by R.S. Grey
Beck went to scope out the campground while I got ready. I pulled out a wrinkled, but still pretty, aqua dress that had thin spaghetti straps. The cut was low in the front and normally I skipped over it so that my scar wouldn’t be on display, but I didn’t seem to mind that when I was around Beck.
I pulled out my bag of makeup that was stocked full with no help from me. My mother had done her best to provide me with things she thought I should use, but most of it looked like foreign torture devices. I skipped over the eye shadows and opted for some mascara, a touch of bronzer, and some cherry-red lip stain that brought out the bright red tones in my strawberry-blond hair. Mostly I felt like a little kid playing dress up, but I tried to talk myself up as I slipped on my strappy sandals.
When I pushed the flap of the teepee open, I didn’t see Beck right away. The sun had dropped lower toward the horizon, finally allowing the temperature to hit a tolerable ninety degrees. My sandals clapped against the rocks and dirt as I wandered toward the center of camp and spun around looking for him. The abstract sculptures and teepees blurred by and then I saw him walking toward me. I stopped my spin and waited for him to get closer. He must have snuck into the teepee after me and changed because he was wearing a vintage Dallas Cowboys shirt that hugged his chest, over a pair of worn, sexy jeans. His hands were stuffed in his pockets and his eyes were locked right on me. That crooked grin was ever present.
When he stepped closer, he whistled, low and sweet. “Wow.”
I looked down at my dress. There was a hint of cleavage and the bottom cut off well above my knees.
“ How’d you sneak in without me seeing you?” I asked with a bemused smile.
Beck winked and shrugged before placing his hand above my heart, right over my scar. He leaned in and gave me a quick kiss, and I could feel my heart fluttering beneath his hand. “You look beautiful.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
We walked hand in hand to the Camper and then Beck drove us to the bar. I couldn’t tell if it was the heat clinging from earlier or just me, but I grabbed a glass of cold ice water as soon as we walked into the bar, trying to lessen the headache forming behind my eyes.
The bar was a casual place; mismatched tables and chairs dotted the floor. A stage was set up on one side of the room. A guy was singing softly while playing an acoustic guitar.
Beck and I propped ourselves against the bar and ordered some appetizers. It was too loud to try and have an actual conversation, so we munched on our food and Beck sipped his Fat Tire beer. I didn’t mind the crowd. In a small town like Marfa, it seemed like most of them knew each other. I people-watched until the bathroom called.
“ I’ll be back,” I murmured to Beck before sliding through chairs to the bathroom. There was a long line of girls chattering, but as I stood against the wooden paneled wall, I closed my eyes and just rested. I realized then that I never told my mom about my fever. I wet some paper towels and dabbed my forehead and neck, telling myself I was overreacting, that it was just the desert heat. After using the bathroom, I fluffed my golden waves into submission and then pushed through the crowd to find Beck. Except the sight I was greeted by made my stomach drop.
The spot I’d been sitting in for the past hour was now occupied by a much prettier girl with her head dipped low to Beck. He was smiling and nodding. Her long blond hair fell pin straight down her back, and when she threw her head back and laughed, I thought the appetizers I’d just consumed would make their second appearance on the bar’s floor.
I stood there for a moment, watching them talk animatedly to one another. It was a strange feeling. I’d never had a boyfriend, or even a boy I cared about. Before meeting Beck, I’d never experienced that tight twist in my stomach. The death grip of jealousy.
I took a deep breath and decided I had two options. I could be an adult and walk over to them and join the conversation, or I could save myself the trouble and just wander around the bar. There were back rooms that people kept meandering out of, so I figured I’d check them out.
With one final glance toward the bar, I backed up before Beck could see me and went in the opposite direction. The first archway opened up to a room where people were playing ping-pong. The next room held a pool table and a dart board.
The darts room was less crowded than the other one, so I walked in and sat down on an empty bench near the door. My head felt a little better when I rested it back against the wall.
