by Ward, Kira
Scribe climbed off the bike, throwing his helmet into the sagebrush that grew just off the road. He walked to the water’s edge and squatted, staring out into the darkness as though he could see the secrets of the night if he stayed still long enough.
Nola climbed off the bike and slipped her helmet into its little compartment before joining him. She sat with a few feet between them, tucking her arms around her knees, and waited. He glanced at her once, but ignored her for a while as he continued to just stare into the dark. Finally, he fell back onto his hindquarters, cursing quietly under his breath as he stretched his legs out in front of him.
Nola ran her hand over his thigh, pressing her fingers into his muscles in an attempt to loosen them. They couldn’t feel good after holding that squat for so long. She moved closer to him, her hands still working, but then he brushed her away and jumped to his feet.
“I should take you home.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer. He stomped over to the sagebrush and started kicking his way through it, looking for the lost helmet. Again, he cursed under his breath, whispering words she’d never heard anyone utter, even him.
“What happened, Scribe? What did Bear say to you?”
“Nothing you would understand.”
“So we’re still compartmentalizing?”
Again he ignored her, turning away from her as he continued his search.
“You’re an asshole, you know that? I thought you took me there tonight because you wanted to be with me. But I guess I was wrong. What, did I not meet your friends’ standards? Would it have been better if I’d gone in there topless?”
His head jerked in her direction, but for a third time he refused to answer her.
Nola spun on her heel and walked away. She couldn’t imagine getting on that bike with him again. Not now. Why would she want to be that close to a man who couldn’t tell her what it was that had him so angry? Was it really that complicated? Was it so hard for him to let her in? She thought they were headed down a road that would lead to something…well, she really hadn’t thought that much about it. But she wasn’t rushing off to meet him with the sense that this was something temporary.
Was he?
“Where are you going?” he demanded, his voice right over her shoulder.
“I’m walking home.”
“You’re twenty miles from your house.”
“I don’t care.”
“Nola.” He grabbed her arm and made her turn. “Don’t do this.”
“Why? You’re in such a hurry to get rid of me. What difference does it make?”
“I don’t want to get rid of you. In fact, that’s the last thing I want.” He drew her closer to him, his hand moving up over her jaw. “You are the best thing about my life right now. I don’t want to lose that.”
“Then quit cutting me out.”
“There are things you don’t understand.”
“I just spent two hours in a stranger’s backyard with drugs lying openly out on a table and more naked women than I saw in the old Playboy magazines that my father had hidden in his workshop. I think I understand that your club isn’t full of upstanding citizens.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it? What is going on with you?”
He buried his fingers in her hair and pulled her tighter against him. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Then don’t hurt me.”
Scribe kissed her, his touch painful as he wrapped her hair around his fingers and twisted her head so that he could move her as close and as open to his explorations as possible. She didn’t fight him. In fact, she wanted him in a way she had never wanted anything. She buried her fingers in his shirt and pressed her hand under the tight cinch of his belt. He pushed her back, nearly causing her to stumble as they moved from the crumbling asphalt to the sandy shoreline. When they reached a small patch of grass, he tucked her body under his as they went down in a controlled fall.
Hands seemed to be everywhere at once. She pulled at his shirt, tangling it inside of his jacket. He pulled at her shirt, not snagging it, but getting it cleanly over her head. Her bra went next, disappearing as he pressed her back into the sharp blades of grass and sticky pieces of sand. She pressed her body up against his as his hand sought access down the back of her jeans. He must have felt the sand clinging to her skin because he pulled away, causing her to moan in protest, but only to strip his jacket off and wedge it under her body.
The warmth of him against her back, the warmth of his body stretched out against her hips, her ribs, and her chest…it was like being wrapped in the most pleasurable cocoon she could ever imagine. And then his hand was tugging at her jeans and her thoughts dissolved, disappearing as pleasure exploded from inner thigh to the nerveless tips of her hair.
When she imagined the moment she first lay with a man, she had imagined a warm bed, expensive sheets, soft music playing from some unseen source. She hadn’t imagined ants crawling over her thighs, sand and mud wedged between her toes, or that the music would be crickets and cicadas hiding somewhere in the darkness.
Scribe was gentle, his touch more delicate than she would ever have imagined. Once her clothing was gone, moved out of his way, his urgency died down. It was as though by allowing him to remove her jeans, she had given him some unconscious signal that she had no intention of stopping what it was he wanted. His hands caressed her thighs, that soft spot behind her knees, the knobby curve of her ankle bone. And then his mouth sought out her throat, her nipples, his touch like that of a blind man trying to find his way. He kissed her belly, his tongue flicking against her navel before he dropped a half dozen kisses along her hip bone.
She ran her fingers through his hair, separating the long strands with her touch, pressing him closer to her as his lips moved lower still. He touched her like he had never known anything quite like her body, tasting her like he had never tasted anything sweeter. Her mind fractured, her body becoming all about the pleasure of his touch. Just when she thought she couldn’t take any more, her retraced his path and worked his way slowly back up the length of her frame.
