by SJ Cavaletti
Same reliable, lovely, helpful, fun, gorgeous, touchable, lick able, kissable El.
Damn it. I hadn’t counted on him being just as good as when I left.
I let out a breath through flapping lips, rubbed my eyes awake, and then pushed myself up in bed. I looked around the open plan motorhome.
Simone was gone.
Grabbing my camera off the bedside table, I looked through some of the photos we’d taken last night. Simone and I decided that in order to do less organizing when we got home, we’d focus on one aspect of Uyu life per day, so that our photos would paint a picture when we reviewed them.
Turning on the digital camera, it felt so old-fashioned to have one now but I didn’t want to wreck my phone with the dust, I scrolled through our treasures from yesterday.
Four men in rainbow tutus.
A guy walking around with a disco ball for a head.
A woman in an outfit of ropes with rope pigtails down to her butt.
Spiky halo crowns. Quite common.
A person on four stilts walking around like a hyena.
A woman wearing a gas mask connected to a see-through backpack with plants in it.
Gypsies, as they called themselves, as I guess I’d soon call myself, were creative people.
Suddenly, the caravan door flew open and in walked Simone with two coffees. “Hey girl, you’re up.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Who cares?”
I pushed myself to the edge of the bed and into my chair. “Look at you, two days and you’re a convert.”
“To be fair, I’ve never been good with time.”
True. Simone was always late.
I rolled over to the kitchen area and Simone handed me one of the coffees.
“Thanks, hon. You’ve already been to Center Camp?”
“Yeah. Geez this place just energizes you. I must have slept like, five hours tops but I’m full of beans.”
She danced a bit and turned around to give me a little twerk, making me giggle.
“Yeah. One helluva ride,” I took a drink of coffee, “Thanks for the caffeine. But you’re right. I surprisingly don’t feel tired after last night.”
Last night when I rode on El’s back, wishing I’d been around front.
That’s when Simone dropped it like a bomb.
“Hope you don’t mind but we’re meeting up with El and his crew again tonight.”
I was surprised, but tried not to be annoyed surprised.
“Ooh-kay.”
“I ran into Drake at Center Camp…”
“You ran into Drake?”
Suspicious. Highly suspicious.
“Well, okay, I ran into him. But at their camp. Not Center Camp.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why were you at his camp? And why were you about to lie to me about it?”
She gave me a cute, innocent, doe-eyed look, “Because I’m not good at being meddlesome.”
“Oh, so you admit you coordinated this effort for me, not you? Because that would have been a better reason. Like, you wanted to hang out with those guys again. That would have worked as a fib.”
“Noted.”
A beat of silence. Then she added, “Upon reflection, I do want to hang out with those guys. They know the ropes.”
“Uh-huh.”
Why was she doing this? I wasn’t ready to pop back into daily contact with El. I wanted to talk. Smooth out the crinkles of the past. But I had four more days to do that.
Equally, I wanted to see him again. And Simone knew I was not the person who would set that up myself.
And it would be fun. Maeve and Drake were sweet, and the rest of El’s crew seemed like they knew how to party.
“For the record,” I said, playing it cool, “It’s totally fine with me. El and I decided a long time ago we’d stay friends. So… it’s not a problem.”
Wait…
“Unless he doesn’t want to see me tonight. I mean, he might not want to hang out with me. Like if he wants to, you know…” I pushed some hair behind my ear and looked to the floor as casual as possible. “Like, maybe he wants to meet other people. Or women. Maybe that would make it awkward. Was he there when you set up this meeting for tonight? Or just Drake?”
Simone put her cup to her lips but didn’t drink. She just looked at me. “Just Drake. And Koa. And Jasmine. El was still in bed.”
Suddenly, I wondered if he had been out late. Had danced with another woman… had taken drugs or…?
I didn’t really know anything about El anymore. He’d always been the early bird. Guess he’d changed after all.
Simone and I tried not to stare as we watched Koa’s deep, tanned arms bulging out the sides of his tight tank top. He lifted my wheelchair into his bike trailer like it was made of feather. He was undeniably gorgeous, and neither of us had gotten any for quite some time.
I hadn’t noticed El sneak up behind me on the chariot platform as he whispered in my ear, “He’s single you know.”
I turned around in the chariot driver’s seat.
El said, “You have a little something…” He dabbed his finger on the side of his mouth.
“I’m not drooling. Just making sure he does it right. It’s precious cargo.”
“Yeah, okay,” he said, licking his lips and rolling his eyes, joking, not joking.
“So,” I made small talk, “Do you want to hitch a ride on a pony?”
“Nah. Unless you want to keep them empty, Jasmine really wanted to go on one. And you already have Simone, too.”
“Sure? I have room for at least a couple more. Plus the platform is sturdy enough for standers.”
“Yeah. I’m sure. He hopped off the small jump to the ground and a puff of dust scattered. “See you later.”
Annoying. Why did he come up here to tease me, make me almost feel like he was slightly jealous and flirting only to run off again? Because we were leaving, that was why. Not only him. Everyone.
