by Loren, Celia
Celeste and Marie were debating furtively in the shallow shade of an evergreen. Marie kept making blatant gestures at Ryder’s turned back.
“It’s almost like a barbecue out here!” Gwen hollered at some point. “Only, there’s no food.” The crew laughed.
Ryder, Chloe noticed, never returned to her corner of the porch to retrieve his lemonade. He just kept plowing and plowing like they’d never had the conversation. The wall had been erected between them again, the veil drawn, and while she knew it was just as well, she stayed outside until he’d finished both the front and back yards. She held that lemonade until the glass got sweaty and the ice melted into slivers, waiting, waiting...for something. She wasn’t sure what.
Chapter Six
There was a distinct, but unspoken code. It didn’t matter if you were religious. They weren’t supposed to be hard rules to follow, and it was understood by most that they existed for a man’s own good. But number four or five on the short list had to be, “Don’t Sleep With Your Best Friend’s Sister.” Ryder would have bet the meager contents of his duffel bag that, especially in a Mormon household, this kind of activity (hell, this kind of thinking) was enough to send a freeloader packing.
On his third or fourth night in the house, his imagination had begun to wander. At first, it adopted the form of Chloe’s stoic figure in his doorway. Something about the image of her watching over him as he slept (something, perhaps, about that judgmental stare) helped him avoid nightmares. He got into the habit of waiting for her dainty steps to cross the landing from whatever secret reading nook she kept on this side of the house. He’d snap off the bedside lamp only once he heard her door slide closed. In this way, sleep would come.
But on that third or fourth night, he’d turned off the lamp and seen Chloe’s imagined silhouette hanging over his bed and wanted something more than a guardian. So his damn imagination had undressed her, right there in the doorway. He’d gently removed first her boxy sweater, then her thin chemise, and finally the mysterious undergarment he assumed all Mormons wore below their panties. Designs for this mysterious garment varied in his head. Some days, a silken sheet separated his body from hers, cool and satiny to the touch. On more adventurous nights, it was a red teddy.
Once she was naked before him, that blonde hair swimming in rowdy waves around her pretty face, Ryder gave himself permission to explore. Some nights, he worshipped at the altar of Chloe’s tits, which were always round and perfectly symmetrical. Other nights, they made long, exquisite love on the little camp bed, her cooing in his ear: “Ryder, Ryder, Ryder.” Her pussy was so wet in his dreams.
The only thing was, he could never quite master her expressions. A saintly architect was responsible for those rolling eyes and raising eyebrows, he was sure. For in real life, once the sun came up, Chloe still withheld her smile like if she accidentally showed happiness she’d be publicly flogged. This wasn’t the case with her brothers, her sisters or her parents—the seriousness was specific to Chloe. He got to wondering if she’d always been like this, or if some strange pain kept her awake in the evenings, just like him. Then he got to wondering if she sent herself to sleep imagining him, the way he imagined her. And lo—the vicious, sinful cycle spun out of control.
Not that she didn’t still drive him batshit crazy, during the daylight hours. For one thing, the twins had returned to BYU for most of the weekdays, only popping home to do a load of laundry or cadge a family dinner. Johnny spent two mornings a week with a physical therapist, and two other mornings a week in the company of several church elders, who Ryder imagined were providing their own funky brand of psychotherapy. This left long swathes of time in which he haunted the house like a ghoul, reading novels and trying not to think about the near future—while Chloe, apparently, did the same.
They’d managed to share one genuine moment, in three weeks—as in, a single moment that wasn’t an argument or an extended dream sequence. She’d been boiling water for pasta, humming something to herself in the kitchen. He’d assumed it was a hymn, but then lingered, watching Chloe chop onions. Watching Chloe chop tomatoes. Once again, he noted her fine hands. She moved with such care, such specificity.
Finally, he’d sac’d up and asked her. “What are you singing?”
“Way to scare me, soldier!”
“Eye for an eye.”
“Makes the whole world blind. Hammurabi.” Ryder’d grinned. He’d always liked a girl who was quick on her feet.
