“Did Byron find a new girlfriend?” Eric’s tears had dried, and the whites of his eyes had mostly lost the pink tinge of his sob-fest.
“Oh, hell no. He’s one irritating little prat,” I said, and Eric laughed. “Funyun has a girlfriend now, though! Her name is…” I grasped for a moment.
“Countess Hazel Loganberry,” Eric supplied.
“Countess Hazel Loganberry. She’s a pug who showed up at the cabin one day, and after she and Funyun did the ceremony of smelling each other’s butts while walking in a circle, they bonded and she never left! They sleep snuggled up together on Byron’s bed. And they’ll live happily ever after.”
Eric sighed contentedly. I kissed him on the top of his head and pulled him to his feet as I said, “Come on, there are still gym lockers to be looted! I’m running low on athletic supporters, you know.”
Home. I snuggled into my sleeping bag and looked around the lean-to, at our heaps of belongings and our treasures on the walls. The Polaroids that made my heart swell. My guys. I gazed at various notes we’d tacked up for each other, at the drawings, at the PARTICIPANT ribbon, at the half-mask Matthew had made me. Ty Pennington’s badge. The “L2C4L” carving Thom had etched into the wall. I looked at “Hauntingly Beautiful Melody”; the song had grown but the name remained unchanged. The “hidden mother” pictures were every bit as disturbing and wonderful as the day Eric found them.
I must have fallen asleep looking at our things, because Eric had appeared next to me.
“Hi,” I said.
He Squeezy-Eyesed me. Eric unzipped my sleeping bag a little, still not speaking. His hand slid into the fabric, onto my leg, across my thigh, and over the top of my underwear.
I watched his face with a half-open-eyed gaze, feeling my body stir beneath his touch. My heart raced as he lightly stroked back and forth over the fabric. Spirals, figure eights, zigzags. His fingers played across the cotton, along the edges of it, against the elastic of it, then down between my legs. I breathed out a long, slow exhalation. Eric tucked his fingers under the elastic.
“Mmm…” my mouth buzzed.
Eric stopped moving his fingers and turned his head to the side, glancing at the convex mirror on the tree at the edge of our area and listening. No one on the trail.
“This,” he asked, moving his fingers one way, “or this?” He moved his fingers differently.
“Yes. Both. More,” I told him, already feeling weak.
I closed my eyes.
“Uh-uh,” he said, stopping his hand. “Eyes open.”
I kept my eyes shut for a second, to see if he’d resume anyway. He didn’t.
“Mm-mm, sweetie. Gotta work for this,” he teased.
I relented and opened my eyes. “Hrmf,” I mock-grumbled.
His hand resumed, and my mock-grumble turned into a different noise.
Eric laughed and leaned in to kiss me, his tongue tangling with mine. I bit his lip a little, staring directly into his eyes and feeling his fingers and trying to breathe.
A squishing noise sounded from where his fingers moved. I snorted at it, and he made faster squishing noises. I ground my teeth together and my eyes glazed over, and I moaned. Fireworks.
Eric took an extended breath in, still staring at my eyes. “Maybe we should go?” he asked, slowing his fingers so they barely touched me; they barely moved.
“Where?” I moved so his fingers felt like they moved more.
“Somewhere,” he said vaguely.
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“Soon?”
“Soon!”
“How soon?”
“Soon soon!”
It was hard enough to maintain a conversation with his fingers on and in me. It was even more difficult having to keep my eyes open. They closed automatically.
Eric stopped.
I opened my eyes again, and he resumed.
“Seriously?” I said, my body giving a little jerk.
“Seriously.”
“You’re going to pay for this.” I forced my eyes to stay open. I didn’t want him to stop again.
“Come on,” he finally decreed. “Out back.”
He hopped up and offered me his wet hand. I looked at it and shook my head. He offered his dry hand instead.
“Gallant,” I commented.
I slid off my underwear, leaving it in the sleeping bag, and accepted Eric’s assistance up. I followed him out and around the lean-to in just Bob. Only Bob. I undid a few more of Bob’s buttons.
