When I look back to the fire Colt’s gone. I squint across the clearing looking for him and see Bethany and Marcy in the glow of her maroon Tacoma’s dome light. Marcy’s shoulder’s bob up and down hysterically.
“Ah!”I yell, whipping around as fingers crawl up the back of my neck. “What the fuck, Colt?” I exclaim. “Scared the shit out of me.”
“Gross,” he says giving me his up-to-something smile. The one that’s wouldn’t be a smile at all if it weren’t for the way his eyes are lit up. I know it well and as always, I don’t ask what it means. The anticipation makes my fingers tingle and I cock my head to the side abruptly, doing a spot on impression of his dog, Jones. He smiles with his whole face this time, open and adoring in a way it hasn’t been in a long time. “What’s wrong with you?” I ask. “Just happy, I guess,” he says. Then he raises a bottle of wine and jerks his head toward the trees. I nod following him. I know where we’re going. Our spot. Our spot implies a location but it’s more a state of mind. It can be anywhere.
I follow him into the trees, weaving around and through aspen trees that fade into evergreens. The transition is marked by a new level of quiet. The ground is littered with evergreen needles, dampening the sound of our footsteps so that the only noise is the far off burble of the party and cricket’s song. All the while I keep my eyes trained on Colt’s back, fixating on the way his worn cotton t-shirt hugs his bulging traps and shoulders; they way it skims the width of his lats as it falls to his waistline. His movement, so sure and steady, lulls me into a kind of trance and I pass into memory. I see him then, that night we found our spot. He ran ahead of me, his arm stretching back to where it joined mine. I can feel the laughter in my throat and the way my body wouldn’t work with it racking me. He smiled as he looked over his shoulder at me and I felt like I could have died right then and there.
We had been hiding behind a tent from Amanda, who was already drunk and annoying the shit out of us. I remember the heat in my cheeks as Colt stared in shock at how miserably I was failing to open a bottle of wine and the way his body tensed when we heard a slurred, “what are you guys doing,” from the other side of the tent. I froze, wide eyed in not entirely mock fear. I was new to this crowd and not yet emersed in its moors. Colt’s eyes widened too when he noticed mine and I snorted. He snatched the bottle of zin from my hand, replacing it with his and proceeded to sprint through the trees. His grip was tight, pulling me and my laughter along behind him. “Did we lose her,” he asked with a backward glance. “Stop! Stop! I can’t breath,” was all I could choke out. “Can’t do that little lady,” he said over his shoulder, “the enemy is on our tail,” he’d said. Tree after tree flicked past us as Amanda’s annoyed voice continued to call for us. Just when I thought I’d lose my footing, the tug on my arm lessened and we came to a stop in no place particular. “This’ll do I guess,” he said looking around at the large boulders to our right and the dense foliage that surrounded us. We weren’t far from camp, but it felt insulated and safe. Like I didn’t have to gauge my every breath for its acceptability in my new-found place as a cool kid. Colt sat on a boulder and patted the space next to him. I sat down and he opened his hand in front of me like he wanted me to put something in it. “What?” I asked, laughter threatening to burst from me once again.
“Corkscrew?”
“Oh, musta dropped it,” I said snorting as the laughter broke free. He sighed in exasperation. “Well, guess we’re doing this the old-fashioned way,” he said and broke the neck of the bottle on a rock jutting out next to him. We sat on that rock alternating careful sips from the broken bottle and talked and talked and talked and never ran out of words to say. We returned to the group two hours later, him guiding the way again. Next to the fire, with people all around, talking and laughing, I looked up at the stars. They were twinkling. I had never notice that before. Then I looked at Colt and he was staring back. He smiled and I laughed, and the rest was history, I guess.
I’m pulled from my revery when I barely manage to block a branch rebounding after Colt passes it. “Fuck, man!” I cry out. “Sorry.” He responds.
A moment later the trees thin out and Colt stops at their edge, looking around. “This’ll do,” he says, before veering to the right. To the left is a drop off and I walk nearer to its edge. In the fading light, I can barely make out the narrow hiker’s path that winds its way up the steep grade. The trees are sparse here, but the tough vegetation native to this high desert flourishes in the soil, still hydrated with snow melt. During the day the brush and piñon pines look scraggly and gnarled, but in the warm darkness they take on a rich texture that only deepens as the tree density resumes a little way down the side of the mountain. The valley below seems to sleep under their cover beneath a quilt of trees. As night consumes the last of the daylight, and the pin prick stars begin to wake up I breath deeply. Out here it feels like I’m a part of the world in a way it’s impossible to in town.
