EDGES

by C. G. Carroll

  Without pause Mallory darted away from the porch onto the dirt driveway that cut down the slope of the hillside.

  He was across the porch and down the steps before she could even blink. He stormed up to her, ripped her around by the arm, and swiped at the wine glass. It lifted out of her hand, spent a moment flying in the air, and broke to pieces on the packed dirt. The wine seeped away, coloring a small patch of the drive maroon.

  Mallory started crying harder. Anger she didn’t know had been there came out and she shoved him away, digging her nails into his chest for an instant.

  “You ungrateful bitch!” he cursed. He latched onto her shoulders and she couldn’t get away from his overpowering grip. She hadn’t done it to anyone since middle school but it seemed an apt time to let her foot fly up between his legs. It felt like she had kicked a wall, but it did the job, dropped Teddy right to his knees with painful spasms and gasps.

  She took off up the hill, away from the house. The dried pine needles crunched under her shoes as she jogged, tears shuddering down her cheeks and falling away into the undergrowth. Within seconds she was deep into the trees and even though they were thinly dispersed, she looked back and could only see a small portion of the green roof of the house. Teddy’s furious moans cut through the air and it chilled her skin, even from a distance.

  She jogged faster. There was still plenty of light left in the day.

  She hurried for a good three minutes until she came to the stream. It was a small creek, no more than two feet wide. She paced alongside it all the way up the hill. It was the only reference point she knew, and by following it up the mountain she would know where she was going.

  Then Mallory came upon the pool. An outcropping of granite rocks had kept any pine trees from taking root in the small clearing, but the stream cut right through pocket of rough, hulking slabs. The gray boulders with colorful speckles stood taller than Mallory, about seven or eight feet high. The stream gurgled and splashed down the longest, most sheered rock face of the bunch and collected into a depression below in the hillside, creating a beautiful, constantly recycling pool of clear, fresh water. It was no more than fifteen feet across but was nearly four feet deep in the middle. It was the most beautiful place on the property, the water freezing and clear to the bottom.

  When Teddy had bought the house and the property with all the money from his job, he’d convinced her to move in with him by taking her here specifically. He’d romantically called it ‘Mallory’s Waterfall’. Ironically named, because it was a place she could be alone without getting lost, and he rarely got off his butt to venture up this far on the mountain.

  Mallory’s tears dried and she fell quiet, but she couldn’t stop her heart from pounding. She prayed Teddy would leave her be this time, just like all the rest. Five minutes she sat there staring into the pool and listening to the washing sound of the diminutive waterfall. But then came the crunching of boots crushing pine needles. The footfalls were soft at first and then became pronounced and rapid, accelerating. She twisted around and watched as Teddy took three leaping paces and lowered his shoulder into her sternum.

  There was a flash of white, then the feeling of falling, and then she could only hear the sound of her own gasps for air. He lowered onto her slowly and pinned her wrists to the ground. Mallory shook her head and felt a cold hard surface beneath her skull. The pony tail of her hair had dipped into the frigid water and swirled in it.

  “You’re lucky I don’t pound your face in!” he shouted down at her, hot spittle misting her cheeks and lips.

  She couldn’t speak, was too overtaken with fear to utter even a sound. He let go of her wrists and hovered his hands over her throat. Both his hands were paper white with tension. She swallowed hard and wheezed in panic, ready to scream. Then suddenly, like a light switch had been flipped in him, he stood up. He just stopped.

  Mallory lay there for a moment while he backed away. She couldn’t manage words and couldn’t blink, hadn’t even taken a breath.

  Teddy mumbled an apology without looking her in the eye, but she noticed that he was now crying. He mumbled ‘come on, get up,’ a half a dozen times and then turned and walked off back into the trees. He was gone as quickly as he’d rushed up to her.

  It took twenty minutes or so to gather herself. What had just happened? She sat up and rubbed the spot where her head had hit the ground, a fat lump forming under her hair. She massaged high between her breasts where his shoulder had rammed her sternum, wincing at an aching spot directly over her heart. Did she need to call the police? She decided it was better to leave. His anger had broken like a fever, and now he was crying. She would be okay now.

