by Sasha Dawn
“Sorry,” I say at her lips.
“Don’t be.”
“But, God, what you do to me.”
“What you do to me.” She’s flushed in the cheeks. I see their color even in the dim light from the moon and the lights off in the distance, but I feel it even more. Her eyes are heavy-lidded now, and a thick curl is hanging down between her eyes, and she looks sexy as all hell. And happy. Really happy.
I lower my lips to hers again, this time slowing things down. I move my fingers against the holiest parts of her, and hear her gasp a little. God, I want to be in there.
Normally, I’d keep pushing my luck, see how far she’d let me go. Normally, I’d put it on her to stop. I’d keep going until she tells me she doesn’t think we should go any further. But maybe because it’s Chatham, I see the hypocrisy of doing that. For the first time, with this girl practically melting under the influence of my hands, of my mouth, I don’t want to put her in this position—to stop me, to disappoint me, to take responsibility for both of us.
Say she doesn’t want to stop. And we go as far as two people can go . . . before we should’ve gone there. And it ruins us.
I pull my hand from her pants and slide up over the smooth skin of her stomach.
The consequence, exhilarating or devastating, would be ours to share. Because I’m not like my father. Because I’m better than him.
Shouldn’t taking this step be our decision, as well? Instead of solely hers? Instead of me attempting to get her to want it?
Maybe it’s a rationalization. Maybe I’ve stopped because I know she’s going to stop me eventually, and it’s going to be easier to cool it now than it will be in five minutes. Or maybe, if she’s as revved up as I am, I know she won’t want to say no, and I like her too much to risk ruining this by going too far too fast.
“Holy hell, you’re good at this,” she whispers.
I laugh because I’m so rusty that my ADHD exploration of her terrain couldn’t possibly be impressing her.
I want to ask her if she’s done this before. Well, maybe not this, not lingering at the edge of the inevitable, but what I think we’re about to do, or what I think we’re going to do eventually, be it tonight, next week, or even next month. I want to tell her I’ll wait. That we should wait, if we don’t want to fuck this up, because we’re more than this. I feel it. Do it too soon, and it becomes only about fucking.
And then it dawns on me. I have faith. I believe in something: her.
Despite the fact that she could blow out of town tomorrow, I know it’s going to happen eventually. Even if I have to travel to the ends of the earth to find her again.
Still, it would be freaking great to do it atop this old caboose table in the black of night when we’re not supposed to be here. I nudge against her, still imprisoned by the walls of fabric between us, but I feel the heat between her thighs.
I look at her, forehead to forehead.
I’m threatening to burst out of my pants.
“I want you to wear my jersey,” I say.
“I’m going to.” She presses a kiss to my lips.
“Not just Friday. For the rest of the season. Next season, too.”
This time, when she kisses me, it’s a slow, determined kiss with parted lips.
And she pulls at the drawstring on my pants until it gives way.
And she draws her delicate fingers over what she finds there.
Oh my fucking God.
D r e a m O n
Her skin feels smooth and hot against mine, and the heat between us might be enough to steam up the windows of this caboose.
I lace my fingers into her hair while we kiss. “You can’t leave. No matter how bad it gets, you have to stay. We’ll find a way.”
“If I could,” she whispers against my lips, “I’d hide here forever with you.”
And now, with the front clasp of her bra undone, and me memorizing the peak of the nipple beneath my thumb, and her hands stirring up magic as she draws the tips of her fingers over me, I can’t remember feeling as if she was deliberately putting distance between us, purposely misleading me or lying. I can’t remember anything but honesty between us because this . . . this is honest. Pure.
“We could be like those people who live in tiny houses,” she whispers. “We could make a home out of this train car.”
I laugh, and so does she.
“What if we could?” she asks. “Would you? I mean, assuming we could find a way to heat it.”
“Are you kidding? I’d run back here at the end of every day, and we’d make our own heat.”
She tenses. “Wait.”
I pull my fingers over her contours.
She pulls back. “Wait.”
My hands slide out from under her shirt.
“Joshua.”
And she’s straightening her clothing.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s too much, right?” I silently curse myself for getting too comfortable, too fast, with her body.
“I—”
“We’ll slow things down.”
“What? Oh. Joshua, no. I’m just . . . you said run back here.”
“Yeah. I would.”
An awkward moment hangs between us.
“It’s just that . . .” She swings back over the ledge and jumps down from the loft.
It’s just that . . . what? From up above, I watch her. She spins in a slow circle, and appears to be studying everything inside the caboose.
Slowly, she makes her way through, touching the walls and built-in bunk. She then exits out the back.
I’m on my way down now. When I meet her on the rear grate, she’s leaning against the rail, by the crank the engineers used to turn.
“Savannah was running, telling me to catch up, catch up. We had to get to the train.”
“Mmmhmm.”
“What if . . .” she says. “What if this is where we were running?”
“Do you think—”
“Are there ever lots of people here?”
“Few times a year. Fourth of July. Sugar Creek Summer Days.”
“This place. There’s something familiar about it.”
