Nu Alpha Omega

by H. Claire Taylor

  Danny grabbed one of her hands in his and lifted it up toward his face, pressing the back of it against his cheek. “Damn, Jessica. You’re still freezing. Here.” He grabbed the cup from her and set it on the hardwood floor, freeing up her other hand. He took booth of hers in his and rubbed them to thaw her fingers.

  I should pull away.

  But instead, she stared down at his olive-colored hands, watched the smooth, confident way they moved over hers. They were just touching hands. She touched people’s hands all the time. He was just trying to be nice and warm her up.

  Another way he might warm her up popped into her head and she yanked her hands away from his as she cleared the image from her mind.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, grimacing. “I didn’t mean … um.”

  “No, it’s fine. I, um. I just—”

  “You have a boyfriend,” he finished for her, like it wasn’t an issue. “I know. I’ve seen y’all outside of class. I respect that. I’m seriously not trying to make a move on you, I promise.”

  She felt her face heat up.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to, but you have a boyfriend and you’re not interested in me. I get it.”

  She nodded, not sure what else to do.

  “But that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to talk to you. You absolutely captivate me.”

  “Oh. Okay.” She leaned down and grabbed her drink again, holding it with both hands to avoid another hand-holding miscommunication.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about God, but would you be down talking about miracles?”

  She considered it. “Uh, sure. As long as we keep it strictly miracles.”

  “Awesome.”

  As he shot off one question after another, she was surprised at her ability to answer honestly while also avoiding the topics of God and her half-brother’s tendency to interrupt sex dreams. She was also surprised at her willingness to tell Danny things of a miraculous nature. And the sudden strength of her belief in such things after so much time spend feeling maddeningly unsure. Maybe it was just because saying, “I can’t perform miracles,” would have driven a stake through the heart of the conversation, and she didn’t want this conversation to end. Not yet. Not when someone as earthy and beautiful as Danny was staring at her like she was a Greek goddess.

  “So wait,” he interrupted. “How did you discover the field goal thing?”

  Her mind felt fizzy, and while she wasn’t tired, her eyelids were becoming heavier by the minute. It was worth struggling to keep them open to be able to see the hazel flecks in Danny’s green eyes. “I got high before the game with this guy I liked, and he talked me into trying.”

  Danny leaned back and made a T with his palms. “Time out. You got high.”

  She giggled and nodded. “Yeah.”

  “The daughter of God gets high.”

  “I thought you promised not to mention God.”

  “Sorry, sorry. Do you still get high?”

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno. The opportunity doesn’t arise and I don’t seek it out.”

  “Do you want to get high?”

  “Yeah, sure, whenever that opportunity arises, I’m down for it again.”

  He grinned mischievously. “Man, I wish I had some weed right now. You seem fun to get high with. I could listen to you talk about miracles for hours.”

  She emptied her drink and stared down longingly. “Yeah, I wish you had some weed, too. I don’t know if my stomach can handle any more of this trashcan shit.”

  He frowned. “Yeah, that stuff is pretty fucking rough. We have better stuff I can get you, or—” He paused and seemed to reconsider. “Nah.”

  “What?”

  He waved her off. “Nothing. Probably a bad idea.”

  “What is it?” she demanded. If she was willing to dish on her miracles to him, he would damn well tell her what he was about to say.

  He hesitated but eventually went for it. “Okay. Don’t judge me. But have you ever tried mushrooms?”

  Mushrooms? That must mean something different from what she thought it meant. “Mushrooms like …”

  “Magic mushrooms.”

  So, not what she put on her pizza. Good to know. “Um, no.”

  He nodded, a determined look in his eyes. “Do you want to try them?”

  “What do they do?”

  He laughed and took her by the hand, pulling her to standing with him. “That’s a loaded question. They can do a lot of things, depending on how much you dose. For me, they’re a total tool for expanding my mind. Every time I take them, it feels like walls I’ve constructed in my mind break down to make room for new ideas.”