Eric pulled me to the back corner. This was the happy back corner of the lean-to, not the one I went to when I needed to be tucked away from the world.
Eric pulled my hand to indicate what he wanted me to do. I stepped up onto the boulder there, befuddled but willing. A wooden beam from the lean-to stuck out a couple of feet from the back wall’s edge, above my head. Eric lifted me, and I reached up to wrap my hand around the two-by-four, to hang from it. I put my other hand on his arm.
Eric pressed me against the wall, and I was taller than him for once. I stretched my arm so I hung lower from the beam. Then I reached down to guide him, and Eric pushed into me.
“Yes,” I told him, holding on to the beam, and to his arm, and thrusting my hips toward him. I knew he wasn’t going to let me fall, but I clung to the beam nevertheless. I enjoyed feeling the tiny splinters of wood lodging underneath my fingernails. “Eric…”
He smashed into me harder; powerful strokes that made a repetitive slapping sound. I watched Eric’s eyes. I made a weird shuddering of pleasure from the base of my throat and squeezed my eyes shut.
Eric stopped.
“Seriously!” I exclaimed. My body bucked. I didn’t open my eyes.
He waited.
“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. I slowly opened my eyes and wrapped my legs tightly around him so he couldn’t move his body from mine. I rippled the muscles inside.
Eric’s breathing got ragged and I moved my muscles more—until his eyes closed.
“Seriously?” he groaned.
“Yuuuup!”
He opened his eyes and leaned his forehead on mine. I squeezed my muscles around him again.
“Unngh,” he moaned. He closed his eyes and I stopped moving. “Okay, you win!” he declared.
His tongue wrestled with mine once more. I closed my eyes a moment, then opened them and kept them open for the rest of the ride.
Sam and I were lying out under the stars on one of the concrete picnic tables. I realized I must have a thing for picnic tables. They weren’t so comfortable to eat at, but I enjoyed the tabletops. Funny how such simple things could make me happy.
“I used to be afraid of the dark,” Sam admitted quietly. “I could never see what was coming next.”
Buck, and his fists.
“It’s so peaceful now, though. I love looking up at the stars.” Wistfully, she added, “Wish I knew more about them.”
“Want to learn to read them?”
“What do you mean?”
I taught her to find the North Star, and from there we branched out, connecting those distant dots into pictures. We looked at Ursas Major and Minor, Cassiopeia, Gemini, the Pleiades, Orion, and others. I told her their stories. I explained how to tell time and track the seasons by them, should one be inclined to do so.
“See Orion up there?” I asked.
She pointed at the cluster of stars I’d shown her to help find him.
“He’s only out in the winter. In the spring, he sinks down, out of sight. The constellations move in the sky throughout the year.”
She gazed up with wonderment. “I never knew. I never even imagined.”
“The Universe is full of such things,” I teased her in a stuffy, professorial voice. And, cryptically, “I have a present for you.”
“What is it?”
“You’ll have to wait,” I smiled in the silvery half-moon’s light, “until tomorrow.”
“So stay awhile and watch the wind throw patter
ns on a field.” John K. Samson, “Winter Wheat”
In the morning, Sam and I set out for her treat: a Renee-inspired nature art day. I took Sam out to the edge of a clearing. It had a meadow with grasses three feet tall and tons of wildflowers.
“Do you like to braid?” I asked, sweeping an arm through the air to gesture across the field.
“Where should we start?” She lifted her hand for a Matthew-style fist bump.
We chose a random place near the center of the field. We made an outline, working in opposite directions to braid the framework of our picture before filling in the details.
We finished the first field, then went and found another, knotting the grasses down onto themselves in a way that somehow caught our feet when we tried to get out from the middle. (We’d worked from the outside in on this particular field.) We had to crawl from the center on our hands and knees. We giggled all the way.
