by Piper Lennox
“Actually,” he whispers, touching his forehead to mine, “I think you’re right.”
Shepherd
Lila shuts her eyes as I pick up speed. She wraps her legs around my back, ankles locked, and rises to meet me every time I thrust, her shoulders lifting off the bed. I catch the scent of smoke in her hair, but stronger than that is the scent of us, our sweat and breaths, her perfume and my detergent, all mixing into something new, but known. I hold her face and kiss her again.
I missed this kind of contact, too. Not just the physical aspect, but this connection: that moment when you know exactly what someone else is feeling, because you’re feeling it too, flying with them.
“Would you mind getting on top, for a sec?” I manage, biting back my orgasm. She unhooks her ankles and slides out from underneath me, letting me take her place on the bed.
Her hair falls across her breasts perfectly, like girls on album covers or in fashion ads, just the right amount hidden as she straddles me. I push it back onto her shoulders and lean up to capture one of her nipples in my mouth.
She arches her back, offering me more.
My hands grab her hips and pull her down onto me again. At this angle, everything feels new: tighter, deeper. She lets out a moan, short and clipped, as I pull my mouth away, sit back against the pillows, and start to guide her.
“I’m close,” I confess, “but I want to feel you finish, before I do.”
She opens her eyes. “Again?”
“Again.” My hand slides from her hip. The second my thumb finds her clitoris, she buckles, arms pinned underneath her against my chest.
“Shepherd, I’m—I’m....”
My hand can hardly move with her on top of me the way she is, so I push myself down into the bed to make a gap between us. This time, I can only touch her with the back of my hand, just a brush of my knuckles. But it works.
“Oh, my God, Shepherd,” she whimpers. Her walls convulse around me, thighs trembling; I feel eight distinct arcs as her fingernails dig into my chest.
“I’m coming too,” I manage, just in time, and lose my breath when it hits.
I can’t remember the last time I came with someone. In the brief void where everything around me stops and disappears, I’m only aware of her. The rush that crashes across me feels twice as big, enveloping us both, as I tighten my grip and hold her against me even harder, like she’ll float away if I don’t.
“Shepherd,” she whispers, one final time, as she wilts on top of me. I stroke her hair and stay inside.
I think I missed this most: the afterglow.
Nine
Lila
When I wake up, Shepherd is gone.
Admittedly, I panic. I’ve been left by guys before: at parties, strangers’ houses, the police station. Donnie, in particular, was a master of the sneak-away. But Shepherd wouldn’t do that—would he?
He folded my clothes for me, lined up on the other bed. I shake my head at myself as I get dressed. I do know him. Maybe not every detail, maybe not even most of them. But last night, I felt something beyond just pleasure when he touched me: I felt comforted. There was the typical, heady thrill of being with someone new for the first time, but wrapped up in that, there was a strain of the familiar, too. Like being with a friend.
He wouldn’t leave me like this, out in the middle of nowhere. I comb my hair with my fingers and relax when I remember how he kissed the top of my head, just before I fell asleep.
He’s probably at the vending machines, I think, or getting coffee. I open the door, ready to join him, but stop short.
The car is missing.
Shepherd
“Can I add two coffees to the order?” The woman at the register blinks at me a second, like my request is so complicated I should know better than to ask. Finally, she nods.
I check my watch. It’s barely 7:00, but we should have left already, if we want to get the most driving in that we can. I guess I could have woken her, but even while sleeping she looked exhausted, and I didn’t have the heart.
While I wait for the coffee, I look around. The diner near our motel is a little seamy, but there’s some charm to it: jukebox in the corner, milkshake menu by the door. A local makes eye contact and tells me good morning. I say it back.
“It’ll be a minute,” the waitress calls. “Gotta brew a new pot.”
“That’s fine.” I sit at the counter and study the television propped behind it. It’s nice to watch the news and know Jess’s mug shot won’t pop up.
I wonder how her parents, the quintessential socialites, manage to spin the scandal to their friends. It’s possible they just ignore it, not one bit surprised this is where their little girl ended up. Jess always was pretty wild.
The night we met, at a party in someone’s backyard, she walked up to me in her sundress and took my cigarette right out of my hand.
“I’m Jess.”
I watched her lips purse around the filter before I answered, “Shepherd.”
“That your real name?” she asked, slurring a little, blowing the smoke close to my face. She was drunk. We both were.
“Of course. If I was going to lie, I’d pick something cool.”
She smiled, but didn’t laugh.
It was summer, but the night had a snap to it. She shivered. I gave her my jacket and she kissed my cheek.
“This party sucks,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the crowd and then at me, like she expected me to chime in with complaints of my own.
“Seems okay to me.” I knew the guy throwing it, so I felt a little offended. Who was this girl to judge? Apart from her eyeliner and my cigarette between her lips, she looked like she’d just come from the salon with Daddy’s credit card.
“Nope. Sucks.” She ashed the cigarette into an abandoned drink. “You got anything to make it more fun?”
I shrugged, my head feeling heavy, suddenly, as I patted down my pockets, trying to remember what I’d brought. When I handed her a joint, still in the baggie, she shook her head.
