by Easton, BB
Oh, right.
I hop over to the wall beside Wes, and that’s when I hear faint, deep voices inside the building.
Wes turns toward me so that our faces are inches apart, and I hold my breath. I know he’s not going to kiss me—that wouldn’t even make sense—but my body doesn’t seem to know that. It tenses all over and buzzes and hums as Wes’s lips graze the edge of my ear.
“I’m gonna give you the backpack so that I can move around more easily in there. You stay out here and watch the bike.”
I shake my head violently. “No. I’m coming too.”
“No, you’re not,” Wes hisses between his clenched teeth.
He drops his eyes, and I feel his hand wrap around mine. I look down with my heart in my throat as Wes wraps my fingers around the handle of his gun.
“I won’t be able to focus with you in there, and trust me, those guys won’t be able to either.” Wes’s eyes slide up my body to my face, and they take what little power I have along with them. “Stay out here. Please.”
I swallow and nod, feeling the weight of his trust fall on my shoulders along with the backpack. Then, he turns and opens the door.
I don’t know how he does it, but the glass beneath his feet doesn’t even crunch as he tiptoes in and silently closes the door behind him. I watch through the broken glass as he disappears from view.
This is bad.
My painkillers are in full effect, and I can’t tell if he’s been gone five seconds or five minutes. One of my arms feels heavier than the other.
That’s weird. I bend my right elbow and notice a small black handgun in my fist. I blink at it. How did that get there?
Thunder booms in the distance even though the sun is shining. Nothing makes sense anymore. I should be in college right now. I should be working part-time at some shitty diner and getting an apartment with Carter and adopting a cat and naming it Blurryface. But, instead, I’m standing outside of Buck’s Hardware, holding a gun and guarding a stranger’s dirt bike while he sneaks inside to steal a metal detector so that we can find a hidden bomb shelter to live in because the four horsemen of the apocalypse are coming in two days, according to an unexplained dream we’ve all been having.
I hear the thunder again, only this time, it’s coming from inside the building.
Crash!
My heart lurches into my throat as the sounds of struggle—muffled grunts, skin hitting skin, skin hitting the floor, merchandise hitting the floor—come pouring out through the hole in the door. I don’t think; I just react. I yank on the handle with my free hand and charge inside, my giant backpack jostling with every step. This place hasn’t been ransacked like Huckabee Foods, but on the left side of the store an endcap shelf of fertilizer has been knocked over, and there are plastic containers and little round granules everywhere.
I run in that direction. I don’t see anyone yet, but I hear Wes’s voice coming from the back of the store.
“Rain, get the fuck out!”
“Rain?” another masculine voice says.
I recognize it immediately.
“Quint?” I almost slip in the spilled fertilizer as I turn the corner and find Quinton Jones, my buddy since kindergarten, standing at the end of the aisle with his daddy’s hunting rifle trained on Wes.
Wes has his back to me and appears to be holding Lamar Jones, Quint’s little brother, like a human shield. I can’t tell from here, but the way his arm is poised, my guess is that he has a certain pocketknife pressed to Lamar’s throat as well.
“Quint!” I squeal. “I didn’t know you guys were still in town!”
My classmate keeps his gun trained on Wes, but his dark features pull up into a big grin when he sees me. “Rainbow Williams! Got-damn! Where you been, fam?”
I make a beeline for my buddy, but the second I get within arm’s reach of Wes, he grabs me, shoving Lamar toward his brother and using me as a human shield instead. I don’t even realize he’s taken the gun back until I see it stretched out in front of us, aimed at Quint.
Wes’s breath is warm against my cheek when he says, “You can tell him hi from here.”
I laugh in surprise and wave at the kid I used to play Power Rangers with on the playground. “Hi, Quint.” I giggle. “This is my new friend, Wes. Wes, this is Quint and Lamar. Quint was in my grade at school.” I turn my head toward Wes and whisper loud enough for everyone to hear, “He’s a lifer.”
Quint rolls his black-brown eyes at me and elbows his brother. “Here we go with this shit again.”