  “Huh.” Oddly enough, that sounded like exactly what she needed. “How long do they last?”

  He shrugged. “About four hours.”

  That was a deal breaker. She couldn’t be out of commission for four hours. For all she knew Leslie was ready to leave already, now that she’d struck out with Brent. And Chris would start to get worried if she didn’t get back to the dorm and call him soon.

  “It’s worth the time,” he said, stepping forward and reaching toward her shoulder. Her delayed reaction only allowed her eyes to follow the path of his hand, and it wasn’t until he’d already hooked his fingers underneath the shoulder strap of her toga, where it’d fallen off, and slipped it back into place that she realized what he was doing … or that her clothes were falling off without her knowledge.

  She needed to pull it together. She looked up into his face and watched his eyes linger on her shoulder a moment longer than was needed.

  “Um. Where’s the bathroom?” she asked, and he pointed toward the staircase.

  She hurried off and squeezed past a plastered guy stumbling out of the bathroom who apparently no longer found a need for a toga or any covering whatsoever.

  “Heeeey,” he said, his eyes crossing as he stumbled past, and she felt his soft junk bump into her thigh.

  “Geeesh.” She slipped past him and hurriedly closed the door before pulling her cell phone out of her bra and checking for notifications. Nothing. But she was shocked to find that it was already almost eleven. She texted Chris. How’s your night going?

  Of course he didn’t respond instantly, but she wished he would. She needed to contact him. It felt critical.

  But not so critical that she couldn’t distract herself with a pee that seemed like it might last forever. She looked at herself in the mirror once she was done. (Ten minutes later? It felt like ten minutes later.)

  Mistake.

  She didn’t recognize herself. Was it the makeup? The hair? The toga? Her eyes fell on the shoulder strap and she lost herself in the moment she’d just had with Danny. Her phone buzzed in her bra. “Fuck!” It startled her out of her stupor.

  Chris says: Not great. Henri just got in a cab with some girl he doesn’t know. We gotta find him. Talk in the morning?

  You say: Sure. Talk in the morning.

  She tucked the phone back into her bra, feeling adrift and profoundly lonely without really understanding why.

  She needed to find Leslie so they could head back. She just hoped the girl hadn’t drunk too much to drive.

  As she headed out of the bathroom, she nearly bumped right into the exact person she was looking for at the bottom of the stairs. “There you are!”

  Leslie grinned sheepishly, “Oh hey, Jess.”

  Then Jess realized that Leslie’s hand was attached to someone else’s. Someone who was already two steps farther up the stairs. Jess looked up and saw Will, who glanced down when Leslie resisted his pull.

  Jess glared at him. “Showing her some philosophy books?” she said bemusedly.

  “Huh?” His eyes struggled to focus on her.

  “Kant. You showing her your Kant collection?”

  He scoffed. “Uh, no. I don’t have any Kant. Philosophy is gay.”

  “He wants to play me a song on th
e guitar,” Leslie said, slurring her words. “He’s a musician.”

  Jess’s mouth hung open slightly before she clued in and shut it. So it looked like they weren’t driving anywhere anytime soon.

  “Do you want to see it or not?” Will asked impatiently.

  Leslie flinched at the abrupt tone and then looked up at him. “Yes! Definitely!” and the two of them headed up the stairs. Jess watched them go, and when she turned her attention away from the upstairs, Danny was standing next to her. “So you never gave an answer. I don’t want to pressure you into it, trust me. But the offer still stands.”

  “The offer for …?”

  He placed a hand on her bare shoulder and leaned close. “Mushrooms.”

  She sighed. “Yeah, sure. Sounds fun.”

  He grinned and nodded enthusiastically. “Awesome. They’re up in my room. You can wait down here if you’re more comfortable with that.”

  She waved him off. “No, it’s fine.” Then she followed him upstairs.