There were two guys playing a game and then a couple of people waiting for their turn. I had no clue what the protocol was, so I relaxed on the bench and started to watch the current game, trying to forget about my fever and Beck.
It felt good to be anonymous and I didn’t mind if people thought I was weird for sitting by myself in a bar. There were enough people watching the game around me that I didn’t look like too much of a loner.
“ Are you going to play?” a voice asked to my left. I tilted my head to look up into an unfamiliar pair of bright blue eyes. They belonged to a guy standing to the side of the bench, just a few feet away. He obviously didn’t want to encroach on my space without asking.
“ Oh, you can sit if you want, and I’m not sure, maybe if no one else wants to,” I answered distractedly. The guy sat down next to me and I peered over at him from the corner of my eye. He had blond hair that fell a little longer on the top than it did on the sides. His face was handsome with stubble dotting his jaw line. When he sensed me staring at him, he turned to look at me and I smiled awkwardly before muttering, “Are you going to play?”
“ I don’t have a partner yet,” he answered with a small smile. Smooth.
So he wanted me to be his partner. I didn’t think it was a problem, so I told him I’d play him.
“ What’s your name?” he asked, peering at me gently.
“ Abby.”
He nodded and then offered his hand, “I’m Ethan.”
Ethan looked to be in his early twenties, but it was hard to tell in the bar lighting. A small part of me felt guilty for walking away from Beck, but he seemed occupied, so I’d play one game with Ethan.
The two people before us finished up their game and set the darts back into the bucket underneath the boards.
“ You ready?” Ethan asked, standing up and offering me his hand. I took it because I didn’t want to be rude, but it felt strange. Mine fit in Beck’s like a lock and key. But my hand felt awkward in Ethan’s. I tried to look back through the doorway, but Beck’s spot at the bar wasn’t in my view. I chewed on my bottom lip and then turned to follow Ethan over to the dart board.
“ I haven’t played in a while,” I muttered as I picked up three darts out of the bucket.
Ethan gave me an encouraging smile. “Well, what if we practice for a bit?” he offered.
“ Yeah, okay, that sounds good.” I tried to shake out my shoulders and relax, but it was hopeless. My head was dizzy and I felt guilty about leaving Beck.
My first three throws were beyond pitiful. Like a blind monkey pitiful. Two of the darts hit the paneled wall beyond the dart board and the one dart that did hit the board landed on the far edge.
“ Yikes!” I laughed, stepping up to retrieve my darts.
I looked back to see Ethan stifling a laugh. “I think landing them on the actual board is the goal, but you definitely get points for originality.” I smiled and scrunched my nose.
“ Yeah, yeah. Let’s see how good you are,” I quipped, stepping back to stand next to him. With easy grace, Ethan landed all three disgustingly close to the bullseye.
“ Pfft!” I gaped. “Be honest, have you been practicing all night?”
He walked backwards to grab his darts. “I’m good under pressure. Especially around pretty girls.” He winked and my heart dropped. But he didn’t give me time to say something awkward. He walked back to my side and started sputtering advice.
“ Okay, try to aim your elbow at the board when you bend your arm backw
ard.” I listened to his instructions and slowly bent the dart backwards. “Now it’s all in the wrist…try to let it flick out of your hand,” he continued. A second later, I tossed the dart and it sailed painfully slow across the room and into the ground about two feet in front of the board.
“ Oh my god! This is pitiful!” I huffed, and turned toward Ethan. “Maybe I shouldn’t take your advice.”
He held his hands up in surrender. “True, even your first turn was better than that one.”
I rolled my eyes playfully and turned back to shoot the next dart. I was assuming what I thought was an okay dart-flinging position, when suddenly I felt Ethan’s hands circle my waist so that he could stand behind me and direct the shot. Yes, everyone, I was actually having one of those classic romance moments when the guy attempts to correct the girl’s sports swing. Except it was with the wrong guy and his hands sent a terror down my spine.
