by Ruthie Knox
“Really? When?”
“In the Boy Scouts. I was really into survival stuff, and I thought … I went off by myself in the woods with a tarp and no food or water or anything. I got lost. They didn’t find me for a few days.”
Ashley sat up, chilled in an instant.
He’d said it so matter-of-factly, but there was nothing matter-of-fact about what Roman had just told her. “How many days is a few?”
“Four.”
“Oh, God, Roman.”
“It was a long time ago.”
But the strain around his mouth looked fresh, and he reached up and pulled her into his arms, sprawling her across his body.
“You poor thing,” she said.
His arms tightened. Ashley rolled onto her back, bringing him on top of her so she could pet his hair, stroke his shoulders, hold him close with her legs wrapped around his waist.
“You must have been so scared. And so lonely.”
He tucked his face against her neck. One of them was trembling. Both of them had been there, lost in the woods, alone in the world. Discarded, forgotten.
Small sparks of starlight up against the whole howling wilderness.
She held him, and he held her, and she closed her eyes and promised whatever gods or karmic forces had influence over her life, whatever fates controlled her destiny—the ghost of her grandmother, the saints of Cuban Miami, anything with influence, all of them—that she would never let Roman be alone that way again.
If she could hold on to him, she would give him her constancy. Because if she were to be given just one thing, one wish granted in the whole of her life, Ashley wanted Roman Díaz.
She wanted this home to come to.
The fading daylight hit the tent at an oblique angle, setting the orange aflame. Ashley pushed her hands beneath Roman’s shirt and pressed her palms into his skin, moving them up over the map of this body that she hoped to travel again and again, to traverse every path, every road and byway of memory, every dark alley of his pain until she knew him inside and out, until she’d heard all his stories and she rolled her eyes at them, Roman, don’t tell that one again, we’ve heard it a hundred times. She wanted to get tired of him and tease him for being so predictable but never, ever be done with him.
She wanted to make love to this body for the rest of her life.
“Jesus,” she whispered. Because that was a thought she’d never had before.
This was a feeling she’d never felt before.
Huge, fathomless, selfless, beautiful, frightening, gorgeous, awesome.
Scary.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
It wouldn’t make sense if she tried to put it in words. Instead, she put it in her hands, framing his face as she lifted herself from the mattress to kiss him.
She put it in the desperate strength of her thighs, squeezing him tight, drawing him against her.
She put it in the stroke of her tongue and the lift of her pelvis, the stuttering panic of her breath, the raking of her fingernails as she tried to claw off his T-shirt and remove every barrier that kept his skin from covering hers, outside, inside, everywhere.
Roman laughed, uncertain. “Ashley?”
“Shh,” she said. The fire pit was twenty feet away, Nana and Stanley and Jamie and Carly gathered around it, talking and distracted but right there. They couldn’t see inside the tent because Ashley had put the rain fly up, but even so, this wasn’t exactly kosher.
She didn’t care. Ashley didn’t have a single flying fuck to give about what was kosher right now. “Get naked.”
“I should put the flaps down first, or—”
“I need you.”
She brought his face close again, kissed him with her heart and her need and her fear, and he got it. They spent a frantic minute wiggling around, pushing down shorts, kicking underwear off their feet, untangling themselves from shirts and bra and digging frantically in Roman’s bag for a condom, and then she was centered over him, sinking down his length, retreating and trying again because she wasn’t wet enough but she didn’t care. The condom was lubricated. She wanted this.
Ashley kept going, slowly drawing him inside her, draping herself over him, her breasts against the friction of his chest hair, her mouth trailing sloppy kisses over his neck, kissing his mouth, kissing his hair, needing him everywhere at once.
He was with her, holding her eyes every time she looked up. Cupping her cheek, cupping her breast, cupping her ass in both hands and seating himself deeper with a gasp.
“Shh,” she said again, rising, and swallowed his moan with a kiss as she came back to him.
Rising and falling, she came back to him every time, and he wouldn’t let her go anyway. He never stopped holding her, hands at her hips, on her breasts, at her waist. Stroking her belly. Glancing over her clit, drawing her down to him again and again. Returning each kiss with fervor, with fever, the same desperate need she felt ricocheting back at her so she couldn’t tell who was needy and who needed. Who thirsted and who quenched.
They were the same in this. The same.
He rolled over on top, thrusting hard, pulling her knee up. She bit his earlobe. He sucked at her neck. They rolled again, coming off the air mattress. Roman shoved it aside, pushed her duffel bag into the wall of the tent so she’d have room to get her knees under her and ride him better, none of that soft bouncy cushioning when what she wanted was this, gravel under the nylon beneath her kneecaps, hard strokes that she could feel, she wanted to feel this, to be with Roman for every second of this frantic, quiet coupling because she needed to.
He pressed his thumb into her clit and she let it grind against her on every stroke, let the pressure take her someplace that was too raw and too ugly, not the orgasm she sought but the one he would give her, the one he’d make her take.
It came on, an explosive surprise, forcing her head back and his fingers over her mouth, muffling the sound that tore out of her, his jaw so stern, his face cruel if you missed what was happening in his eyes, which was everything, acceptance and tenderness and Roman, the real Roman, all of him right there.