Every time SammyJo laughed, it was a fuck-you to Buck. A fuck-you to everyone who’d ever thought they could forever take away her ability to celebrate the world and enjoy lighthearted, innocent pastimes. I hadn’t taken Sam out on this excursion with the intent of having Revenge Fun, of course. This was something that occurred to me later. As much as she’d been through and as much as she felt she’d missed out on in life (and although it wasn’t always within her control to decide when those phantoms would visit her), unblemished joy and friendship were still available. I’d taken her out to play because I wanted to remind her of this.
SammyJo and I visited three long grass clearings and decorated them each differently, twisting them onto themselves in spiraling rows of flora, carefully worked into huge-scale images reminiscent of a corn maze or an alien crop circle hoax. Then I took her up to the cliff and we surveyed our work. It was a patchwork quilt, abstractions of scenes from throughout our days, a puzzle of handsome interlocking pieces which could each stand alone beautifully, but fit together even more elegantly.
Eric and Thom and Matthew were up there already when we got to the clifftop. Matthew gave us both admiring fist bumps as we arrived.
Matthew and I were having a staring contest. I don’t know how it started, even. One minute we were snacking on crackers, the next minute we were forehead to forehead, trying not to break eye contact, each attempting to distract the other.
“Too easy. Give me a challenge!” I commanded.
“Up and circle!” he told me. This would put him at a disadvantage, but he realized it too late. We stood up from the picnic table, still forehead to forehead, and began to turn. He had to lean down to reach me, which probably became uncomfortable quickly. He didn’t want to remove his forehead from mine because he knew he’d break eye contact. I tried not to laugh at this, but it brought a twinkle to my eye and Matthew broke away from me, laughing, instead.
“Damn it!” he yelled.
Eric and I were having a staring contest. We were going to, that is. As soon as Eric looked in my eyes, he started kissing me.
Thom and I were having a staring contest. We were on the love seat in the shack. It was awkwardly shoved into a corner, but comfortable. We’d been forehead to forehead for several minutes, staring intensely. He’d mentioned my staring contest with Matthew, and I’d told him about attempting one with Eric, and he’d challenged me.
Looking into Thom’s eyes was different. He’d seen things and done things most people had trouble imagining. I had too. He understood a part of me I couldn’t even share with my Eric, not ever. He was a force to be reckoned with. I watched his eyes and questioned them with mine, and I felt like crying. And I did cry. But Thom had started crying too.
“Draw,” we agreed, pulling into a hug and holding our heads together.
“About Thom?” Eric asked as he settled onto the lean-to’s deck beside me the next morning.
I shook my head kind of sideways.
“No?” he inquired.
I shook my head again. “Not no. Just… processing.”
“You don’t have to, you know.”
“That’s not it at all,” I murmured as he kissed me, and my thoughts strayed from Thom and focused completely on Eric.
nly the ephemeral is of lasting value.” Eugene Ionesco, Improvisation, or The Shepherd’s Chameleon
I set out to Thom’s spot by the river. I left him something: an arrangement of rocks and bottles, positioned on a large boulder out in the water. I had to wade in several times to get the materials there, and then several more times to make adjustments until I had it right. They were out of the way, out of sight from the entrance to the shoreline. Thom would be able to see them from where he liked to sit, though.
The items I’d placed wouldn’t look like much to anyone else, but he’d recognize the image. It wouldn’t stay that way for very long. Its temporariness was part of what I loved about it. I wondered how time and weather would wear the materials away. A haunting note sounded from the sculpture, and the gust of wind that had sung it across one of the bottles swept over and passed me. I sat and listened to Thom’s “Special K Mix” on the MP3 player. These would only sound like love songs to me, I thought, considering his eclectic choices. “Sick of Myself” by Matthew Sweet. “I’ll Be Your Lampshade” by Beulah. “The Operation” by Charlotte Gainesbourg. No, not just to me, I decided. Thom had assembled the collection for a reason. I hung out for an hour or so, sitting there in Thom’s place and thinking about him. I waded in again to make one last adjustment to the rock sculpture, checked it a final time, and prepared to leave the river.
It’s time to wake up, Thom.
When I returned to the lean-to, I was shivering. My clothes were still soaking wet. Thom looked up from his book as I approached. You’re weird, his eyes sparkled. He grabbed dry clothes from my clothing pile behind him and passed them to me without comment. I went behind the lean-to and changed into them, then hung my wet clothes to dry.
