by Piper Lennox
My hesitation charges the air. I trace the perfect circle of her navel.
“Nah,” I tell her. The shortest lie I’ve ever said.
“Do you guys still have the ranch?”
I poke the hickey I made, already the color of a strawberry. “No. We sold it.”
“Hope that wasn’t because of me, either.”
“Long time coming. Mom was all over that place. We had to start moving on.” This one’s a partial lie. Juniper was a catalyst, but not the cause. Her leaving made us realize it was time for us to do the same.
“If it helps, we sold it to Howard. He joined it with his property and turned the whole thing into a wild horse sanctuary.”
This makes her smile and relax. My tongue dragging down her thighs certainly doesn’t hurt. “Good. I like the idea of it still being there, and Howard having it.”
“Me, too. We can visit it after the competition, if you want.”
And just like that, the tension’s back.
I’m starting to wonder if it ever really left. The days since our last argument have brought out a quieter version of her. Shrunken down. Way too similar to the girl I first knew.
Maybe it’s all our memory-combing. It’s no secret she’d rather forget her old life, and I’m starting to think that might include her weeks at the ranch.
“Or...not,” I exhale. Damn. Tough crowd.
“No, no, we can do that.” She’s about as convincing as I was when I downplayed my fever. “If you want to.”
“I said if you want to. I don’t really care either way, except that we could catch up with Howard. Figured you might like to see him, that’s all.”
“I would. I’m just not so sure he’d like to see me, after what I did.”
“Howard is incapable of holding grudges. It’s his biggest flaw.”
Juniper laughs quietly, the sound transforming into a sigh when I decide to shut down all this North Dakota talk with something far more fun: I push my tongue inside her without warning.
She lets out a string of divine little noises I’d gladly replace all my music with. I alternate between fucking her with my tongue and coming up to lick her clit. Soon her thighs twitch against my shoulders.
“Van,” she groans, arching her back, pressing herself hard against my face when she comes.
I refuse to stop. I reach underneath her to hold her ass so she can’t pull away when the high ends, and everything’s sensitive. I’m ashamed it took me several nights to learn this about her: if I keep going, even when her instincts have her pushing on my head, I can make her orgasm two, three times in a row.
By now, she knows what I’m doing. Her fists clench against my hair as she fights the urge to stop me. Soon she’s panting again, hips writhing in my hands as I devour every bit of her.
“Oh, God,” she whimpers, when the second one hits.
She folds both arms across her face. All I can see is her mouth, teeth biting her lip hard enough to draw blood, when she finishes.
I’ve never put a condom on so fast in my life.
“Fuck yes,” I sigh about five seconds later, when I push my erection all the way inside her. “Your pussy’s still shaking, baby.”
Her blush spills from her neck to her chest. She loves my dirty talk, but gets embarrassed by how much she enjoys it.
“You know,” I tell her, rocking in and out with deep, slow strokes that make us both groan, “I’ve noticed something.”
She puts one hand on the back of my neck, the other pushing my hair off my face. “What’s that?”
“You never talk dirty. I mean, hell, I’ve only heard you cuss twice, so I guess it’s no surprise you can’t say ‘cock’ or ‘pussy’ or ‘Plow me like a field, Van,’ or—”
“I can,” she laughs softly, “I just...don’t. All those words sound so forced, when I use them.” She rests her finger on my lips. “But they fit so perfectly in your filthy sailor mouth.”
This time, when I pretend to snap at her, she lets me do it. I bite down gently and wet her fingertip until she knows exactly what I’d like her to do with it.
When she reaches between us to rub her clit, I almost lose it. She’s pretty shy about touching herself in front of me.
But right now, she tips her head back and loses herself in it completely.
“I’d come so damn fast and hard hearing you say just one dirty thing.” I withdraw to the tip, then drive in hard again. Her moan stretches out farther.
Her hand moves faster.
“Harder, Van....”
Instantly, I obey. The bed creaks; that broken cabinet in the underbed storage rattles like a hurricane’s tearing through. “More.”
“I’m not sure what else to say.”
“Tell me to fuck you. Tell me you’re about to come on my cock.”
“Fuck me, Van,” she manages, shutting her eyes even tighter and pulling me closer. I draw her earlobe between my teeth and bite down, grinning when she breathes, “I’m coming on your cock.”
As predicted, I orgasm fast. And so, so hard.
“Shit, Juni,” I stammer, the sound choked when I push my face into her neck and thrust as deep as I can. My ears ring, everything sounding like a television on mute when I release.
We hold onto each other for so long, our arms start to fall asleep. I roll off her; she drapes herself across my chest and shudders.
“See?” I pant. “You did great. Keep practicing and you’ll have an even filthier mouth than me.”
She kisses her way up my chest. “I think yours is dirty enough for the both of us.”
Twenty-Seven
“Does that bother you? Your dad having another kid?”
“Not like it changes my life at all. I don’t live with him, anymore.” Van lifts one finger off the wheel, pointing to an exit with a Waffle House. “Breakfast for dinner?”
I shrug; he takes the turn.
