by A. L. Davroe
I give her a gentle smile. I know exactly how she feels. We’re only given a few hours to be free of Evanescence, why bother bringing it here, too? “Okay, fine. You tell me what’s going on with you and Morden.”
Chuckling, she stirs the pot. “Only if you tell me what’s going on with you and Gus.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lie, pulling a false innocent face.
“Uh-huh.” She rolls her eyes. “You two are disgustingly obvious.”
“We’re not disgusting.” I yell in mock chagrin. I throw a mango pit at her in emphasis, and she nearly falls over laughing. We devolve into tossing rinds, seeds, and husks at each other until we hear yelling coming toward us.
Startled, Nadine and I both straighten and stare toward the noise, our grins slowly melting to concerned frowns as we both realize that the voices are Guster, Morden, and Opus. However, theirs aren’t the only voices in the chaos—there’s a whole chorus of additional screams and hoots and howls.
A moment later the boys come bursting through the clearing, running at top speed, but with giant grins on their faces. “Run,” Gus yells, even though he’s laugh-gasping.
I turn to comply, but I’m caught mid turn by the herd of screaming little creatures that are chasing the boys. They’re like furry little people with beady black eyes and sharp yellow teeth. Just as I realize that they’re throwing berries at me, Gus grabs my hand and drags me after him. We leap through the underbrush, and I soon lose track of the others.
“What are those things?” I gasp, frightened even though he doesn’t seem all that bothered.
He ducks as one of the creatures flies at him. “Flying monkeys.”
I spare a glance behind me. They look very angry but, at the same time, they’re so cute and fluffy it’s sort of hard to be scared of them. A berry hits me on the shoulder and, as soon as it does, it explodes into sparkles and bubbles.
Grinning, I slow, tugging Guster to a halt. The monkeys stop, too. Surround us. Stare at us. I glance around, at the tiny faces and unblinking eyes. “I-I don’t think they’re dangerous.”
“No,” Guster says simply as he brushes glitter out of his hair. “Just annoying.”
I touch the glitter on my arm and finally take him in. He’s covered head to toe in silver glitter and pink and purple paint. In some strange way, he looks like he’s been Altered. “Why were they chasing you?”
“Mord dared me to try and catch one. I got close, grabbed it by the tail, but I think I made them angry.”
A laugh explodes out of me before I can help it. When I can breathe again, I say, “You idiot,” and give him a playful slap, which sends up a little puff of glitter.
Blushing, he rolls his eyes and playfully shoves into me, invading my space, and I relish it. Every hour of every day spent with him, the slow slope of falling for this boy in more than just a carnal fashion has been like slowly pulling the strings on some great tapestry. Every day the weave becomes tighter, the picture clearer, everything more complete. I love him close to me in more than just body. I lift my arms and pull him into a hug, which he returns without a moment’s hesitation.
“Seriously, though,” I say into his shoulder, “all three of you are idiots. Didn’t you guys learn anything from practicing your shooting skills on the trees back in Oz?”
“How could I?” he mutters, touching his backside. “My butt is still bruised from the smack that one apple tree gave me.”
I try to look sympathetic, but I can’t stop smirking. “Well, you deserved that smack…and the string of profanities she threw at you, you idiot.”
“Yeah, well…” He seems at a loss for how to respond so kisses me instead. When he’s satisfied, he draws away and says, “I’m a handsome idiot.” His hands wander up my back, he pecks the corner of my mouth. “And you’ll kiss me no matter how much glitter I have in my hair or how bruised my ass is.” He kisses me again.
I smirk against his lips. “True.” I pull away and put my finger to his lips, halting him. “But we should probably clean off.”
He stares at me, holds my gaze as he moves to evade my finger, kisses my jaw. “Should we?”
“Yes.”
He makes a noise of agreement against my neck as he trails kisses and explores with his hands. “Baths are good,” he murmurs against my skin.
