And just thinking that made me wonder if this had been the right thing to do. I had been so caught up in it all, it was like I had lost sight of everything else, that finding out whatever answers I could was all that mattered. But now that I had the answer I thought I so badly needed, I wasn’t sure if I had done the right thing. I didn’t know if I could go over there and make my presence known.
I was about to reach over and grab Gwen’s hand and tell her we should leave when Ashleigh looked right at us. She started to look away, like I was just some guy, but then she did a double take, and then Brandon was turning and looking in our direction, too.
“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, and started to run over. “Drew? Am I hallucinating right now?”
I swallowed what felt to be a boulder in my throat. “Ashleigh,” I managed to say. “Hi. Fancy meeting you here.”
She cracked a smile and then held her arms out and we hugged. I let my eyes close and I thought, This is it. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for that you thought would never happen. It is here. It is right now. Enjoy it.
But right as I was telling myself to enjoy it, Ashleigh let go, pulled away, took a step back and stared at me, a look of disbelief in her eyes.
“I know,” I said, even though she hadn’t said anything else, but the sentiment was almost tangible in the air: This does not feel real. Is this really even happening? But it was, because here she stood, right in front of me. We had just hugged. She was alive. She looked well. She looked more than well—she looked like she was absolutely thriving, enjoying her life.
And I felt this... pang… of something. Which was ridiculous, I know, because I should have just been so relieved, so thankful, so indebted to whomever that we were able to see each other again. It shouldn’t matter to me that it had been so easy for her to just walk away from everyone who had been in her life, people who cared about her, who loved her, who enjoyed her company. That she had just been able to turn her back on it all, like it hadn’t even mattered.
“This is so surreal,” she said, a grin breaking out on her face. She had lines on her skin where I hadn’t remembered her having lines, but they didn’t make her look older—rather, it seemed they made her look more experienced, like she was really out there, living her life, if that made any sense.
“It is... I’m not even sure what to say.”
I was vaguely aware of Gwen next to me, drifting off to the right, because Brandon was walking over to her, a somewhat dumbfounded expression on his face. But I couldn’t stay focused on their situation because trying to figure out what was happening here was hard enough and required all of my attention.
And there were children.
Ashleigh saw where my gaze was and she glanced over her shoulder, her smile changing from the awkward, slightly nervous one to one of genuine affection. “That’s Luca and Hazel,” she said. “Luca’s eight and a half and Hazel just turned seven.”
So I was an uncle. I’d been an uncle for eight and a half years and I was only just now finding out about it. Holy shit. Luca kind of looked like me, I thought, when I’d been that age.
“Can I meet them?”
“Of course!” The smile faltered for the briefest second. “Listen,” she said. “We’re just going to tell the kids that you guys are old friends of ours, okay? Who is that, anyway? Introduce me.”
It wasn’t clear whom Ashleigh was addressing when she said, Introduce me—if she wanted me to introduce her to Gwen, or if she wanted Brandon to.
But Gwen didn’t hesitate and she turned abruptly from Brandon to look at Ashleigh. “Hi,” she said, stepping toward her, right hand extended. “I’m Gwen. You’re married to my cousin.”
Ashleigh, who was taller than Gwen by a good four or five inches, seemed a little surprised at the forward tone in Gwen’s voice. There was a hint of disbelief. She stuck her hand out and shook Gwen’s.
“Nice to meet you,” she said. “I’m Ashleigh. I was just about to introduce Drew to the kids.” This she said to Brandon.
“Yeah. We’re longtime friends. I got the rundown.”
Brandon glanced sidelong at Gwen, and it was clear that he hadn’t yet mentioned the part about not wanting to let the kids in on the fact that we were blood relatives. Was that weird? Was I supposed to be offended about that?
It doesn’t matter who the hell they say you are, I chided myself. It’s not going to change the fact that those kids ARE your niece and nephew, whether they ever know it or not. They were their own people. I wanted to get to know them.
“Um, yeah,” Brandon said. “We were just about to get to that part.”
“You’ve talked about this before?” Gwen asked. “Like, what you would say if you ever got found?”
Ashleigh and Brandon exchanged looks. “Well...” Brandon said, “yes, we did. You know what my dad is like, Gwennie. You know he would’ve done something awful if he ever found out where we were. And the only way we could really move forward was to just act like we were starting over. Wiping the slate clean completely. We had to sever that part of our lives from our consciousness. But that was something we decided: if and when we ever had children, we would not ever mention our families.”
“Jesus,” she said. “It sounds like you’re in a cult of two. Do you hear yourself?”
“I know you think I sound delusional, but you don’t know how bad Joshua could be. And that whole ridiculous notion that he clung to, that he was somehow this legitimate leader, someone people should revere and follow. Do you think I wanted any part of that? But he wanted things his way; he wanted that control, wanted me to eventually take on his role for his ridiculous, fraudulent cult! Like that was my calling in life. My main purpose. No. There’s a whole lot that you don’t understand about this, Gwen, and there were some things that we just had to do.”
