Looking for Group

by Rory Harrison

  I love her.

  Suddenly, Arden wraps around me. Arms around me, brow against mine. A shield against the world, saving me from a roadside attraction. She’s murmuring, “Don’t cry. Dylan come on, don’t cry, I thought you’d like it.”

  Then she’s not saying anything at all, because I kiss her. I’m too tired to lift my arms, to wrap them around her neck. So I twist my fingers in the front of her shirt instead. I pull her down. Her heat spills into me, and my heart races. It might be a little misshapen, it might taste like salt and Mountain Dew, but I’m lost in her kiss all the same.

  Trembling against her, I break away to catch my breath then rush for another taste. Her mouth is just as soft as it looks; it’s liquid fire. Each caress feeds heat to my veins, and I cling until we’re both dizzy and we both draw back. Her eyes are so wide; my lips are so swollen.

  Most people don’t realize when they’ve had their last first kiss. Now I don’t either. This might be the last, or the first of a thousand, and it’s fucking amazing to know that I don’t know. All that matters is that this one, this first, belongs to Arden.

  She makes time stop.

  (WEBSTER STATE PARK)

  We’re too far off the main drag to find a motel, so we go down Highway 24 awhile and end up paying to camp at a park. The ranger at the gate tries to tell us the good outlook spots, but it’s not like we’re setting up a tent and taking in the view. Arden listens to the directions, and then just takes the first camping spot we find.

  It’s kind of desolate out here, early in the year for camping, apparently. Bare trees whisper around us, bare limbs whipping in the wind. According to the park map, there’s a lake nearby. If I stop and listen, completely still, I hear the waves.

  It turns out in new cars, there’s a manual. Arden pulls it from the glove box, flipping through it. Pressing close behind her, all I do is distract her. My arms loop around her waist; I cling while she searches for the instructions to the backseats. When she wriggles free, I stick out my lower lip and get rewarded with a kiss. I make a mental note: remember that trick for later.

  After some folding, and some cussing, and actually, some more kissing up against the side of the Escalade, we figure out how to fold the seats. They make something like a bed to crash in, slippery because they’re leather, cold for the same reason. For a lumpy pillow, we have the bag with our clothes in it; my hoodie and her jacket are pretty thin for blankets.

  But who needs a blanket, really? Arden is my heat. My restless hands chase her bare skin. Her arms; I can touch her arms as I steal another taste of her mouth—her face, her cheeks: they burn beneath my fingers. When I get my hands into her hair, I get tangled. All those curls lace me up and it’s awkward. But Arden laughs softly, right against my lips. She steals the kiss from me and slips past my lips, and somehow manages to free me all at the same time.

  There’s a good chance, a real good chance, that I’m bad at this. A wavery beat runs up and down my spine; it’s a pulse that flickers through my chest, uncertain, uneven. My breath is thin; it’s loud. It fills up the Escalade. And it’s a true fact, it turns out to be a true fact, that tangling and twining and kissing and touching in the dark, it fogs glass windows right up.

  Ever since I stepped in Arden’s room, her scent has haunted me. Now I’m alive in it, pressing my face against the curve of her neck, breathing her in. When she streaks a hand beneath my shirt, I catch my breath. Her touch is a trail of heat, and my heart pounds. I’m lit up; I feel like I’m sending up sparks, not a warning—a call. Yes, there, and there—and then the sparks flicker out when she finds the scar from my PICC line.

  Measuring it with her touch, she pushes up on an elbow and kisses it through my shirt. Sparks again; sparks everywhere, and now we’re peeling off shirts to get to skin. Just like her hands, her chest is winter gold— in the dark, it catches our little light, it seems to glow. Her bra cracks when I catch fingers in it, but the way it falls away, I think it was supposed to unfasten like that. I hope so. If I broke it, I’m sorry and I kiss the middle of her chest to apologize.

  She pulls my hand to the dark, flat curve of her nipple, and presses her own to mine. What little experience I have was rush and hurry: rough, hard kisses to distract from the fact that it’s awkward to yank open your clothes in a hydrotherapy bed. Nobody’s touched me like this before, like Arden does. I follow her. Every touch, I follow her. I find her in the taste of her skin. I find her in the arch of her back as she settles beneath me. I find her in the sound she makes when I rasp my thumb across her navel.