Everything she’d ever read, everything she’d ever been told, everything she had ever imagined could never have prepared her for the reality of that first moment. He pressed himself against her and she opened up, lifting her hips to his thrust. And then…pleasure and pain mingled and she caught her breath. Scribe slid his arms around her, tugging at her hips, his lips seeking hers again. It took a second, but they found a rhythm that was perfect. Pleasure rolled through her lower belly, pleasure that grew and grew with each movement. After just a few moments, she had to break away from his lips, had to suck in a few deep breaths and then…she couldn’t stop the moans that wanted to burst from her throat. And then…Scribe buried his mouth against her shoulder, the vibration of his own moans moving through her flesh deep into her bones.
They lay there wrapped in each other’s arms for a long time as their breathing slowed and their heartbeats returned to something close to normal. Scribe rolled onto his side and pulled her with him until she was nestled against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry. I meant for this to happen somewhere a little less dirty than this.”
Nola kissed the center of his chest. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. You should have champagne and strawberries.”
“I don’t particularly like champagne. I’m more of a red wine girl.”
“Yeah, well…” He kissed her forehead. “You deserve the world.”
“I don’t want the world. I want you.”
“I don’t know why.”
She kissed his shoulder and then his throat, letting her lips slide over his jaw. “You’ll figure it out one of these days,” she whispered against his ear.
Chapter 6
Scribe had to go out of town the next day, something about a job in Waco. He came to her in the early morning hours, holding her against his chest as he sat on his bike.
> “Nathaniel,” he whispered against her ear.
“What?”
“My name. It’s Nathaniel Hawthorne Watson.”
“Wow.” She pulled back, amusement dancing in her eyes as she brushed a few strands of hair out of his face. “That’s quite a name. But I guess I understand why they chose Scribe.”
He shrugged. “My mom, she didn’t read much, but she carried around this book of short stories written by all these great writers: Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Truman Capote…she loved the idea of them.”
“Nathaniel.” She kissed him gently. “It fits.”
He kissed her again and then pushed her away, standing to take something from one of those handy compartments on the back of his bike. He turned, shaking out a smaller version of his leather jacket and draped it around her shoulders. “Now you’re one of us,” he whispered against her ear.
Nola giggled softly as he stole her lips once more, his arms wrapping so tightly against her that it felt like he might never let go. But then he did, quickly climbing onto his bike and rushing off in a roar, as though he was afraid if he didn’t go quick, he wouldn’t go at all.
Nola stood there for a long time, that jacket tucked around her body, feeling both protected and abandoned.
Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table when Nola finally walked back into the house.
“You’re up early.”
Nola nodded.
“Everything okay?”
Again, she just nodded, not really sure how to answer that question. Without Scribe—Nathaniel—there, by her side, she was never sure about anything.
***
The days passed slowly. Nola tried to be good, tried to motivate herself to go to class each day, but it quickly became something of a struggle. Whenever she heard a motorcycle engine pass on the street outside her house or the classroom, she could rarely resist the urge to run and look. Was it Nathaniel? Had he come back for her? But it never was.
She began to worry that he’d forgotten about her.
One day, she drove to campus and gathered her things, running through her mental checklist to be sure she had everything she needed and then…she just couldn’t make herself walk into that building. It all just seemed so pointless all of a sudden. Nathaniel might be out there putting his life on the line for some illegal act and she was sitting in a calculus class learning about things she would probably never use in her professional life. It seemed absurd.
Instead, she went to the lake and tried to figure out what her future was supposed to look like now.
She’d always felt anchored by her father’s demands that she become a doctor. She had it all planned out—and it was going so perfectly—but then…no one prepares you for the implosions that life can sometimes through your way. Her mother seemed to be adjusting well to their new life, much better than Nola had ever imagined she would. It was Nola who couldn’t find her way. Throwing Nathaniel into the mix had just been that final jolt, the final explosion that destroyed it all.
But the thing was…she had no regrets.
Maybe medicine had never been right for her. Maybe her life should have gone a different direction and this was just fate’s way of waking her up.
Maybe.
***
Nola stepped out of the shower a couple of weeks later to find her mother leaning against the counter.
“Have you been missing classes?”
Nola turned away as she dried herself with a thin towel. “Why?”
“You know I check the mail every afternoon, right? And you know that the school sends home letters when they feel there’s a problem?”
“Are you trying to tell me they sent a letter about my attendance?”
“What’s going on with you, Nola? You’ve been acting so different since we moved here.”
Nola didn’t answer, she just brushed past her mother on the way into her bedroom.
Her mother followed. “I know things have been tough since your dad died.”
“Tough?” Nola glanced at her. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
“It hasn’t been easy for me, either.”