“Uh, well....” I looked around. “Pete’s always got rolls on him.”
Jess finished the cigarette and stomped it out on the ground with her flip-flop. “Buy me one?”
“No. I don’t even know you.”
She smiled, putting her hands into my jacket pockets. “You could.”
I know, deep down, it wasn’t all me. Jess wanted to try everything she could get her hands on. She wanted to spiral. I didn’t make her do any of it. I just made it easier.
“Your dad hates me,” she giggled, the night I brought her to dinner. My mom was still trying to mend the rift between my dad and me, even though I’d been kicked out for two months without a word. Jess and I decided, as revenge, we’d show up in jeans and hoodies, reeking of weed.
The lines of coke we did in her car beforehand, parked right in front of the rose bushes my mom won actual ribbons for, made her talkative and touchy all through dinner. She kept putting her hand on my dad’s arm while she told stories of her high school lacrosse team, which she led to State twice.
I’d been doing coke for a long time, by then, so I just sat there and forced a smile whenever Mom loaded more sweet potatoes onto my plate. Under the table, my feet wouldn’t stop bouncing. The chirp of my sneakers on the hardwood tore through the dining room.
“I don’t know what you’re on,” Dad seethed, as he ushered us to the door right after the meal, no dessert, “but you’ve got some nerve, walking in here like that and thinking we wouldn’t notice.”
Mechanically, my shoulders shrugged. I knew he would notice. I wanted him to. Only now, I couldn’t figure out why. We thought it would be funny to get under his skin.
Jess, apparently, did find it funny. Hilarious. When we got back to Tillie’s house, I checked that she was asleep before letting Jess in the back door. Right away, she sat on the kitchen island and packed a bowl, laughing the entire time. “Did you see his face when I hugged him goodbye?”
“We
were probably pushing it.” I thumbed my lips. They were numb. “Did you notice my mom went straight upstairs? She didn’t even say goodbye.” She’d probably done it so she could cry privately, safe in their bedroom with her collection of Precious Moments figurines. She had hundreds: doe-eyed, porcelain kids who offered all the wholesome mischief a mother could want, with none of the heartache.
“Fuck them,” Jess blurted, bringing the bowl to her mouth. After her hit, she passed it to me. Smoke trickled past her lips as she added, “They kicked you to the curb over a little coke.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, but I knew it was about more than drugs. I’d changed. The day Dad made me leave, he’d just caught me stealing from Mom’s purse. The lowest move of all.
“...and honestly, now that I’ve tried it?” Jess coughed into her elbow and hopped off the island, holding her arms overhead, gymnast-style. “It isn’t a big deal. I like it. It’s like a ton of caffeine or something, but I don’t feel jumpy.”
“Give it time.” I set down the bowl without taking a hit. The chair creaked as I sat, rubbing my face with my palms. “After you do it enough, it stops feeling so good.”
“Maybe for you.”
That was the thing about Jess: she wanted me to get her whatever drugs she felt like doing, show her the right parties, introduce her to the right people—but still acted like she knew better than I did.
Even so, if it weren’t for me, things wouldn’t have gotten so bad for her. She might have stopped there, had her fun, and gone home to her rich parents with her experiences locked away. Part of her forever, but all in the past.
I can’t do that to Lila. I might be nicer now than I used to be, but my foothold in this area, this new me, is shaky. One slip, and I’m right back where I started. I can’t risk dragging her down with me.
I drive back to the motel slowly, one hand on the food in the passenger seat, and tell myself bringing her breakfast isn’t that big a deal. It’s not a “boyfriend” thing, just common courtesy.
When I get to our room, the door is open. “Lila?”
She pokes her head out of the bathroom. She’s been crying.
“Where did you go?” she snaps, then sucks in a breath and wipes her eyes with a handful of toilet paper. “I thought you’d left!”
“Hey, don’t cry.” I walk closer and reach for her, but stop. That’s not in my jurisdiction.
At least, it shouldn’t be.
I motion behind me, to the food on the table. “I stepped out for breakfast, that’s all. I got you pancakes.”
Lila sniffs, looking between the food and me, like she’s trying to decide if she should believe me.
“Okay,” she says, after a minute. “I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions, I just....”
“I wouldn’t leave you without a car in the middle of nowhere,” I tell her. “Why would you think that?”
“It’s not like I know you all that well yet,” she mumbles, taking a seat. I don’t know what else to do but sit, too. “I mean...we’re still kind of strangers. And you were complaining about the trip so much.”
Her words hurt, even though they’re true. Rather than show it, I take a sip from my coffee and let it burn my tongue.
“Sorry,” she says again. She opens her food and pokes at it with a fork, not eating.
“You know,” I point out, “my luggage is still here.”
She follows my eyes to the duffel bag on the floor. Her cheeks redden. “Oh.”
“You’d make a great detective,” I smile.
Lila doesn’t find it funny. “It’s just...I’ve been left like that before,” she says.
“Seriously? That’s so shitty.”
“Yeah, well...I’ve had really shitty relationships.”
Her use of the word “relationship” reminds me of the speech I rehearsed all morning. I clear my throat. “You know that we’re not...together, right?” It’s not the smooth opener I planned, but at least it’s out there.