“ Abby?” I heard Beck’s voice behind me and my entire body froze. I didn’t want Ethan’s hands on me, but I didn’t have time to protest. Beck had chosen the worst possible second to find me. I twisted around, trying to get out of Ethan’s grasp, but my dart scratched his arm in the process.
“ Oh, crap! Sorry!” I murmured, my face flushing dark red from the embarrassment of the situation. Should I feel bad about Ethan touching me? Yes. But that girl was touching Beck at the bar.
“ I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Beck stepped forward, his features were hard and accusing.
His tone pissed me off. We were both in the wrong and I didn’t deserve to be talked down to. With a huff, I turned and flung my remaining two darts as hard as possible at the board. They landed ridiculously close to the bullseye. Maybe I had to be angry to play darts well.
“ I came back from the bathroom and my spot was taken , so I decided to check out the rest of the bar,” I explained calmly, turning back to Beck. His arms were crossed and I realized he stood a good half foot over Ethan. I was angry with him in that moment, but you should know that he also looked dangerously sexy and I wasn’t immune to that.
Ethan stood there awkwardly glancing between Beck and I. “I’m guessing you don’t want to finish the dart game?” he asked, rubbing his arm. Poor guy.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest and shook my head. “No, sorry, I’m sure you can find another partner though.” I gave him a genuine smile before brushing past him and Beck, wandering out into the hallway.
“ Abby,” Beck called, but there was no need. I wasn’t running away from him. I just didn’t want to have this discussion in front of Ethan. The dark hallway in the back of the bar was a much better venue for our first fight as a couple.
“ We’re together, Abby,” Beck stated, coming to stand directly in front of me so that I was stuck between him and the wall. I still had my arms crossed in front of my chest, attempting to block him from pressing up against me.
“ I know we are,” I bit out, a little too harshly. I didn’t want to admit to being jealous.
“ So what was that? You were letting him touch you and you should have seen the way he was leering down at you. Like you were his latest conquest.” Beck wasn’t hiding his anger, but he wasn’t yelling. That wasn’t Beck’s style, yet his tone gave me chills and for a moment I feared that I’d pushed him too far. We didn’t know each other’s limits. We still hardly knew each other.
“ I didn’t want him to touch me. I came back from the bathroom and that girl was sitting there and it annoyed me. I just…I don’t know what I felt. I just didn’t want to come over and have to stare at her pretty face and compare myself to her. So I went to play darts.”
“ I wasn’t flirting with that girl. She’s here with her boyfriend and they wanted to go check out the Lights with us.”
My face flushed ten times brighter. Fuck my teenage logic. “Well, this,” I motioned between the two of us, “is new to me, and I’m apparently still a nineteen year old, whether I’d like to admit it or not.”
“ You’re my girlfriend. You can’t let another guy teach you how to play darts. I want to teach you how to play darts.” He unwrapped my arms from around my chest and then boxed my head in with his hands against the wall. His face dipped low to mine and I bit my lip in anticipation.
He just called me his girlfriend.
“ He was a shitty teacher,” I joked, staring up into the hazel eyes that were home to me.
Beck closed his eyes and smirked before leaning in and giving me a soul-stealing kiss. His lips met mine and I sighed into him, pressing my hands against his chest and giving myself over to the moment.
When he pulled away, I felt him take a little part of me with him. “I’m sorry,” he offered quietly.
“ Me too,” I smiled wistfully. “But that was a pretty lame first fight. I think we should break plates and stuff next time. Maybe one of us slams the door and leaves for the night to ‘get a pack of cigs’.”
Beck shook his head so that his nose ran across mine. “How about we skip all of that and just have really great makeup sex,” he offered, bending low to kiss my neck. My eyes fluttered closed and I desperately wished we weren’t in the hallway of a bar.
