by Amber Burns
Nina stood there, seething, her shoulders heaving back and forth, riding the adrenaline spiked waves of her anger as it riveted her body into sharp, taut angles. She balled her hands into fists and held them tightly against her thighs, containing herself into one small, fiery pellet of rage. She stared back at Rowan, her nostrils flared with anger, her eyes gleaming, her lips pursed into a snarl. Hot angry tears slipped from her eyes and rolled down her flushed cheeks, but she did not so much as move a muscle to wipe them from her face; she did not acknowledge them at all. She simply stood frozen, angry, watching him intently, daring him to insult her.
She felt sure that he stood silent now because he was absorbing everything she had just told him. She felt suddenly that she might hate this man, this man who thought that rich people were just rich people because they were lucky or had been born that way; this man who condemned the fact that yes, she would have a party when she got back, and yes, she would accept gifts from people, because that was what normal people did. She felt that, at that moment, she and Rowan did not see eye to eye. And she hoped that the words she had just spoken had just succeeded in educating this man, if only by an inch, on the matters of the world, because he clearly had no idea how hard it was to get to where she had succeeded in getting. Nina stewed, thinking of how many hours of overtime she put in at work, of how many people she was forced to suck up to, just to make the amount of money she did. She would not have a fucking woodsman, someone who was basically a fucking hermit, telling her that she was horrible because she actually worked to make money and live the life that everyone in the world wanted to live for themselves. She would not.
Rowan stood still for several long moments, simply breathing, blinking, looking right back at Nina. He no longer looked angry, Nina noticed, nor did he seem sad. He stood there, his face relaxed, his arms uncrossed, simply looking straight ahead at her. Finally, he breathed out, the breath making a rushing, sighing sound as it slipped from his lungs. Then he looked at her again, and he shook his head, slowly, sadly.
“You just have no idea.”
The words were not an insult, there was no force behind them at all. They sounded more remorseful, more wrought with a great, deep, sadness than any words Nina had ever heard anyone speak before. Rowan looked at her for several more long moments before he finally sighed and turned around. He began to dress, his back to her, slowly and deliberately; as though the simple task was suddenly extremely difficult for him to force himself to do. He spoke, his back still turned to Nina, his limbs still wrestling to pull the clothes onto his suddenly weakened body.
“All ready to go?”
Nina watched the muscles in Rowan’s back work to wrestle the shirt down over his head. She felt something, not unlike regret twinge in the pit of her stomach. But she grabbed her dead phone from where it lay on the window sill and nodded, even though the dark man’s back was still turned to her, and he could not see her face.
“Yes,” she said, suddenly calm once again.
Rowan turned around, avoiding Nina’s eyes.
“Alright,” he said. “I guess there is no point in waiting around, anyway. Let’s just get a move on and go.”
Nina looked down at her feet. Her shoes had been forever lost in the dark depths of the tangled forest, she had nothing to wear on her feet. She looked up at Rowan.
“What about my shoes?” she asked.
Rowan glanced at her feet.
“What about them?” he asked. His voice sounded flat, dead as if all emotion had been stripped from his heart.
Nina stared at him incredulously.
“Do you not remember? The part where I lost my Louboutins in the forest?”
Rowan continued to stare at her blankly. She dipped her chin, her eyes widening.
“My high heels?” she said, wondering if maybe he just had not understood what the brand name connotated.
Rowan nodded as if he now understood.
“Right. Right.” He looked dejectedly around the room, then crossed to the linen closet and pulled out a pair of soft, leather slippers. He extended his hand towards Nina. “Here. I made these, but they turned out too small anyway. Take them and put them on. You can just have them.” He looked away.
Nina eyed him carefully for a moment, trying to force him to make his coal black eyes meet her own. He did not. She finally grabbed the leather slippers from his outstretched hand. They were soft and smooth to the touch but made expertly, so that they were strong and untearable. She slipped them onto her slender feet and wriggled her toes. The material felt gloriously luxurious against the soles of her chapped feet. She glanced out of the sides of her green eyes at Rowan.
“Thanks,” she said quietly.
She watched as Rowan nodded his dark head up and down. He made as if he was about to walk out of the door, but at the last second, he stopped short. He suddenly turned around, his eyes falling upon Nina, his mouth open as if he was about to say something. But he saw her, holding her phone clutched against her chest, dressed in those tartan pants and that designed jacket, and the words were stoppered before they ever slipped from out of his lips. He slapped his lips closed and turned back around, then walked slowly out the door.
Nina stared after him for a moment, her mind filling with words unsaid, things she could have done to make their argument not an argument at all, but a conversation. Yet she found herself gripping her phone tightly against her chest, forcing herself to think.
No, Nina. No. You said what you could say, and you did what you could do. The rest is up to him, and it is obvious that he does not have any desire to make anything work. Well, I don’t know… something like that, anyway, she thought, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that had suddenly taken complete control over her stomach.