Tense as he looks, I decide to press just a little more. “I meant like…the fact he’s having a kid with a woman who’s not your mom.”
Van chews his cheek. “Does it really matter how I feel about it? It’s happening either way.”
Under my stare, he squirms and cracks his knuckles on the dash.
“Okay, yeah,” he confesses, “it’s weird. But I’ll get over it. I mean, the guy waited years just to date anyone else, and it’s been a decade since my mom died. He’s paid his widower’s dues, that’s for sure. Why not have another family while he still can?”
“You know that’s not what he’s doing. He’ll still have one family. It’s just…expanding. And that means yours is, too.”
“Nice idea, but a little oversimplified for my tastes,” he snorts. “The three of them will be under one roof, living one routine. One life. A few holidays and weekend brunches might feature me, sure, but I’m not part of the main cast.”
For once, I can’t think of a positive outlook to combat his negative one. Possibly because his doesn’t really sound bad, just factual.
Either that, or I’ve just been duped by another of his overconfident little speeches to get what he wants. In this case, that’s a prompt end to this conversation…which I give him. I don’t like talking about his dad longer than a few minutes.
Inevitably, he’ll bring up the kiss. I know something in Van needs that answer, even though he doesn’t want it. And I’m still not sure how I’d explain it to him.
In the diner, we settle into our booth and order decaf coffees, “hot as hell.” Van shivers in the bone-chilling AC, swatting my hand away when I check him for a fever.
“Quit that. I’m fine.” Changing the subject, he waves his phone at me. “I messaged Howard to ask if we can stay at the ranch overnight, when the competition wraps up.”
My hunger turns into something rabid, gnawing a hole through my stomach. I don’t want to talk about Howard any more than I want to talk about his father. “What, uh...what did he say?”
“Hasn’t answered yet.” Van scrolls his screen idly before
shutting it off, using the reflection to fix his hair. “I told him we’d probably just park the Transit and stay in that, if we do stop by.” His eyes flash to mine. “But we don’t have to.”
“Up to you.”
“You keep saying that, like you don’t care either way.” He folds his arms and sits back in the booth. “But I get the feeling you care very much. It’d just be nice if you actually said so.”
“Whatever you want to do,” I assure him, and force a casual smile before the waitress returns with our coffee.
I despise the idea of returning to North Dakota at all, let alone the ranch. But I did promise Van I’d take him wherever he wanted to go.
He hasn’t mentioned our deal in days. I wish I could forget it too: call everything balanced and enjoy this new chapter. After all, that agreement was made between two very different people than the ones sitting across from each other now.
But I still have to fix what I ruined. No matter how much things have changed between us. Whatever that was.
If anything really changed at all.
I shake these doubts away, but the echo stays behind. I keep hearing it in Clara’s voice, from our conversation in the Hamptons.
I’ve stopped messaging her for now, even though part of me is dying for an update about her and Wes. Not because I love drama. I think I just need proof a girl can date a Durham and come out of it in one piece.
I haven’t asked, though. It’d be way out of line; we’re still too new friends. But I’m also not sure I want to know.
Ever since Van and I got together, time has slowed down to a beautiful crawl. Like being airborne, stuck inside a blue sky. It’s so much easier to give into this thing with him, shutting out the rest of the world.
Enjoying our time in the sun, refusing to worry if we’ll fall.
“God, you and your hashtags.” Van peeks over my shoulder while I publish my photo to Instagram: the Transit, as seen through the window of the Waffle House, reflections of neon signs and truckers blurred in the glass.
“Hashtags are how I got your compilation clips going viral,” I remind him, “so hush.”
“Hashtag: van life,” he chirps, ignoring me and reading every last one I type. “Is that why you chose this lifestyle? So you could legitimize plastering my name all over the place and not sound like you missed me?”
“Pure coincidence,” I tell him.
“No such thing.” He spins my chair to the aisle and kisses me as he passes, spinning me back before I can catch my breath.
We stop for gas near Lincoln; I nod off against my window.
I bolt awake, as soon as he returns and slams his door shut.
“Whoa.” I scrub my face. “What happened?” It’s not uncommon for pit stops to stoke his anger. We get a lot of people marveling the Transit and asking questions he deems too personal, even if they’re not directed at him. In fact, I think he takes greater offense on my behalf than his own.
From the way he grips the wheel, breathing hard and staring straight ahead, I know this isn’t one of those times. It’s something different.
Something worse.
His phone lands in my lap. “Howard just wrote me back.”
That gnawed-out feeling in my stomach returns.
When I pick up his phone and scroll, it spreads through my heart.
You know you’re always welcome here, Van. But I’m not so sure Juniper visiting is a good idea.
And if I were you...I’d watch things closely, with that one.
Your dad didn’t want me telling you this at the time—he knew you wouldn’t take it well—but now that I know you’re dating her, it feels wrong to keep my mouth shut.
My tears blur the rest. Kerosene drips down the back of my throat as I turn the screen off, set it in his empty cupholder, and wait.
“You kissed Howard, too?”
