” Karen teases. She breaks apart to face him and the meaning is clear in her eyes.
“- and beds,” Graham says, lifting her up and carrying her away towards the bed as her giggles burst around them like bubbles of the finest champagne.
*
“Camila knew about us,” Karen says, a while after. They are sitting side by side on one couch, clad in fluffy white bathrobes, watching an old black and white movie on tv. The sun has set over Miami, blanketing them in darkness.
Graham frowns. Throughout the years, he has learned to listen to Karen. To her music, to her words, to her silence. “She is good at being quiet, I guess,” he says. On the screen, Clark Cable is lending his pajamas to Claudette Colbert.
“I didn’t tell her anything,” Karen adds wistfully. “But apparently you were smiling a lot more than usual.”
Graham chuckles. His sister-in-law has the true gift of the photographer: reading minds and souls.
“I could get used to this,” he sighs. Karen curls up against him and he wishes he could remember this moment for ever, the clean scent of her lemongrass shampoo, the soft press of her body, her laughter as the two actors bicker and fall in love.
“Doesn’t it feel good to do something normal for once?” Graham asks once the protagonists have reached New York and Claudette Colbert’s heiress is questioning whether she should get her marriage annulled and marry Clark Gable’s journalist.
Karen laughs. “Instead of sex, drugs and rock and roll?”
“I’d still keep two of those…” Graham snickers. “Maybe adding some other stuff too. Like watching movies with my -”
Karen’s shoulders tense up. Graham freezes and swallows the end of his sentence.
There are words he cannot say. He can sing them on stage, he can scribble them on flimsy bits of paper and hand them to Daisy and Billy when they are looking for new lyrics, he can whisper them at night when Karen is asleep by his side. But he cannot speak them to her. Never, never.
Best friend. Sweetheart. Lover. Darling. Girlfriend. Honey. Soulmate. My love.
It takes a few more instants before Karen finally relaxes. He kisses the top of her head, tattooing the words he cannot say into her hair.
*
“This hotel knows how to do breakfast,” Graham says contentedly the next morning, after swallowing the last piece of fried bacon on his plate, his feet up on the couch, a hotel tray on the coffee table with the remnants of a feast.
“When are we expected for rehearsals?” Karen asks, peeking her head out of the bathroom, wearing again that white bathrobe that is all the more alluring for how much it hides of her body. She has eaten some toast and rushed to take a shower.
“Noon,” Graham says. “We’re good.”
“And where’s our next stop?”
The voice coming from another room is strangely Karen-less, as if she was miles away. It amazes him how Karen doesn’t care about the tour schedule, only wondering about what’s next, whereas he counts the nights away from home, spent on the tour bus or in hotels, all the miles they travel.
When she walks back into the room, she is wearing jeans and an old t-shirt of his, her face makeup-less like their team prefers it.
“Las Vegas,” Graham says, standing up. Pins and needles have formed in his arms and legs and he feels lightheaded. But he knows that now is the good time.
“If you need it, we could get married there…” he trails, “…those immigration officers might come in calling one day and I don’t know if the record company could -”
Karen looks stricken and then she begins to laugh, a low rumble that shakes her entire body. She crushes the tears forming in the corners of her eyes.
Graham is astonished. He hasn’t made an offer of love, hasn’t referred to what he feels for her. Hell, he is still wearing his boxer shorts and a t-shirt. He hasn’t showered or shaven. He hasn’t gone down on one knee and he certainly hasn’t shown her a ring. He has been practical and level-headed and yet… Karen is laughing.
She must read something in his face because she stops.
“I have citizenship,” Karen says quietly. “Didn’t I ever tell you my father is American? From Chicago? He came over to the UK during the second world war and never left.”
“Oh.”
The world had spun a little faster but is back at its usual pace. Karen wasn’t laughing because he offered her to get married. She was laughing at his reasons for doing so. Maybe there is hope. Us.
“He’s the one who paid for the piano lessons. He would buy me all the newest records as long as I learned how to play the hit songs.”
Graham listens to Karen as she begins to retell memories of her childhood and teenage years. While her voice raises and falls, as musical as the notes of her keyboard, something alights inside of him. A knowing. He will never fully understand her. There will always be a part of her that, like the sea, like the clouds, escape his grasp. But he doesn’t mind, he actually prefers it. And maybe one day he can write a song about that.