It came on, and it wrecked her, one long ceaseless spasm that felt so good, so fucking amazing that it pushed tears out of her eyes, pressed her heart into her throat, made her bite the tender crease of his palm as she rode it and rode it and rode it out, his cock surging up to meet her, his hand at her back, gentling her.
Ashley came down, gasping for breath.
Roman said, “Turn over.”
He set her on the edge of the air mattress, spread her knees wide, and pushed inside her from behind, one palm beside her head, the other between her shoulder blades, pressing down. He sighed or sobbed, she couldn’t tell, but it sounded good, like he was getting just what he needed as he fucked into her with four deep strokes, smooth and slow, and then he lost it.
His hand left her back, scooped beneath her belly, graceless and fumbling, and he moved that way, too, the orgasm stealing his finesse, yanking him into her again and again, fast and hard, rough and panting until he came, too, and stilled.
They collapsed like that, facedown on the mattress.
Ashley felt damp cloth beneath her cheek before she realized she was still crying.
She wasn’t sad. She was in love with Roman.
It was fucking terrifying.
But that was okay. She was okay. Better than okay. She could do this.
Propping herself up on her elbows, she swiped at her eyes and inhaled a sniffly breath.
She reached back, found Roman’s hip, and slapped it.
Forward.
CHAPTER FOUR
The green lawn at Cave Point sloped downhill toward a thin line of spindly trees. Through them and over their tops, Lake Michigan winked and sparkled, steel-blue water under a crisp blue sky.
They’d made it to Door County, Wisconsin, a thumb-shaped peninsula sticking out into the lake. Nana had called Esther yesterday to tell her they were on their way, and Esther ha
d suggested that they get together at Cave Point for a picnic lunch, because her own house was too small to hold so many guests.
Ashley sat on the grass between Roman’s thighs, resting her hands on his knees. She felt as though they’d reached the edge of the world—out here on this narrow strip of land, the road butting up against the parking lot, the lawn kissing the edge of the asphalt and dropping away downhill to the trees and the cliff’s edge, the long descent to the water.
It made a scenic picnic spot, but on this brisk Thursday morning in early September, they had the place to themselves.
Esther folded open a red tablecloth and snapped it high in the air, letting the wind smooth out all the wrinkles and float it gently down to Stanley, who caught the end and helped secure it to the table with a bottle of ketchup on one side, a saltshaker on the other.
Dora held Jamie’s index fingers and jumped from one large, flat rock to the next, working her way down the line that divided the parking lot from the picnic area. Carly and Nana were off exploring somewhere.
Ashley sighed and tried to find a more comfortable spot to rest against Roman.
The man could stand to have a little more padding. He was hard muscle and sinew all over, which was nice to look at but uncomfortable to lean against. There was a reason people weren’t supposed to have one percent body fat.
Not that she wanted to get up. She ought to. She should help Esther, but Stanley was already over there, making whatever Stanley’s version of a move was, and it was nice to let someone else be in charge for a while.
Plus, the number of men she’d slept with who were interested in sitting on green lawns with an arm around her waist, letting her rest between their thighs, was very short.
It was a list of one, actually.
So she would take her romantic lawn-sitting, thank you, even in this less-cozy guise.
“How are you doing?” Roman asked.
She plucked at the sleeve of his black hoodie. Is shit-blind with panic a thing?
“I’m nervous,” she said. “Because I’m dumb.”
How strange was it that Roman had on a black hoodie? He’d bought it at REI. It made him look like an ordinary person, except more beautiful, and seeing him zip it up this morning in the tent had shoved a shish-kebab skewer of affection right through her heart.
Which was also dumb.
“I don’t think it’s dumb to be nervous. You’re on a quest, remember? Quests are scary.”
The quest thing felt dumb, too, today. What was this, trial by picnic lunch? Afterward, they would explore the caves, which weren’t really caves so much as pits and hollows, moist crags and shelves of rock formed where Lake Michigan pounded into the limestone cliffs of the Door County peninsula.
It wasn’t as though any evil geniuses lurked about, waiting for a chance to push her off a cliff so she would split her head open on the rocks below.
No, all Ashley had to do to get through today’s trial was talk to Esther about Grandma. Ask the questions she’d carried here from Florida—Why did she cut me off? Why did she keep secrets from me? Why didn’t she let me say goodbye?
It wasn’t the questions or even the answers that scared her now. It was knowing that after she heard them, she might not feel any different. It was understanding that no matter what Esther had to say, Ashley’s future was up to her.
“Remind me what the holy grail is on this quest of ours,” she said.
“I can’t say it.”
“How come?”
“It’s too corny.”
She elbowed him in the ribs. “Come on. You’re not going to say, like, enlightenment, are you?”
“No. Close, though.”
“Inner peace? Karmic balance?”
“Stop,” Roman said. “You’ll nauseate me, and I won’t be able to eat lunch.”
“Just tell me and I’ll stop,” she promised.
“I was going to say something like self-awareness.”
“You were not.”
“I was!”
