Gray
I need to destroy something.
I storm back in my room and consider throwing that stupid poem she framed for me off my balcony. Then I notice the card with Dylan’s number and address on it and I grab it. I’m careful not to look at it because I feel like my desperate mind will memorize the numbers, and I want to forget she exists. I rip it up into pieces and head into the bathroom connected to the back corner of my room and I flush them down the toilet. I slam the seat cover down and sit, because my legs are shaking.
What the fuck is she thinking? That fate’s going to magically bring us back together? She really does live in a storybook. Doesn’t she realize it takes effort? Even love takes work. It’s not just a fucking fairy tale. All I know is when she’s smart enough to realize this, it’ll be too late. I’ll be gone.
I take my hat off and throw it on the ground and pull my fingers through my hair and swear and kick the wall. I hate all the wasted hours and energy I spent missing her. Wanting her. More than anything, I hate that I believed she felt the same way—that I was just as hard for her to get over. I hear a pound on my bedroom door and I know who’s standing behind it.
I pull myself up and open the door and Amber is standing there all pouty and mad, but she’s also giving me those lovesick eyes. She still has a red cup in her hand. She waits for me to invite her in, and I move away from the door and she slides by, careful to rub her chest against my arm and her hip against my side as she passes. She sets the cup down on my dresser and turns to stare at me. I close the door behind me until I hear it click shut. My breaths are short and unsteady, and I’m trying to get a grip. She gazes at me in the dark room, lit only by a streetlight outside.
“You’re an asshole,” she says, but it’s her weird way of flirting.
I ask her why.
“Because you’re playing hard to get,” she says. “And I know you want me.” I stare back at her and think this is the last thing I can handle. I’m barely hanging on right now. I cross the room toward her, and before I can say anything she reaches up and grabs my neck and pulls my mouth down to hers.
I tense up but then I close my eyes and tip my head down to taste her lips and I want her to drain my mind. I transfer all my anger into this kiss. Maybe it will dull the pain. I cup her face in my hands and press my mouth harder against hers, because I want to suffocate. She tastes like beer and cigarettes and she smells like a perfume advertisement. She reads my anger as passion and she slams her tongue deep into my mouth and drags her fingers down my back and I feel like we’re starring in a soap opera because it’s too forced and too choreographed. She’s doing all these fancy moves with her tongue and her hands and she’s moaning like she’s getting off. But it isn’t real.
She pushes me down on the bed.
She stands a few feet away and throws this seductive grin at me, but it leaves me cold. She slips her ponytail out of her hair and it falls long past her shoulders, and she flips it around so it covers half her face. I lie back on my bed, feeling like I’m having an out-of-body experience, like my mind is hovering somewhere in the corner of the room on the ceiling and I’m looking down at myself wondering what the hell I’m doing here. This beautiful girl is moving right in front of me, but it feels as intimate as watching a commercial.
I don’t want to use Amber. I can’t. It’s not fair to her. I’m not looking for someone to fill my heart or my mind or my bed, because when you’re lucky enough to know exactly who you want, then fuck the rehearsal. No one else will ever compare.
She peels her tank top off slowly and tosses it at me, and it hits me in the stomach and rests there and I don’t move. I just watch.
She’s going to strip for me?
The wood floor is thumping from the bass downstairs, and rap music filters in. Amber swings her hips and leans forward so I can get a good look at her cleavage and her black lacy bra, and then she slowly pulls a strap down over her shoulder and waits for me to smile or swoon or nail her because I’m so turned on.
But it has the opposite effect on me. I feel dirty, as if I’m cheating on Dylan. Dammit. I can’t. I stand up and hand her the tank top. My hand’s shaking.
“Amber,” I say. “I’m sorry. We can’t do this.”
She stops swaying and stares at me.
“What?”
I don’t say anything. I just hold the tank top in my hand and try to apologize with my eyes.
