“We’re hooking up now? Fuck yeah,” I say with a grin, but not too loud.
I rest my head against the window and peer at myself in the side mirror. Mostly, I’m making sure I still look like I was put together in the dark. Big shock, I do.
Sometimes, I think that should bother me more. There’s a dead space in my heart where that’s supposed to go, I guess. By the time I was old enough to give a shit how I looked, I was glad to just be alive. Now that I’m gonna stay alive, the emptiness is just what could have been.
Maybe in another life, where I didn’t get sick, I grew up good to look at. I grew up and got cut, but not too much. Enough, just enough so guys looked my way. In this life, though, I never was cute, and I never hooked up at school, and the only guy I ever kissed is dead. It just is.
I like the way Arden tells it. In her version of my life, I’m something to want. Something to brag about.
“You haven’t met him, and you’re not going to,” she says, puffed up and possessive. “Why? Because you’re a slag, and I don’t trust you alone with him.”
She says all of this with a lying smile, with laughter threaded in her voice. Part of me wonders if she means any of this; part of me desperately wants it to be true. It’s not. It can’t be, I don’t think. Logic says though, if she’s saying it in front of me, it’s because it’s easy to say—it’s not how she really feels. She might hold all her friends’ hands. As soon as that thought rises up, jealousy starts to burn in my belly. She has other friends.
That makes me jealous. Or, envious? People say there’s a difference, but like lay and lie and affect and effect, damned if I can keep it straight. Let’s put it this way: you know what I mean, so leave it alone. Short version is, I don’t get to keep Arden to myself. She’s not all mine.
Hanging up, Arden tosses the phone into the console again. The smile falls off her face and she turns to me. Venomous and tense, she says, “God, I hate him.”
“Seriously? You sounded like besties.”
“I just get stuck hanging with him.”
Flattening her lips, Arden shifts lanes abruptly, speeding around a car that’s toodling along too slow. Around us, the flatness suddenly drops away. Hills appear from nothing, signaling a change of geography. We’re elevated now, passing over trees and train tracks alike. I’m not jealous anymore, but I’m confused. And I ache, because it’s obvious Arden’s hurting. I just don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t have anything to say, so I talk shit. That, I can do.
“I get stuck sitting with my mother’s best friend’s niece sometimes,” I tell her. Lynne doesn’t bring Lolly around much. Just when her sister decides to ride long-distance with her trucker boyfriend. As much as I loathe Lynne, Lolly is actually okay. She has carroty red hair, and she draws her eyeliner on the waterline. That’s all I have to say about her. We have nothing to talk about. She doesn’t game, I don’t watch reality shows. Neither of us wants to make out with the other.
“Dylan?” She catches her lower lip in her teeth. She bites down so hard, the blood drains away, and then she lets it spring free. “I might not go back.”
The way she says it worries me. It sounds final. Too final. My insides turn, anxious and tightening by the moment. Licking my dry lips, I say, “You wouldn’t be the first person to run away to California.”
Arden nods and leans her head back against the rest. Guiding the wheel with her fingertips, she becomes a statue. Still flesh, eyes unblinking. Whatever’s happening in her head, she doesn’t share.
I am the last person in the world to save somebody. But that look scares me. I reach out anyway, brave or stupid, and brush the back of my hand against her rough cheek.
“You okay?”
She says nothing. Then, with her eyes still on the road, she turns her head slightly, her lips rasping against my hand. “I’m fine. Swear.”
I want to believe her. I want to so bad.
(1968.51)
At Arden’s insistence, we park for the Arch. I saw it from a distance first, a silvery loop on the other side of the Mississippi.
Turns out, it has its own name: the Gateway Arch. Gateway to the West, see thirty miles all around and 200 years into the past. It’s not as old as I thought it was; it was built in the 1960s. I don’t know why, but I thought it had been here a hundred years. Maybe more. Doesn’t matter, though, because it’s still epic.