I turn around and realize where we are. We’re at the arch. The distinctive rock formation only looks like an arch from a distance, though. Standing here, right below it, it kind of looks like an alien space-ship punched a hole through the mountain face, leaving only a delicate bridge of rock in its wake. That’s what my dad had told me had happened when I was eight and hiked up here with him for the first time, anyway. He and I would act like we’d reached the top of the world as we looked out from the mouth of the arch at the rugged terrain spilling out below. Out here in the absence of the prying eyes of small people in a small town we’d collect rocks, him pretending the fool’s gold was real and me pretending that he was my real dad. No, that I was his real daughter. It had been a staple of my childhood, but we hadn’t been for so long I hadn’t made the connection that it was just a short walk from our party spot. Each was a place in time that felt worlds apart.
Colt looks small making his way up the boulder strewn path, toward the mouth of the arch. He’s rapidly nearing the place where the hike transitions to a climb. He meets the rocks with athletic efficiency, stirring some very old part of my brain that is designed to react strongly to physical capability. “There’s fucking bats up there!” I call out.
“So?”
“So, I’m not coming up there at night.”
“Don’t be such a baby. What are they going to do? Turn you into a vampire?”
“Uuugh,” I groan. “That’s the spirit,” he says as he reaches the top and sits on a flat rock jutting out from the ground. Behind him the stone face of the mountain rises up, in layers and crevices, worn smooth by the passage of time. Small entrances in the stone are barely visible in the falling darkness, and I see a small shadow zip out of one. I have nothing against bats, but the frenetic way their wings move is disconcerting at close range. One zips past my face as I reach Colt, so close I can feel its wind against my cheek. I freeze with what I’m sure is terror in my eyes. Colt laughs. “See? They don’t like you, either.”
“Everyone likes me, and if they don’t it’s because they’re jealous,” I say as I take a seat next to him on the rock, pulling my knees into my chest to avoid scratching my bare legs on some brush growing up from beneath the rock.
“Oh, yes. All hail the queen,” he says, doing a seated bow.
“This line of succession is moving quickly. Promoted to princess a few hours ago and now a queen. One might think the person in charge doesn’t know what they’re doing.”
“That’s not how it works?” he asks.
“No, dumby.”
“Guess it’s a good thing I got that scholarship then,” he replies.
“Just what every college campus needs. More dumb jocks.”
“You seem to like them a lot.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That means you and Chole were gone for forever. I almost had to actually hang out with my girlfriend.”
“Almost had to call in the B team, huh?”
“Nearly,” he says, and then we’re quiet for a minute. We’ve had similarly sarcasm laden conversations about his and Marcy’s relationship before. In fact, it’s been the only way to make tolerable any discourse pertaining to her. The conversation I had with Chole earlier makes it feel different, though. Like doing what we always have is somehow lying, now. Warmth rises in my cheeks and I fixate on a bat ahead of me just to have something to do. The rapid pace of its beating wings seems to be keeping time with my heart.
“You ok? You’re kind of red. Wouldn’t think the climb would be all that taxing for you,” he says.
“I’m fine, just took a couple hits off Ashley’s joint is all,” I lie, feeling the heat in my cheeks spread to my chest. “So… what are you and the B team going to do when you leave? Long distance?” I ask.
“I don’t think that’s my style. Not for her, anyway.”
“Does she know that?” I ask.
“Yeah, probably, seeing as how I just told her so and am now hiding from her in a bat cave.”
“We ever going to be able to go back, then?” I ask, meaning from our physical location and status as cave dwelling fugitives. Up until now we’ve both been staring forward, in a laden casualness, but he turns to look at me now. I search his face for what in my words he found significant. “To being just friends, you mean?”
“No… Uh, nope. I meant to the party… We can never go back to the party,” I say, like I’m correcting driving directions, not an incredibly exposing misunderstanding. I return my eyes to the sky. Colt does the same. I’m sure, now, that my heart has exceeded the pace of the bat’s invisibly fast wing beats. Colt makes a quick recovery, saying, “Oh, yeah, no. We live here now.” He bumps his shoulder into mine for good measure. Nothing to see here. Nothing weird. It’s quiet for a minute until, in an uncharacteristically honest show, I say, “I don’t know that I have ever been just friends with you, and I think you know that on some level.” He returns his gaze to me, and I turn to meet it.