She inhaled and then exhaled sharply, quickly, trying to clear her mind for the journey that lay ahead. Outside, she heard the muffled rumbling of the motorcycle engine revving to life, and she glanced about the room, suddenly sentimental. She was flooded with the instant realization that he was probably right, she did not feel that she would ever return to this cabin in the woods, in the middle of fucking nowhere. It was not that she didn’t love him, up until just a few moments ago she had been so sure that she loved the man who had built this cabin with his own hands that she would have bet her life upon the fact. At the end of the day, what pulled Nina towards home, permanently, was that she did not feel she deserved this life, she did not feel she was good enough for it. For she craved money, she craved hot showers and electricity and laptops and wifi hotspots. She did not think that she, Nina, was good enough at conquering the forest, at living off of the land, at being a lover, because that was, at the end of the day, largely part of it. She did not see herself to be the person that this man, this dark and handsome, muscled man, deserved. She knew in her heart that she was wrong for him and that she would never be enough, and so she clutched the phone tightly to her for comfort, took a deep breath of sweet, sweet country air, and headed out the door and towards the sound of the rumbling motor.
Rowan sat on the black bike, the dark helmet pulled over his head. His gloved fingers wrapped around the handle bars and he looked Nina’s way. He jerked his head upwards as she approached, signaling for her to straddle the back of the bike. Nina threw her lithe thighs over the leather upholstered seat and shakily shifted her arms around his waist. She felt Rowan breathe in deeply as she circled her thin arms around his toned middle. She turned her head to the side, surprised to be fighting back tears. The wind kissed her lightly upon her closed eyelids and ran its fingers through her tangled red locks. She pressed her pink lips together and bid the cool forest wind a small private goodbye. Then she laid her cheek on the back of the leather jacket that Rowan wore and forced herself to keep her eyes closed as he kicked off from the dusty ground and sped away; away from the cabin, down the curling trails of the green and gray forest.
9
Nina kept her eyes squeezed tightly, closed, as Rowan steered the glea
ming black motorbike through the leave laden forest trails. He curled the bike left and right, curving around obstacles, leaping over rocky faces in a way that made Nina’s stomach fly and forced her hands to curl more tightly around his waist. As she heard the rush of running water, she knew they were nearing the place where Rowan had first discovered her, sitting crying in a puddle of her own filth, black forest mud streaked across her face. She felt a single tear dribble down her cheek and stuck out her tongue to catch the salty morsel before the man driving the bike through the dangerous trails could notice that she was crying. She finally opened her eyes as she realized that the light of the warm afternoon sun had begun to bathe her in golden warmth and she knew this must mean that the darkness of the forest was subsiding; that they were nearing the place where she had first left the car. She could not believe her eyes when she realized that she recognized the strip of narrow trail down which they traveled. For, yes, it was, it really and truly was, Rowan was slowly steering his prized bike down the narrow path that Nina had complained about when she had first entered the forest for a picnic with her friends.
Rowan slowed the motorcycle to a crawl as the bumped over several exposed roots and the path grew skinnier still. Nina peered forward, squinting, daring to loosen her grip around Rowan’s rock hard abs. She saw it, and she felt as if her heart was about to leap out of her mouth and dance upon her lips: the clearing. It lay just ahead of them, spangled in golden sunlight and treeless, absolutely, deliciously treeless. Nina could no longer stand it. Before she could second guess herself, she leaped off of the back of the motorcycle and sprinted forward on her bare feet, her naked soles slapping the rough forest ground, her toes gripping wet leaves, her arms outreached in pure, unadulterated joy. She yelped out loud as the forest edged its way away from her, thinning around her skipping form.
Finally, she fell to her knees at the edge of the parking lot, tears pricking her eyes, her cheeks flushed with the colour of rose buds, her hair wild and shivering all around her as she pressed her fingers against the gravel, feeling the very texture of civilization pressing up against every individual one of her nerves. Her fingers worked through the pebbled lay of the ground; her feet felt somehow suddenly more grounded, more sure of themselves and their footfalls. Her eyes had become overwhelmed, suddenly having to view such a wide and long and twisting expanse of solid road made Nina feel slightly dizzy, and the vastness of everything, the open land, clear-cut ages and ages ago, made her feel as if the world was rapidly expanding in all directions outwards, right before her very eyes. She swallowed and forced her eyes to remain open, despite the overwhelmingness of it all. Then she ran her hands through her hair, her head shaking back and forth, back and forth, a huge grin overpowering her face, bringing so much light to her features. She was happy. She could not believe she had made it back to the place where it had all began.