  She spills out beneath me as my palm skims the hitching flat of her belly. This time, she hesitates. And this time, I’m not scared, because she wasn’t scared of me. Her breath comes in soft whispers and I like the fact that leggings come off easier than jeans. My jeans, I have to roll to the side and fight with them. Probably I look like a jackass, and I don’t care. When I finally kick them free, I roll into her again and we collide with a kiss.

  My knee presses between hers; her thighs are silk parting to mine. Sliding together, our bodies grind in a long, slow caress. I feel her everywhere beneath me. She rises and falls, elemental. She’s thunder in the distance; she’s a storm on my lips. Her pale hand drifts in the dark, down to adjust her body the way she wants it. When she smooths her sac out of the way, I glide in to press my thigh tight beneath it.

  There’s a soft spot there; I know when I find it because her whole body shudders. Pressed tight between our bodies, my erection stings and swells. It’s almost painful—rocking against her is the only thing that takes the edge off. There’s a rhythm here, both of us trying to find it. At first, it’s off—like we both missed the bass drop.

  But she plays a hand down my back; I trace my fingers into her hair. We hold our breath at the same time, and then I smile. I realize probably nobody knows what they’re doing—not in the dark for the first time, not when they look out at the horizon and have to figure out how to get there. What I know is, I want to write her name into my skin; I want to keep her always.

  Brushing my nose against hers, I murmur, “Okay?”

  She exhales; her lips curve on mine and she nods.

  Together, we find the beat.

  (TWO THINGS)

  After our skins dry and our sweat cools, it’s cold in the Escalade. At first, we scramble around trying to piece together something to cover us. Then I remember that space blanket I took when I dumped my mother’s car at the gas station. Covering up with it is like getting rolled in tinfoil. When I tug Arden into the curve of my arm, the blanket crackles. Arden giggles.

  There’s a lot more giggling as we try to settle in. Eventually we fade down to quiet, pressed between soft kisses that are more warmth than shape. Sleep flickers in and out; once, she jolts awake again, pushing up to look at me. There’s all this wonder in her eyes, and I have no idea why she likes looking at me. All I know is I’m not gonna argue it.

  “What are you thinking?” she asks, just as I start to drift off.

  Warmth spreads through me and I tug her closer. “That I didn’t expect this.”

  “Me either.” She burrows closer, weaving her ankle between mine. For a long time, she doesn’t say anything. The air around us is just quiet and full; she presses her fingertips into my chest, one after the other. It’s an idle touch, almost incidental, like her breath across my skin. Then she kisses my collarbone and says, “You know what’s been amazing about this quest?”

  She doesn’t want my answer, though. She buries her face against my neck and goes on before I can say a word. “I wake up and get dressed, and you don’t say, is that what you’re wearing? I put on lip gloss, I don’t, whatever, it doesn’t matter. You roll over, you say, ‘Morning, Arden.’”

  “’Cause there you are,” I reply.

  “There I am,” she agrees. “I want that from everybody. I want the world to say, ‘Good morning, Arden!’ with a smile. I want people to meet me and shake my hand, and whatever they notice is differen
t, is different, and who cares? People are afraid to touch me, sometimes, you know that? You’re not.”

  Furrowing my brow, I try to look down at her. She’s hidden behind her hair; even when I try to brush it out of the way it springs back. “What’s to be afraid of?”

  “That’s what I want to know.” She shifts, stealing a look at me. “My mother wasn’t. I mean, she actually understood, you know? I told her when I was seven; I told her when I was young enough to get hormone blockers, and she understood. She bought me the clothes I needed, and told the school she would sue them to next Sunday if they had a problem with it.”

  There’s a question right there on my lips; I weigh it, but I ask. “Then what the hell happened?”

  “She wouldn’t stand up to my Dad.” Arden stirs, raising her head. She stares past me though, spilling this out like she needs to exorcise it. “He was always, ‘This is a phase.’ Then for a while, he was just like, ‘David’s gay; he’s confused, he’ll figure it out.’ And then all, ‘What if he changes his mind?’ He didn’t want me to do anything permanent, just in case.