“Not really,” he says. “Don’t you think I’d have done things a little differently if I had?”
“Don’t know,” is all I say.
“I knew on all levels that I felt that way about you,” he says.
And just like that I’m crying, like I’d just been waiting to do it all my life.
Unguarded relief relaxes Colt’s face. He wipes the tears away with his thumbs as he cradles my face in his hands a I close my eyes. “So, we just wasted all this time? Being stupid? For nothing? What now” I ask, the tightness in my throat making my words small. “What’s now is… now. Can it just be now for a minute?” I open my eyes and nod. He puts his hand on the back of my head and leans in to kiss me then rests his forehead against mine. I try to look into his eyes but all I can see are his eye lashes opening and closing quickly in a bid to stop his own tears coming. They come anyway. “Who knew we were such babies?” I say laughing and accidently shooting snot onto the thigh of his jeans.
“Gross,” he says, “You’re lucky I love you.” His eyes don’t waver as he says it, like it’s nothing. “You do, don’t you?” I say.
“Yeah. I mean, I tell you all the time,” he says matter of factly.
“Yeah, but I thought you meant something else. Like, not in love with me.”
“Oh,” is all he says looking into my eyes. He leans in and kisses me supporting my back as it lowers to rest on the stone. We incrementally shimmy and readjust as we kiss so that my body is entirely on the rock, his flush with mine, but mindful not to put his full weight on me. His lips move down to my neck, and it feels so good that I gasp. He stops to look up at me and he gives an accomplished smile. I pull his lips up to mine and into his mouth say, “Impressed with yourself, are you?”
“No ma’am,” he says back into mine. I force his body to the side before rolling on top of him. Then I sit up, straddling him and say, “reversal. One point me.” I can feel his junk radiating heat beneath me. “It doesn’t count if I let you,” he says.
“Letting me is the ultimate point. I means I win without even trying,” I say. I lean over to grab the wine bottle from the higher rock that he set it on. He groans with the added pressure of my movement. “You’re smashing shit,” he says. “Just hang on a second,” I respond, righting myself. He looks up at me with dancing eyes and puts his hands on my hips rocking them slightly. “Hang on, I said!” I say, then, “First, a toast, like civilized people.” I lean a slightly ball crushing amount to the left, reaching to smash the bottle’s neck a safe distance from Colt’s face. He groans as I do, saying in choked words “don’t have to do that. Cork’s already popped.”
“That’s no fun,” I say, righting myself.
“Jay did it, but don’t worry, I stopped him before he got any cooties on it.”
“Fucking Jay,” I say. Colt’s eyes harden for a moment, but I glide past the memory of our drive up like it didn’t even happen. Now is not the time. “I’m still gonna break it,” I say. “It would be, like, bad luck or something if I didn’t. Don’t you think?” I ask rhetorically. “Like, we’d be cursed for sure.” Colt sits up shifting me slightly so that I’m sitting on his lap, still straddling him. I get goose bumps feeling his chest pressed against me and our hips locked into each other. I raise the bottle and whisper, “to the A-team,” before smashing it into the rock. It begins to fizz-over and I impulsively shove the bottle into my mouth to catch the flow. I feel the jagged opening slice the corner of my mouth and I wince. The champagne begins to trickle down my chin and I snort a closed mouthed laugh as I wipe my face with the back of my wrist. The brightness of the blood startles me as I bring my hand away from my face.
“Oh, fuck,” I say, but Colt’s already whipping off his shirt and balling it up to apply pressure to the cut.
“Jesus, Lil. Now we’re cursed.”
“Why didn’t you tell me it was champagne?”
“I don’t know. I thought you knew. That you’d see the bubbles in there, or like, read the label, like a normal person,” he said pulling the shirt away for a second to look up close at the wound. Blood drips down my chin and he presses the shirt against it again. I stare at him meaningfully as he fusses over me and can’t stop the stupid smile spreading across my face as I note his shaking hands. “What?” he says, smiling back in a similarly stupid way, “don’t make fun. It just scared me. Heads bleed a lot. Are you ok?”
“I am now.” I say, skimming my fingers over his bare chest, running them from his sternum to the elastic of his briefs. He closes his eyes and lets out a heavy breath. “Quit that. If you don’t imma have to make out with you, and then some, and I don’t want to go back to camp with your blood smeared all over my face.”
