Finally, Forever (15 page)

***

It’s hours later and I’m still awake, looking up at a ceiling of stars. Dylan is wearing my hooded sweatshirt and she’s curled up in a ball next to me. Her head is on my chest and my arm is around her shoulder. The air is cold; it carries faint traces of fall. A whisper of sunlight edges into the sky. I can almost feel the earth spinning on its axis, always looking for the sun, attracted by her golden light. I close my eyes.

Tonight it was all so simple. The dark is like fuel
for desire, always pushing you one step further, encouraging you to take chances while no one is watching. But the light is a harsh judge of night’s impulsive decisions. Now everything is complicated. And worse, possibly all a mistake.

My eyes are heavy and
dry and they burn from two nights of no sleep. I feel her now, like a ticking clock next to me, reminding me to savor each second, as if my relationship with her is always set on a timer about to go off.

Dylan

Gray slides inside a booth and I scoot in next to him and finally it feels natural between us. My knee pushes against his and I can feel the edge of his sandal press against mine under the table and our arms touch on top of the table. I don’t notice the diner or the people, I’m still remembering how last night his hair smelled like smoke from the campfire, how his lips were warm and soft, how salty his skin tasted. I appreciated the camping idea but the only scenery I want to enjoy right now is his naked body. It was so unnerving to be able to feel everything last night and not be able to see anything. I’m a sex-with-the-lights-on kind of girl. Tonight we are getting a hotel room.   

A waiter sets down a coffee next to
Gray and lemonade in front of me. He slides a plate with a cinnamon roll in between us. I haven’t even looked at the menu—I’m not hungry. Love is a powerful appetite suppressant.

I look at
Gray’s eyes and notice the purple shadows under his lower lids. It strangely brings out their blue color. He changed into a black t-shirt at the campground after he took a shower. It’s worn-in and soft and ripping along the hem. He’s wearing olive green shorts that hang low on his hips, and flip flops with a Nike swoosh across the top.

“You didn’t sleep last night,” I
say. I touch his cheekbone and graze my fingers over his lips before I pull away. 

He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “And these diner coffees are a tease. It’s like drinking strong water.” He dumps a spoonful of sugar in the mug and a creamer. He looks at me. “My brain turns on at night,” he says. “I think it’s nocturnal.”

I nod. “And a sleeping bag spread over rocky gravel is a harder mattress than you’re used to.” He stirs his coffee.

“I’d do it over a
gain a million times, Dylan,” is all he says. His lazy eyes settle on mine. I realize he isn’t complaining about last night.

“Does anything help?” I ask.

“I slept really well the summer I met you,” he tells me.

I think about our daily hiking trips. “All the exercise?” I figure.

“If by exercise you mean sex, then yes, it was all the exercise.”

I nod at the memory. I think we set some world records that summer.

“If scientists could somehow capture the hormones released right after sex, and bottle it as a drug, they would make billions of dollars,” Gray tells me. “That is the calmest feeling in the world.”

I think about this. “You mean like a liquid gel orgasm capsule?” I ask. I’m trying to picture it. It would definitely have to be a red pill. Candy coated. Cinnamon flavored.

Gray shakes his head. “No, it can’t be as potent as an actual orgasm. People would never sleep. They’d be kicking and screaming themselves hoarse.”

I nod. “That would definitely be a side
effect,” I agree. “But a great calorie burner.”

“I mean the feeling you get about
ten seconds after sex, that floating, perfect, sated feeling.”

“Ah-em,”
Gray and I look up when someone clears their throat and the waiter is standing at the edge of the table, staring at us. He’s young and his face is either red from a sunburn or a deep blush. “You ready to order?” he mumbles.

“I think we’re good,
thanks,” Gray tells him. The waiter looks at Gray and nods and scurries away like a mouse diving for the nearest hole in the wall. 

Gray
wraps his fingers around mine. He looks at my lemonade. 

“How can you drink that in the morning?” he asks me. “It doesn’t have any caffeine.”

I shrug. “It’s the happiest beverage.” I point at his coffee mug. “Why are so many beverages brown?” I wonder. “Coffee, most sodas, beer, apple cider? It’s kind of depressing if you think about it, all the brown things we drink.”

He takes a sip of his coffee and stares at me, expressionless.

“Why are you like you?” he asks.

“What do you mean?” I stir the ice around my cup with a straw.

“Did something happen to you? Seriously, where do you get all your optimism from?”

I peel off a layer of the cinnamon roll. “I overcame a traumatic obstacle in my past that turned me into a compassionate, self- actualized person,” I state. I stick the cinnamon bread in my mouth and
Gray is frowning with disbelief. I take a sip of lemonade.

“Nothing happened to me,” I say. “Sorry to be anticlimactic. Does some catastrophic event need to happen in our lives in order for us to appreciate anything?”

“Usually,” he nods.

“Well, I want to be optimistic, because
I can be. Complaining is such a waste of time. Instead of focusing on what goes wrong, focus on what’s going right. It’s that simple.”

He shrugs. “Good point,” he says.

