by SJ Cavaletti
“El, I painted you in the best light, the light you deserved. You were really good to me…”
Jasmine and Koa looked at each other, and Koa bent his head to the side. Jasmine’s eyes agreed. Cue: exit.
“We’ll see you in a bit, guys,” Koa said.
And they both walked off.
“I’m sorry, El. Now I’ve made your friends uncomfortable,” she said. “I tried to change the subject. I knew this might happen.”
She was genuinely apologetic. Liz wasn’t a people pleaser and yet was used to pleasing people.
“They’re not like that,” I said, “They won’t care. It’s only natural we might have a blip moment or two. They’ll just ask me for the gossip later.”
“So what is the gossip?”
Her hand was still on my thigh and I wanted her to move it so I could concentrate but equally didn’t want to make a big deal.
“Liz, I just… it was hard to break up. But being cut out of your memories and your story… that was another blow. I’d lie to you, but there’s no point now. It stung.”
“Yeah, I can see that…” she said, putting hand two on my thigh, wiping out my resistance.
“It’s fine though,” I continued. “I get it. I do. Sorry if I seemed riled up about it. I’m not angry. Just, it’s strange to be talking about this kind of stuff. Hearing it from your mouth, with my friends. I’ve hardly spoken about anything to do with us and now… you’re here. In the flesh. It’s kind of a lot to handle.”
Liz finally took her hands back and put them on either side of her face and opened up her eyes, big, wide. “It’s pretty intense, isn’t it?”
I answered her with a nod.
“Listen,” she said, “Why don’t we get off the ship and get shit-faced?”
She smiled, wide and childish. Like on our third date. When I knew she wanted to sleep with me, but needed a few drinks to invite me in.
Clearly that wasn’t what was going on here. But I sure as hell wanted another drink. I wanted off this ship while we were sober and…
I wanted more time with Liz.
21
Liz
Present Day
Uyu
* * *
Getting off the pirate ship was easier than getting on. El asked Clyde to take us back to the chariot once I suggested a nightcap, or many nightcaps as was also possible. When we arrived at the chariot, everyone else wanted to stay on the boat, but Drake and Koa supported us down.
I sat on El’s shoulders but mostly lowered myself down the ladder, using him to ease the load. In this environment, with sexy lounge beats blaring from the pirate ship speakers, the dim lighting, the black night around us and one drink in, it was hard not to think El’s head was facing the wrong way around.
Did I still love El? Dubious.
But he was definitely still the most fuckable thing in any room.
Especially when he got annoyed. Like when he was talking about my Ted Talk and challenged me, rose that little bit. El had juicy lips, and they always went bright red when anger pricked his insides. I should have been more apologetic. Sympathetic to how much that hurt him. But truth be told, touching his muscular thighs to comfort him was me holding back. I wanted to kiss him better. Any woman would want to.
The physical feat of getting me back down that ladder took over my desire and before too long, Koa and Drake helped situate me and El back on the chariot.
Then, like parents leaving two teenage kids with crushes, and more to say than they had words for, they jogged back to the pirate ship, leaving us alone in the darkness.
I told the she-devil inside me to pull herself together and fired up the engine. I flicked the switch, turning on the running lights and the whole art car illuminated with a soft neon glow.
El joined me in the chariot next to the driver’s seat.
“You can take a horse if you’d like? I can manage,” I said, but regretted it because I wanted him next to me, not sitting up alone on some pony.
“Nah. You’ve had a drink and don’t know your way around. I’m telling you. This place is disorientating in the dark. Just ask Jasmine. She’s been lost more times than I can count.”
“Funny. She seems so independent.”
“She is. But this place is like being in outer space. The landmarks don’t stay in one place.”
He looked out over the dark horizon. When we parked here only an hour ago, it had been a veritable nightclub. Now it was a pitch black ghost town.
