by Unknown
By
A. Wilding Wells
Copyright 2016 A. Wilding Wells
All rights reserved.
This work, A Field Guide to Catching Crickets, is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For more information, please contact A. Wilding Wells at [email protected].
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Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1. Songs of love
CHAPTER 2. truths & places to hide them
CHAPTER 3. keeping crickets for fun
CHAPTER 4. guilt & other toxins
CHAPTER 5. in case of emergency
CHAPTER 6. blindspots
CHAPTER 7. stupid questions
CHAPTER 8. a little bit
CHAPTER 9. Cricket juju
CHAPTER 10. Things that end with ing’s
CHAPTER 11. hungry whispers
CHAPTER 12. Cricketing
CHAPTER 13. A spoonful of sugar
CHAPTER 14. Moby dick
CHAPTER 15. never a dull ride
CHAPTER 16. Crickets are nocturnal
CHAPTER 17. The physiology of immersion
CHAPTER 18. the difficult thing about storms
CHAPTER 19. monsters under the bed
CHAPTER 20. I’m still here over there
CHAPTER 21. slipped stitches & nursery rhymes
CHAPTER 22. yesterday I was here
CHAPTER 23. the inexplicable burden of truth
CHAPTER 24. maybe, after all, it should hurt
CHAPTER 25. fanning flames
CHAPTER 26. collisions & Fault lines
CHAPTER 27. simple sometimes isn’t
CHAPTER 28. silver linings
CHAPTER 29. underneath it all
CHAPTER 30. cancelled and returned
CHAPTER 31. optical illusions
CHAPTER 32. riding storms
CHAPTER 33. life lies waiting
CHAPTER 34. remember this
CHAPTER 35. edges and paths
CHAPTER 36. Through the looking glass
CHAPTER 37. a grain of truth
CHAPTER 38. the dark side of the moon
CHAPTER 39. blood is not blue
CHAPTER 40. satan rules hell
CHAPTER 41. girls & boys come out to play
CHAPTER 42. chasing rainbows
CHAPTER 43. on the flip side
CHAPTER 44. inside out
CHAPTER 45. dark angel
CHAPTER 46. delicious things and wings
CHAPTER 47. And if that mockingbird don’t sing
“You’re gonna break more than a few hearts, darlin’. Already breaking mine.” Hawke’s chin trembles, as his warm breath drifts across my face, the scent of it wrapped in a tequila tang and summer-night sweat.
“I’m sorry.” The words scrape my throat in a crawl. “With me moving overseas to live with my grandmother, it’s for the best.”
I broke the news tonight. Not all of it. Just the breakup and the moving-overseas part. The thing is, I can’t possibly tell him everything. I can’t be the reason Hawke doesn’t go on to college and become an indie filmmaker like we’ve talked about since, well, almost forever. Which is nearly how long we’ve known each other.
We met years ago under less-than-favorable circumstances. He was assaulting me with a water gun filled with his pee. Boys. I didn’t know it was pee, of course, until my mom sniffed me at the dinner table. I reeked of dried Hawke Slater piss. Gross. That nasty deed sealed the deal with my brothers to invite Hawke into their all-boys club, The Brohicans, as the newest member—since he’d just moved to Ojai and was living on a neighboring ranch.
“Hell, Cricket, it’s a lot,” Hawke says, kissing my tears away as his eyes glisten.
I’m gonna miss the fuck outta this boy. Everything about him, from his tragically beautiful face to his gushy, love-filled soul.
“Dropping out of school to move overseas. What the hell are your parents thinking?”
“Oh, come on. You know my folks. They’re southern hippies. Hell, they want me to hack my education. As it is, the fact that they allowed me to enroll at the public high school made them crazy. Anyway, I’m eighteen, it’s not like I’m going to be missing much of my senior year.”
Hawke rolls up on his side and draws little circles over my chest with his index finger. “Will I ever see you again?”
“You want the God’s-honest truth?” I sit up to meet his dark-emerald eyes and pray he believes me. I wish what I’m about to say to him is his eyes are the color of my future. I’m pretty sure I could have promised him eternal love. But I can’t, because from here on out, there will be no intersection of me and Hawke. It’ll be best for him—according to my folks—even though he doesn’t know it. As for me, I’m not sure what’s best. I’m trying to do right by others for now. I’ll figure me out later.
He shrugs, and knows what I’m going to say by the line of worry nestled between his eyebrows. “Yeah. Lay it on me.”
Some shit’s just hard to swallow. Lies, for example—those go down like broken glass. Lies also hurt tripping off one’s tongue. Spitting them out with marginal thought works best—for me, anyways.
“Me and you together—you know…an ongoing relationship—is about the furthest thing from the truth.” I have to lie. The truth is, we were made for each other in every possible way. From the way our brains fit together, to the way our hearts fit together, to the way all our body parts fit together. It’s as though we were broken apart in some other lifetime then found each other and became whole again in this one.
“I don’t like anything about this. We had a plan,” he says, his voice breaking. “We were gonna make films together, travel the world. It was gonna be me and you and our future. Us.”