“My mother used to sing that song when I was small,” he’d continued.
Her face had softened at the mention of his mother, and Ryder’s own cheeks had burned bright. It wasn’t an accident that he’d refused to talk about his family with the Christiansens. He was just so positive they wouldn’t understand his unusual upbringing.
“Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries,” Chloe had finally answered, smiling. And there, in the kitchen, he’d seen the Grail. Her full and uncomplicated smile, easy and beautiful as a bell ringing. He couldn’t even remember the last time a woman had smiled at him like that—nurses not included. But her glance contained no pity. Merely joy.
“Well, your voice is nice,” he’d responded, a little more gruffly than he meant. She’d swiveled back to her cooking, and the evening had carried on like any other in Provo. She made a few stodgy remarks and he tried to make jokes of them. They’d gone to bed, as usual, without saying goodnight. But when it came time to shut the light, Ryder’s whole body had seemed to go erect on realizing that he now had a face to match his imagination’s creation. Gripping himself beneath the thin covers, he’d pumped to completion with that smile hovering above him in the dark. Life is just a bowl of cherries, indeed.
But it was impossible, in real life. Of course. Obviously.
Ryder tossed and turned on the little camp bed, attempting for once to restrict his wanton mind. A big tough-guy like him, made small by a little Mormon girl. You almost wanted to laugh.
Chapter Seven
Ryder was awakened at dawn, by the sound of heavy clattering in the hall. The faintest light was visible behind the shades in his bedroom.
“Get up, soldier!” Johnny called, sounding merry and energetic. His bud was the source of the noise, Ryder realized, and as soon as his eyes adjusted to the light he saw that his host was dragging a pair of hockey skates along the floor.
“What the fu—I mean, what the fudge is going on, J?”
Johnny ambled into the bedroom. Ryder noticed he was getting more confident with the use of his crutch.
“It’s a Christiansen family skating trip!” his friend hollered, putting his mouth up close to his sleeping companion. Ryder resisted the urge to smack John away, remembering only at the last second that sometimes John spoke louder than he needed to these days. He hadn’t quite adjusted to his hearing loss.
“Every word in that sentence bums me out.”
Johnny smirked, but proceeded to clatter around the guest room, taking survey of the room.
“You’ve really made it cozy in here. I bet a Franciscan monk would feel right at home.”
“Oh, stuff it, Jay.”
“You know you’re free to like, unpack. We’re not gonna have to abandon camp at a moment’s notice anytime soon.”
Ryder peeled himself out from the starchy sheets, and stretched his hands over his head. He still hated the moments when Johnny made allusion to the front. It was like he was trying to make combat sound more human than it was, or more mundane.
“Someone’s getting a little flabby,” his friend said, breaking the brief silence. He walked over to the head of the bed and poked at Ryder’s biceps, which, it had to be admitted, were no longer in prime fighting form. He had to stop eating all these carbs, or he was going to grow a gut. Just like his old man.
“You can’t tell me a little exercise wouldn’t make you feel better.”
“Who says I feel bad?” John cocked his head, so his reddish blonde hair (overgrown, now) swept against the ear he could no lon
ger hear out of. The look on his face betrayed insight. We all feel bad, he seemed to say. We’re always going to feel bad.
In another twenty minutes, the whole sleepy-eyed Christiansen clan was bundled into their winter garb, even though spring was begun in earnest. The twins dozed against one another at the dining room table, their pretty mouths puckered in sleep. Mrs. Christiansen ran around the house like a dizzy butterfly, collecting mittens and hats as if it was her last earthly task. Mr. Christiansen alone seemed bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, his helmet-y hair freshly wet from a shower. “This is something I like to do with my family, Ry. Just another Christiansen spring tradition,” he said, clapping him on the back like they were teammates. All Ryder could manage was a weak smile.
The last down the stairs was Chloe, who looked nearly normal in a pair of skinny jeans and a v-neck sweater. No one else seemed to notice this drastic shift in wardrobe, but Ryder couldn’t help himself. There were the soft curves he’d been dreaming about, bright and on display for the whole world to see. The half-moons of her hips. The mounds of her tits.
