by Julia Kent
“Isn’t Darla from Ohio? Or is it Iowa?” I asked Maggie.
She scrunched up her face in concentration. “I thought she was from Iowa.”
We both shrugged, the first time we agreed on a single thing. It seemed to remove some of the tension in the air.
I put one red gummy bear on my tongue, moving slowly, like it was a cockroach.
I closed my mouth. The sweet, fruity taste was fine.
I sighed and relaxed. Sort of. “Relax” was an odd term after the conversation we’d had. Way to start off a long car trip where I felt like an asshole already. My calf throbbed from Cujo’s bite. My cock and balls had settled down and didn’t ache, but my ass hurt from sitting for so long.
And my brain was in a blender again.
Something about Maggie made me want to talk. I don’t talk to people like this. Every time she asked me a question I wanted to give an answer. Answers are dangerous. You never know how the other person is going to react. You read their faces, their tone of voice, their demeanor and see if it matches the actual words. If not, go for safety. Say the fewest words. Be boring. Be nothing.
And when they match? When the words match the nonverbal cues?
I don’t know.
It hasn’t happened much before, and never like this.
Never with someone I wanted to trust.
That night, two months ago, on the rooftop came back to me like being inhabited by a spirit. My breath caught in my throat and I went taut. My ribcage ached from containing the impulse to move. To talk and ask and pry and answer and share.
You can only go so long in life being an island before you realize the mainland is pretty damn nice, too.
Problem was, never before had I met someone who seemed to hate me and like me at the same time. I didn’t think the hate part was real. I think she hated the truth I brought out in her.
And then there was that whole rape thing.
She ignored me as I ate, stretched, drank water and let my stomach settle, but eventually she started talking. I knew she would. The air between us had too much potential. It felt ripe and raw.
Her words would be, too.
I stared at her, a little awed. This wasn’t real, right? People like Maggie didn’t exist. People who wanted to hear the truth. Who accepted my truth. Who didn’t judge or categorize.
Well, she did. Had. But something told me she had a wall as impenetrable as mine. When you encounter that, you have to find out what’s on the other side. Because if it was what I thought it was, Maggie was as strong as me.
And needed someone to be weak with.
Maybe I was wrong and this would fail.
I had to take that chance. Not like I had a choice.
“I asked you because you’re hot,” she confessed.
I was in the middle of taking a huge swig of water when her words hit me and I sprayed the entire dashboard in an impression of Mrs. Wilmer’s watering hose.
“Jesus Christ, Tyler!” Maggie shouted.
“Sorry.” I wiped my chin. “It’s not every day an older woman calls me hot.”
“Older? I’m twenty-nine. How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
Her jaw dropped. I grinned at her.
“Cougar,” I said.
She gaped, then made a cute little nose crinkling gesture. “Rawr.”
I burst out laughing. Couldn’t contain it. Isn’t every day a chick tells me I’m hot. Especially a chick I rejected.
“Why else?” I asked through gasps.
“Because I’m lonely.” She gave me the side-eye.
“Lonely’s pretty much the reason everybody hooks up,” I replied, wiping the dashboard with the edge of my shirt.
“Why did you really turn me down?” she asked. I looked at her and caught her checking out my abs. I flexed them and she quickly looked away.
“You want the truth, or what I’m supposed to say?”
“The truth, of course.”
“You say that like it’s obvious.”
“It is.”
“Then you haven’t lived a hard enough life.”
“You know what, Tyler? You have this thing. This thing about being a know-it-all who thinks the world is judging him. Like you’ve had the hardest life ever and no one’s had it as bad as you.”
Silence.
“You don’t know what other people live with on a daily basis. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation—”
“Quoting Thoreau at me?”
“You read Thoreau?”
“No. I just know the quote from a coffee mug my mom had when I was younger.”
“Oh. I figured you studied him in college.”
“Didn’t go to college.” I sighed. “See? You assume everyone else is like you, Maggie.”
“No, I don’t!”
“Yes, you do.”
“Everyone else doesn’t dye their hair and pierce their face.”
“You only do that so you won’t be everyone else, but it doesn’t do any good. Changing the outside doesn’t change the inside.”
“Then why do you have so many colored tattoos?”
“Because I like them.”
“Maybe I like my colored hair and my piercings.”
I just grunted.
“And maybe your problem is that you assume you’re too different from the rest of the world to bother even trying to make a connection,” she declared.
A forcefield surrounded me, like a layer of sweat that glowed.
“Do you know the rest of that quote?” I asked her, my voice low and slow.
“The rest of what quote? I wasn’t quoting anything.”
“The Thoreau quote.”
“That’s it. ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation—”
“—and go to the grave with the song still in them,” I finished for her. “The entire quote is, ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.’” I gave her a look I’ve never given anyone in my life before. I can’t describe or explain it.
“Oh.”
