Music of Us

By Sky Burton

Ryan, a 21-year-old actor starts the year frustrated with his life and can’t seem to commit to his long-term girlfriend Ellie. His life is about to change after getting the lead for a gay romance movie to be filmed along the beaches of Santa Cruz, California. It starts when his sister drags him to a club to hear David, the musician and musical director for the movie, a young and handsome singer-songwriter he knows to be gay. Ryan finds himself unexpectedly attracted to David. At a party with David, a lot of tequila, a hot tub, and the urging of a female friend, Ryan can't resist David's beauty and shy charm. He quickly tries to dismiss the one-week fling, but new feelings have been awakened he can't deny, and they are about to be put to the test. Within a few weeks Ryan meets his co-star, 30-year-old Josh on the movie set.

After long hours filming every day, Ryan and Josh end up spending their short evenings together sharing stories, running lines, and drinking a few beers. It doesn't take long before both are swept up in the on-screen movie chemistry as well as their own off-screen friendship that’s taking them further than they ever expected. As the movie filming wraps, one of them questions their reality. Is it real love or just a fantasy rooted in the passionate movie?
Book 1 of series. MM romance. HEA friends to lovers. Over 18 descriptive sexual content.

Review:
Music of Us is a beautifully written novella about Ryan who is lost and struggling with life when he meets David and begins to question everything he’s known, particularly his own sexuality after a brief fling with David. When Josh comes into his life, they begin their friendship as co-stars on a movie set but as more romantic feelings begin to develop, Ryan must face the reality of his romantic relationship with Josh. This is an eloquently written story that provides readers with a passionate, and sometimes erotic, story of both love and self-discovery. The characters are unforgettable and relatable. In addition to being a fantastic story, Burton’s writing style is beautiful. She does an amazing job at portraying a whole range of feelings that her characters move through as they discover more about themselves, develop new relationships, and explore their sexuality. Burton writes in a way that is engaging from cover to cover. The story continues in Book 2, Dry Drowning, as an incident in Portugal brings their relationship to the media that could either tear them apart or make them stronger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sky Burton
• Release date: Jul 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985866025

Sky Burton

Sky Grew up along the beaches of Orange County, California and, at one time, was a gallery represented artist with work in Palo Alto, California and Los Alamos, New Mexico. When she’s not writing, she’s painting, walking, or reading and always with music in her ear.She designed and manufactured children’s products, started the original Silicon Valley VIP Tech Tour, owned a public relations agency, and traveled the US alone for eighteen months writing and volunteering.Other books under DJ Lynn include Road Noise, the three-month road trip memoir; Running With Chickens, (co-authored with her son) published in 2016 but currently expanding and will re-publish later in 2022. She also wrote Leaving Madmen, published in 2001 and updated in 2016, and a variety of other nonfiction including In The Land Of Bugs And Rain and the wildly entertaining International Public Relations Guidebook.Fiction coming up - third book in the Music Of Us series (the MM romance continues) she plans to write while in Italy Fall 2022, Elements (sci-fi Winter 2022), and Essays After A Lot Of Tequila (2023).

Book preview

Dedication

For M. 

RIP

I discovered the beauty of MM love and romance when I was seventeen through a completely platonic and innocent, yet intimate friendship with a man willing to enlighten the blissfully ignorant curiosities of a teenage girl. It was through him that I realized the absurdity of labeling others.

Love with Courage

Sky Burton

Contents

Dedication

SAVE ME

LIVE A LIFE

COASTLINE

OVERCOME

LOVE ME LIKE YOU DO

KICK AT THE DARK

PEOPLE WATCHING

BEAUTIFUL

THIS THING

MORNING COFFEE

WONDER

TREES

PLAYING WITH FIRE

SECRETS

WATERFALL

FALLING INTO YOU

TRIPPING ON STARS

SPINNING

ANYTHING EVERYTHING

What's Next for Ryan and Josh?

About & Coming Up

Spotify Playlist

djlynn-music-of-us.link/yhc

Spotify Playlist at the link above. I selected music specifically for each chapter. Titles in the playlist are in the order of the chapters (list on the website):

https://skyburton.com/

Other songs are included in the playlist on Spotify because they were the other favorites considered for the book.