“Gus,” I giggle, trying to squirm away from the tickling feeling he’s giving me.
Displeased with my feigned attempts at escape, he growls into my neck and presses me against the nearest tree, startling the monkeys perched there so that they retreat into the leaves and out of sight. I can’t help laughing some more. I feel so light and airy, as if the glitter bombs were actually filled with laughing gas. It takes me a moment to calm down, to realize that Guster isn’t smiling—not his normal grin, anyway. This is a very quiet, content expression, his eyes deep and bottomless. He looks at me like this more and more and, every time he does, it takes my breath away. I’ve never seen anyone look at anyone like this before. It makes my heart pound and my blood pulse and a warmth spread throughout my chest.
“You okay?” Though I know he’s more than okay.
His eyes slide sideways, survey the quiet forest around us. “We’re alone.”
I reach out, touch his face with the tips of my fingers, let them wander through his hair, down his neck. “Yeah. It’s nice.”
He looks back at me. The distance is closing between us. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been alone. I’ve been waiting for a moment like this.” Suddenly I know where this is going. And we’re kissing again. Not the wild crazy kisses that he steals in his madman bouts of play. This kiss is long and slow and hungry. It’s hot and tingly and determined. It’s the kind of kiss that involves the whole body, the kind that makes you forget where you are and exactly what’s happening.
I touch him, tracing his muscles through his shirt, and then I get bold and slide my fingers under his shirt. His skin is warm and smooth and hard. I want it against my own. I pull the jacket from his shoulders and hear it fall to the ground. His neck free of his high collar, I pull away from his lips and move to his neck, kissing his tendons and prominent Adam’s apple. He growls under his breath, his fist bunching the fabric at the small of my back, pulling my shirt tight against my chest and stomach as he hitches his pelvis against mine.
I’m filled with a need like I’ve never had for any boy in my life, more even than Quentin. I want him so bad it’s physically uncomfortable. I’ve been wanting since the beginning, but managed to hold it off. Held it for a good long time, until I was certain there was more than just lust for Guster and even longer because we’ve not been alone or had the chance to take a moment’s breath. “Gus,” I plead against his skin. Because I don’t know what else to say or how to say it. I want things, I need things, I’m scared of these feelings—yet there is nothing I want more. And I want them with him. No one else. Just Guster.
His hands find my wrists, and he pulls away and fixes me with heady, molasses deep eyes. “Where?”
Rolling my eyes at his sudden romantic need to make this right, I shake my head and say, “I don’t care.” Not anymore. Delia and I used to talk about the right moment and location for this sort of thing. But really, to me, it seems it’s the person, not the setting, that makes it special.
He lifts a brow, shrugs, and just like that his leg is gently kicking my legs out from under me. He holds me so I don’t fall; instead he lowers me against his jacket. “Here, then,” he informs, voice thick and edgy as he gets to his knees and kisses me again.
His fingers grip my thighs, dragging me under him. His mouth strays and finds bare skin as his body brushes mine. He keeps the goal fresh in my mind—and I play the game, doing the same to him. Giving him promising expressions, letting my touch slide under his clothing, nibbling his ear, creating friction and desperation between us.
Intermittently, I yank off his clothes, drinking in the perfect planes of his body with my lips and fingers and eyes and tongue. He’s gentler with my clothes—treating them reverently like they’re extensions of me. And maybe he thinks they are since, after taking a number of tutorials he bought for me on textile arts, I made them myself. If he sees something about my Natural body that displeases, he doesn’t reveal it. Instead, he treats me like the goddesses I’ve read about in Dad’s files. Slow, gentle, reverent—like there’s all the time in the world, and my pleasure is the only thing he cares about. I try to do the same, to show him my feelings in a physical sense.
Eventually we’re so wound up that any apprehension I normally would have is gone. I’m blinded by want and need and the desire to be everything all at once. And it’s freeing. Like running. But I’m not running alone. I have Gus with me—the whole way. In tentative touch, in bare skin, in gasping breath, and that final union that we’ve been seeking, dancing around for months. And it’s so much better than I could have imagined.
