The Infinite Onion

by Alice Archer

  Sunlight sliced across Grant’s strong nose through a gap in my hair. “Nothing happens as planned,” I said.

  Grant didn’t seem to hear me, but I didn’t need him to.

  He bound me to him tight with his strong arms. The head of his cock caught on and slid past the head of my cock, made me spread my legs and… Keep talking. Keep talking.

  “The soldiers arrive too… soon.” I’d lost the thread of my story. “We lie together on the stone floor. Shouts outside the door. So… close. I’m so close already. Grant. Grant. Wait.”

  The slice of sunlight found the smug upturn of Grant’s mouth. “Aw, did I get you too hot too soon?” He rolled us into a patch of shade next to the DeVille and landed on top of me. “Your turn for grass wedgies.” His thick thighs between my open legs and his cock on mine made me ignorant.

  What’s grass? my mind asked.

  Grant exhaled on my nipple. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Years and years,” I groaned, lost between the two worlds. When he pushes my arms above my head, I stumble and fall, even though I’m already on my back on the cold stone.

  Rough hands, to make sure I stay the way he wants me, open and honest.

  It was like before, in the bramble.

  Up close, my body reacted to Grant with confusion, our tryst a fight to the finish with someone I didn’t want to hurt. Too intense. Back off. More. Don’t go. My heart goaded me with beats I couldn’t keep up with. I pushed my feet against the ground to pull away from his mouth, from his kisses along my hip bone. He won’t slow down. He wouldn’t let me feel between strokes of his agile hands, another bite of his confident mouth, another pivot in a scene I hadn’t engineered.

  I scooted back until my head hit the front wheel of the DeVille and my cock hit the underside of Grant’s scruffy chin. I froze and stared up at him. My hands rested against the tire above my head, even though he wasn’t holding them anymore.

  “Better,” he said. “Now put your hands on me.” With a tilt of his head and a sinister smile, Grant lifted my hips and bent to lick my hole.

  I screamed—I couldn’t help it. Slapped my hands on Grant’s head, tried to escape, banged my head on the hubcap.

  He licked me again and pressed his palm onto my boner.

  I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. He’d turned me into an animal, into instinct and thoughtless reaction, and it scared me. I grabbed his hair, tried to pull him off, but he was stronger, kept at me, followed as I writhed and grunted, pinned me against the tire with his shameless tongue and insistent palm, pressed spit into me, then his tongue, then lube, too much to keep up with.

  Without meaning to, I began to use my hands in his hair to direct him. I stared at my fingers wound tight with black hair grown long over the summer. My grunts and exhales changed tempo as Grant figured me out. His teeth, for a split second, against the wet rim of my ass, convulsed me. A knot formed where the back of my head hit the hubcap again and again.

  “Get in me, you jerk.” I yanked hard on Grant’s hair.

  Before my next breath, Grant stroked two lubed fingers up inside me with a twist. I pressed my head into the hubcap for leverage to push onto his fingers.

  With his free arm, Grant pulled me sideways away from the tire. “Condom,” he ordered in a voice deepened to a hard scratch. A wrapped condom landed on my chest. He rotated his hand to rub his fingers against my prostate.

  “Holy… fuck you.” The condom fell from my fingers. “Stop it. I can’t concentrate.”

  “Good.” Grant pulled his fingers out of me and knee-walked his cock to within range of the condom.

  “Holy fuck indeed,” I muttered. I left the condom on my chest while I took the measure of him, worried the condom wouldn’t be long enough.

  “Waiting,” Grant said with a load of sarcasm. He wiped his lubed fingers on my thigh.

  “Rude beast.” I unwrapped the condom and rolled it over Grant’s cock, smoothed it down with the last of the lube squeezed from the packet.

  Grant grabbed my wrists.

  “Go slow,” I said. “You’re bigger around than I’m used to, and a lot longer.”

  “I knew it.”

  I inhaled to reprimand Grant’s brag, didn’t have time, used that breath to manage the ache from his cock sliding in—not far, not too far. Far enough. I swallowed a mouthful of saliva then left my mouth open.