“Are you gay?” she asks. I shake my head, but I can’t really blame her for wondering. What guy wouldn’t have a hard-on right now?
“That phone call,” I say. “That girl?” I trail off because I don’t know how to describe what I’m feeling and who Dylan is to me. Sometimes words aren’t enough.
She presses her lips together.
“That’s your girlfriend, isn’t it?”
I shake my head. “No,” I say, because she’s not. “But I’m still in love with her. I’m sorry.” She just stares at me before grabbing her shirt and pulling it on with a huff. She slams my bedroom door in my face before I can explain. I grind my teeth together, then open the door and pound my feet down the stairs. I pass people making out on the staircase and Bubba offers me a manly high-five when he sees me coming down after Amber, but I ignore him. I shove my way through people dancing in our living room and walk out the front door and into the cool night.
I feel like a wuss and a freak and a jerk but more than anything foolishly in love with this girl who’s just becoming another memory to me. It’s raining out, and before I know it I’m blocks from the house and my hair’s soaking wet and I’m wiping water out of my eyes. The street’s empty and I laugh pathetically to myself because I feel like Led Zeppelin’s song “Fool in the Rain” was written for this moment. But the rain doesn’t do anything to quiet my thoughts or calm me down, so I keep walking, my anger chasing after me and my doubts keeping up the pace.
First Surrender
December
Gray
I’m in my bedroom in Phoenix, two days before Christmas, and it’s eighty degrees outside. My windows are open because there’s a decent breeze. I’m lying on my bed in some work- out shorts, listening to Cold War Kids and tapping my feet to the rhythm. I like their rock sound, but what I’d like even more is to fall asleep just once this month without pills.
I think maybe Cold War Kids is too hard and I decide the Eagles might be more soothing. Then I settle on Counting Crows.
And then I hear it. A knock on my bedroom window. I sit up and my pulse skips a beat, as if that knock was right against my heart. I think maybe I imagined it because my mind just wanted to hear it, but I get up anyway. I slip on a pair of sandals and walk outside. I stop when I see who it is.
Dylan’s standing in my backyard. I blink and think I must be dreaming, but I swear it’s real. She’s just like I remembered. She’s wearing her usual baggy jeans. Her hair’s in a ratty ponytail. She’s wearing some vintage-looking T-shirt promoting a city softball league.
“You didn’t leave your back door unlocked,” she tells me, as if I should have been expecting her.
I run my hands through my hair and try to form words into a sentence.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I wanted to give you something,” she says.
I notice she’s holding this plastic bag and I ask what’s in it and she says “Things” in this secretive voice. I ask her what kind of things.
“You might think it’s dumb,” she says.
I rest my hands on my hips. “Dylan, we never would have made it past day one if I thought any of your ideas was dumb.”
“You have a point,” she says.
She explains every day we’ve been apart she’s collected stuff that reminds her of me. She collected one thing a day. She says the bag’s full of letters she wrote, rocks she found, photographs and postcards. She admits she has a new habit of asking people what their favorite quote is, so a lot of it is written-down quotes that she thinks I’d appreci
ate.
“It’s probably a hundred things. That’s about how many days it’s been seen I’ve seen you.”
I look down at the bag and tell her I’m impressed she kept it to one.
“Oh, there are four more in the car. It’s my Christmas present to you.”
I blink at her, and even though I shouldn’t be surprised, I always am.
“Great,” I say. “Maybe by next Christmas I’ll be finished opening them.”
I ask her if she drove Pickle all the way down here, and her mouth sinks into a frown.
“Pickle died a few weeks ago,” she says, and I honestly feel bad hearing it. I fell in love with her in that piece of crap car. She says now she drives this green Buick she named Big Blue, and I don’t bother asking her how she picked that name. She says he’s okay but he thinks he’s a professional ice skater because sometimes he likes to slide through stop signs or intersections when she’d prefer it if he just came to a complete stop.