“Believe me, I hate it as much as you do. Today’s just another one of those new-tampon-needed-every-hour sort of days.”
He laughs and shakes his head as he cups my cheek in his giant palm. “No one will ever say you don’t create visuals.”
“Too much?” I chuckle mockingly.
“Nah, I can take it.”
I paste a smile on and lick the tears that have pooled in the corners of my mouth. Brushing a soft wave of hair off his forehead I ask, “So, now that we’re making a clean break and going our own ways, what do you want to be when you grow up, post–film school?”
Then he slays me, as per usual. Making all my defense mechanisms—which I coached all day—to nose dive.
His fingers skim mine then close around them. “Someone you can’t imagine living without.”
I drop onto my back in a huff “You’re dope as fuck.” I wipe the stream running down my top lip. “You’re not going to make any of this easy, are you?”
“Nope,” he says as sure as any man who owns the sort of confidence he does would answer.
Shit. How did I fall so hard for him? I hardly fell. It was the opposite of that. A soar. A hurdle. A breakthrough to a new place in my heart. It was an all-out upgrade for my tender, tomboy soul.
“What if I’m easy for you till midnight? Wi
ll that shut you up? Or is that too hard for you?” Nerves ripple in my gut as I choke on guilt. My God, I loved him. I’m already talking in past tense in order to trick my heart.
He lets out a noisy guffaw. “I’ll tell you what’s hard when you talk like that.” He rolls on top of me, positioning himself between my legs. His eyes flick over my face then settle on the gleam in mine.
“You’re trouble,” I say as he rocks against me. “Have been since that day you soaked me in your piss.”
“And you, seem to be looking for some trouble. I’ll never soak you again if you stay.” He places his forehead on mine. “One last time?” Those words. So soft and tender, so immense, that I cover my heart to protect it. Is this really it? Our goodbye?
I reach for my laptop. “Let me grab Soul Sister.” Guilt blooms in my stomach as I get ready to press record for what’s likely to be our last film, thinking about how Hawke and I have spent our lives filming everything.
“Make sure you send me a copy of the video, got it? I’m gonna need it to get through my first year of film school while you’re hanging out in Amsterdam with your granny, doing God-knows-what.”
Heartbeats, fast—then wild. Tongues sliding. Bodies responding. There was love and connection. Then there was carnal. We were both—and then some.
What will I do without him? My mind floats. My heart…breaks.
Ten Years Later
“To Hawke, the last of The Brohicans,” Fletch says as we pound back shot number whatever.
I can’t count anymore. None of us can. We’re celebrating, after all. Fletch and Coco are getting married next weekend.
“I don’t know. I may give him a run for his money in regards to never settling down.” Hux groans.
I’ve known Fletcher and Huxley McQueen since I was ten. I was the Huckleberry; they were the Tom Sawyers. We were considered nuclear damage in our neck of the woods. Not much we didn’t do wrong, or what others thought was in the wrong. To us it was good country fun.
The McQueen ranch was where all the action happened. The McQueens had four boys: Fletcher and Huxley—twins and my best buds—Teddy and Granger, and Sloan, the only girl.
“Dude, what’s up with that? I thought you guys were definitely headed into ball-and-chain land?” I ask Hux as he sinks back a shot.
“Eh, we’re just fighting lately. I think, with Coco and Fletch getting married, she’s got the itch going on.”
Hux walks past me toward my kitchen and tosses out a grenade. “You know Sloan’s coming back, right? You get the family memo?”
The McQueen brothers hold their breath as their eyes sear me.
“What?” Nerves ripple in my gut. “Cricket’s coming home? How has no one mentioned this? It’s been ten years.” I breathe, and as my knees buckle, a grin the size of Montana hits my face. “For the wedding? You guys didn’t say anything so I thought she wouldn’t. Holy shit!” I slam back the shot Teddy curls my fingers around. Sloan Story McQueen. Or “Cricket,” as I dubbed her the first time she started chirping when I soaked her with my pee via my squirt gun. Just marking my territory. The name Cricket stuck, as did the meaning. Until we hit puberty. That’s about the time when the meaning became different to me. Her chirps took on a whole new form when my hand found its way up her shirt and elsewhere shortly thereafter.
Ten years. She has no idea what I went through when she all but dumped me and moved to Amsterdam. Seems crazy that two kids could fall in love that hard and that I still want her all these years later. But shit, I do. She was my first love and no other woman has come close in all these years.
I tried to stay in touch. Sloan, though, seemed to want nothing to do with me. So, after three months of writing letters and sending videos, I stopped. Problem is, everything stopped. I actually believe my heart might have stopped working. Mostly because she’d broken it. Pulverized.
Then I started to hate her. It was my only way to stop loving her.
But how could I ever un-love Sloan?
“You think she’d miss her favorite brother marrying her best girlfriend?” Fletch chuckles.
His brothers throw bottle caps at him until he becomes a moving target. Then I trip him as he zips past me.
“When was the last time she came to the States?” I ask as I help Fletch off the floor.
“She’s, uh… Not for a…” Granger jumps in and looks around at his brothers for a beat, which makes me want to kick him in the nuts so the words stuck on his tongue fall off and trot their way into my ears. “She’s moving back here. Guess you should know that too.”
