Finally, Forever (18 page)

“Dylan, what are you doing to me?” I mumble to the ceiling.

Dylan

After a three-hour morning sex marathon, we emerge from the hotel room, slow and stiff as if we just ran a triathlon. I have sex hair. Not bed hair—sex hair. It is much more violently rumpled
than bed hair. I leave the windows in our room open so it can air out. It smells like latex and sweat inside. I carry out the garbage with me because I’m a little embarrassed there are six used condoms inside. I throw the garbage in a trash can next to a bench outside our hotel door.

Gray
opens his trunk and tosses a baseball cap at me. I catch it and examine the black fabric.

“You might want to put it on,” he says. “You loo
k like you’ve been electrocuted.” He points to my head.

I smile and tug the cap over my wild hair. He grabs my hand and we walk to the lobby to check out. My legs ache and my thighs hurt and my steps are wobbly.

“Ow,” I say. Gray looks over at me. “My crotch is so sore,” I moan loudly, just as we realize there’s a family walking behind us. We turn and the mother shoots me a slut stare and pushes her two younger boys towards their car.

“Classy,”
Gray says.

“Sorry, but it’s true. Does your penis ever get sore?” I wonder.

“Never,” he says without hesitating. “That’s like asking somebody if they get sore from an amazing massage. No, they just feel absolutely amazing.”

He opens the door for me and we walk inside the lobby.
The small room is warm and stuffy. I sit by the window and examine a pile of books stacked on the ledge while Gray checks out. The books are ragged, with torn covers faded from the sun. I pick one up and look at the cover, featuring a picture of the Eiffel Tower. I read words underneath the iron statue.
Je t’aime.

I stare at the phrase, how simple the words look in another language, how elegant like it’s the name of a painting, or
a movie, or a song. They’re not intimidating. They roll off your tongue. They’re something to be celebrated, lyrics to write, poems to recite.

I follow
Gray outside and as we cross the parking lot to his car, I start to panic. I was so busy enjoying the beginning of everything, I never prepared for the end. I refuse to accept that this is
it.
I refuse to say my least favorite word of all time: goodbye.

I open up a complimentary state map of Arizona I took from the lobby counter and stare at the interconnecting jumble of lines and highways.

We haven’t discussed our next move. We haven’t had the “us” talk yet. How have we missed this pivotal conversation? Last night, leaving Flagstaff, there was only one clear thought in my head, and that was Gray. The roads were twisting around us while we drove and I couldn’t see beyond each turn. I didn’t know where we were going, and I didn’t care because I was with the only person I wanted. I look over at Gray as he walks across the parking lot. How do you make a person your final destination?

I stare down at the map of Arizona, desperate to lengthen the moment. We can’t separate like this. The end of our road trip was always a vague time, a far away d
ate.

A green space hovers over my finger on the map.

The Grand Canyon. We’re practically there. The base of the south rim nearly touches our highway exit.

“Can we go?” I ask
Gray.

“You’ve never been to the Grand Canyon?” he asks and I shake my head. “You’re really capable of picking a destination?” he asks, his eyes on mine. I know there’s more to his question. The Grand
Canyon feels like the perfect place to spill my mind. It might actually be large enough to hold all of my thoughts.

“It would be the perfect ending
point to our itinerary,” I say.

He smiles. “I can almost hear your camera shaking in your backpack,” he says.

***

I’m not pr
epared for this much beauty. It’s like seeing spiritual transcendence fall to the earth and lay down at your feet. Your only instinct is worship it, and be humbled in its presence. Even though the canyon is in front of me, right under my feet, I still think I’m imagining it. There is the past, mixed with the present and suddenly you can see time, the way it gathers in waves of dust and dirt and rock.

I stare out at the sea of rock walls beneath us. Sounds don’t have to compete out here, they each
get their own solo. A bird crows in the sky, followed by a breeze blowing through the trees. A tourist shouts.

“Can we hike to bottom?” I ask
Gray as we sit down at the edge of a trail to take in the view. I wonder if there is a bottom. I would rather imagine it goes on forever, like space, the further you go the more it expands.

“
You need to buy a permit to do the hike,” Gray says. “They sell out almost a year in advance.”

“She’s a popular place,” I say.

He nods. I want to promise him we’ll come back here together. Someday we’ll do this hike and we’ll sleep 5,000 feet under sea level. I wonder how cold it is, or if the stars look any different. I wonder if you can hear the stomach of the earth rumbling. All I know is I want to experience it with Gray. I don’t want this to be our last day together.

We both kick off our s
hoes and sit at the rim’s edge. I take a picture of our naked feet, dangling over the mouth of rocks and set my camera aside. It might be my favorite picture yet. I press my knee against his and let my head rock onto his shoulder.

“You’re a lot like this,” he says.

“A big empty hole?” I ask. “Thanks.”

“Something
you can never really understand,” he says. “The longer you stare at it, the more complex it gets. The more it just keeps going on and on forever.”

“So, it’s better just to admire it from a distance?” I figure.
Gray smiles.

“Sometimes.”

“It must drive you nuts.” I wrap my arms around my knees and look down at the chasm. I swallow down a bubble of sadness forming in my throat. I know what he’s trying to say. “So you’re giving up on me?” I ask. “For good?”

“I’m just accepting it,
Dylan. It’s who you are.”

