Nobody but Us

by Kristin Halbrook

  “Zoe,” she whispers. “God, I’ve been worried. Where are you? Are you with Will? The police came, wanting to know if I knew where you were. They have a warrant for Will’s arrest. For assault on your dad. They want to find you. What’s going on?”

  I stare at the wall across from me, even though Will’s trying hard to catch my eye. I can’t look at him yet or I’ll panic over all this.

  “Are they tracing your calls?”

  Lindsay snorts. “I don’t think so. This isn’t a movie, you know. But my mom and dad got so pissed when the police came. They threatened to ground me for the rest of the school year if I didn’t tell them everything. But, geez, Zoe, you didn’t even tell me you were leaving.”

  “It was a last-minute thing. We had to get out of there. You understand?”

  “Yeah, we all understand. But that doesn’t mean the cops care. Did you know Will’s been busted for assault before? They think he stole some money, too. They told us he was dangerous. He isn’t holding you captive or anything, is he? I’ll get it if he’s right there and you can’t say anything. If he is, just say, uh, goldfish, and I’ll call the cops right now.”

  “Lin, stop. It’s nothing like that. He’s never done anything to hurt me.”

  “But you know about his fighting problem, right? Remember Hank Prosser? He finally got a fake tooth put in. Looks so white next to all his chew-black teeth.” She lowers her voice again. “I just want you to be okay.”

  “Yes,” I whisper. “I know. And I wanted you to know I’m okay. That’s why I called. To say hi and I’m fine. We’re both fine. Happy, actually. It feels amazing to be free and far from home.”

  “Aw, you don’t miss me?”

  I smile at her tone. Cops or no, I know she’s glad I got out of there. Maybe a little envious, even.

  “Sure I do. I’m lucky I have Will, though.”

  “I can’t believe it’s just the two of you. Have you? You know.”

  I try as hard as I can to stop the heat from filling my face, but it’s no use. I don’t know if Will heard the question through the receiver, but he knows now that something embarrassing has come up.

  “No,” I murmur.

  “Too bad. Will’s cute. But, no, that’s a good thing. Hold on to your principles. Well, are you sleeping in his car or what? Do you have someplace to stay? Where are you going?”

  “Mostly in the car, yes.” I consider her other questions. “Lin, if I might get you in trouble, I don’t want to tell you where we’re going. It’s not that I don’t trust you—I do—but I’d feel terrible if your parents found out you were keeping something from them. This way you won’t have to lie. But I wish I could tell you. And I will, once we get there and things have settled down.”

  “It’s okay, I get it.” Her voice is a little wistful, but she’s trying to hide it. We both know we need whatever support we can give each other. “But do you have plans? Like, what you’re going to do when you get there? How’s he going to take care of you?”

  Maybe it’s because it’s helpless me, or maybe it’s just the way Lin thinks, but I bristle at her assumptions.

  “We have it figured out. I’m finishing school while Will works. College, too. Then I’ll work so he can go to school. We’ll be fine. Will does a good job taking care of me. It’ll be nice to take care of him.”

  Will adjusts his body and stops trying to catch my eye. Instead, he grasps the back of my neck with gentle fingers and tries to rub the tension out of it.

  “I have to run. I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay at home.”

  “Your dad? I haven’t seen him. But I guess he’s fine. If you could put up with everything he did, he can—”

  “Lin, that’s okay. I don’t need to know quite that much.”

  “Call me again soon, ’kay?”

  “I will. Next time we stop. Bye.”

  I set the phone on the table and lean into Will.

  “My dad’s brought assault charges against you. They’re looking for you.”

  “I figured as much. Don’t worry about it. They’ll poke around for a few days, then let it drop.”

  I touch the seam on his jeans, run my finger along it.

  “You sound pretty sure about that. It’s not the first time they’ve looked for you, is it?”

  “I’ve been around some sad excuses for human beings in my life.”

  I nod. I know what he means.

  WILL

  SHE DON’T EVEN KNOW.

  And I ain’t telling her, don’t wanna worry her, but the police are only the beginning. If there was any other way, I’d turn around and drive her back to North Dakota, do this the right way. Slowly. Let her spend our whole lives looking at me like she knows things about me that I don’t even know. Let me spend forever taking care of her. But I’ll never let her go back to her dad and I’ll never let the system dump her in homes like I seen. This girl ain’t getting any more screwed over.

  “C’mon, let’s take a walk.” We pay the bill, suck on some sticky red-and-white mints. Move outside to get some air. “I was thinking we’d go that way.” I point behind the motel, where the trees are thick enough to hide the clouds and the sky and everything else.

  She gives me a look.

  “What? Yeah, okay, it’s a little creepy, but let’s be crazy, remember? Come on.”

  I grab her hand and tug her into the forest. She comes with me, shaking her head, with a smile like she thinks I’m unbelievable. And that she’s blaming me if she gets sick. Or eaten by a bear. But I ain’t gonna let her get sick or eaten.

  Not by a bear.

  “Come on.”

  The woods are wet and smell like ranch soil after cows and rain. But better. Green. I can’t figure this forest ever gets dry or dusty. Not like the Dakotas, where keeping layers of dust off your shit is a full-time job.