Standing beneath it, I tip my head all the way back. So far back, I lose my balance. With a few uneasy steps, I steady myself and drink it in. Polished steel shimmers, floodlights caressing it all the way up. It’s taller than I imagined. Seeing pictures didn’t tell the truth; yeah, in pictures, the people are tiny and the monument is big. But this is legendary. It’s enormous; so big, you can go inside and ride up to the top.
“People built that,” I say to Arden. I shake my head to soothe my neck, then look up again. I can’t get enough of it. It’s a wonder of my world. Imaginary until now, and now the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
Arden puts a hand on the small of my back when I stumble again. Her touch spreads warmth through my t-shirt, a gentle brand on my skin. “I know, right? I wouldn’t have wanted to be the guy putting the last piece on, would you?”
Confidently, I tell her, “I’m not afraid of heights.”
“I’m not either,” she says with a thoughtful smile. “I’m more afraid I’ll jump.”
What a strange, exhilarating confession. Sometimes in the game, I feel that way. Like a tall place is just waiting for me to leap from it. Drowning in the game scares me, but jumping off of stuff just lights me up. But that’s in the game. We fall down; we die, we run back and start again. This is real life, and this shit is real tall.
“Even that high?” I ask her.
“Especially that high.”
Looking away from the gleam of the Arch, I reach back and rub Arden’s hand. “Seriously? You’d stand up there and have to convince yourself not to jump. Like, ‘No, me! Don’t jump.’”
Arden laughs incredulously. “Exactly! I’ll jump off anything.” She points out a curb. “Like that. Or a balcony. Or a cliff. I don’t know what it is. I just stand on the edge, look down and it’s in my head. Jump. Do it. Go for it.”
“Just don’t forget that you’ll pop like a watermelon if you do,” I say. “You’re prettier when you’re not inside out.”
“Go out with me,” she says. The intensity surprises me, how it hardens her all over. A deep breath spreads her shoulders wide and her eyes darken. They do; they’re alive with shadows and flashes of color that dazzle me. She’s a kaleidoscope; she changes everything.
Now I’m afraid. It could be a joke. I could be misunderstanding. (Let’s face it, I could be hallucinating. My forehead still hurts from running into my ghost-that-wasn’t when I was looking for the pool.) I feel fragile and hollow and too full, all at the same time.
Scrubbing my hands against my hips, I squint at her. “I am out with you.”
“Don’t play dumb, Dylan,” she grumbles. Then, in case that was the wrong thing to say (it kind of was), she softens it. “I mean, let’s go to a movie. Let’s have dinner. Let’s hold hands.”
There’s no pause in Azeroth, and there’s no pause here, either. But I’m frozen—with fear. With hope. Everything I’ve been feeling for her, it’s been easy to say it’s just mine. One-sided, because why wouldn’t it be? Look at her. Fucking look at her, really, and listen to her laugh and follow the train of her thoughts, and try not to fall in love. But look at me and . . . what the hell is she seeing when she looks at me?
Then all at once, I melt. I don’t know why Arden wants to take me to the movies (maybe she’s been in my drugs?), but I don’t care. I’ve been dying for years. In a real and present sense, not in a country song, live like it might be your last, nobody knows the day and time way.
I’m here now. I’ll be here next month; I’ll be here next year. Arden is beautiful and confusing and I want her to be mine. There’s time. I ha
ve time to figure it out. Judge me if you want to (if you haven’t already, let’s be fair, you have a lot you could hold against me at this point), but I step into Arden’s space. She’s taller than I am.
Reaching out, I lace our hands together. I rest my temple against hers and shiver when her hair brushes my skin. I can’t help myself. She’s so clean, so warm, and I say, “Tonight?”
(TONIGHT)
We grab our stuff and say good-bye to the Civic. It was a good-bad car, and now it’ll be somebody else’s. We leave the doors unlocked and the keys inside, in case somebody wants to go on a joyride. In case somebody else is running from California to Maryland, and they need a set of wheels to get them through Indiana and Pennsylvania.
Arden calls a cab and we check into a hotel first. Not the way most dates go, but who wants to cart a cooler and a backpack and a laptop all over town? Not us, let me tell you. It’s another medium-okay hotel, no cookies in the foyer, though.