Koa hopped on his bike, which he needed to stand up to push now that he carried my wheelchair with the trailer. It was a lightweight model, but Koa still towed the weight of that and a bunch of other supplies.
He pulled up next to us and said, “You ready to roll?”
“Sure,” I said, then spoke loudly over his head toward the group, “Anyone want a ride tonight?”
“Oh! Me!!” Jasmine ran over and didn’t waste a minute taking the dark bay horse looking like it was going to rear. She looked back at me. “I wanted to go yesterday. This thing is ah-may-zing.”
The woman called Helena also came over, more shy with her request. “Do you mind if I come, too?”
“Hell no. Hop up. It’s the bad bitch buggy tonight.”
Helena smiled at me, a shy but pleased smile through twinkling eyes. She was beautiful. And more my age than Jasmine. More El’s age. I wondered if El had ever gone there.
Why did I keep wondering where El put his dick?
It didn’t belong to me anymore. I needed to get over this jealous suspicion thing that kept poking me like an annoying little brother. I hated to admit it, but here I was, thirty-four years old, and I still didn’t want my ex going to the dance with someone else.
For a second I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. That I shouldn’t hang out with El at all because this jealousy was justified. Because this place was top to bottom full of sexily dressed women, half naked, fully inebriated and “open-minded.”
But it was too late now.
Tomorrow, I’d do Uyu on my own.
It looked like El’s entire camp was out with us tonight. It didn’t even feel like we needed to go anywhere to find a party. El, Drake, Maeve, Pika, Joey and Flick went out first on bikes, then Koa with his trailer, then me.
Only a couple blocks from El’s camp, we hit the esplanade, the enormous semi-circular road that hugged Center Camp. We all planned to go to a place Pika and Joey suggested. Apparently they were the party ringleaders of the group.
The sun had
set while we were still at El’s camp, and I hadn’t realized just how chilly the night air became. The slow but sharp breeze nipped at my skin through the thin, long-sleeved camisole I had on. It was see-through and unsurprisingly offered no warmth. I pulled my pink fur coat from the back of the stool over my chest the best I could while driving.
Simone had given her horse to Helena. Jasmine sat on the other, but kept looking back at me. Though she smiled any time I caught her eye, she tried not to make eye contact and my gut told me something was off. It almost felt like she was taking stock. Inventory. Trying to suss me out.
I could almost take Helena and El being together, but if he and Jasmine, this total bombshell Hawaiian queen who still looked in her twenties, had a thing with El, I think that would do me in.
“Hey,” she said to Simone, “Want to trade places?”
Simone nodded, shimmied to the dark horse, and Jasmine stood on the other side of the chariot, hanging on the rim for support. Not that we were going quickly. She came to talk to me.
“So what do you think of Uyu so far?” She asked.
“A million times better than I could have dreamed it to be.”
“Well, by the look of this art car, you were born to be a Gypsy. This thing is rad. How did you come up with the idea?”
“Have you ever seen the show Vikings? On Amazon Prime?”
“Only the first season.”
“Oh. Well, anyway, there’s a paraplegic in the show. He goes off to war and has the boat maker craft him a chariot. He could be more upright. It’s a copycat, really. Inspired by that design. Can’t take credit.”
“Still. You must have had to draw up the plans? El told me you were an engineer or something?”
Oh dear. She knew something about me. They’d talked about me.
“Kind of. Used to be. I used to fix and design medical equipment. I’m a motivational speaker now.”
She nodded, listening agreeably, smiling, though her eyes melted through my skin and I could feel them looking around for something on my insides.
Maybe she did like El. There was definitely something less open and comfortable than I had with Drake and Maeve last night.
Fortunately, the small talk came to a halt as the bikers up ahead stop at a massive, lit up dragon snake. It was an art car, too, as long a double length public bus. Dance music bubbled and poured out of the dragon’s mouth, and a crowd of about forty people danced around the mythical, illuminated creature.
I stopped the chariot alongside the bikes and El’s crew jumped off, most of them dancing immediately to the yoyo beats. Koa pulled his bike next to my chariot.
“You want to dance?” He asked.
“You don’t have to ask twice.”
I began lowering the driver’s stool when El arrived at the chariot.
“Hey, you want some help getting into your chair?”
“No. I’m cool. Go. Dance. Koa’s getting the chair I’ll be there in a minute.”
But El didn’t budge. He also didn’t insist. Once a safety net, always a safety net.
Koa hoisted my chair off his trailer. But it was a few feet from the edge of the chariot platform and he looked for how to open it. El went over to help, flicking it into position.
He was adept with the chair because he’d practiced. Both in my manual chair and in my power chair. Many, many times. I remember the morning, soon after my first days home, when we still lived in our old apartment, I woke up and my power chair wasn’t next to the bed. I sat up, alarmed, looking around the room, until I heard that faint sound I would have in my past put down to being a kid’s remote controlled car.
“El?” I had called out to the hallway.
“Yeah?” He called back from well into the living area.
“Um… do you have my chair?”
“Yeah… coming.”