  Zoe’s hands are cold like mine, but we both warm up as we walk. She’s got her coat on, and I know she can’t figure how I can be warm in just my shirt. But I am. There’s this blood-rushing feeling when I’m with her that keeps me heated.

  Mostly the trees and stuff are so crowded that I gotta brush them aside or stomp over them so Zoe can get through. But then there’s this space where something forgot to grow, or died and ain’t nothing taken over yet, and the moonlight gets through to us. I stop and pull Zoe to me. We look at the stars through the hole in the trees.

  “It feels like we’re far away.”

  “From town?”

  “From everything. It’s just you and me and these trees. And you know what? They’re gonna keep their secrets.”

  “What secrets?” Zoe laughs.

  “How would I know? They’re secrets.”

  “The woods make you weird.”

  I lower my head and catch her eyes.

  “You and your name-calling.”

  She laughs again. Then kisses my stubble.

  “Better?”

  “A little.”

  She kisses my mouth.

  “Better?”

  I love this game.

  “A little.”

  She pushes me against a tree. She’s slow, deliberate. Not being her usual shy self. I like it. Anticipation churns in my chest. She runs her mouth down my neck and around my collarbone. Meets my ear with her lips.

  “Now?”

  I don’t answer ’cause I’m too busy catching her mouth when it comes within reach of mine. She tastes like mint and smells like wildflowers pushing up through the forest floor. I bend her toward the ground, lay her on a bed of needles. Her hands are under my shirt, on my chest, and I’m sure we could sink into the ground and no one would know we were gone, would know we had ever lived. She shivers and we tangle like undergrowth.

  I kiss the roundness of her ear, the sharp line of her jaw, the hollow down the side of her neck.

  Her whisper: “I love you.”

  Sinking, falling, decomposing, the two of us into this one thing that makes the earth richer.

  I kis
s the skin at the base of her neck, and it’s my turn.

  “I love you.”

  Her eyes are full as she searches my face.

  “Will.”

  I smile at her. Unbutton her shirt and bury my face in the warmth of her skin. She arches her back when I kiss that line down the middle of her stomach like I’m some kind of architect building a bridge, and balls her fists at the hem of my shirt, grasping handfuls of fabric. I let her pull it over my head and hear her sharp breath as our hot skin meets. I press my knee into the ground between her knees and feel the denim suck in water.

  I want her so bad it aches. Every part of my body is tight for her.

  “Will.”

  It’s her tone—the way she says my name ain’t right, somewhere in between statement and question—that makes me stop and look at her again.

  The ache gets worse ’cause I know what she’s gonna say.

  The flush begins somewhere above her breasts and rises until it reaches the space under her eyes. She can hardly look at me, but I won’t let her turn away.

  “I want to wait.”

  “Wait?”

  “Yeah. I mean, until, we, um.”

  She closes her eyes when I break into a grin. I can’t help it. I know where she’s going, we both know where she’s going, and I love it.

  “Until we what?”

  “Until we get to Vegas. Until we … that is the plan, right?”

  “Zoe, are you proposing to me?”

  She’s trying to hide, raise her hands over her face, but I got ’em pinned under mine and I ain’t letting go.

  “No! Wait, not that I don’t … oh my gosh.”

  “That is the sweetest thing.”

  “Wiiiiillll.”

  No, I was wrong. That, her moaning my name like that. That is the sweetest thing.

  “I accept.”

  She throws her forearm across her face and laughs.

  “Will.”

  “I do. I mean, I will. You asked. Can’t take it back now.”

  “Well.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, I don’t want to.”

  “Marry me? I guess we are kinda young.”

  “I don’t want to take it back.”

  “Good.”

  I trail my lips back up to her neck, closing up the shirt buttons on the way. I get up and help her to her feet and tuck her into me.

  “That was the plan all along, right?”

  She ain’t looking at me, so I can’t see it, but I can hear it, the uncertainty. How do I make it go away? Ain’t it enough to tell her that I ain’t never wanted nothing like I want her? I squeeze her shoulders and laugh. Is it the same thing knowing that I’d never planned on letting her go, ever?

  “All along.”

  ZOE

  THIS HAPPINESS IS SO BIG, I FEAR IT WILL BURST WITH a shock of noise, like a balloon overfilled with helium. It is so encompassing that I fear it will self-destruct from an energy that can’t be contained. It is so precious, I worry there will be a price to pay, a price too great, someday.

  But then I tell myself that I spent the last fifteen years paying the price and that this is my reward.

  We head back to the room, picking up some licorice and crackers and milk from a market on the way.

  There’s the one bed, so we climb in and wrap our limbs around each other and watch a little TV … but not really. The volume is so low that we can only hear it when the audience laughs.

  I hear Will breathe next to me. I feel his legs wrapped around mine. His arms circle my back and it’s hard to breathe with my face tucked into him, but I don’t mind. I feel him and nothing else, not the show, not the worry, not the freedom. Just his skin, his forearm crossed over mine, shades darker than my pale body.

  “Have you loved someone else?” I ask him, not caring if he’s loved every girl on earth besides me, as long as he’s here with me now.