  We watched each other. I heard a distant horn blast from the Tacoma ferry.

  The rock of Grant’s hips seemed involuntary. Shoulders so wide I couldn’t see past him. Dark hair spread down his pecs to become a swirl around his belly button.

  “Breathe now.” Grant patted my chest. “You froze. Take a breath.”

  I sucked in air, a lot of air, moaned it out, drew him into me, and widened my eyes as he… “Fuck, you’re long.”

  Grant slid and slid into me. I lifted my chin to make room, as if he’d need my esophagus too.

  “Too long? I can stop.” He pulled out a little, with a smirk.

  “Don’t.” His cock in me hurt, but not enough to matter.

  With controlled movements in and out, Grant filled me. He leaned over me, brought my raised legs with him, and said in his ragged voice, “You make me want to be so filthy.”

  “Please.” I didn’t want to get away anymore. I only cared about one thing by then. It wasn’t his molten-hot cock inside me or his bulk that blocked the sun. It wasn’t his lubed hand from my ass wrapped in my hair or his dirty tongue on my lips or his teeth across my tongue.

  It was the way he found me.

  I open and he captures me.

  No. That wasn’t how it went.

  Soldiers crash against the locked door. He lays me onto the stone and thrusts into me like he owns me.

  He captures me and I open.

  I found an emperor lying in a ditch. He told the ghosts where I lived, fucked me with a vengeance, and rode away to claim his own kingdom.

  I nail the fortress windows closed so I won’t see his departure up the thread of road, then turn away to the open door and sail off with the man of my dreams.

  Beautiful story.

  I came with Grant’s urgent hand around my cock and his tongue so far down my throat he touched himself.

  The end.

  Chapter 77

  Oliver

  When Grant came, he drooled onto my throat, eyes open, gone and shaking. He’d humped up into me until he’d driven us out of the DeVille’s shade.

  We blinked at each other in the sunlight.

  I’d screamed so much my voice cracked when I said, “Goodbye.” He’d freed me. I wanted to go. I watched his eyes, watched him comprehend my dismissal.

  With slow consideration, Grant pulled out of me and backed off on his knees, swiped at the saliva on his chin. The cramp in my ass made me hiss. We’d breached enough walls to fuck ourselves into a new order. When my ass righted itself, I stood to brush myself off, to rid myself of grass and grit and Grant, and looked around for my clothes.

  Grant didn’t move except to close his eyes.

  The strangest thing was how calm I felt. “Don’t come see me when you’re back on the island on Friday,” I said. “This was our final goodbye, and you have my sincerest thanks for it.”

  Calm wasn’t the right word for how I felt. It was more… distant or vacant or empty. Whatever it was, I liked it.

  “Promise,” Grant said, all traces of flirty desire gone. “Promise me.”

  “Um. What?” I overplayed my surprise, to make a sarcastic point. “We have no future, so promises need not apply.”

  “You’re different, Oliver, from when we first met. I hope I haven’t done anything to make you—”

  “You didn’t do anything.” The words fell between us with a messy, impolite plop, and my shirt suddenly required my full att
ention to turn right side out. I pulled it on before I said, “Freddie is leaving Vashon sooner than expected this summer, which reminds me of my mother leaving. That’s all. It’s not about you.” It’s not, I assured myself.

  “Well, whatever you have to tell yourself to get through the day,” Grant said. “But I want your promise that you won’t do it.”

  “Do what?” I opened the driver’s door of the DeVille to roll up the windows, hit the automatic lock, and grabbed the keys. I was being a total bastard. It felt bracing. I slammed the door. I needed to get in the shower before my fuck-high wore off.

  “Promise me you won’t do what Aza did,” Grant said.

  “That’s absurd.” I pulled my hair up and back, held it with one hand while I dug around in my shorts pocket for a hair band.

  “Oliver?” Grant prompted. He looked pitiful, slouched on the ground, naked and sweaty and smeared with dirt. The used condom, still attached to his dick, draped over his thigh. He looked raw and serious and maddening, and I couldn’t wait to turn my back on him.

  “Okay.” My voice came out loud and impatient. I strode to the gate to escape my own harsh word. “I hate it that you even wondered.”