“My mom used to host a women’s support club at our house every week.”

“That sounds awful,” he says.

I smile. “It was,” I admit. “But it didn’t have to be. It was supposed to an uplifting support group. But it was a two hour window of whining and complaining. They called themselves the Good News Club and it was all bad news. My sister and I would sit in the stairwell and listen and I always thought, that’s what I
don’t
want. That is the way I never want to live. We voluntarily make choices every day. We choose what we do. We choose who we’re with. But people act like it’s some kind of a trap. It never made sense to me.”

“Then how do you block
out all the negative thoughts?” Gray asks me.

“I guess I’ve mastered the art of daydreaming,” I say.

He takes a bite of the cinnamon roll and he licks sugar off his fingers.

“How do
you
escape?” I ask him.

“I can’t,” he says. “I don’t have you
r amazing talent for lack of attention,” he says and follows up with one of his slow smiles.

“You can do better than that,” I tell him.

“When I’m bored, I think of conspiracy theories,” he says.

I take a long sip of lemonade. “What is it with you and aliens all of a sudden?”

“It’s not just aliens,” he says. “It’s government conspiracies. It’s unexplained phenomenons. A kid on my baseball team in high school was obsessed with conspiracies. It’s all he talked about. You have a lot of time to kill in the dugout, especially when you only pitch every third game,” he points out.

“For example?” I ask.

He points out the window. “For example did you know the government can control the weather?”

I look out at the blue sky.
“What? Is that true?”

“It’s a theory. That’s one thing that explains climate change
. The government can make clouds.”

H
e points out white, narrow streaks of clouds stretched behind jets.

“
What do you think those streaks are?”

“They’re called contrails,” I say. “It’s short for condensation trails.”

“Wow,” Gray says, impressed. “It’s incredibly hot that you know that.”

I shrug. “My dad told me. I was always convinced they were ice highways in the sky
, perfect for sledding. He had to ruin my fantasy.”

“What if they’re not contrails? What if that’s just what the government wants you to think? Maybe it’s soap
,” he says.

“Soap?” I look up at the white clouds impossibly high and try to imagine flecks of soap inside of them.

“Supposedly, jets fly around spraying soap all over the sky,” he says.

“
Why? To wash the sky? What, does it clean up the acid rain?”

He
smiles. “That’s a good theory,” he says. “The soap helps absorb some of the sun’s rays and it keeps the earth cooler.”

I look back at him, fascinated
.

Gray
laughs. “I’m not saying I believe any of it,” he says. “It’s just my distraction.”

“Wow. You’ve opened me up to a whole new world of thought.”

Gray rolls his eyes. “Great.”

Dylan

Gray
hands me his car keys after I take a solemn oath that I will never again offer someone a ride without his authorized and signed approval. I unlock the front door and he walks around to the passenger side.

“What if it’s a woman in labor?” I ask across the car from him.

“Definitely no,” he says. “I don’t want afterbirth all over my backseat.”

“What if someone’s been shot
and they’re rapidly losing blood and need to get to a hospital?”

“Same rule applies,” he says.
I frown at him for his lack of sympathy. “That’s what an ambulance is for,” he argues. 

We both slide
into the front seat and shut the doors. I turn on the engine.

“What if it’s a
n abandoned child under the age of five?” I ask.

He shakes his head and I only have one more question.

“Do animals count?” I ask.

Instead of answering me, he shuts me up by leaning over and kissing me
. All my thoughts evaporate at the touch of his lips. It starts off slow and soft, but then his lips press harder against mine and his mouth opens up and our breaths combine. His hand squeezes my thigh, and I wrap my hand around the back of his neck because I need him to come closer, but the console divides us. I murmur the words “hotel room” against his mouth because I’m not thinking anymore, just feeling, and Gray leans away. I lean after him, my lips craving more.

“Later,” he says. His determined eyes back up the promise. I reluctantly nod. I know we need to get on the road.

Gray tugs a sweatshirt on and lifts the hood around his face. By the time we hit the highway ramp, he’s already nodding off to sleep.

***

Flagstaff, Arizona. I see a sign off the highway that we’re entering the city limits. The road continues to climb up the mountain to the town hovering over 7,000 feet in the sky. Scrubby bushes and golden desert hills disappear and give way to thick pine trees and lush green forest. It’s as if nature is performing a dress up runway show, trying on different fabrics and styles, and we’re the audience. 

When we exit into Flagstaff,
Gray is awake, looking for directions to the comedy club. He directs me through campus and downtown. The old buildings have a dilapidated charm.

We slow down across from
a small theater on the main street of town, squeezed between college bars and restaurants. An old marquee over the theater entrance advertises the comedy show starting tonight at 8:00. I look at the clock on the dashboard. It’s almost 7:30.

Gray
opens the door for me and we walk inside a dim lobby with red velvet walls. A box office desk is in the back corner, surrounded by glass like an old fashioned movie cinema. We stand in line behind a few people, all college-age kids in shorts and sandals and t-shirts, tan from enjoying the last warm summer days.