I nod
slowly. “So, I’m the Grand Canyon, to you? Is this your metaphorical way of saying we can never be together? Because no one can ever live in the Grand Canyon. It’s a National Park,” I point out in case he doesn’t know, as if he didn’t just pay a twenty-dollar entrance fee to use the parking lot. Gray looks over at me and our eyes lock. His eyes completely match the blue sky around us. 

“Am I off limits to you?” I ask. 

“You make yourself off limits to people. You push people away, just like I do. You run away before you ever have to feel tied down. You make it impossible for people to get too close to you. The only difference is, you do it by accident. I do it by choice.”

I look out
at the canyon. She seems so old and wise. I wish she could tell me what to do in this moment. What to say. Every word suddenly feels paramount.

“That’s why Serena’s mad at you,” Gray says.

I lift my shoulders. “I went after her. I tried.”

“
Dylan, has it ever occurred to you, maybe your sister is just like you?” Gray asks. “Maybe you’re not the only free spirit in the family?”

I look at Gray and his eyes are still on me. “
I don’t know what else to do.”

“You have
to keep trying,” he says. “You have to go after her. You don’t give up on your family.”

I look away and feel the back of my eyes sting. I know he’s right. But a tiny, selfish voice inside of me wants Gray to tell me to give up, to run
away with him. To stay with him. It would be easier. It would be an excuse. But Gray knows I need to spread myself out in order to be happy. Gray is the only person who has ever loved me enough to understand. I feel a pang in my chest, something like rejection. He’s letting me slip through his fingers again. And this time I didn’t want him to let go. But our roads always seem to split into opposite directions

I take a long, concentrated breath. Beginnings are so easy
. You are fresh, new, fully charged. It’s the closing that is always impossible. We stumble and trip because we are suddenly tied to our actions and they become chain reactions. The last step you take, the last word you say, the final note to a song, the ending to a story. That is when the pressure hits.

“I don’t kn
ow where she’s going now,” I say. “Flagstaff was the last show Mike posted on his website.”

“You’ll figure it out,” he
says. “You have to.”

“Why?” I ask and look at him
.

“Because you have a sister,” he says. He
points behind us. “Mine died in a hospital, in Flagstaff, four years ago and I can never get her back. I know this all seems devastating and tragic to you right now, and I’m not saying what happened with Serena isn’t a big deal, but I’m
jealous
of you. Because this is just a fight. You can fix this. You can still have her in your life. That is a privilege. Don’t lose that.”

I feel tears in my eyes, finally
spilling out and it’s a relief to let them go. Tears stream down my face and I’m starting to see things clearly, even through my blurry vision.

“I didn’t realize how much I loved Amanda, how much I needed her, until she was gone. Don’t make that mistake,”
Gray says.

“I love you so much,”
I tell him. I wipe my fingers over my wet cheeks to try and dry them off. “I’ll always love you. You believe that, right?”

He nods slowly.

“Then what about you?” I ask. “What about us?”

He looks at me. “Was there ever really an
us
?” he asks. “Or just a me, and a you, and these random moments when our lives accidently collide? Maybe that’s it for us.”

I look out at the canyon and suck in a deep breath. I can’t accept this theory. I don’t believe in accidents.

“I wasn’t just upset about Serena last night,” I say. “It was something she said. She told me I drew this out between you and me, for three years, because I was only thinking of myself.”

He leans back on his hands. “Don’
t compare yourself to Serena,” he says. “Her situation is completely different. If I knocked you up in Phoenix the summer we met, everything would have changed. You might have even accepted my proposal,” he says.

“I think about that sometimes.” I look over at
Gray. “Was that real? I mean, what would have happened if I had said yes?”

He runs his hand over his hair.
“I don’t know. I think I would have seriously married you,” he says. “I was so crazy about you. You became my entire world that summer.” 

“I don’t think I would have regretted it, like I
said I would. Maybe I should have said yes.” 

“I’m glad you didn’t,”
Gray says.

I exhale with relief. At least he’s forgiven me.

“Really?” I ask.

“I don’
t want to be married in college,” he tells me. “And when you left it forced me to stand on my own feet. It took a while, but I finally managed. I think if you had stayed with me, I would have always depended on you, like a crutch. I think that would have pressured you after a while.”

“I’ve been thinking about love,” I say. “You
know how you always say I throw the word around too easily?”

“Yes. You do,”
he says.

“Well, I realized something over the past year. You can love anyone. It’s not that hard. I love Nick. I love my friends and my family. I love bacon,” I say and
Gray smiles. “But it’s different to be
in
love. I’ve only ever been in love with you.”

Gray
doesn’t respond. He just looks out at the silent canyon.

I stand up
slowly, my body stiff, and take pictures of the canyon walls. I ask Gray to take my picture with the canyon in the background. I hold out my hands to show it off, like it’s a new car.

Gray
drops the camera and studies me.

“You know why I love you?” he asks and walks up closer to me. “You’re this,” he says and jostles the camera in his hands. “To me.”

“I’m a camera?” I say and he nods. He aims the camera out at the canyon and starts to take pictures.

“Why do you love your camera
, Dylan?” he asks.

I sit down and think about it.
I could list a million reasons. Gray sits next me. “It helps me to see,” I say. “I appreciate so much more when I have it. It widens my perspective; it makes me want to soak up every detail. It never misses a thing, it never blinks. The whole world is crisper and brighter and clearer. It sees beauty without judging it. It makes me want to take every temporary moment and make it permanent.”