  “Say it. Tell me what you promise.”

  “I fucking promise I won’t kill myself.” My shout propelled me out past the holly wall. In a voice laced with resentment I couldn’t hold back, I said, “I promise that if I haven’t dispelled the microscopic rain cloud above my head before I leave on Saturday with Freddie, I will reach out for professional help.”

  “Thank you. Keep the contacts I texted you, for when you try to leave your property and freak out and things blow up with Freddie.”

  “Fuck off, Grant. God, I know I butted into your life, but then I called it quits. Now you need to stop butting into my life.”

  That made Grant look guilty, on top of the hurt.

  I turned away from him, from all of him. “Close the gate when you leave.”

  We needed a clean cut. The cleaner the better. Amputate, cauterize, move on. My body felt loose and coordinated. I broke into an easy trot, certain of my direction, as if I’d been aimed and released from a bow.

  In the house, itchy and eager, I stuffed my dirty clothes into the laundry hamper and grabbed my toothbrush to scrub the taste of Grant out of my mouth.

  Not until after my shower, as I passed the towel over my clean body, did I put two and two together.

  Grant will stay overnight in Seattle.

  I could visit the treehouse before Grant returned on Friday. I could put Aza to rest, forgive myself, and let Aza go before I escaped with Freddie.

  Drugged from the sex and the shower, I skipped dinner in favor of an early bedtime, toppling onto the couch as if I’d been bashed on the head with a rock.

  I remembered Grant saying he planned to go to Seattle in the morning on Thursday. I waited until noon to venture to the treehouse, sneaking through the foliage to check for Dad’s bike. I didn’t see it, but I stayed hidden, parked my sore ass on a rock behind a rhododendron to listen for signs of activity from the treehouse, to make sure.

  The familiar setting made me remember more about Aza. We’d flung ropes, measured, hauled, and hammered for months. After he’d struck the final nail and I’d slid in the last shelf, Aza had moved into the treehouse, for the most part. He did better in school after that. I’d hoped he’d be happy enough to stay longer than he did. He could have stayed forever.

  Why hadn’t it worked?

  For the first time, I confronted my painful questions head-on. Could I have tried harder to persuade Clementine and Robert to keep Aza on Vashon longer? What if I’d realized, somehow, that Aza’s call from the bus stop was more than thank you? If I’d known it was thank you and goodbye forever, could I have stopped him? Or at least delayed him?

  Could I have kept Aza alive?

  Aza’s phone call stumped me. I snagged on it, unable to free myself. I closed my eyes and let the tree trunk at my back bear the weight of my head. A bird chirped and rustled in a salmonberry thicket in a patch of sunlight to my left.

  New York City is trippy, Aza had said on the call. It’s so much, Ollie. It’s everything I imagined it would be.

  My tangle of emotions flailed a loose end at me. I grabbed at it and pulled.

  It’s everything I imagined it would be.

  On a Sunday before he came to live with us, Aza and I had hiked into the western woods. The sea appeared through the trees now and then, a deep blue down below. As we walked, Aza told me about his classmate who’d killed herself the previous weekend. I think about it sometimes, you know, he’d said with a darted a glance at me. I put my hand on his shoulder to stop him from walking on. He turned to face me. You do? I asked. Aza shrugged. It’s only a thought. Like a way to tell myself I have something I can control. The tight clutch of his hug surprised me. He’d whispered, I’d never, Ollie—not unless I really couldn’t imagine anything else. I’d felt relieved, comforted by the scope of Aza’s prodigious imagination, but I’d also told Clementine, who’d called Aza’s psychiatrist.

  In the forest under the treehouse, I asked myself what else I could have done.

  Before those of us who loved Aza could help him imagine something more, imagine something else, anything else, the world ate him and spit his empty shell into the cold sea.

  Alone in the woods, I let the pain of Aza rise. My failure crushed me for long minutes of a desperate cry. I let it come, slipped through the phone to hold Aza, to stand with him in that frozen phone booth, to imagine for him.