And then we’re coming down from some place I’ll never be able to describe or grasp, and I’m lying beneath him, bodies sticky with humid air and covered in sparkles, my heart beating against his throat, and the late afternoon sun peeking through bare spots in the canopy. Stroking his hair, I take a deep breath—the best I can, considering his weight on my stomach—and let it out. I could stay like this forever. In this moment. It’s perfect.
I want this to be Real Life. I want to feel safe and loved like this all the time. I want to be with Guster, wake up to him here and there.
And just like that, I’m suddenly crying.
Guster looks up, bewildered. “Elle?”
I try to wipe my eyes, to hide the sudden well of emotion in me. “It’s nothing. It’s fine.”
“Hey. Hey,” he whispers, rolling off of me and grasping at my hands. “It’s not fine. What’s going on?”
I take deep breaths, trying to calm myself, center my thoughts. “I don’t know.”
“People don’t start crying for no reason.” He brushes his fingers against my cheek, banishing tears, then pulls me close again, stroking my back. He’s quiet for a long moment while I sniffle and hiccup myself out. Then, he finally says, “Tell me.”
I shrug. “I was thinking about how life isn’t fair.”
His arm tenses around me, and he presses his face into my hair. “About us?”
I nod. “Not just us. In general. My life out there…I wish I could stay here forever.”
Sensing the delicate subject, Guster’s tone becomes apprehensive. He knows we don’t talk about this. We’ve both forbade it, but at the same time we’re both far too curious about the other to respect the boundaries. “Is everything all right? You know that I’ll help you in any way I can.”
I remain quiet. Driven to moments of desperation from my gnawing stomach, I have thought a lot lately about telling Gus what’s going on with me in Real World. Knowing who I am or not, being able to be with me or not, I know he wouldn’t tolerate me being mistreated. One way or another, the boy at the other end of this avatar would try and free me from captivity. And that would be beautiful—like the stories in Dad’s files. Except I don’t know who is holding me captive. I don’t know who or how powerful. Most importantly, I don’t know how dangerous. And that’s something I can’t risk. Harming Guster would be worse than starving to death, and I remind myself of that every time I come back into the game and feel myself on the verge of confessing. “I’m fine,” I whisper, kissing his chest—right over his heart. “I’m just being emotional, that’s all.”
“Promise me?” he says, his fingers curling in my hair. “I know something’s wrong; you’ve been acting funny. I couldn’t live with myself if you came to any harm.”
I close my eyes and say, “That makes two of us.” I trace circles on his pectoral muscle and take a clue from what Nadine told me earlier. “I’m not happy there. A lot of us aren’t. You’re not.”
I wait for him to admit this to me. To tell me what makes him stare off into the distance when he thinks no one is watching him, but a long quiet falls upon us. I feel both of us suddenly drifting away from this subject—closing it down and forgetting about it for another few days. And that’s okay. At this point, I don’t want him to know that I’m suffering out there. It would kill him.
“Do that thing you do,” I whisper into his shoulder. “With your voice.”
I feel his chin lift. “What?”
I try to emulate what he sometimes absentmindedly does.
“Humming?”
I nod. “It makes me happy when you do that.”
His head lowers, and he takes a deep breath. And then he hums me something, low and slow. And it lulls me into the false sense of security that I need when I’m here, because it’s the only thing that gets me by.
A long time later, when Gus has fallen silent and I think he might even be asleep, I finally take a moment to take a look at where we are. I move to sit up.
“Don’t,” Guster whispers, tensing his arm around me.
I put my hand on his chest. “I’m not going anywhere. I just wanna see.”
He rolls over, trapping me between the leather of his jacket and the hardness of his body. He shifts, nudging closer, so we fit on the outside the way we fit on the inside. “It’s not important.” He buries his face in my neck, holds me for a long moment.