  * * *

  “How long does it take to feel something?” Jessica asked. She finished off the glass of water Danny had given her to wash down the small chocolate dose.

  “Depends. We’re pretty drunk, so it might take a little longer for us to feel it. Maybe a half hour?”

  That was unfortunate. The chocolate had made the whole idea seem so much more appealing, but now, as she sat on the foot of Danny’s bed waiting for the effect to set in, she felt like maybe she’d made a terrible mistake.

  “Relax,” Danny said, stepping closer to her. He kneeled in front of her so that he looked up into her eyes, and he set a hand on her knee. “Trust me, it’ll be fine, but the last thing you want to do is stress about it. That’s the way to end up with a terrible trip, and I’d hate for you to have your first experience be negative.”

  For some reason, the notion that she was experiencing an important first with a boy she hardly knew and one who definitely wasn’t her boyfriend hadn’t occurred to her until then. This seemed wrong.

  God! God, where are you?

  Of course He didn’t answer. Why would He? It was only her goddamn time of need. And He probably didn’t exist. She chided herself for trying to conjure Him up just because she was a little uncomfortable with the situation.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” Danny said, standing again. “Let’s get out of this room. Open spaces are best for this.”

  “Why’s that?” she asked, standing up as well.

  He shrugged. “I guess when you commune with nature, you should actually be in nature.”

  “Is that what we’re doing? Communing with nature?” She tried not to sound skeptical. She needed to relax into it. This was starting to remind her of her gynecological exam.

  “For sure. And man, Jessica, I can’t wait to experience it with you. I can’t even imagine what you’ll come up with.”

  “Come up with? How do you mean?”

  He grabbed the tips of her fingers gently and stared into her eyes. “I mean, there’s always some new truth on the other end of it. You never come out of it the same person you were when you went in.”

  Is he still talking about mushrooms?

  It seemed unlikely that anything so easily masked in a chocolate could be so profound. But hopefully he was right, because she didn’t want to be the same person she’d always been. She wanted to be someone new and improved. So she willfully ignored the opposite possibility where she might come out new but worse than before.

  “Here.” He reached in his closet and pulled out an oversized jacket. “Put this on.” She did and he led her downstairs, across the deck, where the party had only become wilder and louder, and then off to the brush sloping downward from the deck and into the vast Hill Country.

  He led her right to a small trail head and she paused.

  “It’s perfectly safe, I promise you. I go down here all the time.”

  “At night?” she asked. She was no idiot; she’d done her research on the wildlife of central Texas before ever getting on I-10 to move to San Marcos. Besides the rattlers, there were coyotes, which tended to be shy, but you never knew, bobcats, and there had even been a recent sighting of a mountain lion venturing this far northeast. Then there was always the possibility of a pissed off opossum. Never forget about pissed off opossums.

  It all amounted to one bad idea when she wouldn’t be able to see anything at night.

  “There’s only a short walk through the woods, then it opens up into a clearing. Believe me, it’s worth it.”

  When she still hesitated, he added, “And your pupils are about to be dilated as fuck, so your night vision will be better.”

  “Wait, what?” Did mushrooms turn her into a nocturnal animal? She tried not to sound so excited about the prospect of fulfilling one of her wildest dreams.

  “Well, you’ll get more light, but you’ll also be seeing colors more vividly, which is fun. Just— let’s go. It’s almost a full moon, and we want to be posted up in the clearing when the ’shrooms start to hit.”

  His enthusiasm was hard to resist.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Watch your step.”

  There was just enough moonlight coming through the scraggly treetops for Jess to find her footing each step she took. She wasn’t sure if her eyes were adjusting to the night as they naturally would, or if they were being helped along by the mushrooms. She fell into a meditative rhythm with her steps, and before long she heard Danny’s progress stop in front of her and looked up to see what was happening.

  Wow. He was right.

  The trail sloped down steeply beyond where they stood, leading first into a small grassy clearing and then back into the thin forestation of the rolling Hill Country.