  When I’d bawled and sighed enough, I dried my eyes and wiped the snot off my face with my T-shirt. Sat and breathed.

  The tangle of Aza loosened and fell to the ground, sorted itself into one long string stretched from me at the treehouse to Aza in the phone booth—a taut line, unbreakable forever. I tugged on it and heard his voice, sent love and sorrow and requests for forgiveness down the line and felt Aza’s answering tug.

  Grant’s infinity symbol settled around us. Aza and I hung our arms over the sides to use the loops as life preservers, the twist a bond between us. I splashed Aza with seawater—a dark joke I knew he would appreciate. He laughed and splashed me back.

  The journey up the treehouse staircase felt bittersweet, but in a new way. Grant’s discovery of the treehouse felt right. In a couple of days, when Grant left for good, that would feel right too. He’d restored a neglected shrine to the work of art it was meant to be.

  My gratitude to Grant didn’t keep me from doing what I did next, and his unlawful occupancy didn’t make what I did defensible. But I did it anyway.

  I took careful photos to use as reference, so I could replace everything before Grant returned. Heart on overdrive, I pulled pages off the wall, stacked them, and slid the stack into the bag with his journals.

  Then I ran.

  I squeezed my upper arms against my sides to feel my life preserver, my secure connection with Aza. His rebel laughter rang out as I raced away with my plunder.

  In the house, I filled bottles with water, gathered food and pillows, stuffed my sleeping bag into its sack, then paused to consider. I’d need a flashlight lantern. And extra batteries. Sketchbook and pencils. I filled more bags. I had the afternoon, a night, and a morning to camp in the DeVille and study Grant’s inner world, to immerse myself in evidence that I was capable of saving someone, even if the only thing I’d done was save Grant from an uncreative life.

  I slumped into the back seat of DeVille, turned to lean against the door, and shuffled through the stack of papers to find the one I wanted to study first—the one with Grant’s orange circles and penciled words. Afternoon sunlight fell over my shoulder onto the page.

  Liar. Prisoner. Ruled by secrets. Mistaken about Freddie. Lost his mother. Imperious. Sweet biceps. Surrounded by ghosts. Kisses like a dream.

  In t
he middle of the page, Grant had written Oliver’s Onion. I rummaged until I found his page with the messy infinity symbol, from the center of the galaxy swirl.

  Suddenly it all made sense.

  Two onions, with a turn in between.

  I squeezed my arms to my sides again and blinked, mourned the layers of Aza’s onion we hadn’t found in time.

  On a fresh page in my sketchbook I drew overlapped circles and began to write out Grant’s layers. Magic with kids. Smells like pine and dust. Loves to be outdoors. Huge. Funny when rude. Intrusive. Adored by his nephew.

  Kisses like a dream.

  I closed my eyes and let the sketchbook slide to the floor. No. Don’t get sidetracked.

  I sighed and refocused, sorted Grant’s pages into categories—rules, nature drawings, drawings of the tweens, views of the treehouse, self-portraits. In most of the self-portraits, Grant had depicted himself as a tree. Every drawing burst with honesty.

  He’d journeyed so far beyond my assignments.

  Except for the Oliver’s Onion page, none of the pages from the wall were about me. The journals were another story.

  I’d already looked through the first journal, the one I’d taken the day I discovered Grant’s presence in the treehouse. Journals 1 and 2 seemed to be full of me, though not in a flattering way. Most of those entries made me uncomfortable—LIES TO FREDDIE and WHO IS HIS ART FOR? and DOESN’T TRUST HIS PALS. Most of the other entries, the ones not about me, made me laugh, like LASAGNA HIGH and MY BEST FRIEND IS A TREE and FARTS KILL. A few of the entries threatened to make me cry, like TOO HUNGRY TO HIKE and TOTAL ASSETS: $35.26.

  I fell asleep Thursday night in the midst of journal 4, woke the next morning under a snowfall of papers I’d somehow managed not to crumple.

  After a quick visit to the house to resupply and charge my phone, I settled back into the DeVille. Sketchbook on my lap to provide a white background, I photographed every page from the wall and every page of journals 1 and 2, plus selected pages from the other journals.