Grand Adventures

by Dawn Kimberly Johnson

  “You feel that?” he whispered from behind me. “You feel that tightness in your chest, just above your heart chakra.” I looked at him over my shoulder, but he gently turned my head back to the sunset with a hand on my cheek. “I know you don’t believe in all that stuff, but that doesn’t mean you don’t feel it. When something is so beautiful, it takes your breath away for no logical reason at all. You can see it, taste it, and feel it. Look at that sunset. Thousands of people have tried to describe it, paint it… capture it on film. But there’s no substitute for the real thing.”

  I did feel it.

  Beyond his warmth at my back and the shivery sensation his quiet words were giving me, I felt what he was talking about, deep down to my skeptical little heart.

  “It’s magic,” he whispered.

  And in that moment, I couldn’t contradict him, even if I’d wanted to. Instead, caught up in the spell, I turned to face him, and he didn’t stop me this time. And when I met his gaze, he leaned forward and placed his lips on mine. The kiss was gentle and chaste, our lips merely brushing. But Brian made it memorable. He kissed me as if that kiss were all that mattered in the world. Sweet and tender, he teased my lips with his own until he drew away and smiled that gorgeous smile at me again. “You see. Magic.”

  “Magic,” I whispered back.

  I couldn’t help myself. I was feeling all gooey and romantic, and I forgot to be a hardened realist for a while.

  Brian grinned back at me and cupped my cheek. “I like you, Adrian. And I know you like me too.”

  Thinking maybe Brian was getting a little too cocky, I felt the need to ask, “Oh yeah? How do you know that?”

  He rubbed our noses together lightly. “You’re still here,” he whispered with another grin.

  I snorted and shook my head. He had me there.

  “Have dinner with me tonight. If, at the end, you still don’t think we should do this, I won’t push. I promise,” he said.

  And how could I say no to that, especially with my whole body purring contentedly after that kiss?

  Brian saw my answer without my having to say it out loud, and he took my hand and started walking. As we set off in the opposite direction from the bar, toward a restaurant I thought he’d like, I spotted a priest and a rabbi playing chess at one of the small tables set up by the pier. I burst out laughing, and even though Brian had no idea what was so funny, he joined me after a little while.

  We had dinner that night, and the one after that, and the one after that.

  You get the picture.

  And after seven years together, I still don’t know what he’s talking about half the time. I’m still an atheist, and I still don’t believe in crystals and auras. But there’s one thing he did make me believe in.

  Magic.

  It’s there every time I’m willing to take a moment away from the rat race and the noise, to go somewhere beautiful and quiet, close my eyes, and feel. With every sunset Brian reminds me to stop and watch, with every flower or tree he points out, I feel it. And every morning, when I wake up and roll over to find him sleeping next to me—his mouth hanging open and a little puddle of drool on his pillow—I believe.

  Magic.

  But don’t tell him I said any of that, or I’ll never live it down.

  Last First Kiss

  LE FRANKS

  Love flows like a river through the heart of the hardest stone, wearing away the barriers that would keep you apart. Together, TJ & Eric, you are the river. And when I think of the epic nature of love and the valor of the human heart and the strength of will that comes from bravery and determination in the face of heartbreaking odds, I see your faces.

  Your grace and vulnerability and steely determination not to be parted regardless of what the fates throw your way gives me hope for us all. I am grateful to you both for sharing your journey.

  In Peace and Love and Adventure,

  —LE

  “WHAT DOES a gunshot sound like from inside a car?”

  Henry gave me an odd look before leaning in to whisper in my ear, “This is not the place, J.” I twitched away from him and jerked at the silver-and-blue-striped tie my sister Aggie had wrestled over my head in the parking lot. There was a pale yellow spot resting over my diaphragm, and I became fixated on watching it surf my chest until I couldn’t resist lifting it to my nose.

  It smelled old and warm and musty—like the odor seeping from an abandoned closet in an old lady’s house. I sniffed again at the yellow spot, but instead of the acrid residue of yellow mustard, there was the lightest hint of the vanilla lotion that always seemed to kiss Aggie’s skin. I picked at the spot with the corner of my nail until Henry slapped my hand away.