  She got moving, something inside her felt stronger, more resolute. It was almost like the violence had sobered her up. She walked back down to the house with a tightened gut, especially as she walked inside. Teddy was upstairs in the bedroom. She could hear him moving around. He called out for her with gentleness in his voice, “Babe?” As if he were calling her to bed after a long day. She grabbed her car keys out of the bowl by the door, didn’t say a word in response to him, and shut the door quietly on her way out.

  She headed for town immediately, probably too drunk and flustered to be driving, but what choice did she have? She had her phone and thought about calling Patrick. She didn’t though. It was what Teddy deserved without a doubt, but she decided she was better than that. She called her friend Angie instead, and talked the whole way over to her house, where Mallory was going to stay for the night, if not longer. If not forever.

  George

  GEORGE WAS RESEMBLING A HUMAN being again, every day his face a little bit more healed. The swelling around his eye completely subsided, and though there was still some purple discoloration above his eyelid, there was nothing he could do to speed its healing along. The doctors said it may not totally dissipate for up to a year. Lingering bruising, they called it.

  It was time to finally go apply for some bartending jobs. He could stand before restaurant managers and look them in the eyes with confidence again. George knew there was a chance he still wouldn’t get hired, there was always a story behind a black eye, but he wasn’t going to hide in his apartment any longer.

  George slid on some slacks, threw on a button-up and even tied a nice blue tie. He combed his thick dark hair back neatly. A quick trim up of his bristling eyebrows, a smooth shave, and he was out the door, feeling groomed and professional.

  He merged left onto Durango’s historic Third Avenue and cruised with the window down, making his tie flap and flit against his chest. This was his favorite part of the small town—a town he now found was quickly growing on him.

  A van was rolling toward him in the opposite lane across the median. He recognized it straight away and perked up in his seat. The big oaks and cottonwoods standing tall in the grassy median cut and hindered his view, but he knew who it was.

  Patrick drove along, oblivious as normal, but he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He had sunglasses on and didn’t seem to notice George coming up to the stop sign in the opposite lane. They both arrived at the four-way stop at almost the same moment, George slumped down a bit in his seat, staring at the van. That’s when he noticed Patrick was chatting with someone in the passenger. George hadn’t been able to see her before because of the glare coming off the van’s windshield, but he leaned forward just as they drew away to see that a very attractive young girl who looked like she had nothing on but her bra was sitting next to him in the van.

  Tiffany’s harping rang loud in George’s mind. He’d given her his word that he would tell her about anything suspicious, that he would ‘monitor’ Patrick. He shook his head, regretting ever agreeing to such a thing.

  Patrick’s van was soon sliding into his rear-view mirror. George pulled forward past the stop sign, throttling the gas in frustration over being put in this position. He’d spent the last two nights with Tiffany while she cried to him. In between pathetic sobs she’d pleaded to George, wanting to kno
w why Patrick would do this to her? Treat her this way?

  He’d wanted to grab her by the shoulders, shake her, and scream, Just leave him!

  It was almost a block down from the four-way stop when he jerked the wheel in anger, flipped a bitch at the next intersection and, against his better judgment, sped after the van.

  He tailed them from Third Avenue onto Main Street and then north all the way up to the end of town, where the van took a right and then an immediate left alongside the river. George had kept his distance the whole way, his hands and brow growing sweaty, feeling the stress of playing the spy.

  It was obvious now why the girl had been in a bra. It wasn’t a bra at all. They were going to tube down the river. Patrick pulled into a dirt lot and parked. George watched him hop out of the van, then turned right on the next road, which ran south, parallel to the river. There was a little park right along the river where he parked on the street and got out. He checked his phone. It was only 2:15. George knew restaurants liked it if you could stop in for interviews between two and four, and even more unrest bubbled up inside him.