I dare to drape an arm around her hips.
She melts against me. “It’s the first time something feels familiar. Like, maybe I was here before. Maybe this is the place Savannah and I were running to.”
“In your dream?”
She shrugs. “That dream . . . maybe it was there to make me remember something. And if I was here before, maybe I was here around the time someone kidnapped Rachel Bachton. It’s not too crazy to think . . . maybe Savannah was right. Maybe we really did see something that day.”
The flicker of light in the distance catches my attention. Something like the beam of a flashlight.
“Hey!” The call echoes up the rolling terrain of the park.
Chatham practically jumps out of her shoes when she hears the voice booming at us from a distance.
We’ve been found.
I grab her hand and take off, and she pounds down the grated step behind me. She stumbles a little when we hit the ground running. I feel, more than see, the security officer pursuing us, but I don’t look back to confirm it. “Head for the pines,” I say.
She keeps pace at my side, and we plunge into the forest.
I pull her over the pine-needled paths, dodge branches and protruding tree roots, and finally, I hook to the left, where I know there’s a split-rail fence marking the edge of county property.
I step on the lower rung and hurdle the thing, and turn to help Chatham over it, too, but she’s already clear.
A few steps later, our feet meet with the gravel of the roadside, and the streetlights are like a spotlight on a dark stage.
My Explorer is just up ahead.
I get Chatham in first, then settle behind the wheel.
“Hurry,” she says.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the officer emerging into the light.
I turn the key in
the ignition.
The engine doesn’t fire.
Try again.
No dice.
“Fuck.”
“C’mon c’mon c’mon,” Chatham’s whispering.
I take a deep breath and try again. Third try does the trick, and I put the car in gear, and we’re gone.
About a mile down the road, when repeated looks in the rearview mirror confirm no one’s following us, adrenaline starts to wane.
“Guess they don’t want us living there,” Chatham says.
I laugh.
She laughs.
And neither of us can stop.
We go back to Carpenter Street. I go in the front door, and let her in through my window.
She pulls off my hoodie and presses ice-cold hands to my bare chest.
I look down at her. Should we dare to finish what we started in the caboose?
“We probably shouldn’t,” she says, as if she’s reading my thoughts.
“Yeah.” But I can’t help it. I kiss her.
And before I know it, she’s sitting on the edge of my bed.
Then, I’m leaning over her.
She nudges a knee between my thighs.
Maybe it’s the rush of running away from that rent-a-cop tonight, the thrill of escape, of survival. Or maybe it’s just that she’s the most amazing person I ever met . . . and I can’t believe, of all the people in this town, she chose me. But I’m all in. If I ever actually doubted it, the uncertainty is long past by now. I know how I feel.
Now, to garner up balls enough to tell her.
“Chatham?” I pull back to look at her.
She’s smiling. “I can’t believe the car almost didn’t start.”
“Right?”
“We were lucky.”
“Well,” I say. “I am.”
And even though I know it, I can’t say it. It’s too soon, maybe. Or she’s not quite there with me yet. But whatever the reason, something stops me.
I can’t tell her I love her.
D i r t y W o r k
Every time I close my eyes, I see her naked curves. I remember the way her skin felt against mine, and I imagine what it’s going to be like next time we happen to have the opportunity to get a little risky.
I replay last night in my mind, like a movie on repeat in my head: from the moment she started sucking on that pink-striped candy stick to the moment she kissed me this morning and disappeared out my window.
It helps the time pass while I’m out raking.
“Josh!” Rosie’s on the back porch, which is really a small deck raised a story off the ground, standing halfway out the kitchen door. “Take this trash out?”
It’s not really a question, or a request, judging by the way she drops it and heads back inside before I even acknowledge that I’ve heard her.
I give my mother a nod through the exterior walls of the house.
I’m taking Chatham to Homecoming tonight, and the parade starts at five, so Rosie’s going to have to know she’s on her own with Margaret and Caroline starting at four.
It shouldn’t be a problem; I checked her schedule, and she’s not due on shift until Sunday evening.
I drop my rake and make my way up the porch steps to grab two bags of trash—one for the landfill, and one full of recyclables—and retrace my steps back to the lawn. Just as I’m about to dump the landfill bag in its bin, something catches my eye through the plastic bag: an envelope with my name, typewritten, on it.
I have to tear the plastic to open the bag, but I dig out the envelope, which is soiled at the corner with spaghetti sauce, so I wipe it off in the grass.
The orange-and-green return address stares at me: Miami University. Coral Gables, Florida. The fucking U.
I tear open the envelope and scan the letter. It’s an invitation to visit their website and, eventually, their campus. Enclosed is a list of the U’s scholarship offerings, majors, and extracurricular campus groups.
My fingertips tingle, and I’m already plotting ways I could get myself to south Florida to visit. A train? Maybe. My insides flutter with the mere suggestion of the word. I doubt I’ll ever look at a train the same way again after last night.
Definitely a Greyhound bus would get me there. How much could that cost?
I go back and carefully read the letter again, which is addressed to me personally, and signed—my heart almost stops—by the head of football recruitment.