  “Was it loud? Did it hurt his ears before….” That bullet killed his brain…? There was a gasp from the pew behind me, and I guessed maybe I’d said that last bit out loud too. I rubbed my side where Henry had just twisted my skin like so much bread dough. I scooted a little farther away from Henry and his fingers.

  “Was the window broken?” This time I did ask Henry. I asked him under my breath, just a whisper next to his hard jaw, the muscle there jerking in sympathetic cadence with the preacher’s liturgy. I watched color wash across his cheekbones before disappearing altogether and realized that Henry might actually know the answers to these questions.

  “I need you to shut up now, J. I need you to fuckin’ shut up.” It was almost a moan—the sound he made that lifted the vowels out of his mouth, warping them to form a curse, settling onto my skin. Henry folded in half next to me like a crash test dummy—his head resting on an arm bent awkwardly across his lap. I wanted to poke it just to make sure he was still real. Instead, I went back to fiddling with my tie, twisting it between my fingers. Henry stayed down.

  Mrs. Jenson leaned over the back of the pew to pat him softly, like he was a dog, and the urge to brush the blue-veined hand off Henry’s back rose like an angry demon from a dark place deep inside. Henry wasn’t mine. He wasn’t anyone’s, as far as I knew. Not anymore.

  It had been years since high school graduation and our last moments together that summer—before kicking the dust of this backwater town off my shoes meant abandoning them. I was really in no position to object.

  I looked around carefully, just to see if I’d missed someone staring at us, at our weird tableau of shared grief, but all eyes seemed to be fixed on the man standing behind the mahogany casket.

  Pastor Richards was leading a call and response. And I’m sure it was all very heartfelt—the congregation perfectly parroting Richards’s diction—but I hadn’t opened the pale blue program. I wasn’t in the mood, half-afraid of the response I’d give when prompted.

  You fucking bastard. You goddamned fucking selfish bastard.

  Henry jerked upright the second the thoughts flashed in my head, and I panicked a second, wondering if I’d said that out loud as well, but there was no stirring from the darkly clad women in their Sunday finest. Their floral hats sat proudly atop iron gray curls like ceremonial headdresses. They surrounded the two of us, just like the Sioux at Little Big Horn did just before they invited the 7th Cavalry to dance; all their faux condolences were like arrows to my heart.

  I felt my fist covered by Henry’s warmth. Had he taken residence inside my head, reading my mind again? The last thing I needed was to have Henry poking around, moving boxes and upending trunks filled with the memories of the three of us and so carefully sealed against time, pain… and regret.

  I jerked away, dropping the crumpled wad of blue paper on the pew between us, and closed my eyes. The pastor’s monotone droned through the scripture reading of I Thessalonians 4: 13-14. Paul’s admonition to believers not to grieve, as those who do not believe do, was another dig.

  Working the tie again, I tried to block out the sounds around me before they filled my mouth, my nose, my ears, even my eyes, sealing the words off inside me, burying me alive like a human sacrifice to my grief.

  Henry peeled my fingers fro
m around the mangled polyester, moving my hand away from my body and pressing it flat against his leg. It was warm and hard.

  I could feel the muscles shift under the pressure, and it reminded me of the horse we’d rented together when we were fifteen, all three of us sitting bareback atop the dun-colored gelding. Since I was the smallest, Henry had slung me over the poor beast’s neck first, and I sat perched on its bony shoulders while the two of them scrambled to find their places.

  Henry, as usual, finally sat back on the rump, his long arms wrapping around the two of us, keeping us together—holding us in place was always Henry’s job.

  No wonder he was falling apart.

  Humpty-Dumpty had left the building, and there’d be no picking up the pieces this time—Danny had made sure of that.

  Fucking bastard.

  The fingers lying on top of mine suddenly curled inward, sliding against the tender skin in between. It wasn’t until Henry was holding my hand that I noticed the shaking, and I couldn’t tell which one of us was to blame.

