The Savage Wild

by Roxie Noir

  Wilder just laughs.

  “Well, don’t go too crazy with the feelings until I get news one way or the other,” he says. “One step at a time, Squeaks.”

  I swallow hard, because he’s right.

  “If you get it?”

  “I’m moving to Seattle and you’ll have to put up with me in person.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Squeaks, I have a confession.”

  I lean on one elbow on my desk, moving my face in toward my laptop speakers. I want to bathe in Wilder’s voice, low and just a little husky, let it wash over me.

  “Confess.”

  “I wasn’t looking for jobs at Boeing, I was looking for jobs in Seattle.”

  “That’s your confession?”

  “What, it wasn’t good enough?”

  I grin at my laptop.

  “I guess I was expecting more,” I tease, and Wilder laughs through the speakers.

  “All right, Squeaks,” he says. “Do you really want a confession? You think you can handle one?”

  Suddenly my stomach twists and my toes scrunch in my shoes, because what if I can’t?

  What if his confession is I bang a new woman every night after we hang up and I’m never going to change my ways?

  “I don’t know,” I whisper.

  “I spend every day looking forward to the next time we talk,” he says, his voice gone quiet and growly. “The only thing on the walls in my apartment is a calendar that I use to count down the days until you’re back in the states, even though I have no idea if you’ll want anything to do with me. I’ve applied for seventy-three jobs in the greater Seattle area, and I’m going to keep at it until I find something that gets me closer to you. And if you turn me down again, I’ll still be there, waiting for you somewhere in the background, just hoping you look my way sooner or later.”

  I feel like someone’s knocked the air out of me. There are tears in my eyes, and I cradle my face in my hands, try to swallow the lump in my throat.

  “It’s fucking pathetic, Squeaks,” he says, half-laughing. “You’re what I want, you’re all I want, and it took me so long to realize it. Want another confession? Something less romantic?”

  I don’t answer. I don’t think I can, the lump blocking my throat.

  “I never stopped thinking about you in the back seat of my dad’s Mustang,” he goes on. “I still jerk off to that at least once a week. I have for years.”

  And now my face is on fire, cheeks burning.

  “That was almost really sweet,” I manage to say.

  Wilder just laughs again, and it makes me grin down at my laptop even though I’m still tearing up with no idea what to think.

  “I’m probably too honest sometimes,” he admits. “But I can’t have you thinking I’m all sonnets and roses.”

  “I promise I wasn’t about to,” I laugh, my face still hot. “I know you just as well as you know me, Wilder.”

  “I know,” he says, voice bottoming out. “Trust me, Squeaks, I remember.”

  “Where are you taking me?” Wilder teases. “I demand answers. Right now.”

  I roll my eyes at him on my laptop, walking down the main concrete corridor in the research station, headphones in.

  “I feel like I’m being kidnapped. Are you gonna be holding me for ransom?”

  “Are you always gonna be this obnoxious about surprises?” I ask.

  Wilder laughs.

  “Probably, Squeaks,” he says. “I’m like a cat on the wrong side of a door.”

  I’ve been saying stuff like that more and more lately, stuff that assumes we’ve got some kind of future, even though I’ve confirmed or denied nothing.

  But Wilder’s got an apartment outside Seattle now. He’s working at Boeing, forty-five minutes from where I live.

  None of that means I ever have to see him again. Avoiding him in a city the size of Seattle wouldn’t be too hard.

  But we both know I’m not going to. For the past ten weeks we’ve done nothing but talk, sometimes about absolutely nothing and sometimes about the deepest, darkest parts of ourselves. Mostly, it’s about all the in-between stuff.

  And somehow, even though we’ve talked for probably a hundred hours now, every time my laptop makes that beep boop beep sounds that means I’ve got an incoming call, my heart skips a beat.

  “Okay, okay,” I say, just to shut him up. “I’m taking you outside and hoping that the Wi-Fi is good enough that you get signal out there, too.”

  Some of the other scientists here finally got fed up with the slow Wi-Fi at the station and they did… something. I know way more about animal poop than about technology, so I’m not precisely sure what they did, I just know that suddenly it’s fast enough that I can actually use the video portion of my video chat.

  “And what’s out there?” Wilder asks. On my laptop screen he tilts a beer back into his mouth, sitting on his couch.

  “You’ll see,” I tell him.

  I hope.

  I’m weirdly nervous, because as much as we’ve talked about everything under the sun we haven’t talked about us. Not exactly. We’ve talked about high school and we’ve laughed about stuff once or twice, but we’ve shied away from really talking.

  But this… might bring some stuff up.

  I open the inner door, put on my coat, and heave open the research station’s outer door. There’s a black gravel path leading toward the airstrip and another path leading toward some outbuildings, but I take the middle way between the two of them, boots tromping over tufts of the green grass that shows up on the tundra mid-summer.

  “Do I owe you an adventure next?” Wilder asks. “I’m not sure I know anywhere in Seattle that you don’t yet.”

  Then he leans forward, his elbows on his knees, peering at his own screen.

  “Can you see?” I ask, and turn my laptop so the camera can take in the sky.

  Wilder laughs.