  He leaned up behind a big tree and waited. Waited for ten minutes, the tension eating into his stomach each time he checked the time on his phone. A few tubers floated by. A cool breeze ran down the valley and George saw dark clouds forming over the peaks to the north. It was sunny now, but thunderstorms were on their way.

  The two of them trickled into view up the river. George ducked behind the tree and peered out. The young girl was laughing, but George couldn’t make her out clearly, not enough to recognize her. Patrick was in his tube spinning around and around and she was reaching out for him with her slender arms, trying not to get split up.

  George studied the water. It ran brown and murky, and heavy from the spring melt. Tubing the Animas River wasn’t necessarily dangerous, but it could get tricky for inebriated tubers, especially this time of year.

  His eyes moved back to the girl. She was very pretty. Dark hair that dipped into the water. Patrick intentionally split them up, but he quickly swam over to reunite them after she whined for him to come back. The girl, whoever she was, had a melodic laugh, a very pleasant sound.

  And just like that they were pulled downriver in their two tubes, never having even paid a lick of attention to the park or the tree where George stood watching. They were out of sight after another minute. George hustled back to his car and drove downriver.

  Patrick

  PATRICK MOVED RESTLESSLY AROUND THE house. Everyone was being lame. No one would tube with him. First he asked Josh. Then Simone, to which she didn’t even respond. He didn’t want to tube with Tiffany, didn’t want to see her. He went to the kitchen and called everyone else he could think of and they all complained of being hung over.

  He walked out onto the front driveway and then sat down in the grass, half day-dreaming, half watching the cars roll by. It was a gorgeous, sunny day. Then his phone buzzed with a text from Reagan, asking what he was doing. He stood up and a smile moved over his lips. He’d grown supremely fond of the girl.

  After a few texts, she agreed to tube with him. She was hanging out with some friends, and he laughed when she told him that they were awful, hopeless, and boring. Patrick waited for her, seated on the lawn beneath the big old layered maple tree that was sprouting new, bright green leaves.

  Reagan arrived in a skimpy purple bikini, awesomely stylish-looking aviators, and nothing else except her lightning bolt necklace resting as usual in the center of her chest. It glinted sun rays at him as she flashed a smile, sauntered over and hugged him. Patrick rolled two flat tubes out of the garage and began airing them up. A group of college guys came screaming down the hill in a topless red jeep and whistled out loud cat calls at her. Reagan put a hand on her hip and threw them a friendly wave with the other, like it was a routine thing.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Patrick said, hunched over the tubes, glancing up at her. For some reason he didn’t feel the need to be clever around her anymore.

  “I’m glad I’m here,” Reagan replied with a cute shrug.

  He took a quick glance at her body, still airing up the second tube.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Nothing.” He couldn’t hold back his smile. “You ready to do this?”

  “Bitch, are you ready to do this?” She gave him a playful shove.

  “Oh, I’m ready.”

  When he was just about finished filling the second tube she let out a hoot and gave him a stinging slap on the butt.

  Patrick winced. “You are going to get it so bad for that.”

  She gave another shrug, this time a thuggish, funny one. “I’d let you slap my butt, but it would probably break your hand.”

  “You’d probably enjoy it too much.”

  “Probably,” she replied, holding his eyes, though he couldn’t see them fully through the icy lenses of her aviators.

  An urge rumbled through him to blow off tubing entirely and take her inside and throw her down on the bed, but the fact that she was still seventeen was hanging over him. He didn’t feel right about it, even with her insistence on the legality of it. He buried the feeling and rolled the tubes toward the back of his van. Reagan kept throwing glances at him in a peculiar way. Something was different about her today, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was exactly.

  Both of their cars were needed for tubing the river. They’d leave one at the finish, and drive the other to the start with the tubes. He opened the back doors to his van and the two tubes slid in perfectly.

  She followed him down to the pull-out point, Santa Rita Park, and left her car in the parking lot. The park lay right alongside the river, just past the nastiest section of rapids the river had to offer, not much more than a quick thrill if you were in a raft or kayak, but pretty gnarly if you were in an unstable tire tube. You almost always got flipped and sucked under for a terrifying moment or two.