“Present,” I said to Thom, returning to the lean-to from the clotheslines. “Its completion’s hours away still, but… well, you’re here, and you’ll know anyway.” I felt like this only further confirmed the look his eyes had conveyed when I arrived home, and I started to feel awkward and self-conscious about being weird. Thom smiled quizzically, and the corners of his eyes crinkled, and I felt… accepted, and acceptable. I retrieved a bin from our newly-finished shed and took out a few items so I could make soy milk. The beans had been soaking all day.
“Please tell me you’re making what I think you’re making,” Thom begged earnestly.
“Do you mean the soy milk, the tofu, or the spring rolls?” I asked, pulling more items from the bin—rice paper wrappers, a bottle of sweet chili sauce, some mung bean noodles, and a few other surprises. I’d recently raided an Asian market on a solo flying trip.
“I love that you’re so weird!” he said, jumping up from the bed and hugging me. “You seriously know how to make it all?”
I dug around in another bin and retrieved my tools for making soy milk and tofu: an antique food mill, a permanent coffee filter, a cheese press, and cheesecloth.
“Ridiculously easy,” I told him. “Time-consuming, but worth the effort. Sorry about the delay. I got hung up on finding soybeans, of all things. They weren’t very popular around here. Now we have these, though. We’ll grow some.” I handed him a bag of bulk soybeans. “I’ll help you get those planted in a bit. It’ll be about three months before they’re ready. We have enough to make a couple batches a week until then.”
“You’ll teach me?”
“If you wish. And we’ll need to raid the garden, if you want fresh spring rolls. Cukes, mint, carrots, lettuce… good?”
Thom hugged me again. “I apotheosize you.” His words tickled my ear as I hugged him back. We worked comfortably together out on the deck.
Matthew strolled into camp a few hours later. He made a face at the rice paper wrappers and the chili sauce. “You guys are making real food?” he asked distastefully, trying a small sip of the soy milk we’d made. �
�That’s… actually pretty good. Vanilla? Nice.”
Thom poured Matthew a cup and Matthew gulped it down.
Thom muttered, “I should’ve given him the plain stuff to taste,” and I giggled.
Matthew looked doubtfully at the veggies we’d prepared.
“Don’t worry, M.” I opened a bin filled with an assortment of prepackaged meals.
“Ooh!” Matthew exclaimed. He selected an armload of packages.
Eric arrived as Thom and I finished assembling the last of the tofu fresh rolls. Eric and I—and even Matthew—each had a couple of them. Thom finished off ten on his own. We used the entire chili sauce bottle, the entire rice paper wrapper package, the entire mung bean noodle package, all the tofu, and all the soy milk. I had plenty of the packaged items in storage, though.
“More soon?” Thom asked hopefully.
“Always.”
“You are the sudden sea-song of starlings/That bursts a tree at the shoreline edge.” Stephen Watts, The Verb “To Be”
The following day, I found Thom at the silent river. He was watching the water slide along and had picked a pile of daisies, only to pull all their petals off.
“She loves you,” I told him softly. I didn’t try to backpedal, didn’t try to undo it. It was truth.
Thom didn’t say anything. He nodded once in acknowledgment.
I still felt confused about Thom. I mean, I knew I loved him. This love wasn’t the feeling I had for Eric—though my separate loves for them coexisted peacefully, confusing me more. This feeling went way back, too. It was there when we’d been on the huge bed and he’d shown the anguish of recognizing Gareth without voicing it. It was there when I asked him to cut me open. It was there when we’d sat at the piano. I felt it long before the day he saved me—and we almost destroyed each other—back in that tree. Thom’s strength and courage and depth were immense. I watched the water with him, and I ached.
After a few minutes, I asked him if he wanted me to leave. He spelled out “N” with three little sticks on the ground. Then he signed, “N-O,” with his hand, and then he shook his head to reinforce it further still.
Survial Kit Series (Book 1): Survival Kit's Apocalypse Page 31