by Brisa Starr
We laugh and get out of his car. He walks me to my front door and says, “I had a nice time today. Very nice. It was, well, relaxing, too.”
Hm. Relaxing?
Is that good?
“I have to see you again. Tomorrow?” he asks, and his eyes fill with hope. He reaches out his hand toward my face, and I flinch. But he tucks a stray piece of hair behind my ear, and warmth flowers in my chest. I smile.
“That sounds good,” I breathe, and my heart races being so close to him. “If your groin is up to it, we could go for a walk. Maybe Watson Woods? Maybe even jog.”
“Perfect. My groin and I are totally up for it. Give me your phone and I’ll add my contact info.”
I hand it to him, and after a moment, he gives it back to me. I have his number now. That’s journal-worthy, I smirk to myself.
“Would 9:00 a.m. be too early? I don’t want to wait,” he asks, a wide grin on his face.
My heart does a backflip. Is he eager to see me? Or is he just eager to exercise? The way he’s staring at me, I think it’s me!
“Sure,” I say, and he turns around and steps off the porch. No hug, no kiss, no backward glance. I would’ve even taken a high-five, but nope. Nothin’.
I purse my lips. Maybe we are just friends. Guess I’ll learn more tomorrow.
Just then, he turns around and waves goodbye as he gets into his car and drives home, across the street. At least I got a goodbye wave.
That’s something, right?
11
Luke
I sneak a glance at her walking next to me, and she looks sexy in her tight purple shorts, painted straight onto her gorgeous ass. She’s wearing an overly snug pink tank top that leaves nothing to the imagination, and I’m just fine with that. Hell, it makes me want her more. Her long ponytail swings with each step she takes, and I want to yank it, baring her neck, so I can kiss her. Bite her.
Whoa.
Dude.
Settle down.
The pine needles crunch under our sneakers as we walk, and the sun dances through the trees like twinkling lights. As happens every time I’m around Ash, I’m relaxed and have more peace in my soul than I’ve had in ten years.
My chest expands as I breathe deep, filling my lungs with the fresh air, and I appreciate the scenery. The trees, the flowers, the energy... Ash. I’m blazing with a smoldering desire I thought was dead, a buzzing that stokes my fires. It’s making me horny as hell.
I don’t know what it is about Ash. Her laughter, her smile, her tight body, her angelic face... perhaps it’s everything. But there’s something more when I look into her eyes. Acceptance.
Since Jeremy died, I’ve felt nothing close to the renewal I’m feeling in my heart now. For so long, blackness swamped me every fucking day, never allowing me to look forward to the next. But, now? I want to know what happens next with her. I’m like an eager puppy.
I want to progress. I want to see around the next corner. And to start living again.
“So, you mentioned at lunch...” she starts, and turns her face toward me as we walk. I catch a whiff of her lavender scent. It distracts me and makes me want to kiss and lick her everywhere to find its source. I shake my head to pay attention to what she says. I don’t think I’ve ever been this crazy about a woman.
“I’m sorry. I was distracted. What were you saying?” I smile sheepishly.
She looks at me again, but she’s wearing sunglasses, and I can’t see her expression. But she doesn’t seem to mind. “What part didn’t you hear?” she asks and chuckles softly.
“All of it.” I shrug and give her my most apologetic smile, but the truth is, I was paying attention to her, just not to what she was saying.
She laughs and says, “I was wondering what kind of intense exercise you were referring to yesterday at lunch.”
“Oh! Things like surfing, lifting heavy objects,” I grin and flex my bicep as a joke, “And skydiving.”
She halts and grabs my hand. Her touch sends a shock through my arm, down my spine, and into my cock. Houston, we are GO for launch. I exhale a short huff of breath.
She drops her hand quickly. Did she feel that too?
She moves her glasses down to the bottom of her nose so I can see her eyes, which are wide in shock. “Skydiving? Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Totally serious. I’ve got 165 jumps under my belt. I was going to do a couple of jumps later this week with a local company, but their pilot is on vacation. I’m working my way to 200 so I can wing-suit jump.”