El ran his fingers through his hair, scratched his head, thinking. “Alright, so the key to knowing where to go is remembering which direction you were facing when you parked. We were facing away from about August. So let’s do a one eighty and try to keep it straight. We’ll hit the esplanade, eventually.”
“Okay.”
I pulled the steering all the way around to the left, but it was tight. Or maybe my arms were tired from all the ladder work. El, standing next to me, sensed it was hard and put his hand on the wheel with me, helping me turn it. His hand brushed against mine.
In my mind’s eye I saw those red lips again. They were a wet, shiny. Like a maraschino cherry. And just like that, the touch of his hand had me back thinking about that gorgeous, sweet face of his.
But I could hardly see it in the night. The headlights of the chariot didn’t shine backward. They couldn’t reveal whether he felt the same way I did about that touch.
We were quiet most of the ride back to the esplanade. For the first few minutes, it had been suffocating, with nothing to distract me from the swirling thoughts in my head. Hardly anything to see, like driving through a still lake at midnight. But soon, we got closer to the huge semi-circle that made up the streets and more and more people dotted around the vast Plain.
Bike lights. People with glow sticks and headlamps. Gypsies of all sorts, showing us we were not alone. Giving my brain something to think about besides El.
I parked up when we finally reached the edge, not wanting to risk driving through the more narrow streets. It seemed sensible to go the rest of the way without the chariot. El lifted my wheelchair down, then, without asking, scooped me up in his arms like a baby, cradling me until he placed me down in it.
“You’ve done enough for the night, Lizzie. If you do any more, you’ll ruin your arms for tomorrow.”
Lizzie. He was the only person who had ever called me that. Even as a little girl, nobody called me Lizzie. Eliza-boo and Liz-pot, yes, but El was the only person who’d ever called me Lizzie.
I remembered getting closer to my only boyfriend since El, Dave, and after we dated for a month, he started adopting nicknames. Honey was his usual. He also called me Jonesey. And one day, he called me Lizzie.
“I don’t like to be called Lizzie,” I had told him.
But that wasn’t the truth. The truth was, I only liked it when El said it. It was his name for me. And Dave saying it only reminded me of how much I had loved it when El did.
“So…” El said, “I’d invite you back to my motorhome but…”
“No. You should come to mine. I can get the chair inside and all that. We don’t have that much to drink though.”
El patted his backpack. “That’s okay. Every Gypsy had two liquid containers at all times. Water and a flask with something harder in it.”
We worked our way through the streets, Vertical Soul camp being about five blocks away from where we’d parked. We only saw the odd person here and there, one woman carrying a giant Hula-Hoop, off to perform or just having finished, a couple dressed in full on Victorian garb. Most people were out on the Plain, climbing on art or bringing on blisters at some pop up club.
Finally, after a loud and yet silent walk, we arrived at Vertical Soul.
My camp was busier than most, and the vibe changed instantly from eerie to easy. I wasn’t sure RollerBunny even left all that much because he always seemed around. Making food out of promised hours, sitting around chatting to people, and keeping a steel drum fire pi
t alive from dusk till dawn. Many of the campers at Vertical Soul couldn’t venture out for long, as devices didn’t have bottomless batteries.
When we came into camp, I saw RB sitting there with the same woman that had been to see me in Minnesota, Sasha.
“Hey guys,” I said, going up to them.
“Liz! Hey girl!” RollerBunny said, looking as happy to see me at midnight as he was at eight in the morning.
“This is El,” I said, introducing my… friend.
El lifted his hand. “Hi.”
“And this is RollerBunny, who runs the camp and… Sasha, right?”
“Yes. Aka your biggest fan.”
I turned to El to explain, “Sasha saw me speak once.”
She interrupted and also spoke to El, “This lady is frickin’ inspirational. She totally changed my life.”
El leaned in toward Sasha and said, “Mine, too.”