“So, are you telling me that you never wanted to be found? That you’d be perfectly fine never seeing me again?”
I didn’t want to know the answer. I didn’t want him to respond, because I knew without a doubt that Ashleigh’s response would be the same.
“Uh, maybe this was a mistake,” I said quickly, before Brandon could say anything. “You know, not really the best-thought-out thing to do. I can see that. I think we’re just going to go.”
“What? No! Oh, my God, you can’t do that!” Ashleigh looked genuinely stricken at the idea. “Shit. Drew. This is intense, I know—I’m sorry. Now that you guys are here, though, I don’t want you to just leave. Why don’t you come over our place? We want to sit down and catch up with you guys. I know it’s been so long. So please don’t leave like this.”
Could things get any more surreal? No. We’d found them and now they were the ones imploring us to stay. Yeah, yeah, of course we would; I opened my mouth to say it but Gwen reached out and grabbed my hand.
“Tell us your phone number, one of you, and we’ll be in touch.” She pulled me in her direction. “But we do have to get out of here temporarily.”
Ashleigh opened her mouth but didn’t say anything, only nodded and then pressed her lips together.
Gwen pulled her phone out of her pocket and put in the number that Brandon spelled out, walking backward toward the car. Once he’d said the last digit, she whipped around and strode off to the car.
I felt bad because I knew the kids were probably wondering what the hell was going on, although maybe they weren’t—they hadn’t looked too interested in what we’d been doing when we were standing there talking to their parents. Kids probably wouldn’t let themselves get caught up in this sort of complicated adult shit. I envied them, I really did.
“Drive,” Gwen commanded once I had my seatbelt on. She stared straight ahead, didn’t even turn her head to look as we drove away. I gave a little wave, which I wasn’t sure if they could see or not.
“Where am I going?” I asked when I got to the parking-lot exit.
“I don’t care. Anywhere. I just needed to get out of there for a minute—it was too over
whelming.”
There was a large part of me that agreed with her. I’d had some sort of Hallmark rendition in my subconscious as to what it would be like if or when I ever saw Ashleigh again. I had never factored in the awkwardness or the resentment I had inside of me. It was a very selfish thing to do, what she had done, without any concern for all the pain, worry, and anguish she had caused people.
“Am I wrong to be mad?” Gwen said. “Is that completely fucked up and morally devoid of me? Because I actually am. And I’m admitting that, and I don’t care how it sounds.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” I said, and I could see how conflicted she felt about the whole thing. “I actually feel something similar. Even though there’s a big part of me that thinks I shouldn’t. That believes I should just be happy we found them. I guess I never really thought about how I would feel after that initial excitement of seeing them. That it was all supposed to be just roses and rainbows or some shit?”
Chapter 28
Gwen
It felt good to be able to confide in Drew in such a way and have him not only understand me, but also admit that he was feeling something similar. Not that it would have changed how I felt, but I did feel bad having this anger toward Brandon, and it wasn’t something I felt I could just ignore. It was hurt feelings, which part of me thought I should just somehow rise above, let go of, just be happy that we had found them. Because that had really been our goal, the main objective, hadn’t it? And that had actually happened. We’d achieved what we set out to do. It just seemed as if neither of us had been prepared to feel what we were currently feeling.
I sighed, wishing there was some way that I could just make myself forget everything I was feeling right now. We drove for a few more minutes, neither of us saying anything.
“Can you pull over?” I said suddenly, an idea occurring to me. I’d realized I knew exactly what I could do if I wanted to take my mind off these feelings. “Somewhere secluded?”
He glanced at me. “Are you okay? Do you need me to stop? Are you going to be sick?”
“No,” I said, looking further up the road. “Turn down that road. It looks like it might go somewhere out of the way.”
The road was called Browns Cartway and it was unpaved, just hard-packed dirt and gravel and a line of grass running down the middle. There were a few houses, but then it was just woods.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Drew asked as we bumped along the dirt road.
“No.” But I had a feeling I would know it when I saw it.
And less than a minute later, there it was. It was a small, somewhat overgrown parking lot, where you could park and presumably access trails that started here.
“Just pull in the back corner over there.” It was under the shade of a tall oak tree, so even though it was a bright, sunny day, this corner was dark and shadowy. He backed into the spot and before he even had the car all the way in park, I was out of my seat and on him.
“Whoa!” he said, laughing a little. “Easy, girl!” But his hands went to my waist and started caressing my flanks, as I shivered and pressed my mouth against his. He kissed me back, hard.
He got the car in park and turned it off, leaving the keys there in the ignition. He moved the seat back as far as it would go, which wasn’t much further than how he had it, but that was okay. I liked feeling confined, wanted this to be a little uncomfortable. There was a whole bunch of energy I needed to get out, and the only way to do that seemed to be through sex.