Now she does laugh, tilting her head at me. “What, like, boyfriend-girlfriend status? Because of one night?” She shakes her head and, finally, takes a bite. “It was awesome, don’t get me wrong, but I know it doesn’t mean things are at that level, yet.” After a pause, she adds, “And by ‘yet,’ it’s not like I’m assuming they’ll go that way. I’m just saying...we should get to know each other more. See where things go on their own.”
She starts adding cream and sugar to her coffee, while I sit there and try to remember what, exactly, my perfectly crafted speech entailed. I didn’t expect her to say that.
“Uh...I’m not sure we should do that, either.” When she looks up, confused again, I mess with the pull-string on the blinds. “We can be friends, but I can’t...you know. Get involved.” I take a breath. “Romantically.”
“Okay,” she says slowly. “Can I ask why?”
“It’s...hard to explain.”
“Nothing is hard to explain. That just means you don’t want to explain it.” She stabs the fork back into her food. “Which, if that’s the case, is fine—but I think I deserve to know why you seemed to like me so much last night, when you really don’t. Was it just about sex?”
“No, no, it’s not that. I do like you.”
“Then I don’t see the problem. But whatever, if you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”
This, I did expect: the anger, the hurt ego. Nobody likes being rejected. I thank her, but she just shakes her head, finishing her breakfast in silence. My appetite is gone.
After checkout, I carry our luggage to the car. She steps around the bumper with her hand out. “Keys.”
“I don’t mind driving.”
“Keys,” she says again. I dig them out of my pocket and drop them into her palm.
When we get on the road, I consult the directions list. “There’s a turn-off, somewhere up here,” I say, “but if we follow it for a few miles, it’ll—”
“I’m taking you to the bus station.” She glances in the rearview, hitting the gas to clear some distance from another car. “I’ll buy you a ticket back home.”
Ten
Lila
“You don’t have to do this.” Shepherd folds his arms across his chest as I lurch the car to a stop. The bus station looks deserted, except for some teens scattered inside. “All I said was things shouldn’t get serious with us.”
“Look, you don’t want to be here. You made that pretty clear with all your complaining yesterday. And I don’t want to do the just friends thing—not after last night.” I let my hands slip from the wheel, into my lap. “Seeing where things go, keeping it casual, I can do. But I won’t pretend I don’t like you.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Yes, you are. Because if you don’t even want to play it by ear and see what happens on its own, what am I supposed to do with those feelings? And if you really do like me, what are you supposed to do with yours?”
Shepherd starts to answer, but takes a breath and looks at the floor mats, instead.
“The only explanation I can think of,” I add, not daring to meet his eyes, afraid of what I’ll see there, “is that you’re lying, and don’t really like me, but you’re trying not to hurt my feelings.”
“That’s not true,” he says, his tone fierce. “I told you, I do like you. A lot.” When I look at him again, he has his head back against the seat, eyes closed. “More than I’ve liked anyone in a long time, actually.”
“Then tell me why you want to pretend last night didn’t happen,” I say, “or get on that bus.”
“You said I didn’t have to explain it if I didn’t want to.”
“I changed my mind. I guess you can understand that.”
He opens his eyes and twists in the seat, half-turned to me. “I don’t want to drag you down, the way I did to that girl. The one I told you about.”
I blink, trying to make sense of his statement. “That’s it?”
“Trust me, it’s a lot.”
“W
ait, wait, wait.” I hold up my hand. “You’re basing all this off the assumption I can’t make my own decisions, or stand up for myself? If you turn out to be an asshole, you think I’d just get down in the gutter with you?”
“You said yourself, you’ve had shitty relationships. What about that Donnie guy? He’s obviously an asshole, but you stayed with him.”
“Yeah,” I snap, “and then I left.” I reel back from him, my back against the door. “That’s so insulting. Like I can’t learn from my mistakes? Besides, you said you weren’t like Donnie. So which is it?”
“Lila,” he says, sighing, so different from the way he said my name last night, “it isn’t that black-and-white.”
“It is to me.”
“I don’t think I was what you’d call an ‘asshole.’ But I had problems—which I don’t want to talk about right now, so don’t ask—and…and I’m not really in a place where I should get involved with someone.”
“And I’m not really in a place,” I retort, my voice more than a little derisive, “to take a road trip with a guy who just wanted to get in my pants.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Shepherd shifts his jaw.
He’s angry? This throws me. In my experience, guys who lie their way into bed don’t deny it so vehemently, if at all. Maybe I’m wrong.
“You could tell me.” My thumbnail is split; I peel the fragment back and let it fall into my lap. “How you dragged her down, I mean.”
“Why, so you can tell me all the ways I’m wrong, because you wouldn’t possibly let the same thing happen to you?”
I can’t even contest this. It’s exactly what I planned on doing.
The crack of his knuckles makes me cringe. “Crime, pills, take your pick, all right? I told you: I’m ashamed of who I used to be. Don’t make me dredge through every detail.” It sounds like his voice catches, but only for a second. “Look…the point of the trip was for me to help you find your mom and keep you company. Let’s just do that, okay? Keep things simple.”