My face prickled. What was this? I got what Sasha was up to. Though she and I weren’t friends, women loving women means you see a girl with a hot guy and you big her up. Sasha was bigging me up because she didn’t know El wasn’t anything more than some dude I met tonight trying to get my groove on.
But El? Why did he say that? Because he bigged me up, too. He always had.
Sasha’s eyes turned on me. A cocked brow and curious pupils. But I wasn’t going there. Not now. Not later.
“Well, guys,” I said, “Have a great night…”
I turned when RollerBunny said, “Wait. Liz, if you want to come with us tomorrow, GnarlyWheelz camp has a half pipe…”
I turned to face him again. “Oh yeah? Actually Simone said that the wheelchair freestyle guy…”
“Yeah, Dig Deep…” RB interrupted.
“Yeah, him. That he’s staying at that camp this year? He’s doing a performance plus anyone can try out the half pipe. It’s going to be carnage, I suspect. Want to come?”
“What time?”
“Three.”
“I’ll meet you here at two-thirty.”
And I turned again, El following me. He asked. “Who’s Dig Deep?”
“He’s a wheelchair freestyle guy… he’s all over the internet and does insane tricks in his chair. You want to come see him tomorrow?”
Why did I invite him?
“I don’t think I can. Drake and I said we’d have some bro time tomorrow. I haven’t seen him much since he moved to LA.”
Phew.
“But would you mind if Jasmine went with you? She has a skateboard here and would love to do something like that.”
Shit. Stink eye Jasmine.
“Yeah. Of course. Tell her to be here at two-thirty.” I said against the will of my gut.
Jasmine made me uneasy. Did she have a crush on El? Did she not like me? Or was she simply intimidating because she was a tall Polynesian goddess who, as friendly as she was, made me feel like I needed a password to truly get in?
But now she was coming tomorrow. Damn. I hoped Simone would join us. That would ease the pressure.
Getting in the motorhome, I flicked on the light, instantly fearful that it might have the same effect as the lights up in a bar at two am. Closing time lights in a bar typically spoke as sternly as my parents had. Go home and do not talk, touch anyone or have any more drinks…
But the light was dim and didn’t startle El in the slightest. Nor my conscious. He looked around for a place to sit and took the captain’s chair, swiveling it around to face the open expanse.
I went to the kitchen and looked in the cupboards. As suspected, they were pretty empty. We relied almost solely on RB for food. But Simone had bought a couple long life juices at the last gas station before entering Uyu.
“We have a few juices here. Orange, cranberry and,” I turned another carton around to see. “Orange.”
“Gin and juice. Old school,” El dug around in his backpack, presumably for the flask he’d mentioned.
“You have gin?”
“No. I just like saying gin and juice. Reminds me of when rap was actually good. I have vodka.”
“A vodka cran then?”
He found the flask and handed it to me. “See? Vodka cran doesn’t have the same ring to it. Sounds like a middle-aged person’s drink.”
“You practically are…” I said, never losing a chance to tease.
“Don’t you dare…” He lifted a finger and wagged it at me. “You’ll be eating those words one day. Telling me forty is the new thirty when you get there.”
I turned to take two plastic tumblers out of the cupboard but El’s use of words tickled a spot inside me. They assumed he’d still know me when I was forty. The corners of my mouth twitched and twinkled with silly, giddy pleasure. Like when you’re a teenager and any little thing a guy says that indicates there’s a chance lights up your insides.
Even though we needed closure, I wanted him to always love me.
I took two glass cups out and dug out seven pitiful slivers of ice from around a larger chunk made of pieces that had melted and reformed. Pouring in the vodka, I wondered, should I go hard or go home? No doubt it would make it easier to talk if we had some stiff drinks, but it would also be easier to touch him again.
Ah to hell with it. I poured what seemed like two shots each and then topped it off with cran. I took El’s drink over mine wedged between my legs. “Sorry we don’t have any limes. Makes such a difference.”
“It does actually. But I don’t need it.”