  “THOSE ARE all wrong.” Henry was back to sitting stiffly, not touching me, and I realized I must have zoned out again. Pastor Richards was moving swiftly through a series of dirges designed to accommodate the tastes of the nearly departed, and by the rapt looks on their faces, he was succeeding.

  Lois Jenson was playing fat fingered through the refrains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” which made my stomach lurch, and I leaned into Henry to complain. “If he was here for this, he would have left by now….”

  I trailed off at the look that Alice Finch, the school librarian, gave me over her shoulder, and I decided I needed a new whisper. The one I was using seemed defective today.

  Apparently Alice was holding on to her grudge against me for slipping a paperback copy of E.M. Forster’s Maurice into the library stacks senior year. She wouldn’t have cottoned to its presence at all if a mousy sophomore—offended by the idea that a “homosexual book” might coexist peacefully alongside Inkheart—hadn’t gone to her to complain.

  She spotted it right away, along with the list of students who’d read the book—initials and dates carefully inscribed inside the back cover under my own. I’d been given a stern warning and a lecture on my sinful nature to go along with a suspension and lifetime ban from the library, but it was Danny who made a new cover in art class, and Maurice was back in circulation before I was. I wondered if it was still in there.

  Henry spoke quietly next to my ear. Since he hadn’t encouraged my train of thought before, I was a little thrown.

  “The songs?” he prompted.

  I had to rewind about five minutes’ head time, which even at double the speed still took a while. It was like trying to untangle wet yarn kept in the bottom of a gym bag—nothing looked right or smelled right, and in the end it all hung limp and sodden in your hand, with random crap sticking to it all over the place. My brain in a nutshell. I focused harder.

  “What? Songs? No—well, yes, those too, but he hated roses. Whoever picked those didn’t know Danny for shit. It should be sunflowers.”

  I gestured to the fulsome display of white roses tumbling over the coffin, my disdain unrestrained in any way save volume.

  Danny had always mocked such hothouse displays of sentimentality. Anything that could be purchased at one in the morning from the twenty-four-hour grocer lost all meaning. For him, true tokens of love came from the wildflowers you picked yourself that sprang up overnight in prairie grass. Love required intention and effort.

  Henry stiffened, my words finding a target closer to home than I had expected. I could almost see them, little ninjas sliding their linguistic blades between Henry’s ribs. If I could call them back, tear them out of the very air, I would. Pain was oozing out of Henry from a thousand tiny cuts caused by my carelessness. I could smell it on him, an emotive fetor stinking of failure and betrayal, and worse, it was an old smell—I’d managed to reopen wounds. In that moment I couldn’t decide which one of us was the bigger bastard. My vote was still on the man in the box, but what Henry whispered back changed my mind.

  “I guess you’re right—I never knew him at all.”

  He moved away and didn’t say another word, my hand growing colder as it lay between us on the bench.

  I’D BEEN at my desk, struggling over my words, my laptop glowing with expectancy that I was coming to resent. Everything had become harder lately, and I wasn’t sure why.

  It was almost October, and I had a magazine article due, and my agent had left me three messages looking for the latest chapter of my book. She wasn’t the only one.

  I’d call her back when I had some news beyond how many times the drinking bird on my desk could dunk his head in water before I either threw it across the room or wanted to join in the drowning. At least I wasn’t wasting time playing Words With Friends—pointless since I had few of either these days.

  The phone buzzed, and I felt such a moment’s joy at the reprieve that I juggled it to my ear without looking.

  “J.”

  My heart clenched, not prepared for the low, warm voice. Henry.

  Every few weeks we’d check in with each other—just a quick text, a newsy e-mail, or a brief call to touch the connection and make sure it was still there. The last time I’d spoken to Henry was about six months prior, a lousy thirty seconds of nothing as I jogged through the Seattle airport, late for my flight.