Even when I don’t want to eat them, it’s nice to smell them. So points off for no cookies.
I shower after Arden does. The steam smells like her, and it makes me jittery. All over, I’m warm, and it’s not just the water spilling over my bare skin. It’s like I can feel her, arms banding around me, heart beating beneath my ear. My breath is short and I bite my lip again and again. By the time I get out and towel off, I’m wound tight.
When I walk out that bathroom door, I don’t know what to expect. I’ve spent most of my nights with Arden for the last couple years. Maybe I crushed on her before, but the game puts a weird shine on that. We’ve done nothing but flirt for years, in completely different bodies. In cities where warlocks are raining fire down for fun, and people fly by on magic carpets.
For me, Arden was purple-haired and decayed, but I smiled when I saw her anyway. When I logged in, I knew she’d be waiting for me. Or I’d wait for her, and then we’d dive into this vast, enchanted world.
Limited by programmed emotions and actions, we only fit together in predestined ways. She could tell me /jokes, and I could blow her a /kiss. Even if I had wanted to hold her hand before, I couldn’t. All we could do was sit close together and type in message.
But that’s Arden out there—the same, but different. I steel myself and step into the room. Even though we’re not getting fancy or dressing up or anything, we know we’re coming back to the hotel together, I’m nervous. She looks nervous too, her smile rising and falling as she struggles to come up with something to say.
Instead of letting her wild hair fly free, she’s tied it back. She looks older that way, not as soft. But now her face is bared; I see all of her features, no shadows at all. My insides dip again, and for the first time, I wish, I wish so hard, that she could look at me and feel the same way. If she can look past all my bones and edges, then good for her. But I wish she was getting the full blast of crazy beautiful that I am. It might even things up a bit.
Neither of us speaks. That unsteady, anxious quiet from our very first day in the flesh is back. It’s only a few steps from me to her, but we don’t try to make it. Instead, we look each other over. As if we’re going to see something new or different, but what? It’s the same clothes we bought at Walmart, and we’re the same selves we’ve been since I turned up on her doorstep.
“So,” Arden says.
“Yeah . . . ,” I reply.
I’m selfish. I want this to be amazing, and right now, it’s just awkward. So I make myself say something. Somebody has to, may as well be me. Since we started in Warcraft, and it makes sense to us, I crib from that.
“You have beautiful skin,” I tell her, one of the Undead pickup lines from the game turned back on her. “No maggot holes at all.”
The tension burns away. She breaks into a smile. Instead of heading for the door without me, she holds out her hand. She meant it, every word she said, she meant it. Until I take that hand, she’s going to wait for me. She smiles; she teases, “I barely recognize you without your horns.”
Slipping my fingers into hers, I swell from the inside when she tightens her grip in mine. This is a thing that’s happening. She wasn’t messing around; we’re going out. To dinner, to a movie, just the two of us. I’m dizzy all the way down the elevator, and when we climb into yet another cab, I think twice, but fuck it. I go ahead and pull her beneath my arm.
While we showered, dark slipped over St. Louis. The city lights wash it clean; the sky is clear and studded with stars. It’s a different world than we drove into, transformed after sunset just like Azeroth. Arden curled to my side and both of us watching the world pass us through the cab’s windows, I smile.
At night, the river is silver.
( . . . )
She forgives me when I sleep through the movie. I forgive her when she orders sushi.
(LEAP)
Everything we talk about is stupid and inconsequential. You don’t believe me, so I’ll prove it. In the cab back to the hotel, I’m drunk and dying over the way she works her fingers between mine. Her fingertips are so soft, skimming through my palm, and then looping back to graze my wrist.
What matters is that when I reach for her, she reaches back. Our hands slip together. Then apart, trailing and tracing. Racing to find new ways to meet between us. When it’s quiet, it’s audible. Skin whispering on skin, rasped together, slipped apart. Seeking again in a tumble of electric sensation. Sometimes I get brave, and skim up the inside of her arm—never too far, not too far. Touching the inside of her elbow is impossibly thrilling.