“ Oh…” I sighed. “Okay.”
Please take me in the bathroom. Please take me in the bathroom.
“ We have to go. Izzie and Tom are waiting to go see the Marfa Lights with us,” Beck said, stepping back and reaching for my hand.
“ Now?” I asked, surprised at how fast the plan had formed without me.
“ Yep. There’s a guy that offered to be our tour guide,” Beck answered.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
There was a viewing platform in Marfa built so that tourists could have a good vantage point to view The Lights. It was made up of a small stone building with a large wrap-around porch. Our group made our way up the stairs that lead to the porch after we’d reconvened in the parking lot.
I’d briefly met everyone at the bar before we left. Tom and Izzie were from England and they were backpacking across the United States before heading off “to university”. Izzie wore a black dress with her pin-straight blonde hair. Tom was dressed really well in a pair of ankle jeans, boots, and an army fatigue jacket. Drew, our tour guide, seemed incredibly odd, but I was happy to have a guide so I didn’t complain.
“ So do you guys know much about these lights?” Tom asked with a thick British accent as he started to roll his third cigarette of the night. He was chain-smoking. He’d pull out a bag of tobacco, roll it into a thin piece of paper, and lick it closed, repeating the process as soon as the previous cigarette was finished. I wondered when he had time to eat or drink.
“ Beck told me a little bit about them. That they’re supposed to be aliens?” I answered with a shrug. I tried to force my head to stop spinning by taking deep breaths, but nothing seemed to help.
Izzie smiled, “Yeah. That’s all we’ve heard as well.”
Drew, who’d been inspecting the perimeter of the rock wall for God knows what, stray javelinas maybe, turned when he heard us talking about the lights.
“ They ARE aliens,” he clarified with a sharp tone. Izzie and I shot each other a silly glance and I tried my hardest to stifle a laugh. Okay then.
“ The Lights were first sighted in 1957 and there have been many studies that claim to explain what the lights are, but I believe they’re examples of paranormal phenomena.” Drew’s facts were interesting, but his tone was going in one ear and out the other.
I turned my chin toward the sky and inspected the billions of stars floating over head. Beck and I had seen stars when we went camping our first night, but the stars in Marfa were on steroids. They were brilliant flickers of white against stark blackness. As I stared up trying to connect them all into made-up constellations, I felt closer to Caroline than I had since the last time I’d spoken to her on the phone.
“ The lights are going to
look like small flickers of white light way out in the distance.”
I cast my gaze to where he was pointing, but still wasn’t convinced.
“ I only see that blinking radio tower,” I muttered, confused how that played a role in alien activity.
Drew shot me an annoyed glance, as if to say ‘dumb tourist’. “Everything to the left of the radio tower is Marfa lights. Everything to the right is just headlights.”
I tried to comprehend what he was talking about. I could see the radio tower, but I didn’t see lights on either side of it. Why were the lights on one side aliens, but not on the other side?
I didn’t want to ruin the moment for Beck, so I shrugged and kept my mouth closed.
“ I feel like you’re pulling our leg,” Tom laughed toward Drew, rolling another cigarette. Meanwhile, Izzie pulled out a bottle of cheap champagne from her backpack, apparently uninterested in finding the lights at all. Drew stared daggers at them.
“ Will we know when we see them?” Beck asked.
“ Yes,” Drew groaned.
“ Alriiighty then,” Beck answered. He kept his arm wrapped around me and propelled us toward the ledge and away from the group.
We turned to look back out onto the desert landscape. To be honest, I didn’t really think we’d see anything. It seemed impossible to find something when I had no clue what I was looking for. The stars were distracting and I had to concentrate hard to block out their appeal. Beck and I didn’t budge. We stared off into the distance, trying to stay as still as possible. My eyes scoped every inch of the blackness, and then finally a glow of bright white light came into view.
“ Beck!” I hissed, pointing toward the light, fearing it was about to flicker out.