“I am not going to the grave with the song still in me.” And with that, I reached into the backseat and pulled out Lena’s guitar, making room in the front seat for it in my lap.
Maggie looked at me for longer than was safe, then whipped her head back to watch the road.
I strummed, picking out songs I’d play on Tuesday. Hummed along.
She opened her mouth and began to say something. Closed it. Opened it again.
“You are the most infuriatingly confusing person I have ever met, Tyler.”
“Then you have lived a sheltered life.”
“Quit saying that! You act like I’m some sort of princess and you’re this rebel bad guy who’s lived a shit life while I’m in my little tower being pampered.”
I just smirked.
“And you can think that all you want, Frown, if it makes you feel superior. If it gives you some sort of comfort or a cushion between the truth and what you fear.”
“Fear?” I snorted. “What fear?”
“Fear of letting someone in. Fear of letting someone say you’re hot, or try to get to know you better.”
“Sticking your hands on my ass on the rooftop was your way of getting to know me better?”
“No, it was my way of overcoming my fear.”
Huh.
“What fear?”
She shook her head. “You don’t get to know more about me than I know about you.”
We were playing the Show Me Yours I’ll Show You Mine game, only with feelings instead of cocks and pussies.
“One question.”
“I’ve already asked it.”
“You’ve asked a bunch of questions, Maggie. Which one?”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Spiders.”
“What else?”
I strummed. “That was your one question. Mine is this: why is it so important for you to know all this stuff about me?”
&
nbsp; She just shrugged.
“Fuck and forget,” I muttered.
“Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because that’s what you really wanted, and you’re pissed you didn’t get what you wanted, Princess.”
“I wanted someone who wouldn’t hurt me,” she rasped.
A cold little animal woke up at the back of my head, right where the knot of bone and muscle rests. It moved, a stealthy little beast, and made my spine straighten. Maggie had just upped the ante in this truth session and I swallowed, barely able to think. Whatever higher-order function I was supposed to have just disappeared with the part of me that believed the world was a trustworthy place.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t that guy.”
Her nostrils flared.
Wrong answer again.
She cranked up the radio and breathed so carefully I could count with her. Four beats to inhale, four beats to exhale.
I’d said the wrong thing for her.
I’d said the only thing I could say that would keep her from getting too close and not hurt her too much. If I told her the truth—the real, visceral truth—then I’d just be a target for pain transfer. She could put it all on me and get out her demons and she’d be left refreshed and fine and I’d be fucked.
Minus the fun.
A few handfuls of gummy bears and a quart of water later, I needed to pee.
Maggie stopped at a small rest area. I was in and out in under two minutes, quietly climbing into the passenger seat. She was eating gummy bears like she was in a post-apocalyptic movie and she’d just offered me up as tribute in exchange for a bag of them.
We sped off. She said nothing.
The next hour passed in a blur of water, more gummy bears, and most of the soundtrack to Dr. Zhivago. No idea whose CD that was.
“I need to pee,” I announced.
“Again? No.”
“No? What do you mean, no?”
“No.”
“You look like Grumpy Cat when you say no.”
“I do not.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Do not.”
“Do so.”
My stomach made a sound that can best be described as the portal to hell opening up and belching. Maggie actually swerved while driving seventy-eight miles per hour.
“What was that?”
“My stomach.”
Something in my gut shifted.
“Oh, shit,” I said, breaking out into a sweat. “I need a bathroom. NOW.”
Chapter Six
Maggie
I had become a self-contained box full of all the feels. All of them. Every single feeling in the universe had telescoped and concentrated, living behind my rib cage, under my eyelids, in the newly-emerging wrinkles around my eyes.
He made no sense. This man made zero sense. I reached down to the bag of gummy bears and shoved a handful in my mouth, then rooted in the bag for the chips Lena had packed. If I was going to pig out on road food, I’d do it right.
Two more miles and the rest area appeared. Tyler could not get out of the car and into the bathroom fast enough. Guy must have a bladder the size of a walnut.
It gave me a few minutes of peace to think.
What kind of mindfuck was he initiating here? Trying to get me to reveal more about myself while he stayed tight as a ship’s hull. And not the Titanic. I’d already told him too much about me, and for what? There was no hope of a relationship here. Tyler wasn’t into me. He was playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse that suddenly put me on edge more than I already was.
Bzzz.
Lena.
“Hey! How’s everything.”
“We’re high on gummy bears and good cookies.”
“Awww, that’s sweet.” Lena’s voice dropped. “How’s Tyler?”
“He’s on his second bathroom break in twenty minutes.”
“Is he okay?”
“He’s an asshole,” I said flatly.
“Oooo, then at least he’s interesting. You can always work with asshole, but you can’t fix boring.”
“Please don’t ever become an obituary writer.”