Lamar works his jaw back and forth, which I can now see looks a little swollen, and glares at Wes. He’s grown his hair out since the last time I saw it. The top is in short dreadlocks now. I like it.
Wes holsters his gun but keeps his left arm wrapped tightly around my shoulders. I like that, too.
“So, you don’t believe in the nightmares?” he asks Quint. His tone is lighter, friendlier.
I know what he’s doing. And it seems to be working.
Quint lowers the rifle, stabbing it into the ground like a cane, and launches into one of his numerous conspiracy theories. “All you have to do is look at who’s dyin’ and who’s gettin’ rich to know that there’s some fucked up shit goin’ on. If you ask me, I think this whole thing, the nightmares and all of it, was planned by the government to get all the poor folks and the brown folks to kill each other off. Let the trash take itself out, you know?”
“Yeah, and the Burger Palace CEO is in on it,” Lamar chimes in.
His voice sounds deeper than I remember. I don’t know if it’s because of puberty or because he’s trying to sound tough in front of Wes. Either way, it’s kinda funny.
Wes snorts in agreement. “That motherfucker is making a killing.”
I laugh. “For real! They tried to charge me, like, eighty-seven dollars to Apocasize my meal yesterday!”
“See?” Lamar raises his hand in my direction. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”
Quint pushes Lamar’s arm back down. “So, what brings y’all to Buck’s Hardware on this fine day?” he asks, eyeing us a little more suspiciously.
Wes tilts his head in the direction of the front door. “My bike got a flat.”
“And we need a metal detector,” I blurt out, earning me a glare and a shoulder squeeze from Wes.
Oops.
“A metal detector?” Quint repeats, raising an eyebrow.
“Y’all lookin’ for buried treasure?” Lamar chuckles and cups his swelling jaw with a wince.
“Yeah. I’m pretty sure my dad’s got all kinds of stuff buried in the backyard. Y’all know him.”
Quint and Lamar smirk and give each other a knowing look. Everybody in this town thinks Phil Williams is a crazy, old, drunken hermit who doesn’t leave the house. They’re not exactly wrong.
“What about you?” I ask, trying to steer the conversation away from the subject of my dad as quickly as possible.
“Just came in to grab some motor oil.” Quint gives Lamar the same look that Wes just gave me, but Lamar ignores him. “We’re gettin’ outta here.”
“Really? How?” I ask. “The roads are so bad; we couldn’t even get from Burger Palace to here without a flat.”
Lamar grins. “Oh, we ain’t worried ’bout flats.”
Quint glares at his brother, who isn’t getting the hint, and then turns his attention toward me. “Well, we best be goin’.” His dark eyes flick from me to Wes and back again. “You good?”
There’s something in his tone that tells me he wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in this white boy if I asked him to. I love him for that.
I glance over my shoulder at Wes and smile. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Wes doesn’t let me go until the door shuts behind Quint and Lamar. Then, he spins me around and grips my shoulders so hard I feel like he’s going to crush them in his bare hands. I wince and brace myself for the lecture that I know is coming about blah, blah, blah, you never listen, blah, blah, blah, I told
you whatever, but instead, I hear Wes suck a deep breath in through his nose and exhale it just as hard. I open one eye and peek at him. His jaw is clenched, his eyes are narrowed, but he’s not yelling. Not yet anyway.
I lift my other eyelid and give him a tiny cringe of a smile. “Don’t be mad. I know you said—”
But before I can finish my apology, Wes pulls my body flush against his and smashes his lips even harder against mine. My body goes rigid for a second, completely caught off guard, but when he grabs the back of my head and slides his warm tongue into my gasping mouth, an atom bomb of desperation goes off inside of me. I press up onto my tiptoes and kiss him back, sparklers and bottle rockets going off behind my eyes. Wes tears the backpack off my shoulders and tosses it to the ground before slamming me up against the shelves of weed killer behind me. I can feel him everywhere. His hands are clutching the back of my neck, cupping my face, gripping my waist, grabbing my ass. His chest is pressed against my chest. His thigh is shoved between my legs, and when he rocks his hips forward, I feel another part of him—full and hard—against the side of my belly.
“Wes.” My plea is barely audible as it disappears into his relentless mouth.