  “I thought they were only visible in the winter,” he says.

  I sit down, computer in my lap, and we look up at the sky together.

  “Usually, they are,” I tell him. “But they’re especially strong right now, so you can see them even though it’s barely sunset. One of the climatologists told me why but I forget.”

  The green and pink lights dance across the sky, sinuous and winding. It’s barely sunset even though it’s eleven-thirty at night, so they’re faint, but it’s incredible that we can see them at all.

  “I haven’t seen those in years,” Wilder’s voice says in my ears.

  “Me either,” I say.

  “Was Solaris the last time?”

  He doesn’t have to tell me what he means by that. We both know without having to say anything.

  “No,” I say slowly. “I did a two-week research stint in Alaska a year or so ago and I saw them there.”

  But Solaris was the best time, I think.

  “I went on a family trip to Norway,” Wilder says. “Three years ago, I guess? It was supposed to be a vacation but really, my father ended up networking and doing resort research the entire time so he could write it off as a business expense. Anyway, we saw them there.”

  “Were you riding reindeer?”

  “Just snowmobiles.”

  “I’d have demanded a reindeer ride,” I say, eyes still on the sky.

  We’re both quiet for a long time. I think a million thoughts, all cascading and crashing through my head at once, like a stampede of people trying to shove through a single exit: I wish he was here and I wish I were there and I should say something, I should tell him why I’m showing him this.

  I miss him. I do. I’m up here living my dream life and wondering what he’s up to all day.

  “Do you want to know another secret?” he finally asks.

  I shift positions, stretch my legs out, turn over onto my belly and point the laptop so it’s showing my face with the Northern Lights behind me.

  “What kind of secret?”

  “That was my f
irst time.”

  I blink. I straighten my glasses, looking into my laptop screen suddenly unsure what to say.

  “When I took you up the mountain in the snowmobile,” he says. “With the sleeping bags out on that meadow way up there…” he goes on.

  “I remember.”

  How could I forget?

  A flush creeps up my cheeks, but I don’t think he can tell over Skype.

  “I didn’t want you to know,” he admits, a smile creasing the corners of his eyes. “I don’t even know why. I think I was afraid that you’d think I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  I snort quietly, pushing up glasses as they slide down my nose.

  “How on earth was I gonna know?” I tease. “I’d never tongue-kissed a boy until you came along, so why lie about the older woman the summer before?”

  He shrugs, leaning forward, and even over twenty-five hundred miles, our talk feels close and intimate.

  “Why’d I do anything back then, Squeaks?” he asks. “I was afraid of what you’d think. I was afraid of what other people would think. I was mister football guy, son of the richest man in town, and I thought I was some big hotshot that everyone looked up to.”

  I’m holding my breath, because he’s not just explaining why he lied about his first time.

  He’s explaining, as well as he can, about our relationship and Melissa and prom and why he threw me under the bus the way he did.

  “Turns out I was just some asshole in high school,” he says. “No one gave a fuck. When Melissa and I broke up the next summer, no one batted an eye. I had it in my head that what I did back then mattered to the world in some big, dramatic way, and… it didn’t.”

  “It mattered,” I say softly.

  “I wish I’d told you then,” he says. “I should have at least given you that.”

  “Why, so I could secretly lord it over your girlfriend like I did everything else?” I ask, shaking my head and laughing. “When I was tutoring her in English Lit she told me she was thinking about giving up her virginity to you.”

  “She didn’t,” Wilder laughs. “We broke up instead without ever getting past—”

  He cuts off suddenly, and I raise one eyebrow.

  “Don’t tell me you’re suddenly too shy to say,” I tease.

  “Second base,” Wilder admits, and I laugh. “It seems rude to bring it up to you, now.”

  “After everything, admitting that you got to second base with someone else seems rude?” I ask, still laughing.

  He grins and shrugs.

  “Let me tell you a secret,” I say, leaning my chin on one hand. “I have also been to second base with other people in the past ten years.”

  “I can’t believe you weren’t sitting in your laboratory, pining away and waiting for me to come back into your life,” he deadpans, making a face.

  “If anything, I was hoping you wouldn’t.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  Strangely, talking about this doesn’t hurt any more. It finally feels like the past is the past, like it’s not haunting me anymore. Like now it can stay there, and I can move on with my life, whatever that’s going to mean.

  Though I’ve got some strong ideas about that, too. In the past ten weeks I’ve realized that I hate imagining a life where I don’t talk to Wilder all the time, where I don’t see something wonderful or strange or funny and immediately tuck it away to tell him about it.

  “Wilder,” I say, taking a deep breath, fighting down the nerves that are always there, right below the surface, even when they don’t need to be. “When I get back to Seattle—”

  “—You need someone to pick you up at the airport?” he asks.

  I can’t help but smile at his suggestion that this is step one of a million.

  “Exactly,” I say.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Wilder

  I’m standing next to a guy who’s practically a walking Valentine’s day boutique, even though it’s late August. He’s got a giant sign, written entirely in pink glitter, that reads WELCOME BACK HONEYBOO, festooned with hearts and cut-out Cupids and fake flowers.