And at the same time, I say, “I kinda like knowing who the King of England is gonna be in sixty years.”
Angled toward me, Arden presses her thumb against my wrist. Looking up through her dark brows, she murmurs, “I had no idea you cared about the royal family.”
We inch closer, until we’re resting our brows against each other’s. We can’t look anywhere but into our eyes, now. It’s a raw and naked sensation, better than adrenaline. Better than oxies. Better than getting better. Being short of breath right now is a good thing. It means something is going right for once.
With a crooked smile, I shrug and press back against her thumb. “I don’t really. It’s just like—I can see the future, you know? I know King George is gonna be there. If I know it, then I’m part of it. I’ll still be here.”
“You will be here,” she says. Her gaze falls, even as she turns her hand in mine. “You got better.”
“That’s still a long time from now. Who knows if I’ll—”
She shushes me. “If somebody remembers your name, you live forever.”
“Who’s going to—” I start.
She interrupts, placing her finger on my lips. There are so many shades of green in her eyes. Spring and summer, jungle and countryside. She’s all brown and green, her hair, her eyes—her skin smooth; she’s alive. With a tender touch, she unfolds my hand and presses it against her collarbone. Her lashes dip, hiding her eyes, then revealing them again. They’re a wonder every time. “I will.”
A whisper slips out of me; I’m surprised. I don’t mean to say it this way, it just happens. Like it was sitting, coiled in the dark frame of my body, waiting to spring out. Dylan-in-the-box, unstoppable, uncontrollable. “I’m afraid.”
It’s the least romantic thing I can say. Even swept up in her, it’s there. I can’t stop picking at it, even when I’m one breath away from a kiss. If I just shut up and leaned in, it would happen. Aching and wanting and needing, it feels like bad luck to just be here with her and stop thinking.
It’s just, I know if I kiss her now then I’m not trembling on the edge, wanting it. Her kiss is something to anticipate. To look forward to.
No, not to live for, because that’s putting way too much pressure on it. This isn’t the fairy-tale cut, where I die and she cries and love revives me. No, this is just regular old selfish enjoying the want. And how much it hurts to want it, especially after I tried not to. Especially because it’s terrifying and beautiful and maddening to
know it will happen but not knowing exactly when.
Drawing our joined hands up between us, she rests her chin against them. Now her breath trails heat along my fingers, a new experience, just as good. “Me too. All the time.”
She has everything that seems important, so what’s scary about being beautiful Arden Trochessett? The answer is being Arden Trochessett. Not David. Not Nuba. It’s been there all along. It dances on the edge of her expressions. She shuts herself down so fast, I only catch glimpses of it. When she lets it get out, it scares me. If she stood at the edge of a cliff, she’d jump.
I hope, I hope, I hope . . .
I hope I’m not the cliff she’s standing on.
(BUT THAT THOUGHT ISN’T OVER)
Well, if I am, I’ll quake. I’ll roll her off the edge. I’ll grow and grow, till I touch the sky, till she can’t climb anymore. There’s a right way and a wrong way to protect her, and I think I’m starting to get the difference now. Swallowing hard, I ask—and I really want to know—“What scares you?”
“I’m afraid to want things. If I need something, I sit there quietly, needing it. If I’m lucky, somebody notices.”
“Why?” I trail my free hand up, twining it around Arden’s wrist. She’s caught in my touch, bound to me. “I don’t—I walked into your house, and I was like, you have everything. Every single thing in the world, you know?”
Furrowing her brow, she says, “Nobody loves me. I don’t mean, awww, poor Arden, poor little rich girl. I mean me. I thought I had my Mom, but she walked away. And she did it like it was so easy. Dad sticks around because he has to. You met him. You know what he’s like.
“All the friends I had before the divorce, they’re gone. The friends I have now . . . I hate them. And that makes me a terrible person, but it’s like, we’re only friends because we’re the only ones in school. I would never tell Jagger anything that mattered to me, because he’d use it against me. He’s just . . . that’s who he is.”
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