“Shouldn’t we get back?”
“Eventually.” He shifts, pulling away far enough to steeple himself on his elbows, then spends a long minute staring down at me. Long enough for me to start to feel exposed and a little nervous that he’ll find something he doesn’t like on my bare Natural body. He’s an Aristocrat, after all. When he does finally look back into my frightened eyes, he simply touches my cheek and says, “Did you know you have a beautiful blush?”
I blink, shocked. “What?”
His little smirk dimples his cheek. “I like that I put it there.”
That blush he loves so much deepens, and I look away, flustered by that thing he does with his voice and the words he chooses.
Knowing he’s an infuriating tease, Gus shifts, letting me know just how much he likes to make me blush. I squeak, and he instantly goes still. His brow knits. “You all right?”
I shake my head. “I’m just,” I pause, uncertain of what I even am. I shake my head. “I don’t know. I’m just…just, really happy, I guess. It’s overwhelming. I just want to pop. Everything you do, you make me want to explode, there’s so much goodness happening inside of me.”
Smiling, Gus leans in and kisses me. “I love you, too.”
Before I can respond, he pulls away and gets to his feet. He disappears behind one of the high tree roots we collapsed among hours ago, and a moment later I hear a splash.
I get up to find him wading across a crystalline pool. Even though we’re in the middle of the jungle, this pool is lined with decorative tile, depicting a winged banana. I roll my eyes at my father. At this point, I know he can’t possibly have programmed everything into this world, but the fact that silly things like banana pools and glitter-bomb-toting flying monkeys even exist make me love him more.
“Are you coming?”
In answer I jump in on top of him.
A little while later, the surface of the water glinting like a mirror from all the glitter floating in it, Gus and I finally decide we should get back to the camp before we’re pulled out of the game, so we swim back to shore and get out. When he goes still and starts looking around, I glance over his shoulder to find out what’s wrong.
“What?”
Confused, he bites his lip and continues scanning the area. One of the flying monkeys hops up onto a root and waggles his eyebrows.
Gus’s shoulders drop. “Oh no.”
“What?”
He leans forw
ard and squints at the monkey. “Tell me you didn’t.”
The monkey grins in a malicious sort of way. Then points up. Thoroughly confused at this point, I decide to ignore them both and step around Gus. But… “Um, Gus, where are our clothes?”
He doesn’t look away from where the monkey pointed. “How are you at climbing trees?”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Post-American Date: 12/23/231
Longitudinal Timestamp: 4:06 p.m.
Location: Free Zone, Discoland; Nexis
Gus opens the door and steps back, letting me see what he’s found. “Great, huh?”
I stare at the bulky, ugly pieces of technology in front of me. “What are they?”
“Computers,” Gus says, walking into the room and hefting a giant squarish box off a laminate counter. “At least, that’s what I hope they’ll be.”
I give him my best “I am not impressed” expression.
His smile droops. “It’s all I could find, Elle. It’s worth a try.”
Turning away, I cross my arms. “Sparks, I hate this place.”
We’ve landed in a strange time period where geometric shapes and odd colors rule. The women have huge hair, big synthetic boots, and bigger dark glasses. The men wear angular pants and shirts that seem to emphasize a long stretch.
Morden opens the kitchen door, making us both jump. “Far out.”
Gus rolls his eyes. “You’ve embraced the lingo—be still my psychedelic heart.”
Morden pouts, his full lips looking ridiculous with the orange lipstick he’s found. “I’m not entirely sure if that’s the right use of the word.”
Gus puts a fist on his narrow hip. “I’m not entirely sure that I care. What the heck is on your head?”
Morden touches the fluffy yellow thing on his head and the oversized peace symbol earrings in his ears glinting in the late afternoon sunlight. “It’s a fro.”
Gus scrunches his nose and glances at me. “Is that thing legal?”