  Warmth flared in my body, and I allowed myself a tiny bit of happiness before all the heat rushed back out. Just hearing Henry’s voice was enough to send a wave of sorrow crashing over me. This time the pain was swamped by the devastation following his next words.

  “Danny’s gone.”

  I MET Danny Anderson and Henry Keller in second grade—the year my dad got laid off from the Boeing plant in Seattle, moving us back to his hometown in Illinois.

  The job and his life with us never took, and within a year he’d left Mom and me with a huge yellow Craftsman, a fat orange tabby, and a town we didn’t know. To make up for the loss, I spent most nights across the street eating dinner at the Andersons’ while my mom worked extra shifts, or Danny would haul me the three blocks to Henry’s, and the two would take care of me.

  Henry’s mother, Lucy, was best friends with Mrs. Anderson—they did everything together, including management of their husbands, so birthing the pair within a week of each other was not surprising. They’d tell the story on their birthdays and say their friendship was ordained.

  Danny was all shaggy blond hair and freckles, gangly limbs, and cheerful to a fault unless crossed. Henry, on the other hand, always stood a few inches taller than the rest of us, his dark brown hair neatly trimmed, his eyes dark gray.

  Back then he still had an easy smile for anyone, but by the time we finished high school, Henry had become almost stoic, loosening up only when we were alone.

  When I was twelve and we stood listening to the birthday story yet again, I secretly measured how close they stood together, as they indulged their mothers’ whim. That day Danny shifted ever so slightly toward Henry, drawn like a magnet, and I stopped thinking in terms of “us” and started seeing them as a “them.”

  I LOOKED for Mrs. Anderson in the first pew and wasn’t surprised to see Aggie sitting next to her, arm wrapped around her shoulders. After all those years, Aggie thought of her as a second mother. What did surprise me was that our mom was on the other side instead of Lucy.

  “Where’s Lucy?”

  Henry was trying to pay attention to the reading, and I drifted with him a moment, but the question gnawed like a mutt with gout, and I couldn’t let go.

  I leaned forward to look past Henry. Lucy was a head taller than most of the women in town. Certainly her helmet of red curls would shine like a beacon—I was sure the years hadn’t stripped the vibrant color completely from her hair.

  Still leaning, I whipped my head to look behind me, effectively wrapping myself around Henry. A sea of disapproval stretched as far as I could see. Ev
ery now and then, a little gray head bobbed, giving the effect of whitecaps on a winter’s bay.

  He manhandled me back into place, and I sat there marveling at the heat print Henry left on my chest.

  We stood. The congregation broke into “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and I leaned into his shoulder, pretending to look at the hymnal.

  “Where’s Lucy?”

  Standing, it was easier to see that unless Lucy was dressed in male drag, she wasn’t there. Henry continued to sing, his tenor still as rich and lush as ever, ignoring me. I had a childish urge to flip the pages, losing his place, or pull the book from his hand.

  “Where. Is. Your. Mother?” The hissing didn’t really go with the bass line of the third stanza, and I was shushed, this time by a woman I’d never met before.

  Henry’s fingers crushed the tender flesh above my elbow, and I lost the ability to speak. Tears flooded my eyes, and lightning flicked across my pain receptors. Holy fuck, that hurt. It might have been only a split second, or months, but my brain wasn’t processing anything except moving air in and out of my lungs once more.

  Easing up, he kept me pinned in place, though a twitch from me had him clamping down enough to remind me that I had the pain threshold of a Disney princess. “Hen—”

  The look he gave me sent shivers down my spine. My childhood friend had disappeared, and in his place was Detective First Class Henry Keller. The look was cold, the eyes flat and steel gray. There was no forgiveness, there was no acceptance, there was almost no humanity left, and for the first time since I’d left for college, I had a hint of how much he’d lost—how much we’d all lost.

  BY THE time we entered high school, we’d settled into our niches. I wrote for the school paper, hung out with the drama geeks, and took all the AP classes I could find that didn’t involve math. Danny played baseball and ran cross-country and did his homework hanging over our shoulders, begging for scraps.