“I should know. I just left boring.” Lena’s ex was an accountant who spent an extraordinary amount of his free time carefully cataloging everything he did. Fitness, food, home improvement, finances—if there was an app or a spreadsheet, Tom used it. The breaking point came when he created a spreadsheet that tracked their sex life and compared it to sex surveys and national norms, pointing out that he was being cheated out of .7 blowjobs per month and 1.1 episodes of intercourse.
She left. She explored. She found she was more attracted to women than men, though for a time she thought she was more gender fluid. I didn’t ask much about her sex life and she normally didn’t poke her nose into mine. Until now.
“Tom wasn’t boring. A bit...obsessive with detail and data, but—”
“He was boring, Maggie. Worse than boring. He expected me to join him in his boringness and made it all about my failings when I didn’t. That’s when you leave.”
I’d learned a long time ago to keep my mouth shut about Tom, because Lena had broken up with him twice before and if you tell someone the truth about their ex, and they get back together, guess who they hate?
You. The common enemy.
I do know how to keep my mouth shut. Tyler’s not the only one.
“Just checking in,” Lena said. “You getting along?”
“He’s about as talkative as a stuffed Smurf.”
“You drink enough and the stuffed animals start to talk.”
“Shut up, Lena.”
“I love you too.” She got off the phone and I stared at the little glass screen, shaking my head. A few moments of silence, of aloneness, were what I needed.
On the outside, this trip was simple: help a guy who needed to get to L.A. so the band could get its first national concert.
On the inside, this was a series of small clusterfucks that added up to—what? There didn’t seem to be an end game here. A goal. A resolution. I was tumbling through space with my emotions in a wire cage, rolling over and over as bits and pieces fell through the holes and I tried not to get bruised along the way.
I’d spent seven years living life like that. Well, five. The first two years I’d spent simply tying to stop the never-ending images and physical sensations of reliving my attack.
That took every ounce of energy I had.
Tyler came walking back to the car, looking a little odd. Pale. Oh, no. Was he getting sick? I couldn’t drive the rest of the way with a puking guy in my car.
“You okay?” I asked as he buckled up.
“Sure.”
“If you’re not, we can—”
“I’m fine. Drive. You drive the next hour and then I’ll take the next shit—er, shift.”
I gave him a questioning look that he ignored. I pulled away. As I got back on the interstate, Tyler began to breathe meditatively, his eyes like bullets aimed for the horizon, his nose twitching with each inbreath, holding, then nostrils flaring on the outbreath. After ten breaths I was more relaxed, even though I wasn’t doing the breathing.
“You seem—”
“I’m fine.” He closed his eyes.
And then a sound like a rusty gate creaking open came out of...him.
Being a polite midwestern woman, I ignored it. Maybe Tyler had some GI thing he was too embarrassed to talk about. We had more than enough tension between us; I wasn’t about to bring up his digestive issues. He continued his slow breathing and reached for a bottled water and a fistful of gummy bears.
For the next twenty minutes I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he fed one after the other at regular intervals into his mouth, little bears going to their gustatory deaths.
I kept eating them too. I couldn’t help myself. Sugar free, guilt free, and they tasted just as good as the real thing. Who knew?
And then that sound emerged, like a robot being crushed in the gates of hell.
His eyes flew open.
“I need a bathroom!” Panic bloomed in those normally closed-off eyes. It was an odd thing of beauty.
We passed a giant green highway sign. “Twenty-two miles to the next rest area,” I said sweetly.
“I can read.”
And then the car filled with the bad breath of Hades. I flinched and very, very slowly moved my hand to the window button. Tyler beat me to his, lowering the window fast but not saying a word, his jaw clenched.
I bit my lip to make sure I didn’t laugh. Poor guy. Whatever he was going through was mortifying. I’d be embarrassed if I were him, and we were trapped in a car together. For whatever reason, I felt less self-conscious. It might be petty, but to see him vulnerable and in a predicament made me feel more secure.
I’m not above admitting that.
He winced, and a sheen of sweat broke on on his face. A dawning sense that not only was something very wrong with him, but it might be contagious, began to seep in to my bones.
“Tyler, I think we need to get you to a doctor.”
“I’m fine.”
“But—”
“Just drive. I’m not missing this concert.”
Tyler
I was not going to have my bowels open up like this. Talk about vulnerability. Some kind of evil settled into my gut and was painstakingly turning a firehose against the lining of my intestines.
I hadn’t experienced anything like this since I was thirteen and Dad got a bunch of bad canned chicken from the food pantry two blocks over. We’d been wiped out for three days.
This was worse.
Pockets of gas moved around inside me like Tetris pieces. Worse: we could both hear them, like groans from the sarlacc pit.
Keeping a poker face through this was as hard as controlling the, uh...output.
If I just breathed in through my nose, and out through my mouth, I’d—
The sarlacc spoke.
“God, Tyler, I think you’ve got some kind of stomach bug and—”
Then Mordor spoke back.
