by Amber Burns
He slowly reached down to the grassy forest floor and heaved his bike helmet back up into his lap. And there he sat, his arms resting on the top of the shining helmet, his eyes staring out, tracing the shapes the dark shapes of the naked trees began to make against the sky until the last bits of sunlight had snuck away to their hiding spot beneath the horizon. It was only then, when the world around him had transitioned from green to black, that Rowan slipped off of the motorcycle and pressed onwards towards the cabin he had built in the heart of the forest.
The moon hanging over him, full and voluptuous, caught the shoulders of his leather jacket and tickled him beneath the chin as he dragged his muscular body across the grass and towards the door. He stared up at the sky, so full of stars, just yesterday so full of possibility. He felt suddenly as if the stars would never again hold the same beauty that he had felt they had shone with on that night that he and Nina had soared around the darkness on the bike. Thinking of her now brought the ghost of a smile to his lips. The way she had held the gun so fiercely, it made him hard just to think about how confident, how fiery she was. Her red hair suited her well, the woman who wore fire upon her head was a lady whose soul was stitched from flame. She was passionate, beautiful, sexy beyond belief, Rowan’s hand caught the door knob of his cabin, and he felt something catch in his throat, felt himself unwilling to turn the knob and let himself back inside of his home. For in that second, for however briefly, Rowan truly believed that opening that door would send all of the bits of Nina, her smell, the memories of her looking up at him as she lay on the kitchen floor, the sound of her laughing or singing as she made them coffee, would all come flooding out and smack him so hard in the face that he would be unable to breathe, that he would drown in them, these memories, these images, these smells.
After a long moment, Rowan finally twisted his fingers and let the door open. The wooden door creaked open slowly, revealing the inside of the home, just as Rowan had left it. It was uneventful, no rush of Nina flying through the rooms to suffocate him. Just silence, the gentle whisper of the wind as it passed through the open doorway and tickled the rooms of the house. Rowan simply looked at his home, peered at the interior as he balanced upon the brink of the entryway, as if he was an intruder inspecting the house to see what treasures or dangers might lay in store. After a long second, Rowan took the step forward. He walked into his home, closed the door behind him, and busied himself with the kindling of a fresh fire in the fireplace.
When the flames burst to life, Rowan leaned back from the heat and watched in silence. The warmth kissed his cheeks and brought color back into his heart. He felt calm at last begin to again take over his center, it spread a sort of peacefulness, a rested “It’s alright” feeling over his body. He felt his shoulders relax, though he had not been aware of the fact that he had been tensing them. He let himself lean back, resting upon his strong arms, his muscles catching the light of the dancing flames, emphasized by the shadows that had begun to dance dreamily about the room.
Something about watching the fire licking and leaping made Rowan feel comforted, it made him feel as if he were watching Nina’s hair blowing in the wind as it had on that dark and passionate night. So he let his dark eyes tangle with the wild dance of the flames, and in doing so he felt calm enough, comforted enough, that he was at long last able to drift off to sleep.
10
Nina twisted the steering wheel to smoothly pull the car around the corner of the final bend. She could not believe she was headed home. She had not been gone that long, but even now the enormousness of the houses that she passed had begun to overwhelm her. After her time spent living in the center of the forest, in a modest though beautifully crafted cabin, she was having a hard time wrapping her mind around the monstrosities that seemed to soar up all around the roadside. She swallowed as she stared up at one particularly large home, it sprawled the entirety of a block of property, all turrets and beige stucco and winding marble staircases. She slowed the car so that she could get a better look at the house. In the gleaming light of late afternoon, she found it almost intimidating to look at, the hugeness of the home just seemed so overwhelming now. Nina could not believe that just a few days out in the middle of the woods had changed her perspective on this property so much, for when she had been leaving for that very same walk with her friends that had led her to Rowan, she had driven by that very same house and remarked upon its beauty.
She remembered it vividly:
“Can I pick the song though?”
Jess slapped Anna’s hands away from the ipod USB.
“You are totally not being the deejay for this trip, Anna,” she said, her eyes glinting as she glared at her friend.
Anna raised her hands in mock defense and pulled away, leaning back against the backseat.
“I don’t understand why you always have to be the one who controls all the music, Jess,” she said playfully.
Jess turned to face the back seat of the car, her golden hair slapping against her painted pink cheeks.
“Um, hm, let’s, like, think a second, kay?” she began. She rolled her eyes upwards in an overexaggerated thinking look. “Hmm. Oh!” She raised a perfectly manicured finger, the purple nail came to a glittery point that looked sharp enough to take out someone’s eye, if need be. “Right! We don’t let Anna do the music because Anna has like, the most depressing music ever. Right.” Jess smiled sarcastically and stared daggers at Anna.
Anna shook her head and laughed.
“Whatever keeps you happy, you child,” she said, waving a hand at Jess. Jess turned to Esme, her eyes open wide, her heavily made-up eyes blinking in a desperate plea for Esme’s support. Esme plucked one of her iPod earbuds out of her ears just long enough to cast her gray eyes over her two friends. Then she popped the earbud back in and said without expression: “I really do not care.”