Wes responds by gripping my hips and grinding against me harder. I feel my core coil and tighten as the entire world, both inside my mind and outside this store, disappears.
“You never … fucking … listen,” he growls between kisses.
“I know,” I pant, hooking my knee over his hip and shifting so that his hardness is now between my legs. “I’m sorry.”
Wes’s pace becomes even more punishing. I cling to his shoulders and suck on his swirling tongue and hold my breath as tiny earthquakes begin to rock my body. My legs tremble as the pressure builds.
“Wes …”
I tilt my hips forward, taking the full brunt of his force. Feeling him there—right there—separated by only a few layers of fabric and knowing he’s just as desperate for me as I am for him, does me in. I whimper against his lips and pulsate around nothing as the earth shifts beneath me, and I’m suddenly falling.
But I don’t hit the ground.
The shelf does.
Along with about two hundred plastic jugs of weed killer.
I open my eyes at the sound of the crash to find Wes smirking down at me, lips swollen and eyes hooded. He has a death grip on one of my arms, which he releases slowly as I turn and look behind us at the damage.
My cheeks burn white-hot when I realize what just happened. How pathetic I am. Wes is a sex god, and I just came in my panties and knocked over a shelf of weed killer from a kiss. I can’t even face him.
Thunder booms outside—for real this time—and I feel his stubble graze my cheek.
“As much as I’d love to pick up where we left off, I think it’s about to rain. We’d better go.” He smacks me on the ass and walks off, giving me and my bright red face a much-needed moment to compose ourselves.
So … that happened, I think, staring down at the damage we did.
I wait for my next thought to come—for me to overanalyze every aspect of that interaction; for me to admire the way the shelves were spaced just far enough apart so that, if one fell, it wouldn’t cause a domino reaction; for me to freak out and find a way to make the whole awkward situation worse—but there’s nothing inside my head except for a warm, soft, fuzzy kind of glow. I wait and wait, blinking at our mess, smiling to myself, but still nothing comes.
I don’t know how long I stand there, admiring the emptiness in my mind, but it’s the closest thing to relief I’ve felt in weeks.
Wes managed to do what all the alcohol and painkillers in the world haven’t. With nothing more than his body and his attention, he made it all just go away. All the memories. All the loss. All the worthlessness and loneliness and hopelessness and fear. For a few minutes, I was free of it all.
God, I hope he does it again.
As I wander the aisles of Buck’s Hardware, I let my mind actually contemplate the possibility of survival. Maybe living a little longer wouldn’t be so bad … if I were with Wes. Maybe we could make each other happy in our bomb shelter built for two. Maybe, once we find it, we can do what we just did again but without clothes on.
Blurry, grainy images of Carter’s boyish face begin to tiptoe around the edges of my chemically induced bliss. He’s only been gone about a month, but I can hardly remember what he looked like anymore. What his voice sounded like. What it felt like when we’d sneak out and make love on a blanket under the stars, hidden by the waist-high grass in Old Man Crocker’s untended field.
It hadn’t felt like whatever Wes just did; I know that much.
Or had it? I can’t remember.
I walk two or three laps around the store in a daze before I spot Wes kneeling next to his dirt bike just outside the front door. He tucks his hair behind his ear as he fiddles with the tire, and I can’t help but admire his gorgeous profile. It’s crazy to think that somebody that beautiful came out of Franklin Springs. I’m glad he got out when he did. He doesn’t belong here. The people here are … simple. Or, at least, they were before the nightmares began. Now, most of them have left town, killed themselves, or gotten themselves killed.
Not that I’m one to judge. I was thinking about doing one of those three things myself—until Wes showed up.
I take another lap, actually paying attention to the merchandise this time, and discover that Buck’s Hardware does not carry metal detectors. My hope deflates like the tire on Wes’s bike. How am I supposed to tell him that we came all the way out here and got a flat for nothing? I can’t. I won’t. I just need to think. I close my eyes and try to concentrate, but nothing comes. It’s ironic. This whole time, all I’ve wanted to do was erase everything in my brain, and now that Wes and the painkillers have finally done it, I need the damn thing back.
