by Amber Burns
The red car disappeared from the strip of side road that led from the highway to the parking lot and Rowan blinked back angry tears. He was angry because he was crying; he was crying because his heart felt as heavy as a stone inside his chest. He squeezed the handle bars of the ebony bike tightly, bracing himself, supporting himself. He inhaled deeply and slapped a hand across his face, wiping the tears away with his tattooed paws. Then he took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the clarity and calmness that only the forest’s pure, green air could provide him with. He pressed his hands against the bike and pushed it forward, slowly steering it from the spot he had stashed it in off of the trail, and rolling its reliable wheels back onto the skinny, tree cleared path.
He had slipped away and into the always friendly arms of the trees when he had no longer been able to watch the fire-haired girl’s joyous dancing. The happiness she so clearly felt when making her reunion with the beginning tips of civilization had first made him smile, because seeing the woman that he loved so filled up with joy made Rowan’s own heart sing. Yet as the moments passed and Nina walked further and further out of the forest and became more and more intensely involved with her celebration of all things material, Rowan’s joy had begun to ebb and ebb until nothing remained in his chest but deep and great sadness. Without even thinking, he had quietly pushed his way between the leaves, slipping into the green as easily as the wind itself. And there he stood, as silent and sturdy as a tree, watching with unblinking eyes, as the girl he loved was lured back to her world, a world so far removed from Rowan’s heart, by the glinting of her well-kept car, by the flatness of the paved road, ironed out by society’s glaring monotony. Rowan could not help the tears from falling as he watched his fire headed goddess slide inside the car and laugh to herself as she turned the vehicle away from him, flying down the road without so much as a single backward glance.
That was not true, Rowan caught himself as he stumbled through the dizzying thoughts. She did look back, he thought.
He had been about to press the bike away and out from between the bookends of the trees and the leaves when he had noticed that the red car, now just a tiny red speck on the horizon line, had stalled. He had wondered at first if maybe the car had given out, maybe the vehicle itself had protested Nina’s leaving so much that it had made itself conveniently out of gasoline. But that couldn’t have been it, he reasoned, because continue onwards the red speck quickly had. It had been brief, and he could not be sure because of the distance, but Rowan felt in his heart and in the pit of his stomach that Nina had stopped to stare back at the forest. To stare back at what she was leaving behind in the dust that spewed from the motor of her fancy car. To stare back, perhaps, though Rowan nearly dared not think it, perhaps to stare back at him.
Shaking the thoughts from his mind, Rowan succeeded in straightening the bike’s nose down the front of the skinny cleared path. He swung his muscled body over the seat and let the emotion fall from his body with a heavy sigh. He straightened his back, letting the wind rustle his hair and revive his spirits. What he thought about Nina’s parting did not matter now. What he had felt for her could not matter to him, either, because now she was gone, and she had made her choice. She had tasted life with him, and life between the trees, and she had announced, quite fiercely, that it was not the life she wished to have. It stung him to the core, but he could not allow himself to continue to feel this pain. It had no place out here, he lived alone, and he was not about to invite pain and heartsickness to move in and begin sharing his cabin. His cabin was his, as it had always been, and he realized now the real reason for that.
“Alone, that is the way you, Rowan, were always meant to be,” he said aloud, as he kicked the motorcycle into drive. Its engine soared to life, speckling the forest with shivering thunder. He slid his helmet down over his eyes. “Alone with the leaves and the wind and your animals and your crops. Alone is comfort and safety. And alone is where someone like Nina will never fit.”
The engine purred to life, and Rowan shot off, a dark, shining bullet, winding a speeding path of black sound through the green rustling of the forest. The trees seemed to bend gently to allow his passage; he steered the bike with such blind expertise that the forest seemed no longer a separate entity from Rowan; it seemed Rowan worked through the many twists and turns and over the bluffs and protruding roots in a way that could only mean the trees and rocky surfaces must in some way be a part of his actual being. He wound his way through the dense and complicated trails that filled with dark and pale green light as though this feat was no more difficult than tracing the lines of his own palm. As he drove through the filtered fluttering light of the forest, Rowan did not think. He did not blink. He simply stared ahead and drove, unfeeling, the roaring of the bike as it leaped over rocky outcroppings and over small holes in the path blaring all around him and silencing his inner turmoil, making him deaf to his feelings, making his insides quiet and numb. And that was exactly what he wanted at that time.
Rowan curled the bike around the corner of a particularly thick tree, and at last the cabin popped back into his view. He slowed the bike, its roaring petering out to a slow but steady purr, and rolled up towards the cabin. As he made his way halfway across the green lawn of his property, he suddenly found himself stopping, braking the bike and twisting his hands against the handlebars. Before he could even understand what was happening his hands were wrestling the gleaming black helmet from his head and he was tossing it to the ground; he was swiping tattooed fingers through his tangled hair, choreographing a dance of inked on symbols through midnight black tendrils; and suddenly, silent tears, hot and unwanted, were burning in his eyes. He blinked then, and rapidly, willing the tears to stop, yelling at them to go back to the insides of his pupils, to retreat and never bother him again. But they would not.
As Rowan sat, the cabin laying, waiting, before him, the green vastness of his own private world stretching out all around him, the tears decided that they were the ones who were in control, and they began to carve a slick and painful path down his face. They slipped over his pronounced cheekbones, slipped between the dark hairs of his beard, and jutted down over the ridge of his well-defined jaw. It was moments before he was able to become unfrozen, to regain his control over his own body, and that was when he reached slow hands up and slapped the hot tears away from his cheeks. But even without tears trickling down his face, Rowan found he did not have the energy to move. He simply sat on his bike, staring out at the land that lay, as it always had, before him. He felt something dark and cold weighing heavily upon his chest and pressing down upon the bottom of his stomach.
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 k
nob 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 actuall
y 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.”