Jess rolled her eyes and turned back around, bouncing her head off of the white leather of the seats. Then she reached forward and began to scroll through the music on the iPod, her long nails tapping noisily against the screen.
Nina glanced in the rearview mirror, making sure she was pulling out of the driveway properly, she did not want to even come close to colliding with the fourteen million dollar restored car her neighbor had boasted about and parked just inches from her driveway.
“Nina, can we, like, actually move please?” Jess sighed, punching her nails at the iPod screen.
Nina winced and completed the backing out successfully, passing the expensive, prized car by mere inches.
“Yea, yea, hun,” she said, feeling calmer now, more secured. “We’re good; we’re good.”
Anna drummed her fingers against the window, flicking at the window switch.
“Yo Nina!” she yelped playfully. “Can we please get these windows down here? It is fucking beautiful outside, and you are trapping me in this air-conditioned piece of shit! Let us let the sunshine in!”
Esme threw Anna an unimpressed side eye and yanked her ear buds out.
“Can we maybe, like, not?” She asked monotonously. Anna grinned back at her.
“Oh, Esme, darling,” she sighed, leaning her head on her friend’s shoulder as Esme cast her eyes up towards the roof of the car. “We are just getting started! Road trip woooo!”
Nina laughed and rolled the windows down. The breeze flew in and played with their hair, and tickled their cheeks. Anna yelped in joy and threw her head out the window.
“YEAAAAHHH! HIKING DAY TRIP WOOO!” She cried, her short hair rustling in the breeze. Jess watched her, her upper lip curled, then shook her head.
“K, Anna?” Jess began. “You, like, really seriously though, need to like, grow the fuck up? And the longer it takes you, like, the harder it gets to actually be mature? So you should probably like get a move on with that? That is what they tell, me anyway.”
Jess turned back to the iPod, tapped at the screen, and suddenly the car was filled with the sounds of the latest techno-hip. Esme
’s purple painted lips twisted into the tiniest grin and she began to move her head back and forth, her eyes closing in pleasure. Anna rolled her eyes at Jess but laughed, waving her hands out of the window, playing with the breeze as it rushed through her fingers like sand. Nina smiled, pushed her sunglasses down over her bright eyes, and nodded along to the music, drumming her fingers upon the patent leather of the steering wheel in time to the beat.
Anna sang along happily, her off tune voice filling the car with light. Nina maneuvered the shiny red vehicle through the narrow laneways of the private community, steering carefully around the corvettes, BMWs, and Lamborghinis that dotted the road. She curled the car around a swaying bend, the signal that they were departing the gated community and heading out onto the open road, swinging the car past a rolling expanse of a house, a tumble of white brick, beige stucco, soaring turrets and ornate windows.
“Oh, you guys, fuck,” Nina sighed, slowing the car down to a labored crawl as the house loomed into sight around them. The other women leaned forward, allowing themselves to get a better view of the architectural monstrosity.
“Holy shit,” Anna mused, her mouth agape, her dark eyes running over the course of the house. “That is not, like, just one house.”
“That totally is just one house,” Jess retorted quickly, glancing enviously at the tallest turret. “My dad actually helped design it, so…” she let the boast hang in the air, filling the others’ minds with curiosity.
“Fuck. How many square feet is it, did he say?” Anna asked, pushing forward and wedging herself between the two front seats of the vehicle in order to get a closer look at the house. Nina sidled over slightly as Anna jostled her shoulder.
“Um…” Jess tapped at her forehead with one of her sharp nails. “Yeah. He is like always talking at me though so like I don’t always actually listen, you know how you do that thing when your parents are like talking…” she looked at Nina and Nina nodded in empathy. “Yea. Um but I think that this was the one that he said was like five thousand square feet? Like around there. I dunno. It might be like smaller. Or maybe bigger. Whatever.” Jess delivered the words in an unaffected tone but the way her eyes gleamed hungrily as they lapped up the sight of the sprawling mansion revealed her true desire for a home of its likeness.
“Wow,” Nina sighed lustily. “Five thousand square feet. Fuck. My place is only three thousand. Like I’m basically living in a fucking cardboard box.” She rolled her eyes in disgust.
“I know,” Anna chimed in. “It’s actually embarrassing to have people over.”
“Fuck, guys, I dunno,” Jess said. “Like yeah, it’s nice and all, but like can we not just like actually freaking stalk this person’s home like? I thought we were going to take Insta pics of a cute picnic or something, not just stare at some house that isn’t even that impressive.”
Anna shook her head and leaned back into the backseat.
“Yea,” she agreed. “You’re right. It’s a killer house, but we’re being total fucking creepos right now,” she laughed.
“Totally,” Nina agreed, but she could not tear her eyes from the vision of the house. She felt in her heart an attraction to it so powerful that she could not stop her mind from wandering, from imagining what it looked like on the interior, and what she would not give to call it her own…
“Nina.”