And the fact that Drew was easily the sexiest man I had ever seen made me feel even more aroused. I pulled my shirt off and threw it aside, yanked my bra off, helped him slide out of his own shirt. I straddled him, the steering wheel pressing into my lower back. It felt good. He slid his hand down the front of my shorts, into my underwear. That felt even better. He reached up with his other hand and tugged first on my left nipple, then the right, and then he leaned forward so the muscles in his abdomen flexed and he lowered his head to my breasts and began playing with each nipple with his tongue, his fingers sliding lower, then up, smoothly, easily, inside of me. A little groan like a purr worked its way up my throat and I ground my hips into him, felt his hardness beneath his shorts. These bottom layers had to come off. We did a weird shifty scramble thing as we each worked our way out of our bottoms, but it was well worth the effort because having nothing but skin between us was the most sublime, perfect feeling I had ever experienced. I closed my eyes and let my whole body hum with that energy, this incredible sort of synchronicity with another person.
Having his hand there between my legs felt amazing, but that was not what I really wanted. I wanted him, all of him, and I happened to be in the perfect position to take it. He didn’t have a condom, but I’d tell him to pull out. At least STIs were not something I had to worry about, considering his past history.
But at that point, I might’ve just done it anyway, because it felt like having him inside of me was the one and only thing I needed right now. It was all I wanted. Luckily, he was happy to oblige and he held perfectly still as I lowered myself onto him. Once he was all the way in, we both let out this collective sigh and then started to move together. If I moved forward while he moved down, it created the perfect rhythm, hit all the right spots. My whole body tingled. My whole body was in fact starting to feel like part of his body, like I could feel what he was feeling and he could feel what I was feeling, and that made what we were actually feeling all the more intense. Did it work like that? Maybe not always, but definitely in this situation it did.
I placed one hand down on his chest to balance myself, braced my forearm against the window. It was like being on a thrill ride that kept going faster and faster, but instead of feeling more scared or more vertigo the faster you went, you just felt better and better and better and better. It was like there was no ceiling for the limits of these mind-blowing waves of pleasure coursing through every cell in my body. Slight variations in movement would increase these waves; big variations, like Drew cupping both breasts in his hands and then squeezing hard on my nipples, made it feel like a tsunami.
I had entered that state of no return, but there wasn’t a climax in sight. No, that feeling of no return just kept going, as if it stretched on for infinity. Everything around us fell away, and it was just the two of us, but we were really more like one sphere of energy, two halves fitting together. I knew that would sound sort of batshit crazy if I tried to explain it to anyone, but that really was how it felt, what was happening. It was the sort of experience that you might read about in some Harlequin romance but never think actually happens in real life; it’s just some made-up state of being, something completely unattainable in reality.
I realized, now, though, how completely untrue that was.
I wasn’t sure how long things went on for; that part of my brain responsible for tracking time or really being aware of anything going on outside the confines of my own body had pretty much turned off, tuned out, just did not matter anymore. I felt what can only be described as this surge which seemed to decimate my entire being, but in the best way possible, showering the most exquisite, pleasurable sensation you can imagine all over me.
We clung to each other as the sensations slowly abated. Being in the front seat of a car was not exactly an ideal location for a postcoital cuddle, so after a few minutes we stumbled out and got dressed.
“I’m not even sure what just happened there,” Drew said, “but I know for a fact that was definitely a top five in terms of life experiences. Maybe even top two. Shit.” He shook his head, a look of wonder on his face. “I didn’t even realize that I was physically capable of feeling those things. Have you put some sort of yogic spell on me or something?”
I gave him a coy look. “Maybe I have,” I said. “Should I take it off?”
“No!” he said. “I’m not complaining—just curious. If it is a spell, then, please, never take it away!” We both laughed. “Really, though, do you feel better?” he asked. “
Because I sure as hell feel better.”
“I do,” I said. “But I actually wouldn’t mind going for a little walk. Does that sound okay?”
“Sure thing.”
We started to walk, which was nice, because the small footpath wound through the woods, and it really did feel like we were miles from civilization. I knew it wasn’t true, but it felt as if we could just keep walking forever and we’d never encounter another person. The sun dappled the ground as a breeze ruffled the leaves above us, and I could hear the buzz of bees and birds chirping in the branches above our heads. We came to a big fallen pine not far off the trail, and we sat on it, listened to the sounds of birds and insects filling the air around us.
“You don’t want to see them again, do you?” Drew asked.
“I’m not sure.” And I wasn’t. I’d thought that the joy I would feel at just seeing Brandon again would eclipse any other feelings. But seeing him had made me realize just how easy it had been for him to forget about me, to leave me there with a man whom he himself was running away from. Those feelings also seemed so trite. Like I was holding on to the past and unable to move forward, which was not how I wanted to come across. It sort of sounded like just the thing I would advise against during my yoga classes: Being too attached to our past will not allow us to move forward. To continue and grow, we must always be working to let go of things that have already happened and not give them any more of our energy, because there is nothing we can do now to change that. Yes, I had said that, probably verbatim. But seeing how happy they seemed together, how totally fine their lives seemed, it just made me wonder why the hell they couldn’t have at least tried to be in touch, beyond a fucking postcard that didn’t really say much of anything.
“I actually do,” I said. “I just needed to get away for a little bit, because this is really a lot more intense than I thought it was going to be.”
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