The motor sound came closer and closer until he appeared in the doorway, sitting in my chair. Now some women would think their man just wanted to have a go. Like playing with a toy. And that would have pissed me off. Especially at the time. But I knew exactly what El was doing. He was too serious, and too dialed in on human emotion to treat my new life as a game.
“Sorry,” he said, still in the chair driving it next to me in bed, “Just checking some things out.”
“Alright. And what did you check out?”
“We need to move, Liz. This place doesn’t work.”
Those deep brown eyes, warm with love, had looked at me. He still sat in my chair. “You want to go see some places this weekend?”
We did need to move. Rather than wait for me to tell him how totally inaccessible the shelves were, the bathroom was, the tight entrance hall was… he experienced it for himself. Empathy. El was the king of empathy.
Now, I watched him maneuver the chair to the edge of the chariot, and it was like cymbals crashing inside me. Reverberating unkindly right through my body. El was so perfect and not a single nerve in my body didn’t know it.
Now. Then. Always. El was the perfect man.
People said I was crazy to leave him. And that I was. Totally and utterly crazy. My mind seemed controlled by some other force, which I now recognize as depression.
I made my way into the chair from the platform and Koa, El and I joined the group that danced in the colorful light projecting off the spines of the dragon.
Dancing.
Nobody, including myself, could have ever guessed dancing was when I’d feel as close to my old self as ever. I had loved to dance before the accident. I wouldn’t have said I was any good, really. Mostly a two stepper kind of girl who mouthed the words at the top of her lungs and threw her arms in the air, spilling gin and tonic on herself type of dancer. And that I could still do in my wheelchair. Especially in my manual chair. I could spin around, throw my hands up, and let loose. I still had the same feeling I’d had before this accident.
El’s friends were getting down and dirty. I rolled up to Maeve, because she was the shortest and moved the least, so I felt her vibe. I threw my hands in the air, beamed at her, and bobbed my head to the beat.
She shouted over the bass, “You like this kind of music?”
“I like any kind of music as long as there’s a party.”
She snaked her body to the rhythm. “That’s cool. I haaa….” Something caught her eye mid-sentence. “Oh, my gosh! Guys! It’s the ship.”
She pointed behind me, and I turned around to see a pirate ship approaching in the distance. At first, it was just a blur of light, almost like colors swirling in an oil slick, but as it approached, a string of lights aligned the hull from bow to stern, up and down the mast and crow’s nest. It was clear this apparition was a veritable pirate ship.
Maeve spoke to Drake, who was about five feet from her, dancing with Pika and Joey. “Drake, we got to go on the ship again. It’s where we met. The perfect way to celebrate our anniversary week.”
She pointed again, and he looked. His eyes grew wide. “Now that’s Uyu manifesting romance.” He came closer to me and said, “Maeve and I had our first proper conversation on that ship.” They shared a kiss.
Jasmine came over, too. “Guys, we could all use a cocktail. Let’s flag him down.”
They didn’t have to flag the ship down. It was coming right for us and within a few minutes of us all part dancing, part waiting to see where the ship went, it parked only fifty feet away.
The thing was massive. Maybe three stories high and impressive. I had no idea how this thing ran and I contemplated the super-sized vehicle, but the mechanical design soon turned practical. I wanted to go on. But I wasn’t sure it had a wheelchair ramp. Suddenly, what had felt like a promising night turned into a total disappointment. We’d all been out for only an hour and already…
“Hey!” El snapped me out of my melancholy. He stood next to Koa. “Want to go on the ship?”
“I do, but…”
“But nothing,” El said. “Boys!”
He gave a cat whistle which turne
d his crew’s heads. His finger is the air he made a round up gesture and the men in his gang raced to his side. They formed a line in front of me. And a handsome one, too.
Koa said, “So, you know all about Uyu gifting? Yeah?”
“I do.”
“Well, here’s our gift to you.”
Synchronized, they all lifted their arms like body builders, giving me a show of ten arms, all impressively endowed with more than decent biceps.
I laughed, not understanding. “A picturesque landscape? If only I could take this gift home.”
The boys continued to flex as if competing with Arnold in Mr. Universe competition. It was comical, except for El. He was…
“Naw lady,” Koa continued, “We’re giving you our bodies.”
“Wow. I’ve only been here a couple days and I already have a shot at an orgy?”
Joey stopped flexing and said to El, “Damn. I like this girl.”
He replied, “Don’t get any wild ideas.”
Koa continued, “El spoke to us earlier, and we all decided we wanted you to feel free. So if you can’t do it with your body, you can use one of ours.”
El came over. “We’ll get you up the ladder. If you want to go on the ship, we’ll get you there.”
I searched for Simone’s eyes. Ones that I knew would be on the brink of tears because she always did the crying for us when these things happened. When human connection reached such a point of sentimentality. This time? I wanted to cry, too.
What had this conversation looked like? The one between these five men? These five brawny, sexy men? The one where they made me a priority when they didn’t even know me?
El.
Our eyes met in the dim light. None left by the sun, only flashing disco lights. I couldn’t see him well. Dark patches, intermittently illuminated by the muted shine of a glitter ball, hung off the dragon. Though I could hardly make out his face, I could see all I needed to see.
He still cared.