Although your taste in music may vary significantly, I hope you enjoy the music and the book.

SAVE ME

I opened the back of my car and pulled out the heavy backpack as footsteps approached from behind. My finger touched the right earbud to turn up the volume. Probably a couple wanting me to take their picture for an Instagram post or maybe someone looking for trail information. Do you know how to get to the waterfalls? I didn't want to pretend to be social. There were only four cars in the small parking lot leading to the Fall Creek trail. I was grateful. I wanted to be alone. Then a touch on my back. I turned and raised my hands against the intruder. It was a touch I craved. A touch that could send me to my knees. He took my hands, raising them above my head, pushing me back against the cool metal of the Land Rover, and crushed his body and lips to mine.

That was how the year ended, but not how the year started.

…

I was dying, but not the traditional death. The other one, the one that sucks brain cells and passion from your body moment by moment. How many people wake up on cool sheets in desolate beds smelling of cigarettes and strawberries, chocolate and stale champagne?

Strands of her dark hair lay on my shoulder, and her body was too close to mine. I could feel her sleeping heat and I wished to stretch my hand out and feel nothing but a wide expanse of Egyptian cotton. She was a tar pit disguised as a black pearl. If I stayed too long to caress the smoothness of it and the flawless curves, I would be consumed. Slowly. Inch by inch, I would sink into her until there was nothing left of me but charred bones and a note held with two fingers above the black mass that would say, somebody save me.

But wait, don't get me wrong. For four days, we had sex (a solid eight) in every possible way. Her long dark hair would slap against my cheek as she sat on me, grinding her hips into me. Her breasts bounced. Floating, but her eyes were closed, and she was somewhere else. As was I. Her face was pretty, and her lips were red without lipstick. And I liked that too. She was a natural beauty, but still I felt nothing. The sweat trickled down our backs and her knees got weak. And I loved her for those four days, but I knew on the fifth I wouldn't.

I wanted to leave. But I am the nice guy—a twenty-one-year-old baby-faced actor barely breathing. There were the obligatory expectations of the morning-after and I was already working up a few excuses to skip the morning. I did not want to walk the beaches of Pebble or play a privileged round of bad golf with her storied father. I didn't even like golf.

It was New Year's Day 2021.

I met Olivia a week ago, the day after Christmas. The holiday itself was the usual—spectacularly uneventful. I was beginning to hate Christmas for that exact reason. Yet it was the best as it could be with my mother and sister and a handful of family-few friends who nearly drowned every year in Christmas cheer, happiness, singing and bearing gifts they put much thought into. It was not them. It was me. Melancholy had slipped past me and taken the shape of a lifeless dragon not dead, but out of fire. My mother said I looked unhappy, and my sister said I was bored and needed a change. Both were right.

So, the next day, I took the drive to Monterey Bay. By myself. I wanted to eat calamari and drink enough beers and tequila on the wharf that I would need to find a place to stay for the night. The next day I would wake up with a slight hangover and I would go alone to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, something I had done often with my father, mother, and sister. Apparently, my discontent started as a toddler, and I was soothed by petting the bat rays and watching the fish spin around in the giant two-story tank. My favorites were the jellyfish in their segregated tube. They floated effortlessly, dancing in lacy costumes. The water calmed me. The ocean still does.

California, and the place I loved called Santa Cruz, had become a place that moved between fires and floods, droughts, and deluges. It had been a rainy December, and I had spent the early part of it as a volunteer handing out trash bags and food in an area hard hit by floods along the San Lorenzo River. It's a good feeling for a day or two after to help, but as soon as it's over, you can sink into the despair of it all and it wasn't just Santa Cruz. It was everywhere. Something horrible. Every day. Somewhere. But that's not what started my melancholy at the end of 2020. Mine was more selfish and personal. I was young, but I still wanted something important in my life. Friends I had plenty of, but no constant companion and lover to spend time with—that is, the love of my life. Optimistic? I try. I suppose that's the reason I went to Monterey that day—not to find the love of my life—but to be alone because it was the only person I was tolerating lately.