That thought, the fact that something had begun, brought Nina’s excitement instantly crumbling down around her. The day still shone with incredible brightness; the sun still breathed its sparkling warmth upon her skin. The vastness of the world still hung before her, yet these visions, these realizations, had suddenly lost their original sweetness. Nina felt the pinpricks of doubt popping up across the back of her mind and had to squeeze her eyes shut and violently bite down upon her lips in order to ignore the feeling of guilt and sadness that forced its way into the pit of her stomach. She breathed in and out, slowly, savoring the scent of the air, forcing herself to think about everything she was so happy to be going back to, her friends, her bed, her shoes, her favorite restaurants, but nothing reeked of happiness in the way it first had. Not anymore. Finally, Nina let her eyes drift back open. She blinked as a single, stubborn tear snuck out from between her auburn lashes and crept its path down her pale cheek. She swallowed once more and turned, slowly, to let her eyes fall upon the man who still sat behind her.
But Rowan was nowhere to be found. Nina turned and stopped short, her feet nearly tripping over each other in her shock.
Where could he be?
There had been no sound of the motor of the bike revving off or starting up; he had not so much as said a goodbye to Nina. She stared, frozen, absolutely unbelieving, completely thrown off, her mouth hanging open in a total lack of comprehension.
“He would never do that,” she heard herself saying out loud. Then she caught herself just as quickly. She snapped her lips back together, set her jaw, and straightened out her disheveled mass of fiery hair. She huffed out shortly. “Well,” she said, correcting herself. “You do not know that, now do you, Nina. No, you do not know that at all. Because, at the end of the day, you never really knew the guy anyway.”
The second she spoke the words she felt something like a punch hit her hard in the inside of her stomach; her mind whispered rapidly, urgently, that Nina did know Rowan, that she knew him well, and that he knew her better than Nina had allowed any other single living person to know her. But Nina was stubborn, and she stayed resolute. She shook her head subconsciously again.
“You did not know him,” she repeated firmly to herself, working hard to convince her mind to play along with her words.
She cast one long, drifting look across the forest, squinting between the foliage. But the daylight fell in glinting flecks across the green and shivering leaves and Nina could not for the life of her make out the sign of the bike, or the man who comanded it, no matter for how long she forced herself to peer at the softly blowing trees. Finally, Nina turned on her heel and put her back to the forest. She felt something pulling at her as if the forest itself was tapping her on the shoulder, reaching out and begging her not to leave, to stay. She swore she heard the wind whisper to her that if only she stayed, she would finally discover what it meant to be truly happy. Yet Nina shook this all off, she ignored it as she walked out of the forest.
The foliage fell away around her, and finally, finally, she was completely surrounded by tarmac and pebbles and emptiness. The tall trees fell away, and she stood before the shiny red surface of her sun-warmed car. She placed a fond palm upon the hood of her car and smiled. The warm metal of the vehicle felt comfortable and familiar beneath her fingers. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and fished out her keys. She grinned at them and twirled them through the air, swinging the shiny metal back and forth as she walked around the side of her car to the driver’s side. She pressed the car unlocked and beeped to life. The sound jostled Nina, she leaped up, forgetting the loudness of the metallic beeping. She laughed at herself as she swung open the car door and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Wow, Nina,” she chuckled aloud. “A few days away from the real world and you can not even handle a single freaking beep, huh.”
She shook her head and rammed the keys into the ignition, then twisted. The car jumped to life, and the radio blared in her ears. The sound of it was all so well known that Nina felt instantly comforted; as if she was finally back at home after a long and trying journey. She reached up her chipped fingernails and flicked the overhanging mirror down so that she could get a look at her face. Her jaw dropped open. Her cheeks were slightly tanned, kissed by the sun’s constant shining; her eyes looked so young without their normal heavy eyeliner and blue-black eye shadow. Her eyebrows looked as if they had become true rebels, growing every which way, tiny hairs sprouting off of the cardboard cut out shapes she had worked so hard on maintaining. And her hair, well, Nina did not even know how she was going to tame that mass ever again. It flew out in all directions, fiery red curls of burning chaos, tangling and leaping over each other as though burning with real flames. She shook her head in shock and quickly slapped the mirror closed. She twisted the knob of the radio upwards, for she was for once without her iPod, and her phone still remained uncharged. She checked behind her and then pressed her foot down on the gas pedal and began to slowly back out of the parking lot and back onto the open road that led back home.
Just as Nina was about to turn out of the lot, she decided to
take one last look at the forest. The moment her eyes fell upon the green wall that stood before her, she swore, for a second, that she saw a glint of something moving behind the leaves. She slammed on the brakes and stared hard at the rustling of the leaves, but nothing jumped out at her. She knew it simply be her mind playing tricks on her, but had it been? She could not force herself to drive the car forwards. She sat like that, frozen, the car stereo still blaring the top forty of the summer all around her, her eyes fixed in a stare upon the mystery, the secrets that the green leaves just might contain. Finally, she had to tell herself she was being ridiculous, she could not sit there all day, staring, waiting for a sign when clearly there was nothing. She ripped her gaze off of the green expanse and slammed her foot down hard on the gas. The car shot forward, leaving the forest in a haze of dusty motor excrement, and sped down the road. Nina refused to even check the rearview mirror until she had turned off of the long side street and pressed the car into the whizzing traffic of the highway. She would never, ever look back.