“He’s a showoff,” she says, and I’m grinning and it feels like no time has passed, just minutes. Maybe seconds. We’re both quiet for a moment, and I ask Dylan if she likes living in California. I want her to say she hates it and she’s moving to New Mexico. I want her to say she’s miserable without me, but I don’t think Dylan’s capable of being miserable.
“I like anywhere I go,” she says. “Every place has something to offer.”
This is a little too optimistic.
“So, you’re saying if you had to live in Siberia, you’d like it?”
“Sure,” she says. “I’ve always wanted to dogsled. I’d build a log home and hunt for my food and make clothes out of animal fur and I’d use the teeth and bones to make necklaces and jewelry and that’s how I’d earn money.”
I shake my head and sigh, because even though this sounds ridiculous, I can imagine her doing it.
“How are your parents?” she asks. It’s always about other people. That’s her number one concern. Others first, herself last.
I tell her they took a three-hour bike ride today and my mom’s joined a book club and my dad’s golfing again. They’re doing better. Not great, but a vast improvement. I tell her my mom and I stayed up late last night playing Trivial Pursuit. I admit I hate that game more than anything but my mom loves it, and it was this monumental breakthrough to see her awake after nine p.m.
Dylan’s eyes are dancing over me while I talk, and I ask her what she’s looking at. She tells me I have more muscles now. And my stomach is flatter. I run my hand across my six-pack and tell her I sure as hell hope it’s flatter, since I’m doing two hundred sit-ups a day.
She’s staring at my stomach and then back at my eyes.
“You’re tan,” she points out.
“You’re pale,” I say, but her skin looks creamy and soft and I’m aching to touch it.
“Have you turned into one of those guys that flexes in front of the mirror?” she asks.
“I’ve always been one of those guys,” I say, and she smiles.
“Are you going to get your ears pierced and wear diamond-studded earrings now that you’re a big shot athlete?”
“Nah. Not until the Gatorade endorsement comes through,” I say.
“Maybe you could look into doing g-string modeling in case the thing with Gatorade doesn’t pan out.”
I shake my head. “I’m not a huge fan of the g-string. It looks like butt floss.”
She says that’s too bad. I’d look great in leopard print.
I tell her I’ll think about it, but not right now because I’m having a fat day.
She just stands there holding her plastic bag, and we’re both quiet. She looks up at the moon for a few seconds, full and bright in the sky, and she asks me if I think it’s a man or a woman’s face inside it. When I don’t answer, she tells me she thinks it’s the face of a legendary alien named Vorth that united the galaxy six million years ago.
I ignore her freak creative outburst and ask her if she’s having separation anxiety.
“Maybe a little,” she admits. I mention there are all these terrific forms of communication made easily accessible by advances in technology, like telephones and e-mail, that can help deter that.
“You’re being snarky,” she says.
“I haven’t slept in a while.” She nods because she knows I have a complicated relationship with sleep.
“Have you been thinking about Amanda?” she asks, and I tell her yeah, Amanda, and other girls that like to blow in and out of my life. I raise my eyebrows and wait for her to respond. It’s time to get to the point. Why are you really here?
She sets the bag down on the ground and folds her fingers over each other as if she’s about to pray, but I think she’s just nervous.
I make Dylan nervous? I need to mark this day down on a calendar, because it’s a first for me.
“I’m sorry I tried to stay away,” she says. “At first I thought it would be easier for me, which it wasn’t, and then I thought it would be easier for you, but I didn’t get that impression during our little phone chat.” She pauses and her eyes focus on mine. “I didn’t call you last month to break up. I really want you in my life, Gray,” she says.
I study her and think maybe I should still be bitter, but I can’t be angry at Dylan. It would be such a waste of time. I’d much rather be kissing her. And she’s here. She’s making an effort. That’s all the apology I need.
I tell her I’m sorry I hung up on her.
“All I wanted to do was avoid hurting you. That’s it. I hated the idea of hurting you. And that’s exactly what I did,” she says.