We met at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which sounds like an odd place to meet a woman. But it was the day after Christmas, and she was with her family, who seemed to be the doting and attentive type. She seemed happy and bubbly, and for a moment, I guess I liked that.

It was she that came up to me, Did you know that jellyfish can reproduce asexually?

I knew that but pretended I didn't because any opening line that includes any variation or suggestion of the word sex indicates a seduction. Accept or not, and I was up for it. As much as I didn't care for Christmas, I didn't like the idea of being alone on New Year's Eve, so I stepped in.

I didn’t know that. I lied, something I never do. Except that day. Hi, I’m Ryan and we chatted about the usual things. Was that her family? How was Christmas? Do you live around here? She reported back that yes, that was her family. Christmas was wonderful—those were her words—wonderful. They had a family tradition of visiting Monterey the day after Christmas together. They lived in Pebble Beach on the golf course and, of course, I knew what that meant. It meant they had money, which was of no interest at all to me except the fundamental information that she probably wasn't hustling me or looking for a caretaker.

Father was in the golf business, which would imply any number of things, and I didn’t ask. She asked if I would meet her at a bar later—she had dinner plans with her family and couldn't get out until late. I agreed.

I was trying to determine her age, not that it mattered to me. She seemed like she was at least ten years older, early thirties, but you never ask. Never ask a woman her age unless you suspect she could be under eighteen. A woman’s age is something you must figure out on your own based on the length of her hair or the wrinkles around the eyes, the pattern on her fingernail polish, the number of tattoos or visible piercings. The only thing I would object to would be a ring on her left finger and piercings, of which she had neither. I didn't mind pierced ears, but any other visible piercings often meant there were likely others hidden and when it came to metal objects poking into body parts, I preferred the simplicity of natural skin without self-inflicted holes.

Older women coming on to me was a common thing. I didn't mind. Older lovers were usually better, and I'd had a surprising amount of experience in my twenty-one years. They saw me as safe. Too young for permanence—just a pretty face, some might say childlike, and just a good fuck for the evening. They would push fingers through my blonde curls and attend to every inch of me with the delicacy of a gourmet meal, and I loved every one of them for those moments.

I wasn't quite sure about Oliva, but it didn't quite matter. So, I met her at the bar, and we played the usual seductive dance for several hours and then she took me home to her Pebble Beach house on the golf course and I stayed because that was the kind of mood I was in. Stay. Go. Indecisiveness and apathy had become my personal plague while we were in the midst of a global one.

On New Year’s Day I would stay for breakfast and coffee and give her a kiss on the mouth, but I wouldn't tell her I would call her again because I had no intention of it. She was beautiful, rich, and sweet enough, at least after only knowing her for four days, but I felt nothing, and I was wondering if I had become emotionless.

So, I did what people do in the new year. I made one decision. Some say it's a resolution—a list of things to accomplish, but I figured I was only good for one. I would be open to possibilities—let my guard down to finding the love of my life, as absurd as that sounded to me that New Year's morning.

LIVE A LIFE

I burst up the stairs of Ashley’s bungalow that sat on a quiet street surrounded by old growth oaks and pines. She bought it just four years ago after receiving one of our inheritance checks. The realtor that sold it to her called it quaint, but she took it further by painting the bulk of the outside a shade of yellow she called canary and the porch, forest green. I thought it looked more like grass green, but she claimed my taste in paint and decor was not to be trusted. And the inside? She called that shabby chic, which meant a dozen off-white and pale pastel colors swirled around the room, assuming various shapes as pillows and wall hangings and stuffed chairs. It was all a bit nauseating to me, all that pink and purple fluff, but I had to admit everything was comfortable to sit or sleep on, even the tasseled cotton rope hammock that rocked on the porch. At least the house was only a half mile from the beach.

Hi Ash. Hey mom. What are you doing today?

Your sister is taking me for a haircut. She says I am out of style. Apparently, I'm getting a makeover.

I leaned over to kiss my mother on the cheek and give Ash a hug. Well, I think you look great, mom, but you might want to just humor her. It will make life easier.

"I am going along with it. Better than trying