  He’s also got a giant basket filled with red and pink tissue paper, a huge teddy bear, and an enormous heart-shaped box of chocolates.

  I think Imogen would murder me if I greeted her at the airport like that. I’m pretty sure that the last thing she wants right now is to have her existence pointed out to the entire baggage claim, so it’s just me, standing here, next to a guy who’s practically glowing neon with romance shit.

  Hopefully he’s not making me look bad, but I’m not too worried.

  According to my flight tracker, she landed thirty minutes ago, and with every passing second I get more keyed up waiting for her to come down the escalators.

  There are business travelers. A family with three kids, all of whom sprint across the baggage claim toward two people who must be grandparents while their parents, lagging behind, tiredly shout at them not to run.

  A bunch of girls all wearing matching Everett Cheer! shirts, more families, more men in suits already talking on their cell phones.

  I start to hope that she didn’t get hung up in customs or something. I hope that she didn’t absentmindedly put a sample of musk ox fur in her carry-on only to get endlessly questioned about why she’s illegally smuggling animal parts. It does seem like something she might do.

  But then, finally, there she is.

  She’s got on leggings and an oversized sweater, because she’s always cold, even in August. Her hair’s up in a messy bun and she’s blinking behind her glasses, looking like she just woke up.

  When she finally sees me, she smiles. I take a couple more steps toward the escalator, and a woman in a suit with a briefcase gives me an annoyed look as she gets off and swerves around me.

  I’m grinning like an idiot. Imogen’s half-smiling, still looking mostly asleep, one hand on the railing of the escalator.

  “HONEYBOO!” a woman’s voice shouts.

  We’re all surprised, even the sign-holder, as a girl wearing a pink sweat suit runs at top speed across the baggage claim and makes a beeline toward the guy holding the sign, then launches herself at him, landing with her legs around his waist.

  They kiss. Sloppily. The poster flies out of his hands and settles on the floor next to them. I stare for a second too long.

  “Hey,” Imogen’s voice says, and I whirl around.

  She’s here. Now. In person. I’ve waited months for this moment and suddenly, I don’t know what to say.

  “Hey,” I say back.

  Behind her glasses, her pupils are big, almost the size of her irises, and she’s got this dreamy, lost look in her eyes.

  She’s on the good anti-anxiety drugs, much better than mine, which were ‘all the whiskey.’

  “Welcome back to the—”

  Imogen grabs my jacket by the lapels, pulls me toward her, and kisses me.

  I wrap her in my arms and kiss her back.

  It’s a long, slow kiss. It’s hard and gentle all at once. It takes its time, and when it’s over, I’m out of breath, feeling spun sideways here in this airport.

  Imogen lowers her eyes, a secret smile in them, her fingers still on the zipper of my jacket. It looks like she’s trying to say something but can’t think of what it is, and finally she turns, glances at the Honeyboo couple next to us.

  She’s still straddling him, held in the air. They’re spinning and insisting that they each missed the other more.

  Imogen moves in another inch, tucks her head below my chin and I rub her back. I think she’s still high as fuck, but I don’t mind.

  “Should I have gotten you a sign?” I ask quietly into her hair.

  Her body shakes slightly as she laughs.

  “I took the right amount of Klonopin, but it wasn’t working, so I took more,” she says, her voice faraway and dreamy. “I almost didn’t make either of my connecting flights. I think customs thought I might be a drug mule who had somet
hing burst in her stomach. I’m not sure I can even read right now.”

  “How about I take you home, then?”

  She nuzzles her nose against my neck, her arms around my waist underneath my jacket.

  “I have luggage.”

  “I was going to get that first.”

  “Yeah,” she says softly. “Yeah.”

  It’s almost nine by the time we get to Imogen’s apartment on University Hill, a small-but-nice one bedroom on the second story of an unassuming building. She doesn’t talk too much during the half-hour car ride, but I don’t mind.

  If anyone understands needing to be drugged out of your mind to get on a plane, it’s me.

  When we’re in her living room, she looks around. Turns on a light. Shakes her head slightly, takes a deep breath, pushes her glasses onto her head and rubs her eyes.

  I laugh.

  “Get some rest, Squeaks,” I tell her. “I’ll call you tomorrow when you’re back with the living.”

  “Stay,” she says.

  She puts her glasses back down and just looks at me. I feel like I’m looking into her soul, raw and vulnerable.

  “Please?” she asks. “Just for a while. You can go home later, just… just stay, Wilder? For a little while?”

  There’s no possible way I can say no, and we both know it.

  “Only if you promise to go to bed,” I tell her. “You’re gonna fall asleep standing up.”

  She smiles, softly, her face radiant as she walks past me, toward the bedroom.

  “Thanks,” she says, and closes the door behind her.

  Half an hour later, we’re both in her bed and Imogen’s curled against me, her breath warm against the hollow of my throat.

  “Thank you,” she says. “Every time I close my eyes I swear I feel the plane crash again. Over and over and over, even through the drugs…”

  Her voice trails off, and I rub a circle on her back through the worn t-shirt she’s got on.

  “You’re not on a plane, you’re in your apartment,” I rumble, trying to sound as soothing as possible. “In bed. Solid land. There’s nothing to crash.”