I don’t have to look at him to know what kind of stare he’s giving me. It’s not a sweet and calm blue, and it isn’t protective.
It’s cold as stone, and filled with that searing, endless hatred I stupidly thought—or maybe just hoped—was gone for good.
Twenty-Eight
“It’s not how it sounds.”
Thank God we were at a gas station when Howard wrote back; I read it while I stood in line to pay, slapping some extra bills down for cigarettes when I got to the counter. Juni convinced me not to buy any more after my last pack ran out.
She convinced me of a whole fucking lot.
We drive for about twenty minutes before I can’t take it, anymore. I pull over beside a field and get out.
A few crickets chirp in the grasses ahead, but nothing else. It’s like nature shut herself up, knowing I’m two seconds away from getting loud as hell.
I finish one cigarette and start the second before Juniper opens her door.
“You sure you should be smoking?”
“You sure you were a virgin when I fucked you?” I snap, and regret it the second it’s out there, even before I turn in time to see her shrink into her seat.
Mom always told me I took arguments too far. Biggest understatement of her life.
Something goddamn hideous lives inside me. Stronger than any guard dog, more disgusting than any busted part of my soul, it makes me hunt down the one button sure to destroy a person. Anyone who hurts me, even though I can’t admit that’s what they’ve done.
And I don’t just push that button. I slam it so hard it shatters.
I know she was a virgin. It was the way she unfolded for me. Kissed me.
Held onto me.
But the fucked-up thing inside me wants to take Juni’s gift and maul it into something unrecognizable, ball it up, and kick it back to her.
And since I can’t, I guess insulting it by pretending it wasn’t real is the next best thing the beast can come up with.
“Is there anything I can say that you’ll believe?” she whispers.
“Yeah.” I ash the cigarette too hard, breaking it. The whole thing hisses when I flick it into some rainwater and face her. “You can stop saying, ‘It’s not how it sounds,’ or ‘It’s not what it looked like,’ and actually tell me what the hell it was.”
Sitting sideways in her seat, legs dangling from her open door, she puts her face in her hands. A few seconds pass before she looks up, fingers locked behind her neck. She stares at the field, not me.
“I was confused. Messed-up. I thought...I thought they wanted me to do that.”
“Throwing them under the bus. Nice. Unoriginal as shit, but, you know. Points for making an effort at a somewhat believable lie.”
“Not because of anything they did,” she barks, the echo of her voice swallowed in the nothingness of the sky. “Just because of what they were. Men. Older men. Ones who were giving me all this stuff, helping me out.... Up until that point, that’s all I knew. Men expected it, especially if they helped you somehow.” Her voice snags on itself, and she quiets. “That’s just how it was, where I came from.”
“Where you came from. The greatest fucking mystery of them all.” I fold my arms and lean against the Transit, feeling it rock under my weight.
We lift our eyes at the same time, staring at the same point in the distance when a bird of prey screeches.
“Crown Plains.”
I think she’s christening the field or something equally crazy, until I glance at her and see she’s got her eyes closed, leaning against the pillar of the windshield. Her bare feet kick back and forth in the breeze.
“Crown Plains,” I repeat.
Hesitating, she nods. “That’s where I’m from.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Exactly. It wasn’t real. That’s just what they told us it was called.”
She rakes both hands through her hair, while I stand there and mourn the fact I’ll never be able to see a woman do that without thinking of her doing it after an orgasm, or yoga, or when the air’s muggy and sweat drips down her spine the way I love.
I mourn
a hell of a lot more than that, actually. How did we get here, right back where we started?
Worse than where we started?
“Who?” Fuck it: I light another cigarette. My chest aches too badly to get more than a couple draws in, so I toss that one into the puddle too. It feels like there’s a boulder on my chest, but my inhaler only helps a little.
“Our church.”
“Your church?” I sneer, even though I don’t mean to. It just sounds so bizarre, I don’t know what else to do. Whose church invents a fake town name, just for the hell of it?
That’s the thing about Juniper’s story. Every piece adds another detail to the big picture, but obstructs the view worse than before.
“The more I know about you,” I tell her, “the less it feels like I do.”
She opens her eyes and stares at me. “Nothing you can’t find out online.”
“I’m not talking about your fucking Instagram or blog posts,” I shout—but only because she shut the door before I could speak.
The unholy beast rears its head again.
No: heads. I think it’s got a million, every last one gnashing its own set of teeth and screaming a different horrible idea at me.
I punch the side door without thinking, without caring that it leaves a dent and kills my hand. I flex it while I pace around the Transit, wondering more if it’s appropriate to call Howard for an eleven-hour ride to his place than if my hand is broken. I decide “no” on both counts.
“Maybe it’s better if I just drop you off at the ranch,” she says, after I heft myself back in and start the engine. “After the competition is over, I mean. You can visit and stuff while I find a campground. Then, whenever you’re ready to hit the next place, I’ll pick you up.”
This is, essentially, what we’d planned at the start of this deal: Juniper would spend the summer being my glorified taxi, hitting the gas at my beck and call until whatever mystical being she believes in deemed us even.
In other words, it’s not like this idea is new.