“Well, then we could put it somewhere no one can see…” he rolls his eyes.
“As tempting as a blood halo around my dick is, we should go back. I have a first aid kit in the truck.”
“Fine… Pussy,” I say. Lisping as my tongue works to keep blood out of my mouth. He grabs my hand and presses it into the ball of shirt to replace his.
“Walk,” he says, grabbing me by the shoulders and pointing me in the direction of the path. “Colt, this shirt is filthy, no offense, but I don’t need to have an infected lip wound on top of whatever the fuck is going on with the rest of my face.”
“That is why we are going back. Just keep it on there until we can get something else.”
“I will, I’m just saying. You’re gross.”
“Whatever… What’s wrong with the rest of your face?” he asks.
“I’m breaking out like a mother fucker.”
“Oh, yeah. You are.”
“Thanks.”
“You said it.”
“A likely excuse.” He supports me by the elbow guiding me down the path and over the boulders. When we reach the tree-line, he looks at me and says, “you good?”
“My lip is cut, not my femoral artery,” I respond.
“Last time I ever fucking help you, I can tell you that right now.”
“Fine by me. What would you even do? Put a band-aid in my mouth.”
“Keep digging, Lil. And it’s not in your mouth, dip-shit. It’s like the corner of your mouth. I bet a butterfly would work.”
“As impressive as your bedside manner is, Doctor, I’ll just go find Andi and she can fix me.”
“I know what I’m doing,” he says, stopping to turn and look at me. “I’m an Eagle scout, remember?” He looks seriously offended by my lack of confidence in his medical savvy.
“Ok, I know you’re a very good little helper. I was only declining because I think you have more pressing things to deal with, that I would like not to be in the vicinity of while said dealing with takes place.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Um, Marcy. What do you think?”
“I broke up with her.”
“And you think that’ll be the end of it? No. Our ill-fated sojourn was just the right amount of time for her to get good and pissed. And I mean that in that in both the British and American way. Pissed drunk and pissed off.”
“Fuuuck. Can’t I just come with you? Be a good little helper?”
“Absolutely not. I want precisely nothing to do with a drunk, sad/mad Marcy. I’m sure she and I will have our own fun little chat at some point tonight, anyway. I don’t need to participate in both.”
“You’re a terrible girlfriend.”
“Ick, don’t call me your girlfriend.”
“Well, what are you, then?”
“What happened to, ‘can’t it just be now for a minute?’”
“It’s been like fifteen minutes. Now it’s time for details, lady.”
“Great. Let’s start with this. I’m not your girlfriend, like I always haven’t been, but this time you’re not allowed to be a moron and get a girlfriend and I’ll do the same until such a time as we both decide that we want to do something else.”
“Sounds like the kind of nonsense that got us into this love triangle in the first place.”
“Yes, but now the nonsense is stated and clearly outlined, so...”
“Whatever you say boss.”
“That’s the right attitude,” I say, seeing the glow of fire ahead of us. When we reach the tree line we stop just inside of it. The gathering looks a lot like it had when we left, just darker and with more people. Wade and Todd have relented at least for the time being, the tree still tethered to the truck. The Coles are fighting. I guess it isn’t so much a fight as it is Big Chole pulling little Cole away from a fire that has reached a height too ridiculous to attempt jumping. Tents populate the tree line, now, a few shifting with the movement of occupants. People sit on tail gates and hoods some using them as seating and others as stages. The former whisper quietly into each other’s ears, legs swinging in tandem. The latter do stupid, inebriated, shit, like crushing full cans of beer against their skulls while the crowd that accompanies such an endeavor, cheers from the ground.
The shirt sticks to my lip a little when I pulled it away causing it to start bleeding again. “Whatever, I’m leaving it,” I say.
“Okay Carrie,” Colt replies. I dart in for a kiss on his cheek, then swipe the blood I leave there with my thumb to make a streak on his face. “That’s a blood brand. Now you’re mine.”
I wait for him to wipe it off and say something witty, but he doesn’t. Instead, he does pretty much the only thing that could top what I’d just done. He licks the trickle of blood slowly making its way down my face. “Yours.” He says, his eyes so close to mine that he has four. “That’s what I want to be. And I want you to be mine. Can I call you that? Mine?”
“Ok,” I say, breathily, grossed out and enamored all at once.
33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqI4zcISZEs