She gasps and raises her eyebrows so high they touch the top of her forehead. “Wing-suit jump? Is that what I think it is?”
“Maybe.” I shrug. “It’s when you wear a wing-suit, making you like a bird, more or less, and you jump off a cliff, and glide down. Fast.”
She takes her sunglasses all the way off. “Oh my god. I’ve never known anybody who does that. Not sky-diving or wing-suit jumping. Holy cow! Like in those Red Bull YouTube videos where they fly through crags in the rocks? That would be so scary. Aren’t you scared?”
I take my sunglasses off.
“Honestly? Yes. It scares the shit out of me. Every time. Jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft at 13,000 feet in the air, and free-falling for almost an entire minute.” I square my shoulders and look at her with sincerity. “But I do it anyway because I need the adrenaline rush. It’s the only thing that helps me cope. You know… with Jeremy’s death. There’s this darkness… it’s hard to explain. But it surrounds me, threatens to overwhelm me, and so I do things to get out ahead of it, outrun it.”
“Oh,” she replies, with understanding in her voice. Her face smiles warm and open, full of caring. She puts her hand on my shoulder, and there’s that touch again, searing energy through me, and my heartbeat sprints. I lick my lips. I want to bend down and kiss her. Right here. Right now.
Then, a couple of runners run by us, and she waits until they pass and drops her hand. She looks at me with compassion and says, “I can imagine how hard it’s been for you. Have you been to see anyone about it?”
“No,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“This is not my area of expertise, but you might have PTSD. There have been some really promising studies lately with psilocybin… you know, mushrooms. Sometimes curing long-term sufferers with a single session.”
“Holy shit, really?” I say.
“I mean, it’s still illegal. For now, anyway. But I’m sure you could find an experienced guide in L.A. if you asked around.”
What an amazing woman. My feelings of desire shift to ones of comfort. It’s those words of hers, the gentle compassion. She acknowledged my pain and, not only didn’t try to change the subject, she offered a possible solution. With zero judgment. Normally, whenever somebody brings up Jeremy’s name, I shut down. But with Ash, I don’t want to. I want to open up more to her.
She really is a healer, in the truest sense of the word.
We start walking again, and the movement helps me talk more. Birds chirp in the trees, and a squirrel scampers across our path as it chases another. I think of Ash and myself... me chasing her.
“When Jeremy died, I spiraled into a deep, black hole because… it was my fault. I missed him so badly. I was consumed with guilt and shame,” I admit.
“Some days, it felt like my brain was drowning in blood-red quicksand, and my thoughts were weighed down like a cement block sinking a body to the bottom of the ocean.” I sigh, and her sweet face and bright eyes encourage me to continue. “On those days, I find it difficult to move — to even get out of bed — unless, like I said, I get out ahead of it. I discovered early on that adrenaline — from anything — driving fast, surfing, skydiving… it short-circuits whatever’s going on in my brain and makes me feel alive. So now, my drive for the rush is strong, I’m always on the lookout for it, and I’ve found ways to cope.”
“Why do you think it was your fault?” she asks, and again, this amazing woman takes me by surprise. Instead of say
ing what everyone else says, jumping down my throat about it “Not being my fault,” she just asks me why I think it is.
“Because it was. Everybody keeps trying to tell me it wasn’t, but it was. We were at the bar drinking, and I knew he had too much to drink. More than he should’ve. I knew. I went to the bathroom, and on the way back to the table, I started talking to a girl.”
As I’m telling her about that night, the obsidian darkness threatens to eat me, but I push it away with all my might. I need to get this off my chest. I want to confess my sin to her. Talking to Ash, hard as it is, is making me feel better.
“So, I got distracted talking to this girl, and, well, Jeremy left. Driving drunk.”
“I heard he’d been drinking and driving, and that he slid on ice, but why is that your fault?”
“Because it is!” I snap, but she doesn’t flinch. Still, I regret it.
My voice softer, I say, “When I went back to the table and looked for him, I asked the bartender if he knew where Jeremy went, and he said Jeremy had been looking for me, and then took off. He couldn’t find me, Ash!”