  “So I’m six feet tall and built like a rugby player, and you know what? I’m okay with that now. I wish it was easier to find clothes that fit, but I’m not trying to hide. If there’s a little Arden on the street somewhere, I want her to look at me and see herself, you know?”

  “I know,” I murmur. I roll my head toward her and just drink her in. There’s so much passion in her, so much light—I don’t look away. I want to be blinded.

  “So that’s what’s been amazing about this quest.” All at once she blushes. Her voice gets softer and her shoulders go round. This time, when she looks at me, it’s almost shy. “One of the things.”

  I feel like a king, ’cause there’s two.

  (1085.57)

  In the morning, early, we take another slice through fields and grain and endless skies, then we’re back at I-70, which looks exactly the same. Trying to make up some time, we drive and drive until the low-fuel light kicks on and we have no choice. We’ve made it almost to Denver when we coast into a truck stop on fumes.

  I fill the SUV while Arden ducks inside. I cannot fucking believe how much money just went into this gas tank; maybe we shoulda bought a car with premium unleaded instead of OxyContin, damn.

  When Arden’s not back by the time I finish at the pump, I head inside. Skulking through the racks of random crap for sale, I finally find Arden at the ATM. For laughs, I grab a ball cap from a rack and pull it on. With quiet steps, I creep up behind her and she startles when I slip my arms around her waist. Everything is new with her. A few kisses, a long night sleeping next to her, and I feel a little drunk. A little goofy, and I savor it.

  With my chin resting on her shoulder, I watch as she slips one card, then another, into the slot. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Stuff,” she replies. She clutches a fold of bills, shooting me a smile between transactions. “You want that hat?”

  “No, it’s ugly.”

  She makes the ATM perform, singing all kinds of notes, spitting out all kinds of money. When she finally tucks the last card and the roll into her wallet, she’s carrying something like five thousand dollars. Five thousand. Plucked out of the ether, guarded by plastic cards. I can’t even wrap my head around that.

  “They don’t have my bank out here,” she says with a sigh. “I asked.”

  Under my breath, I fall into step with her and murmur, “So you robbed an ATM?”

  “Cash advances,” she explains.

  May as well talk Swahili at me. I understand how paycheck loan places work, but getting money you don’t have out of a bank machine? Sorry, no convincing me that’s not some kind of magic. And why not? Arden makes all things possible.

  Nobody tackles us as we walk out (I leave the hat at the counter), and we make it all the way back to the SUV before I have to ask. Flailing in my seat, I can’t contain myself. If spending three hundred bucks on a credit card at Walmart was something, four figures of actual cash is insane. It’s play money because nobody has money like that just in their wallet.

  “What for? We’re getting paid, right?”

  “Not enough. The last time we tried to buy a car from the lot, they wouldn’t take my card.” Arden shrugs, carefully backing out of the parking space. “Everybody takes cash.”

  I stare at her. “And the credit card just gives it to you?”

  “No, I have to pay it back. It’ll show up on the bill.”

  The closest I ever seen to turning cards into money is people trading their EBT for cash. And that’s a personal transaction, under the table, where nobody’s watching. What Arden just did, that’s high-class mob shit as far as I’m concerned. I never even seen that much money at once.

  The petty hoods I know pretend they’re loaded, carrying a single hundred dollar bill, wrapped around a wad of ones. Arden’s roll is twenties on top of twenties as far as the eye can see. That’s real. That’s terrifying. Settling next to her, I say, “You’re like the mafia or something.”

  Her laughter rings out. “Oh yeah, I’m hardcore.”

  (WORST MONUMENT, F–––, WOULD NOT DRIVE AGAIN)

  For the most part, Arden lets me sleep when I sleep. And the thing is, I don’t mean to keep dropping off. But my body doesn’t know how to go this long or this hard. Yeah, mostly it’s riding in cars. Sometimes it’s walking. Sometimes, like last night, it’s reaching out and touching the sky like I’m a thousand feet tall.