Nola didn’t respond, not wanting to get into the equivalent of a pissing match with her own mother. She pulled on a pair of jeans and tugged a light sweater over her head, dropping onto the end of her bed to push her boots on.
“Don’t you want to graduate college?” her mother asked.
Nola started to stand, but moved too fast and her head began to spin. She quickly sat back down, missing the alarmed look on her mother’s face.
“Nola?”
“I have to go.” She stood again, a little slower this time, grateful her vision didn’t dim as it had a habit of doing lately. “I have things to do.”
“It’s that boy, right? The one with the motorcycle?”
Nola glanced at her even as she shrugged on her leather jacket.
“He has a name.”
“I don’t really care. It seems to me that your behavior began to change the moment you met him and that’s what worries me.”
“It has nothing to do with him.”
“Doesn’t it? Is he the reason you’re not going to class? Is he stopping you from fulfilling you dreams?”
“My dreams?” Nola paused with her hand on the doorjamb. “Being a doctor…was that ever really my dream? Or was that just something that Daddy wanted for me?”
“It was what you both wanted.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember anyone ever asking me what I wanted.”
Her mother paled. “Nola…”
“I have to go.”
She turned and slammed from the house, jumping into her car even as her heart ached for the sight of Nathaniel and his bike sitting on the street in front of her house.
Worry clouded her. He was supposed to be gone a week. But, somehow, it had turned into three weeks. He hadn’t called, hadn’t answered any of her calls. He was just gone.
She thought about going to Bear’s house, to ask if anyone there knew where he was. But the idea of being around those guys without Nathaniel…she was not afraid to admit that it scared the crap out of her.
Instead, she found herself standing in the middle of a Walmart bathroom, her hands shaking as she waited for the test to do its thing. Her head was filled with memories of how she and her friends made fun of girls who got themselves in trouble. All those stupid girls, too afraid, or too ashamed, to ask their doctors, lawyers, or executive parents to take them to the clinic and get them some sort of birth control. Nola had always thought she would never be one of them. She even had a handful of condoms in her backpack all through high school, though she never got herself into a situation where it was necessary to use them
But now?
She almost wished she still carried them.
What would he say if he knew how naive she had been? What would he say when he realized that she was one of those stupid girls, a twenty year old virgin who never considered the consequences of lying with a man? She was a pre-med student, for Christ’s sake! She was the last person who should find herself in this mess.
But here she was.
And Nathaniel was gone. She had no way of knowing if he was ever going to come back. Maybe this trip had been his way of breaking up with her. Maybe he never had any intention of coming back for her. Maybe he was just having fun and once he got what he wanted, he was done with her.
Maybe she was in the worse mess of her life and she was going to have to face it alone.
No, definitely.
The test was positive.
Chapter 7
Nola began sleeping all the time. It seemed that eight hours during the night was no longer enough. She’d withdrawn from her classes, slipping out in the morning for a few hours to keep her mother from asking too many questions, spending most of her days in the library or walking through the mall. It was good exercise. But when she wasn’t out, she was asleep. In bed, on the couch, curled up in her mother’s rock
ing chair. It didn’t matter. Whenever she sat still for longer than a few minutes, her eyes immediately began to close.
She was asleep now, her dreams a wild and chaotic landscape of colors and people, of Nathaniel and his club, her mother…even her father. She knew she was asleep, but she couldn’t pull herself out of it, like she’d been chained there by some mythical being who wanted to drive her insane.
She could hear Nathaniel’s voice, soft and gentle, could hear him saying something about being out of town and needing to tell her something. And she heard her mother’s voice, insisting it was too late for visitors. Then their voices faded and her mind was encompassed by that dream world again.
She woke with a start some time later, her dreams ejecting her with a suddenness that left her confused. She sat up, the familiar lumps and angles of the rental house’s living room, glowing slightly in the late afternoon sunlight, coming slowly into focus.
“There she is,” her mother said with something like laughter in her voice.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“A couple of hours.”
She ran her hands over her face. “You should have woke me.”
“I tried to convince her,” a familiar voice said, “but she insisted you needed your sleep.”
Nola turned and there he was. Nathaniel. He was sitting at the table, a cup of tea—of all things!—in front of him. She practically jumped from the couch, and he grabbed her, meeting her halfway across the room. She touched him, ran her hands over his face, making sure he was real. And then they were kissing, the sweetest, most painful kiss she’d ever experienced in her life.
“I was so scared,” she moaned. “yYu were gone so long.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I wanted to call you…”
She kissed him again, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I love you,” she whispered, not really intending to say it out loud, but unable to stop herself. “I love you so much.”
He pulled back just a little, just enough to turn and address her mother.
“I apologize again for intruding, Mrs. Grant.”
Nola’s mother brushed a tear from her cheek. “Feel free to intrude any time, Nathaniel. You obviously mean a great deal to my daughter. I’m glad we finally got the chance to talk.”