I stop walking, and she turns to face me. “If I hadn’t been talking with that girl, I would’ve been there. I would’ve called a cab for us. And I was the one pushing the shots of tequila.”
I hang my head, focusing on the ground, and she reaches for my hand.
She pushes her sunglasses up on top of her head, and her beautiful hazel eyes shine on my face, and my posture relaxes. Even after telling her this horrible truth, proving it was all my fault, she wants to hold my hand and be here with me.
I’m a mix of emotions. The guilt of reliving my nightmare — in more detail than I’ve described it to anyone in years — and the relief of being here with Ash as I say it… a violent desire assails my body, and I want to take her. I inhale a slow, deep, calming breath. My mind goes back to that night, and a tear escapes from my eye.
“That must’ve been a horrible feeling to carry all these years,” she says, her eyes serenely compelling. She reaches her other hand to my face and wipes the tear from my cheek. We need no more words, just our eyes. Our hearts. Our souls.
That lone tear cracks my soul open even more, and her dazzling light shines in. But I still don’t know what to do. Where to go. It’s like getting a breath of air, and then being pushed underwater where I have to hold it again, desperate to stay afloat. My lungs tense at the thought.
We’re standing in the path of other walkers and runners, so I put on my sunglasses and gesture for us to continue walking. But I don’t let go of her hand. I can’t. We pass a small group of kids huddled off to the side of the trail inspecting bugs on the ground, their bouncy giggles filling the air.
And I continue processing it all. I’m tired of carrying this darkness with me, so tired of the pain and the guilt and the shame. And now that I’ve experienced this feather-lightness with Ash, a softer side of my soul is peeking its head out. And, more than ever, I don’t want to go back down to that pit of raven-black darkness.
“It’s been hard staying in Prescott,” I continue. “Everywhere I turn, there are memories of Jeremy, and reminders of the memories I’ve tried to bury. It all wants to surface.”
“I’ll bet,” she says. “But I imagine your family loves having you here. I’m sure they’ve missed you. And help you, maybe?” A breeze blows through the trees, and it makes the tendrils of hair hanging by her face dance for a moment. I want to reach out and touch one, wrap it around my finger.
“I suppose.”
Her hand feels good, and I give it an extra squeeze. I wish I could see her eyes, but she’s put her sunglasses back on. She scrapes her teeth across her bottom lip, and it drives my heart wild, and my abs tighten reflexively.
She turns her face back to the trail. “I love being out in the forest. It’s one of my favorite things about Prescott, being around these beautiful trees anytime I want.” She smiles peacefully, and I can feel her happiness. “Did you know, in Japanese culture, they do something called Forest Bathing? It became popular in the ‘80s. Its Japanese name is Shinrin-yoku. Basically, you spend time in the woods. They’ve shown it eases depression, boosts your immune system, and has an incredibly positive effect on your body.”
She shrugs and adds, “I know it works for me. Being in this cloud of chlorophyll and the fresh air, the sunshine. I like how I feel so small among the trees, yet, if I crouch down,” she says and does just that, pulling me down with her into a squat, “and I look under a rock, I marvel as I compare myself to the little critters I find underneath.”
I’m wowed by her, but I don’t say anything. A faint blush highlights her cheeks. “I know, dorky,” she says.
“No, it’s not. I love what you described, and you’re absolutely right,” I tell her, standing up and pulling her with me. “I do feel better, overall, and being out here is great...”
I was about to add “with you,” but then another memory crashes full-speed into my brain, and I take a sharp breath.
Ash stops and looks at me. “Are you OK?”
I let go of her hand and pinch the bridge of my nose. “Yeah. I just had a memory come to me. It’s the second time it’s happened since I’ve been back. The first time was at my dad’s funeral. I had a memory of Jeremy, and it wasn’t a dismal one; it was a good one. I remembered how we used to screw around growing up and riding skateboards in the funeral parlor parking lot. It was nice to think of something light and fun about Jeremy. Something other than my normal nightmares of the night he died.”