  “Like, ever loved another girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not like you.”

  “But you’ve liked other girls before. What were they like?”

  He dots kisses over my hair as he considers his answer.

  “I’m not trying to trick you,” I say. “I won’t get mad.”

  “I’ve never loved anyone like I love you, Zoe. That’s it. I had girlfriends, I guess, but I spent most of my time trying to survive, and the girls that I saw the most—the ones at the home—they were like sisters. And their problems were big. Too big for me.”

  “How were they too big?”

  He shifts uncomfortably. “You’ve met some of them before.”

  I’d known the girls at the home, though not very well. At school, their hooded eyes watched me walk with Will, but they rarely tried to talk to me. I felt like I belonged to them in some ways—begging the universe for a life I wasn’t fully resigned to—but in other ways, I couldn’t be like them. They were brash and aggressive, forced to forge unlikely survivals. They scared me, but Will, I knew, wouldn’t let them rub off on me, wouldn’t let me be like them. He took me away from there, first.

  “I thought my problems were big.”

  “Nah, you just needed to get out of there, right? But I don’t know if things are better for you now, saddled with a slob like me.”

  I smile and nip him on the shoulder. He tastes like smooth salt, and I want to keep him on my tongue until he dissolves into my bloodstream. I let out a shriek as he grabs me and rolls me on top of him, my legs straddling his chest. He’s wearing boxers and I’m wearing his T-shirt, so I feel his heat everywhere, and there’s a windstorm in every region of my body as he pulls my mouth to his. He moans. I straighten my legs and blood rushes to my cheeks. I know how much he wants me.

  “Let’s not wait. I’ll promise everything to you right now, anything you want, and we’ll call it good.”

  His hands are places they’ve never been before, and it feels so good—he feels so good, his temperature, his taste—that I’m tempted to set my fears aside and agree to whatever he says or doesn’t say and does to me instead. Will is not my father.

  But it’s hard to let go of this thing that hovers in my belly behind the desire, this thing that confuses my body. Do I want to be touched or don’t I? Frustration boils in me; I want to give in, let his touch engulf me, take me to new places—diminish my fear of new places. I want to please him, please me, embrace more than freedom of place. Break through this wall that holds me back … this sturdy wall. I cry instead.

  I pull back and hide my eyes, but he sees and he grasps me to him.

  “Okay. It’s okay. You’re all right and we’ll wait. It’ll be great, perfect, when it’s time. Okay?”

  I press my cheek into his chest and stare at the sliver of light coming through the center slit of the drapes. The drapes are yellow, sunshine yellow. There’s a window behind them. An opening through the wall.

  WILL

  ZOE’S IN MY BED. AIN’T BEEN A BETTER THING TO wake up to since … ever. She’s still sleeping, her hair’s swirled all over her face and her pillow. Ain’t a sound in the room ’cept breathing.

  I can’t stop myself from wondering what that bastard did to her. How far he took it. What more he did than plow her to the ground with his fists. Maybe that was all it took to make her afraid of everything, of me. But thinking there could’ve been something worse makes me wish I’d killed him when I had the chance.

  Thinking she needs more to get through this than a ride out of North Dakota scares the shit outta me.

  The girls I’ve known, the girls at the home, the daughters, the girls walking down the street: I could tell when there was something. Some secret, horrible thing. It happens more than it should. The girls at the home talked about it like they were spilling it on some talk show.

  But those girls were hard from their experiences. Zoe ain’t like that. She’s a soft thing lying in my bed, breathing mountain-cold morning air. I wrap a piece of her hair around my hand and move my lips to it. There’s somethin
g about doing that that I ain’t never felt before. Like I wanna drop the hair and move back. But I don’t.

  Her feet poke out from under the blanket. They dangle over the side of the bed. Her toenails are painted in chipped pink polish. Knowing these things about her, that she ain’t painted her nails in a while, that she uses pink polish when she does paint them, these are the things that I wanna know. I’m desperate to know them, all the little things, as quickly as possible. Maybe when there’s nothing left to hide, she won’t be afraid no more.

  I pull her to me. She makes a noise, smiles a little, burrows against me. I feel like we got all the time in the world to be here doing this. Ain’t nobody knows we’re here. Who could find us in this mountain town? Even the noon checkout time would stand still for this.

  “Morning,” she whispers.

  “Hi.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Good.”

  The sun comes in through the slit between the curtains and across our hips. I put my hand over the stripe, push up the sleeve of my shirt with my chin, and kiss her shoulder. The smell of her and me are mingled in that spot.

  I don’t care what nobody says about lacy lingerie; there ain’t nothing better than this girl in my T-shirt.

  “Zoe?”

  “Hm.”

  I press my nose gently to her shoulder. “I been thinking about what you said.”

  “Hm?” She doesn’t move.

  “So, I decided I should see where I was born.”

  She doesn’t say nothing.

  “Will you come with me?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “About bringing you along?”

  She swats at me but gets nothing but air.

  “About seeing where you were born.”

  “Yeah. I think so. Why not? I don’t care none about it, but at least you can make sure I come from an upstanding place. Probably should’ve done that before you proposed.”