  All of it, it’s a lot and I’m mostly used to laying in bed. So I’m tired, and I nod off, and Arden lets me. That’s why it surprises me when she shakes me. It’s not gentle either, and part of the reason I open my eyes is because I’m afraid she’s going to progress to face-slapping.

  That’s what the movies tell you to do if somebody won’t wake up. I’m not sure how effective it is, but I don’t need to find that out personally.

  “Dylan,” she says. “You awake?”

  “Yeah.” I swallow and turn my face away because I can smell my own breath. She doesn’t need to get a whiff. Struggling to sit up, I realize that at some point, she put my seat all the way back. Sometimes I think the two of us are taking very different trips to the Salton Sea. We just keep meeting up in the middle of it.

  “We’re getting ready to hit the big tunnel. I thought you might want to see it.”

  I rub a hand down my face and look outside. Mountains, fuck me, there are mountains. Suddenly mountains, everywhere. Green and stretching away into clouds, trees and valleys. This is what I’ve been waiting for, brand-new mountains. Because I’m almost civilized, I don’t plaster my hands to the windows when I look out, but I want to.

  The Appalachians are round and soft, a gajillion years old. Those, I grew up with and they bore me to tears. But the Rockies, these babies are proud and just out of the box, only about a bazillion years old. (I don’t remember the dates, sorry. You can look ’em up.) They’re beautiful; they fill me up, just looking at them.

  “When did this happen?” I ask breathlessly, rolling down my window.

  “What?” Arden asks.

  “The mountains.”

  “The last twenty minutes or so,” Arden tells me. “You weren’t asleep that long.”

  The air outside isn’t particularly sweet. It smells like the side of a highway: hot oil, gravel, gasoline, dead grass. I don’t care. In my mind, it smells like Christmas trees. It feels like cool breezes; there’s no snow, I realize. Maybe farther west, maybe just not yet. I really want to see snow again.

  Two beige, industrial mouths gape open. On the right side, it gobbles cars and semis and motorcycles alike. On the left, it vomits them out in a steady stream. Over the swallowing mouth, slender letters spell out EISENHOWER TUNNEL 1973.

  “We’re going to drive under the Continental Divide,” she says, shooting me a smile. Even though the SUV is an automatic, the gears hum like they want to shift. The ride is smooth-smooth-smooth, but gravity pulls. We’re climbing mo
untains the Trochessett Way: leather seats, tinted windows, full-speed ahead.

  Raising my seat, I lean forward. My heart thunders. It skitters to a stop when we actually drive inside.

  The tunnel is claustrophobic. It’s like the inside of a kiln or a crypt and oh my god, I hate this. Tile the shade of a smoker’s teeth stretches beside us, and over. Lights line the ceiling, flickering just enough to play hell in my eyes. Green arrows point out the lanes, because it’s darkish in here. And loud. It’s so loud, like a swarm of locusts. It’s like a fucking MRI, and here I am, trapped and helpless again and shit. The other cars are too close; we’re going too fast.

  Clutching the armrest, I bite my lips to keep them closed. This is when I realize we’re still going up. I feel the pull, even though the SUV doesn’t struggle at all. It glides smoothly through this hellmouth. I barely see the sign that says Continental Divide; it’s just a vertical strip on the wall. It flashes past; it gives way to the digital sign dangling from the ceiling.

  It doesn’t say welcome or have a nice day or any good thing, it’s a warning. We’re going down now, speeding impossibly fast in this impossibly tiny tunnel and the sign yells at truckers. Use the right brakes! All downhill from here, motherfuckers! Don’t crash! I can’t even breathe to wheeze. All I can do is press my back against the seat and wait for it to be over.

  I’m laced with so much anxiety, I can’t even cry. It’s like every single bit of me tightened into a knot. My mind is blank, my lips are numb, and I stare.

  Idly, Arden says, “I never liked tunnels myself.”

  She’s so good, her eyes are on the road. She doesn’t know I’m flipping my shit. I’m glad; she’d feel bad if she realized she woke me up just for me to end up pissing myself. She’d take that hard. Inside, I tell myself: It won’t last long; I’ll be okay. Tunnels end, they do, they have to, because there are warnings for the trucks as we careen out of the tunnel and into the sunlight again.