Football.
Recruitment.
And Rosie threw this in the trash?
I bound up the porch steps and into the kitchen, where my mother is cleaning up after the pancake breakfast she offered my sisters and me—which I, of course, silently declined—and I shove the tomato-stained letter under her nose. “You think I wouldn’t have wanted to see this?”
She glances up at me, then turns her back and wipes down the same patch of countertop again.
“Rosie.”
“You call me Mom.”
“Do you know they might want me to play for them? Football, Rosie! In the Atlantic Coast Conference! Do you know who’s come out of the U? Vinny Testaverde! Brad Kaaya! NFL players. And they’re inviting me—”
“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s a form letter.”
“No, it’s not! It’s addressed to me.”
“Yeah, well, wait till they see your grades. They’ll back-pedal faster than—”
“What?”
“You can’t cut it there, Josh.” She looks at the letter. “And we can’t afford it. I’ll scrape up all I can, put your sisters and me into poverty, you’ll have mountains of student loan debt anyway, and you’re only going to flunk out. You know that.”
I’m shaking my head. This is really what she thinks of me?
“If you go anywhere at all, and that’s a big if, it’s Creekside Community.”
“No. I’m going to the U.”
She smirks and keeps wiping down the dingy countertop, as if she’ll someday make it sparkle. “You might be second in line to King Shit at Sugar Creek High, but when you get into a big pond like that . . . have they even seen you play?”
“I know you haven’t.”
“Oh, stop it. Do you know how many times I sat in cold, rainy weather—”
“When? At the park district when I was seven?” She hasn’t been to a game in at least that long.
“My point is,” she says dryly, “that you’re the second-string junior quarterback for a high school in a fly-speck town. You think they’re coming all the way up here to no-man’s-land to see Josh Michaels ride the pine?”
She doesn’t even know I’ve been starting as quarterback since the fourth week of our schedule. I want to call her on this, to tell her about everything she’s missed since . . . well, since forever ago, since she’s been twisting in the turmoil her life’s become. But looking at her, I know it’s pointless. She’s too caught up in her own bullshit to notice she’s way off base, or to care that she’s killing me with every word she speaks.
She doesn’t know anything, but still she says again, “Don’t get your hopes up. They didn’t even see you play.”
“You know who did see me play? Twice?” I ask. “You know who gave me his card, and wants to talk to me about playing for them? North-fucking-western.”
“North-fucking-western,” Caroline parrots from the next room.
I bite my lip, instantly regretting that the girls are hearing this.
Rosie ignores my sister. “Ha! You know who comes out of Northwestern? Astrophysicists. Cardiovascular engineers. Smart people. They’ll be real impressed with your one-point-nine grade point average, I’ll tell you that much.”
For a second I wait, give her a chance to ask how my grades have been this semester. Does she care that lots of this year’s grades will nullify last year’s? Just another second. She’ll ask. She’ll say something.
She gives her head a minute shake. “Northwestern.”
“You know who was there at the game last night? Wisconsin
-Madison! You know who was QB? Me. But you don’t know because you don’t care!”
I fold the letter and turn away. It doesn’t matter that I see a touch of regret in Rosie’s face. What matters is that she actually said those things to me. She doesn’t believe in me. And if that’s the case, I don’t need her. All the rest of the bullshit she puts me through . . . okay. I understand it’s post-traumatic, I get that it’s defense mechanisms at work, and I can deal. But I can’t deal with living with someone who doesn’t believe in me.
I head to the stairs, toward my room.
“You’re not finished raking!” Rosie calls after me.
Yes, I am. But I don’t reply beyond the slamming of my bedroom door. “She can clean up her own damn yard from now on,” I mutter to myself.
I yank my duffel bag off a shelf in my closet. I jam it full of jeans, sweatshirts, socks, boxers. Whatever I can fit. I grab my school bag, shove in my Chromebook and phone, my chargers.
I grab Chatham’s bag of cash. Once I pull my jersey out of the dryer—it’s not all the way dry, but close enough—I have everything I need. I head up the half-flight of stairs to the front door.
I fling Rosie’s re-engagement ring—still in its box—up the second half-flight of stairs. It slides beneath the old dresser she tucked against the wall next to the kitchen table. Let her find it in a month or so when she’s doing her own fucking cleaning.
I walk out the front door, laden with all my worldly possessions—when you don’t have much, it’s easy to carry it all on your back—and get in my beat-up Ford Explorer.
One last glance at 4421 Carpenter Street proves two little girls, with hands pressed to the glass in the living room window, might be the only ones who realize I’m leaving. I should’ve stopped to hug and kiss them. I should’ve told them everything would be all right, but the truth is that I’m not sure it will be. I don’t want to lie to them. She’s their mother, too, after all. Without me there to verbally shred every now and then, who’s she going to turn her claws on when things don’t go right? Who’s going to clean up her messes in the middle of the night, when she’s feeling lonely, and makes a bad decision?
“Sorry,” I say, although I know my sisters can’t hear me. “I wish I could take you with me.”