“To Ojai?” My heart pounds in triple time.
“No. LA,” Granger answers.
I rocket off my chair. “Where in LA?”
“Silver Lake,” Hux says, cracking up, wide-eyed. “Though I told her Los Feliz is way more hip. Whatever.”
“Does she know I live here? Silver Lake… Holy fuck!” I’m fisting the air, grabbing at invisible hope. “As in, we’ll be neighbors?”
Granger strolls to the kitchen and fumbles around in the pantry. Then he comes back with a paper bag, which he opens and places over my mouth.
Talking into it I say, “Not that she’ll give a shit.” I pull the bag away from my face then groan out, “Not one chirp from my Cricket. I have no idea what I did wrong. Obviously something.”
“Dude. Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Hux comes over and grabs my shoulders like he’s my grandpa. “She’s ahh… Well, she’s gone through some stuff. Don’t be too hard on her when you see her.”
“The only ‘hard-on’ is gonna be in my pants.” Speaking of… Then it hits me. “Does she know what I do? Have you guys told her?”
Fletch chimes in, “The first couple of months we’d fill her in on your film school stuff, but then she was, well, she asked us to stop.” He looks at me like he’s about to euthanize my dog.
I drag my hands down my face. “Shit, man. That’s harsh. Does she hate me for something?”
Why do we not have a relationship? We had something. I thought we did.
Teddy, as per usual, saves the day with a comment that sounds too chick-flick for The Brohicans, but I glom on to it as if I’m Rose hanging on to a floating door post–Titanic submersion.
“Dude. Sloan could never hate you. I’m pretty sure she loved you before she was born.”
Maybe it’s not on my face, but I’m smiling on the inside at the things I’d like to do with Sloan once I get my hands on her. Then my stomach hollows out. Yeah. That is never going to happen. Never, based on my career choice. I’m already losing her again and I haven’t even touched her yet.
I love my career. I’m the luckiest guy ever. Hawke Slater. Adult-world entrepreneur. Otherwise known as a shameless porn star performer and producer. So, when I say “lucky,” I mean it. Lucky I was born with the brains to turn my career into the greatest success this industry has seen in a decade. I was blessed with the libido of a bonobo combined with the dick of a donkey. That makes for a rather wonderful story in my line of work. You show me a guy who doesn’t want every form of sex imaginable all day, every day, for years on end, and I will show you a ninety-year-old woman. In a coma.
Now, though, I’m having a temporary wind-knocked-out-of-my-sails moment. And her name would be Sloan McQueen.
Sloan. She was never the sort of girl who got those mani-pedis they did at the salons in town. She also never wore that clay crap on her face that hid a girl’s freckles and character. She was soft, sure. She was all girl with a dose of country spice thrown in. She picked up snakes behind their jaws to study them. Rescued and played nurse to any abandoned animal she’d stumbled upon. She even shoved her feet against a laboring cow’s hind end once and grabbed the calf’s slimy hooves for a pull because it wasn’t coming out. Girl could give Mother Nature a run for her money.
Now for the trip-wire. While I’m the shit—and yes, I’m all that—in this business for the films I produce and often star in, there’s one thing I don’t have much of.
Love. Most women want a future, promises, white picket fences, two-point-five kids. But not from a porn star.
Sloan. She will not want me performing my job with other women all day long then coming home and climbing into bed with her. Period. Anyway, why would I want that job if I had her?
Had.
“You sweet little thing, where is your mama?” I reach into the abandoned nest at the edge of the lake on my parents’ ranch and pick up a tiny, squeaking duckling. “My God, you’re as yellow as a school bus. Oh, baby, no wonder—shit. One leg. How the hell are you going to make it with one damned leg? I can’t believe a coon or snapping turtle hasn’t made you their dinner yet. You tiny miracle.” I nestle the duckling into the crook of my neck. The tickly fuzz makes me giggle as its tiny bill nibbles my skin. “Little squeaker, you must be starved.”
I head up toward my folks’ ranch house in search of supplies, chatting with my tiny creature. I’m not twenty feet from the lake when Daddy’s old truck arrives, kicking up a trail of dust.
“What have you found now, girl?” He tips his cowboy hat up a bit as he slides his sunglasses down his nose to peer at me. “All these years later and you’re still collecting animals?”
“A one-legged squeaker.” I hold the ball of fuzz up for my dad to inspect.
“That thing’ll never live. Should’ve left it.”
Guilt thunders through my stomach as I tuck the duckling under my chin. “The hell it won’t. It has me now.”
“Of course it does, sweetheart, but a duck in LA? What in Sam Hill will you do with a duck?” Daddy looks at me with a smile on his face as he works a toothpick between his teeth. No question, he knows damn well I will be taking care of this creature.
I scoff at him and squint my eyes, giving him the same look I always gave when he questioned me about the critters I’d found. I’ll admit, my nursery out in the cattle barn became quite something. I didn’t have it in me to pass by a baby raccoon deserted in the woods or a sweet owl that had dropped from its nest.
“I’ll love it. What else would I do with it?”