“You really were?” She twisted around to look at his face. He was serious. “You think I’m on a quest for self-awareness. You actually think that.”
“Not if you’re going to make it sound that way.”
“I can’t help it. It’s like you’re telling me I’m going to reach Nirvana in an hour. Become a bodhisattva. I’m about to wet myself, and you think I’m becoming self-aware.”
“I’m just saying you seem like you’re … growing into yourself.”
Ashley turned back around and looked at the water, because otherwise she’d be glaring at Roman, or possibly kicking him in the shins.
Growing into herself.
She was a twenty-four-year-old woman who kept all her worst feelings trapped in a well with a lid on top of them. A woman who’d spent years giving people whatever version of herself they seemed to want—party-girl bartender, adorable tour guide, long-suffering girlfriend, incompetent nonprofit employee, rebellious daughter, world-traveling granddaughter.
It was only with Roman that she’d started to find the edges of herself, the boundaries of her own needs and desires. Arguing with him, talking to him, making love with him—he was the only person she’d ever met who didn’t seem to want her to be anything for him. The only person who wanted her to be whoever she was.
It felt so good to be with Roman.
But Ashley didn’t know what came next. How much further would she have to go to get to a place where she could live in this home she’d found with him? Was it even possible? It didn’t feel possible, and that scared her more than anything, because whatever her flaws, she’d always been someone who approached the future with optimism.
She ought to be able to imagine a way for them to be happy, but she couldn’t.
“I think you have the wrong idea about me,” she told him.
“Probably. I have a lot of wrong ideas.” He plucked a grass stem to twirl between his fingers. “Are you ready for this talk with Esther?”
“I guess so.”
Ashley had been thinking during this morning’s drive about what she wanted from Esther, and she’d realized it wasn’t really answers she was looking for. What she wanted was for Esther to tell her what Susan and Ashley had looked like to her.
Draw me a portrait, she would say, because Esther was an artist, and she believed in the ability of portraits to reveal the essential nature of their subjects. Tell me what we were.
Because she’d thought she knew. A year ago, she could have drawn it herself.
She would have drawn her grandmother sitting on the floor beside Ashley’s bed in her gardener’s cottage bedroom. Grandma with a hot mug of peppermint tea in her hand, Ashley pouring out her complaints or confessing her fears.
She would put pencil to paper, paintbrush to canvas, and immortalize the moment when her grandma handed her the tea—cold, often, by then—and Ashley would drink it.
Or she would have drawn the first time Grandma took her to the beach to try to teach her to meditate. The morning when attempting to sit still with her feelings had made Ashley so angry that she’d thrown rocks and stranded seaweed and clumps of wet sand into the ocean, fistful after fistful, crying until she was exhausted and Susan put an arm around her skinny shoulders and said, There, now, don’t you feel better?
A year ago, Ashley would have drawn a picture of the two of them at a campground together, bundled in blankets against the morning chill, eating pancakes at a picnic table and laughing about some shared nonsense from the day before.
Understanding, sympathy, companionship—surely that was love.
It was. She knew it was.
But her grandmother’s death and the events that had followed—the reading of the will, the loss of Sunnyvale—had shaken her up. Now when Ashley flipped through those memories, they were like pages in a sketchbook, or like those unopened boxes in the Airstream. They were fragments of the past, each with its own colors and feelings attached, each with some kind of resonanc
e, but she didn’t know how to make them add up to anything.
She couldn’t tell her own story anymore. She needed Esther to tell it to her so she could hold Esther’s version up to the other versions she’d heard and listen for the parts that resonated because they were right, because they were true, because they were her.
What she hoped for was the truth—the grace—to be able to tell her own story in her own words. Because if she could do that, she could move forward.
Forward was where she wanted to go.
“Do you know what you’re going to talk about?” he asked.
“I have some ideas.”
“You’ll do fine. You’re braver than I am.”
The sun went behind a cloud. Ashley shivered. “Stop saying stuff like that, or I’m going to punch you.”
“Bet you hit like a girl.”
Ashley turned around and socked him in the arm. Her fist bounced right off, but he hissed, rubbed his biceps, smiled.
He’d skipped shaving at the campground. His hair was quite obviously beginning to curl at his nape. She wanted to ruffle it with her fingers and kiss his cheek.
She also wanted to hit him again.
“Why are you so smug?” she asked. “It’s like you’ve completely forgotten I’m ruining your life.”
“I like this place. I like being with you. I keep getting texts from Carmen saying things like, Where are you? Where are you exactly? What’s going on there? Where’s Ashley? What are we going to do? And instead of making me freak out, they just make me think, Shit, I really needed a vacation.”
“You’re having too much sex,” Ashley said. “It’s turning your brain to mush.”
“Yeah, that’s probably it.” He moved her hair out of the way and pressed his nose into her skin. “Or maybe the real world just sucks.”
Ashley smiled and tried to focus on the trail of warm kisses he was planting along her neck. It helped distract her from the racing poison of her dread.
After a while, Roman lowered her hair back down. She sighed. “It’s terrible, though, if that’s what this quest is all about,” she said. “I mean, other people just buy self-help books, you know? Or talk to a therapist.”