A small smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. She waits for me to continue, and we walk again.
“And I just had another memory that I haven’t thought about in over ten years. Jeremy and I used to race our mountain bikes through these trails. We’d fuck around, always doing jumps and tricks. We used to pretend we were stuntmen in films,” I chuckle. “Anyway, it’s weird having these memories I haven’t allowed myself to think about, or enjoy, because I always feel too guilty to go there. Like I’m not allowed to think anything good about him.”
“Man, that must be some emotional roller coaster you’re on,” she says and gives me another warm smile that makes me want to kiss her, run my hands through her hair, and rip off her clothes. And I can’t believe I’m even having thoughts of sexual desire in the middle of talking about the thing that destroyed my life.
“OK, maybe this will seem strange, but, I don’t know...” she hesitates and waits.
“Go on.” I raise my eyebrows, eager to hear her thoughts.
“Well, maybe it’s like his spirit is here? I mean, maybe he’s trying to tell you to let go of the darkness. That it’s OK. That he’s OK. That he wants you to think of the good memories you two shared.” She looks down after she says that, avoiding eye contact.
“Whoa, Ash. That’s pretty deep,” I chuckle, and my eyes move skyward, pondering.
“Yeah, I know. It’s just, well, I think about death from time to time because of my dad,” she pauses and looks into my eyes. “It comforts me to imagine he could still be around after he dies, sending me signs and stuff, feeling his spirit with me.” She looks back down to the ground and brushes it with her foot, scraping away dried pine needles and a small pinecone.
We start walking again. “To be honest, Ash, I’m not sure I can go there yet, releasing myself like that. But I don’t know. Maybe. It would be nice.”
“I understand,” she says, nodding.
To lighten the mood, I change the subject. It’s beginning to get uncomfortable, and I’d rather focus on her. I haven’t talked about Jeremy this much since… well... ever. And I know it’s helping because I’ve had some amazing moments of peace, clarity, and hope. But it’s all still so raw, and I need time to process it.
“So, Ash, why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
I catch her by surprise, and she snaps her head in my direction, not focusing on the trail, and she trips on a thick tree root poking out from the ground.
/> “Ahhh!” she screams as she falls forward and lands on the ground.
“Oh god! Ash! Are you OK?” I rush to help her to her feet.
She blushes the color of pomegranates and bends down to wipe the dirt and pine needles off her knees. “Um, yes. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? Do you want me to carry you the rest of the way? You can choose: piggy-back, or new bride going-over-the-threshold style,” I tease, and she laughs. I’m glad to have lightened her embarrassment.
“No, I’m fine,” she says and starts walking again.
“Let’s try that again. So I don’t catch you off guard, I’m going to ask you about any boyfriends you might have lined up at your front door.”
She barks a laugh and flings her hand in my direction. “Whatever.”
But she doesn’t answer my question.
“C’mon, I just poured my heart out to you. Now it’s your turn,” I laugh.
She sighs. “Alright. Boy, where do I begin? Well, I had one, a boyfriend, that is. We were engaged.”
The hairs on my neck stand up, and my breathing intensifies. “Engaged?”
“Yeah. We met in college and our relationship was OK, I guess, but it wasn’t a hot and sultry romance,” she giggles and blushes again. “Can you tell I read romance novels?”
I’d laugh with her, but I can’t. I’m bristling with jealousy at the thought of another man having a ring on her finger.
“Anyway, we were engaged, against my better judgment, I now see. Hindsight and all. Cuz, he wasn’t the nicest guy. I mean, nothing terrible, but he was just kind of a dick sometimes.” She says it softly, like he’s in the group walking behind us, and she doesn’t want him to hear.
“But I still let myself get engaged to him, thinking he was the best I could do. He broke it off with me, and I was heartbroken for a while. Now I realize he did me a favor. And I just haven’t been interested in dating anybody since.”
“What a dick,” I say, and she playfully hits my shoulder.
“After I got over the heartbreak, I did some soul-searching, and, as you might remember, my mom left when I was a baby, so I don’t remember her.”