Maybe a skating trip was just what the doctor ordered.
“Ms. Chloe!” Mama Christiansen tutted, in her eldest daughter’s direction. “Do my eyes deceive me, or are you looking a little ‘wintery’ these days?” Ryder furrowed his brow, just as Chloe wrapped her arms around her mid-drift, self-consciously.
“We’ve been eating too much bread, is what it is,” Mrs. Christiansen informed the houseguest. Ryder connected the dots, and buried a comeback. Yet another thing to add to his host family’s slew of neuroses: Mother Bear liked to shame her daughters about their totally-normal frames.
Having come from the kind of family that didn’t tend to monitor things like nutrition and rapid weight loss or gain, Ryder had a hard time sympathizing with Mrs. Christiansen. Even as she tried to laugh off her insult. Chloe, he noticed, darted quickly back up the stairs and returned with a thicker sweater. And the Mormons are off to the races again, the SEAL thought, before he could remember to have mercy.
The rink Elder Johannes drove the family to was located some miles outside the city. In fact, Ryder noticed a few more conveniently located “Winter Games,” emporiums on the long drive through dawn. “We’ve been going to this one since we were kids,” little Celeste offered, when she caught him pointing to passing signs with a baffled expression. “It kind of has sentimental value for us. You see, my uncle—”
“Now, Celeste,” Mrs. Christiansen hissed. “Don’t bother Ryder with our whole family history.” No wiser, Ryder resigned himself to the uncomfortable bucket seat. Around him, the family dozed.
But for Chloe, who had smuggled a paperback into the car. While she rode in the very back of Elder Johannes’ clunky old SUV, Ryder could see her flipping pages in the reflective lens of the rearview mirror. He was struck by how rarely she looked up. Here was a woman utterly engrossed in a story. He glanced through his own ratty iPhone, idled through his paltry Facebook feed, and thought: I envy her that patience. That ability to stay present, to be engrossed. He’d never been able to conjure that kind of focus unless he absolutely had to.
“We’re here!” Elder Johannes finally cawed. The Christiansens piled out of their clown car, and shook sleep off their sweaters. Little Martin pumped a fist in the air, and John laughed and ruffled his younger brother’s hair. Ryder felt a smile inch up the corners of his typically downturned mouth. Odd as the Christiansens could be, they were seductive in the way only happy families could be. He thought of his Tolstoy.
“It’s my Uncle David,” a voice said in his ear. It was Chloe, returned to the province of people. In the chapped, wintery air with the early morning sun above her, he thought she looked like a pioneer woman: determined and gritty. She returned his smile, and for a moment they were back in the kitchen. She was singing an old song as he watched her chop tomatoes.
“He died a few years ago, of a brain aneurysm. He was really, really close to my father. This was the rink where he liked to skate.”
Ryder glanced over at the monolith before them. It looked like a place where Olympic pros went to practice.
“He was pretty serious about it,” Chloe murmured, intuiting his stare. How was she able to do that so well? It was not a little maddening. “Anyways. It’s like our one ‘cool thing’ that we do. So please try not to crap on it.”
“I didn’t say anything!” Ryder wheeled on the eldest Christiansen girl. But he saw that the smile had remained on her lips. Her full, pink, pioneer-woman lips.
“Chloe,” Ryder began, unsure where the words in his mouth were headed. She batted her lashes, squinting against the glare off an old, grey snowdrift. Cocked her head to the side like the parakeet his mother had loved so well. Ryder bit his lip.
“I’m sorry,” he heard himself blurt. The words seemed to surprise both of them. The SEAL plowed on. “About...your uncle. My mother died when I was young, too. Of a similar...thing.”
Chloe’s eyebrows knit together, and for a second Ry was worried that he’d wandered back into the minefield where all their other social interactions seemed to take place. But then, apropos nothing, the eldest Mormon girl in this Mormon family peeled her pale hand out of the lumpy sleeve of her sweater. She was reaching for his own callused palm.
