A Different Kind of Forever - By Dee Ernst Page 0,20
it’s all new to me. Did anything like this ever happen to you? Instant physical attraction?”
Sue smiled in the darkness. “Lust at first sight?”
“Yes. My whole body was all tingly, you know? And that good, achy hurt you get right in your, well, you know where.”
“From just a kiss? Where were his hands?”
“Sue,” Diane pleaded, “be serious. Please?”
“Okay. Yes, that exact same thing happened to me.” Sue checked the rearview mirror again. “With Pete. We had a blind date, left before dessert, and spent three days in bed. And look how we turned out.”
Diane closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the seat. All she could see was Michael’s face, and hours later, as she tried to sleep, she could still feel his skin against hers.
CHAPTER FOUR
MICHAEL CARLUCCI HAD always known he would be a star. His sisters had been telling him so since he was a baby, and they wouldn’t lie to him. When he was eight, his mother died of cancer. She had been sick most of his life, and had always been a fragile, inconsistent presence in his life. He had loved his mother, worshipped his gentle, silent father, but he depended on his sisters for strength, confidence and support, and they had never failed him.
The year his mother died, his piano teacher told his grieving father that Michael’s talent needed more guidance than she could provide. Marie found someone else, and Denise took the train to Manhattan with him every week for the next five years. Angela had already bought him a smaller-sized guitar, so his tiny hands could more comfortably reach around the neck. By then, her guitar instructor had taken Michael under his wing, and all the girls knew they had something special on their hands.
He had sat with them since he was old enough to toddle down the hallway into their bedrooms. At first, they thought it was cute, the way he remembered the words to every song they played on their stereo. Then they realized that he was not only singing the words, but remembered melodies and harmonies. His voice, for such a little boy, was huge. It was also always on key.
He was always the smallest kid in his class. The Catholic School bullies pursued him mercilessly, so he learned to be the toughest kid as well. He played piano in the concert band, made straight A’s, collected model cars and waited for his sisters’ dreams for him to come true.
Dave Adamson had stared at Denise in disbelief when she asked him to consider Michael for his brother Joey’s band. Joey had put together Mitchell Street with his best friend Seth Bascomb, and they were starting to get something of a reputation in the wide open North Jersey club scene. But the band was just a cover band, and lacked the extra kick that could mean success. Besides, Denise Carlucci was beautiful and sexy and when they were in bed together, he couldn’t say no to her. So, he agreed to listen to Michael. And he had been blown away.
Getting the band to accept Michael had been easy, once they heard him play and sing. Getting Anthony Carlucci to agree to let his underage son go on the road had been another story. But Denise had kept up her end of the bargain with her father. Michael’s grades never dropped. He never had a beer with his band mates, never smoked a joint.
Three months after he began performing with the band, just days after he turned sixteen, a twenty-three year old fan followed Michael into the unisex bathroom in a bar in Ithaca, New York. As he came out of one of the stalls, she was waiting for him, bare breasted, and she pushed him back into the stall, gave him a blow job as he stood balanced up on the toilet seat, then left without saying a word. Denise came in moments later to find her sweet, beautiful little brother fumbling to zip his jeans while a hard-looking blonde rinsed her mouth out at the grimy sink. Denise never said a word to him. She never had to. One look at the disappointment on her face was enough for him. It didn’t happen again.
Michael graduated high school the following year. He had been accepted to Princeton. He had been rejected by Julliard. The band was asked to go on tour with BonJovi. Anthony Carlucci traveled down to Princeton and received the personal word of the head of the