I wander the store some more, and just when I’m about to admit defeat, I notice a few giant magnets, grouped together on a shelf near the door. They look like round metal weights with a hole in the middle, and the sign below them says they can lift up to ninety-five pounds.
“Thank you, Jesus,” I whisper, raising my palms to the drop-tile ceiling.
I find some yellow nylon rope on a different aisle and use a pair of gardening shears to cut off two six-foot-long lengths of it. I thread one through the hole in each magnet and tie it off, figuring that Wes and I can just drag the magnets behind us as we walk through the woods. If they can lift almost a hundred pounds, surely we’ll feel a tug if we pass over a big metal door beneath the pine needles. Right? It might work.
It has to work.
I run outside with the backpack and my makeshift magnets-on-a-rope, eager to show Wes my new invention. He looks up at me from where he’s reflating his newly patched tire with a hand pump, and all my excitement leaves me in a single breath. Just beyond the store’s covered entrance, the sky has gone from bright blue to slate gray. Sizzling yellow lightning bolts shoot out of the clouds in the distance, and big, fat raindrops are hitting the asphalt parking lot so hard it looks like it’s boiling.
“You were right about the rain,” I mumble, staring at what’s become of our beautiful spring afternoon.
A clap of thunder booms so loud and so close it rumbles a piece of glass loose from the broken door. I jump at the sound of it shattering on the concrete behind me.
Wes glances at me over his shoulder.
“Can we … can you drive that thing in the rain?”
He raises his eyebrows like that was the stupidest question ever asked. “It’s a dirt bike. A little mud ain’t gonna hurt it.”
I smile, hearing the country in his voice for the first time.
Guess he’s from Georgia after all.
“You afraid of a little rain? ’Cause I can take you home if—”
“No!” I blurt out before reclaiming my chill. “No, it’s fine. I don’t mind.”
Wes gives me the side-eye, then returns to pumping the tire. “The so
oner we find that shelter, the better. I have a feeling the locals are about to burn this whole shitty town to the ground.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because I drove through at least twenty other shitty little towns just like this one on my way here from Charleston, and they were all burning. Including Charleston. That’s why I left.”
“Oh.”
I’m such a fucking idiot. Wes arrived in Franklin Springs without so much as a toothbrush, and I never even wondered why.
Thanks, hydrocodone.
“You had to leave because of the fires?”
“Yep,” Wes replies in a clipped tone, squeezing the tire to test its fullness. “I was living on Folly Island and waiting tables at this little tiki bar.” He’s not looking at me, but at least he’s talking. “The owners were good people. They let me play guitar on the weekends so I could earn extra tips.”
Wes talked about playing guitar in Rome, too. I don’t know why, but I have such a hard time picturing him as a musician. I mean, sure, he looks like he just walked offstage with that grunge rock hair and effortlessly cool outfit—not to mention, his stupefyingly gorgeous face—but all the artists and musicians I know are sweet and sensitive. Wes isn’t even in the same zip code as sweet and sensitive.
“After everything started shutting down,” he continued, giving the tire a few more pumps of air, “they said they’d keep serving ‘til they ran out of food. I didn’t have shit else to do, so I volunteered to help ’em out.”
I smile to myself, picturing Wes grouchily waiting tables by the beach in jeans, combat boots, and a Hawaiian shirt—his half-assed attempt at beachwear.
“On Friday night, some locals came barging in, screaming about fires. The phone lines were already down, so by the time word got to us, half the island had already burned … including the house I’d been living in.” Wes screws the cap back on the tire nozzle as the wind changes direction and begins spraying us with sideways rain.
I shield my face with my forearm. “Oh my God, Wes. I’m so sorry. Did anybody get hurt?”
He stands and wipes his dirty hands on his jeans. “My roommate got out with minor burns, but I didn’t wait around to find out about anyone else. I traded my wallet and everything in it with my buddy down the street in exchange for his dirt bike, stole a gun and holster out of his closet before I left, and got the fuck out of town.” Right on cue, the wind blows Wes’s lightweight shirt like a beautiful floral curtain, exposing the deadly weapon he keeps tucked away underneath.