  While Reagan locked up her car Patrick got out to take a glance at the flow of the river. Even his stomach clenched a touch at the way it was roaring from the runoff. It was going to be cold, it was going to be rough, and it was going to be fast.

  Reagan hopped into the passenger side of his van with a Nalgene bottle filled with pink liquid. “We can get out at the Double Tree if you want,” he offered. “This sections looks pretty fierce.” The Double Tree Hotel was upriver about a half mile.

  She didn’t hesitate. “We’ll survive,” she said. “It’s not my first rodeo.”

  “Okay.” He glanced at her Nalgene one more time. “By the way, I forgot something at the house.”

  She noticed him eyeing the bottle suspiciously.

  “That’s fine,” she said, and unscrewed the cap to take a long drink. She then handed him a single key to her car and motioned down at her scantily clothed body with a smile. “Nowhere to put it.”

  She was breathing heavy after the drink and he focused on the rise and fall of her chest, the way her tan bust seemed to pulse in the tiny bikini, her stomach striated with firmness. He felt a strong pull deep inside his body.

  They ran back to the house and he filled up a few Nalgenes of his own. One with a shitty yet sweet rose Carlo Rossi wine that he would never drink anyway, except on the river it would be easy to chug. He filled another with cheap vodka and 7-Up from the fridge.

  Reagan hovered behind him while he filled the bottles, and he felt a rush of shame. Right in front of her, he thought to himself. What are you doing? It would’ve been weird to have her stay in the van though. It was what it was.

  “You’re okay with this, right?” he asked, after both bottles were filled up and jangled with ice cubes.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” she replied.

  He said nothing more and headed back toward the door. She looped her arm around his waist, stopping him. Apparently she wasn’t going to let him walk out with the glum expression he was wearing. A hard squeeze of pressure filled his chest when he looked into her eyes.

/>   “Really,” she said. “I’m good.”

  Patrick sensed the moment, leaned down and kissed her.

  In the movies they always romanticized about how there could be electricity in a kiss. That’s what he felt right then when he kissed Reagan, a feeling no one else could give him.

  He set the Nalgenes down, picked her up in his arms, and staggered with her across the room until he had her pinned against the wall. She let out a gasp and then a soft cry as he kissed her neck. Her hands ran through his hair as they ground against each other. Soon they were both shivering with anticipation, the heat of their bodies burning through the thin material of their bathing suits, the blood rushing to the surface of their skin.

  “Our tubes are going to explode in the back of the van if we leave them in the heat,” he said, pulling back to take a breath. She’s seventeen. Seventeen. Seventeen!

  “Let them.”

  He wanted to. God, did he want to, but then he picked up on the taste of wine in her mouth. A fruity wine. The only thing worse than sleeping with Reagan before she was technically an adult would be doing it while she was buzzed. He let her down, and his arms relaxed. She wasn’t heavy, maybe a hundred and ten pounds. It wasn’t his place to ask where she’d gotten the booze. Normally, he wouldn’t have even cared, but for some reason he did. He cared very much.

  She ran her hand over his erection, which was pushing against his swim trunks. She moved him from left to right, like a cat toying with a mouse. She moved to untie his draw string, but before she could he swiftly took her hand, scooped up the Nalgenes and headed for the door. Reagan didn’t protest or pout, just followed him to his car with a giggle.

  Light conversation returned along with his breath as they got driving, headed toward the put-in point. Reagan was working her way down to the bottom of her own Nalgene. Patrick kept notice of it. When they arrived at the put-in at the north end of town, she had about a quarter of the wine left, and he had drunk a fair amount of his wine too. Maybe a third. Luckily, Reagan seemed to be a wonderful drunk. Sweet, gregarious, affectionate. They had joked and laughed the whole drive. They locked up the van and rolled their tubes down to the beach. Cicadas were screeching in the trees all around, thousands of them. One other small group of people brave enough to dip into the frigid river gathered on the bank. The group shoved off first, and were quickly sucked downstream.