When their fingers connected, Ryder conceded. Chloe’s actual skin, the actual warmth of the blood running through her veins—even in such a minimal dose, this contact was somehow more thrilling than all of his sneaky, dreamed liaisons. She shifted the slightest bit closer to him, so Ry caught a whiff of her overzealous watermelon perfume.
If they were different people (or perhaps just in a different city), Ryder would be able to follow the script from here. She’s into you, man, his body would sense. He would aggravate the hand-holding, draw her warm little body closer into his until there was no space between them. He would reach for her petite chin, and tilt her pretty mouth upward. Once or twice on leave, he’d “followed the script,” with a local girl. Drawn her in, had her, then spat her out. But Chloe wasn’t like that. Whatever they were moulting into, it would take all of his focus.
“Yo lovebirds! Speed up!” John hollered. He was the last of the Christiansens to trickle past the entrance of the skating complex. And though Ry knew he was joking—that the thought of corrupted best friend and pious sister getting together was the farthest thing from John’s mind—Ry felt the window close, all the same. Chloe must have been on his wavelength, for she cleared her throat and yanked her hand away as if she’d just been caught stealing. Her pale face flushed a pleasing red, but Ry only got a glimpse of her. She sailed past his ass like a ship.
He gazed, a little bemused, at his hand where she’d touched him. It was the dumbest thing, but somehow Ry felt...blessed.
Chapter Eight
It figured that he couldn’t skate. A 230lb man made of muscle, capable of firing AK-47s, boarding helicopters in mid-flight, parachuting behind enemy lines—such a bad-ass didn’t need to know how to do a double axle. Chloe got a little kick out of watching Ryder struggle with the laces of his in-lines, but when he caught her giggling she turned away. She didn’t know what, exactly, had happened in the parking lot—but her feelings informed her that it wasn’t something the Church condoned.
Chloe remembered her mother reading bed-time stories, when she, Celeste and Marie were just little girls. Whenever the heroes or heroines in their largely secular storybooks ran afoul of “good behavior,” Mrs. Christiansen had made a habit of setting the book down on the mattress. “Pop quiz,” she’d tell her daughters. “If we ever feel like doing what this bad boy [or girl] has done, what do we do?”
She remembered, too, how delicious it had felt to make her mother smile when the right answer was uttered. And it was always, always the same: “Pray, pray, pray it away!”
Despite Gwen’s not-so-subtle cajoling, and the many pieces of secular media and literature which she consumed, Chloe still found that binary of right and wrong (or bad
behavior and good behavior...) hard to shake. So it wasn’t a God, per se, or even the Church, that made her feel awful for doing things like thinking sinful thoughts about Ryder Strong. The shame came from a place deep within.
Maybe this whole Ryder—thing—had sprouted on the lemonade day. Or maybe it had sprouted when she first saw his bare chest in the hall. She shook her blonde head, tried to hold on to that childhood mantra—but this time, the urge to sin wasn’t leaving. She had been doing an excellent job of quelching her feelings, until this morning in the parking lot. Why God? she asked rhetorically. What’s so different about today?
Rather than guiding her little siblings around the rink as she usually would, Chloe began to whip back and forth on the ice like a speed-skater. She wanted to feel the air against her face, burning her skin. She wanted the particular burst of adrenaline that was the only way she’d found to banish unwanted thoughts (or a better cure than “Pray it away!” in any case). She wanted the corners of the rink to rear up at her, to be moments away from danger. She felt so much want in her chest.
“CHLOE! WATCH OUT!”
She dug a heel into the ice, but it was too late. She turned her neck but wasn’t in time to notice Ryder, the newbie skater, who in typical machismo fashion had shot out across the ice in front of her without first learning how to brake. The sounds of their bodies colliding rang and echoed in her ears, interrupted only by the thump of her head on a harsh, cold surface.
“Shit!” she shrieked, unfortunately loud enough for her mother to hear. Mrs. Christiansen waddled over on her pearly white skates and wagged a finger in her injured daughter’s face.
“I swear to God, Chloe. I didn’t mean to—”