I take a step toward her.
“I want to try to make this work,” she says. “I don’t want to have any regrets. And I’d regret not having you in my life.”
My eyes rest on hers and I smile. My heart’s hammer- ing in my chest as if it’s trying to push me to take another step forward.
“Anyway, you did invite me to come down here for the holidays. Does that offer still stand?”
I nod slowly. “I missed you,” I say. “I thought about you every day. I just didn’t collect things to prove it.”
“Yeah,” she says, and she scratches her chin while she con templates this. She tells me miss is such a vague word. It doesn’t come close to defining how it really feels to crave someone.
“I guess longing might be better, or maybe yearning, but I hate that word. It sounds so whiny,” she says. “I mean, who actually says, ‘I yearned for you . . .’”
I listen to her ramble, something I missed, because her mind is like a kaleidoscope, always changing and rotating and impossible to predict. And I could rattle off how much I love her and try to express all the feelings that are rolling through my head, but I just grab her and pull her against me and kiss her like I’ve been dreaming about kissing her for the last three months.
I show her sometimes words can never be strong enough.
She kisses me back, and it starts out sweet and then turns into something else. She folds her arms around my neck. I pull her tight against me, and I can feel her heart pounding with mine, and everything else melts away.
I know I’ll never be able to control what happens in my life or what people will slip in and out of it, the way time slips by and you can’t get it back.
And I don’t know for sure where I’m going to end up.
But I know who I love. And I’m figuring out that might be enough to live for.
Inspiration for First Comes Love
This book started as a creative writing exercise I assigned to myself. For a Challenge, I decided to write a love story from the male perspective. What began as a couple of chapters quickly spilled out into an entire novel. I simply fell in love with my characters. I fell in love with their story.
I used to live in Phoenix, and while I was there I took classes at Mesa Community College, hiked many desert trails, learned how to play the guitar, took photographs with my old manual camera, and collected memories in my journ
al. There is no horizon as spellbinding as a desert sunset. It is a setting I couldn't wait to capture in a novel.
Although Arizona was a fascinating state to explore, with the most unique topography I've ever seen, I was miserable living in Phoenix. I hardly made any friends, so it became a long year of solitude and contemplation. It was easy to write Gray's character, because in many ways I was brooding and annoyed, just the way he started out. I couldn't stand the showy scene in Phoenix or the people or the constant heat. But in a lot of ways I was like Dylan, trying to soak up every experience and never waste a single moment. Phoenix is just one of the many pit stops I took while I was living like a vagabond for about four years. In a lot of ways I was Dylan, always on the lookout for a Gray—someone to share my ridiculous adventures with—and in many ways I was Gray looking for a Dylan—someone refreshing to dig me out of the depressing state I was sinking into, dust me off, and make me laugh.
The other part of this story, Gray's struggle to deal with his sister's death, is inspired by an amazing friend I made in Oregon. Her brother and best friend had recently passed away when we met, and she was slowly attempting to pick herself up and move forward. Her way of grieving was to talk about her brother, and she kept his memory alive by sharing stories. I felt as if I knew him even though I never had the privilege of meeting him. I even spent a day with her honoring her brother (on the anniversary of his death). We wore his photograph around our necks, we looked at pictures while she told me stories, we listened to music he loved, and this experience inspired the scene that Gray and Dylan share together.
I owe so many of my stories to the places I travel and the brilliant, hilarious people I'm fortunate to meet. Some of the scenes in this book really happened. I ran down Mulholland Drive once, with one of my best friends, while cars careened past us. We sang Bob Dylan songs and raced all the way to Hollywood Boulevard. (I've also driven down Mulholland plenty of times, and I recommend it to running.) I've hiked all over Sedona (one of my favorite places in the world) and sat for hours in mediation spots. And if you ever want to take some stunning pictures of saguaro cactus, definitely check out Picacho Peak State Park, outside of Phoenix. I went there several times to take pictures by myself.
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