He lifted his drink up and I tapped my cup against his. A pathetic anti-celebration sounded between us.
El took a drink and smoothed his thumb over the cold, condensed droplets on the outside of the glass. He swiveled the chair very slightly sending a waft of cologne my way. It probably wasn’t, but I swore it was the same. The same scent I smelled that first time was at Miami General. The same one that I had thought I wanted to smell every day of my life.
Even this small moment of silence unnerved me. I knew we weren’t here to make small talk but one of us had to warm up. “Your friends are really great, El. I really can’t thank them, and you, enough for, you know… tonight. I would have never seen the top deck with them… without you… doing that… I mean, sorting that out…”
“Course. I want you to have fun. I invited you to Uyu enough times. God knows the onus is now on me to prove the place is worth it.”
“No it isn’t. I came here for work anyway.”
His eyebrows jumped into the air, dismissive and complacent at the same time. If I didn’t know better I would have called the expression passive-aggressive.
“What?” I asked. Challenging his eyebrows to speak.
“Just… nothing.”
“Come on. I know we don’t see each other much anymore but I know that look on a stranger. You rolled your eyes.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well, no, you didn’t but your face did the same kind of thing.”
Like he’d just been waiting to let it all out, he went on. “Guess it’s just a shame that you didn’t carry on with your innovation projects, that’s all.”
Oh. Here we go…
“You don’t think that helping women regain confidence is a worthy cause?” Defensive. I sounded defensive. I was defensive but I didn’t want to sound it.
“I never said that. What I said was it’s a shame you didn’t carry on with your projects. I don’t see why these things have to be mutually exclusive, that’s all. You’re a bit of a genius, Lizzie. Just a shame you’re not on the innovation circuit. I meant it as a compliment.”
Shield down. At ease. He meant no harm. He had always been my biggest fan. Loved me as a nerd as much as for everything else.
It was true. I could have done both. I did do for a while. I was totally in control, for the most part, of my speaking schedule. Sure, if I spoke more, my profile raised, social proof with it, more fans, more money… but I could have balanced it. I tried that for a while. But, something big had changed. Something essential had shi
fted in that dream.
“I did actually try to do both for a while,” I said, “But it…”
I looked down at the melting sliver of ice in my glass, daring me to talk before I reached the bottom of the truth serum.
“Thing is, El, that was our dream. And when we weren’t together anymore, it didn’t feel right. To bring something to fruition without you.”
He drank from his cup, too quickly. “What are you talking about? Your notebook of ideas? That was there long before me. It was your dream…”
“No. I mean, yes. It was, but then…”
I searched for the words, to help him understand the palpable shift within me after we broke up. How my whole direction changed.
“So it’s a bit like this.” I gave him an analogy that was not new to this moment. It was the one that came to mind when I consciously stopped in innovation. “Imagine a twenty something year old woman. And she’s single and wants a baby. Gosh does she want one. She always has. She coos at strangers’ babies. Her friends have them and she breaks out in baby fever when holds them. She dreams big of having her own baby one day. Of being a Mom. Of birthing a real life, living thing. And then, she meets someone. And suddenly, instantly, the dream belongs to them both. She doesn’t just want a baby. She wants to do it with that one particular person. It has to be his baby. That’s how it worked inside my brain.”
I took a drink, wishing he’d interrupt but he didn’t. My words continued to trail. “The dream belonged to us both. And when you weren’t there anymore? I didn’t really have any interest in being a single Mom. So I dreamt up something else.”
El stroked his chin and rubbed the stubble that likely only started to appear, getting ready to cast a five o-clock shadow. His jawline ticked, even his face had strong, masculine muscles and they let me know he was there. Thinking. Considering. Connected to my words.
He could have said something profound. Made a segue into the conversation we needed to have. It was the perfect transition. But… no.
“Well, it seems like you’ve made a good go of making a difference in another arena. There were a lot of people at that Ted Talk.”