  She exhaled a laugh, and it felt incredible in her chest. She giggled some more, and looked over at Danny who was also facing the clearing. When he caught her eyes, a giant placid grin spread across his face, he began giggling, too.

  Jessica laughed harder, but she didn’t know why. It was like someone had pumped joy into her lungs.

  “You feel it too?” Danny asked.

  “Yes!”

  Tears began to well up as she continued chuckling softly and looking out onto the scenery.

  How could the trees be so shadowed and so green at the same time? She could feel the breeze on her face. Had the wind ever felt so sensual? So celebratory? How long had nature waited for her to arrive here? Maybe years. Maybe her whole life.

  She glanced up at the moon and admired the circular rainbow around it.

  My moon.

  She wasn’t sure why she thought that, but it was definitely true. It was her moon.

  Danny headed down the trail and Jess began after him, pausing a few yards down to turn and look at the trail leading into the woods and back to the frat house. She never wanted to return through that tunnel.

  She caught up with Danny where he sat on a small bench and took a seat next to him, staring out over the tall grasses, which seemed to dance like the surface of the ocean. Everything seemed to move together in the breeze. Everything moved together.

  “This is amazing,” she said.

  He nodded without taking his eyes off the field, then scooted closer until the side of his thigh was against hers. He put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her in, and she felt like she was melting into him. “It’s everything,” he replied.

  That somehow made sense to Jess. “It is.”

  “All of it. Together.”

  “Is this God?”

  Danny’s head whipped around to look at her. His pupils were dark rainbows. “Is it?!”

  She started laughing again. “Fuck if I know.”

  He giggled maniacally along with her. “You don’t know! Ha! It doesn’t even matter! It just is!”

  Even the smallest sliver of joy like this at some point in her life leading up to this point would have sustained her for years, allowed her soul to reset. But this was a whole waterfall of joy and peace. Why didn’
t more people do mushrooms? If only everyone experienced this together, there might be peace on earth.

  And then she remembered. That was her job. To bring peace to the US. It was so simple! She needed to convince everyone to take mushrooms together. It was so simple.

  She turned to look at Danny and felt like she could see and feel the goodness coming off of him. It swirled with her own and highlighted the lack of separation.

  She reached her hand up and grabbed his chin, turning his face toward hers. Chris would understand. She knew he would. He had to, because it seemed so obvious to her.

  Not another thing needed to be said as they both leaned toward each other, and she felt her lips explode in a shower of sparks as they met his. What happened next blended together in her mind in a splash of color and strange shapes behind her eyelids until she finally lifted them and saw the starry sky above her where she now lay on the cool, nurturing ground. She looked down her body and saw the top of Danny’s head as he massaged her collarbone with his lips, slowly, like he was savoring it. She stared back up at the stars and began laughing again, and before long Danny was on his back next to her in the grass, staring up and laughing too.

  Even the stars seemed to be moving and dancing. She watched them slowly rearrange while only vaguely aware that Danny was back on top of her. It didn’t matter where he was, though, since it was all connected.

  The heavens were assembling themselves into some familiar shape, the stars moving like a marching band, coordinated, purposeful. She recognized that she knew what shape they were starting to form, but she couldn’t yet put her finger on it. But she was in no hurry, so she waited until the answer revealed itself, which she knew it would.

  “Yes,” she breathed, “I know what’s coming. But what is it?”

  Then it clicked. The stars had rearranged themselves to form a dick. She thought of Chris and wished he could be here with her and Danny. He would like this. And he was right about the stars. He was always right. Love was an expanding balloon in her chest that was close to running out of room. Maybe she would burst open. That would be all right. She remembered prom night with Chris as if it were three years from now and she were seeing into the future. Because it was so obvious that she was existing in a time before when she and Chris ever started dating. She couldn’t wait until their first kiss against the front bumper of his truck. She couldn’t wait until prom night.