Esme was staring at the front seat, her darkly lined eyes boring into Nina with a look of pure annoyance so sharp it jolted Nina’s gaze away from the mansion and back onto the road.
“Yea,” Nina blubbered, slamming her foot down on the gas hard. The car shot forward and Jess squealed, gripping at Nina’s thigh in shock. Anna laughed, and Esme rolled her eyes, coolly slipping her iPod headphones back into her ears.
They drove on, singing along to the top forty that Jess ensured kept blaring steadily from the car’s speakers, chatting about what they had liked and hated from the Gucci Spring Fashion Show, and gossipping about their co-workers. Nina spoke more than anyone, well, except maybe for Jess, and yet all the while they drove and chattered, her heart wasn’t in it. She could not for the life of her, try as she might, pull her thoughts from that house. She drove on and imagined how wonderful it would be to come home to a giant house like that, each and every night. She pictured herself throwing open the doors, tossing a tip at the maid’s feet, and then settling down with a bottle of wine in one of the house’s jacuzzis. And at that moment, as she steered the car over the bumpy narrow side road, on course to the hiking ground, she felt positively certain that if she could one day have a house just like that one, she would be the happiest person in the world. Having a huge sprawling home filled with everything she could ever want, that would be when Nina was finally and truly happy.
“Yea but what if you step in some animal shit? Poopy stilettos, not so cute,” Anna was saying to her.
Nina rolled her eyes behind the concealment of her dark shades and forced herself to stop thinking about the house. She had to focus in order to properly combat her friend’s attacks about her shoes, there was no way she was going to let Anna talk down to her about fashion. Nina bit her bottom lip and forced a stiff smile across her face.
“You just worry about you, you little forest adventurer,” she said through gritted teeth, her voice jumping in pitch. “I’ll take care of myself and my cute shoes too, alright?”
“Is there like a rest stop somewhere? Because I totally have to pee,” Esme whined.
Nina reached forward and cranked the music.
“I can’t hear you!” she yelled. She smashed her foot down hard on the gas pedal and the girls shrieked as she sent the car flying forward along the bumpy dirt road.
***
Nina sat still in the car, staring ahead at the house as it appeared before her now. In her mind she ran through that day, the way she had pulled over so that she could stare at the home, force admiration upon her friends, and then had been so unable to pull her thoughts away from the house; to make her mind stop wandering through the corridors and endless rooms of the mansion. Now, she could not feel more different, she truly felt disgusted as she stared at the house now, and something deep inside of her seemed to whisper its longing for nature, or at least, some semblance of it. Shocked at her emotions, she tore her gaze away from the mansion and drove onwards, curling the car around the remainder of the curve, finally re-entering her private, gated community.
After countless twist and turns on the narrow path of the private roadway, Nina turned onto Poplar Tree Lane, and her stomach flipped over as her home appeared on the horizon. She bit at her lip as her electric green eyes swept over the three-story home of perfectly clean white brick and dark gray trim. She drove on and the lawn, spic and span and perfect, thanks to the constant doting of her exceptionally well-paid help, seemed to smile at her from a distance; welcoming her home as if rolling out a carpet of impeccably bright green grass.
She slowly pulled the car into the driveway, coming to a gentle stop. Then she pushed open the door of the vehicle and placed her leather slippers upon the rose gold tiling. The cement felt so solid, so surprising, beneath her feet, she had become so accustomed to the soft feeling of grass or forest beneath her bare toes, or the gentle give of the hand laid, wooden floors of Rowan’s cabin in the woods. She slowly walked to the front double doors of her home, marveling at how large her house felt, she had always felt embarrassed by her home because it had always seemed so small in comparison to the houses of her neighbours and her relatives, but now she could not believe how massive her home felt rising up before her. She pressed the key into the lock and let the doors swing open as she slipped her hips through the entranceway of her home.
Nina did not pause to soak in the vast differences between Rowan’s cabin and her home, she already knew that her house contained more objects and more square footage in a single room than Rowan’s entire cabin.
“Stop thinking about him,” she said out loud, pushing forward through the rooms until she fo
und her phone charger.
She yanked her dead phone from the wall and plunged the charger into it. In moments, the iPhone jumped to life, and Nina felt herself relax, felt her shoulders drop and soften, her breath rush out of her. She powered up her phone and held it to her ear. The familiar ring tone, followed by the click of someone picking up on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” the warbling voice asked tentatively.
Nina swallowed.
“Mom?” she said. She sniffed. “I’m home.”
11
“Yes, thank you! I just have to visit the restroom for a moment, thanks. I’ll be right back.”
Nina struggled out of the arms of her coworker and squeezed past the crowds of people sipping champagne.
“Nina! Nina!” two half drunken interns cheered as she pushed past.
“Ha,” she laughed, flashing a smile. “Thank you, boys.”
“Hey, Nina!” Felicia from the statistics department was suddenly in front of Nina, waving a glass of vodka punch enthusiastically, emphasizing her words with sloshed pink alcohol. “It is so great that you got home safe and sound, lady.”
