Truth or Beard

by Penny Reid

  Then I realized my mouth was wide open.

  Then I realized a full minute had passed and I’d said nothing.

  I blinked at the stars in the sky. “I’m sorry, I think I must misunderstand your meaning. So…what do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. We’re suited for each other.”

  “You think we’re suited?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what? Debating the color of the sky? Practical joke wars?”

  “Sure, if that’s what you want to do or talk about. I’m going to take you out.”

  “Out? Out where?”

  “To nice restaurants, to movies, camping, for ice cream—on dates.”

  “On dates?”

  “We could go to Genie’s, go dancing.”

  “You dance?”

  “Yes, I dance, when it’s good music and I’m in the mood.”

  “You would dance with me?”

  “Hell yes. I’d dance with you right now if you’d let me and I wasn’t freezing my balls off.”

  I laughed again, shaking my head because this entire conversation had taken a detour to Unexpectedville. I couldn’t comprehend the idea that Duane Winston thought we were suited for each other.

  In what universe would he ever think such things?

  And why did these things he said not sound crazy? And why did these things he said make my heart twirl with excitement?

  “I don’t…I can’t….” I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t know what to think.

  The evening had been too eventful and I hadn’t a spare moment to digest what had occurred. Obviously I needed time and I needed distance. I wasn’t staying in Green Valley, not more than a few years at most. Being suited with Duane Winston had the potential of being a huge confounding complication. My eyes were on the prize, namely leaving town with no debt, no regrets, or reasons to stay.

  I cleared my throat and whispered, “I think it’s been fifteen minutes.”

  When I pulled away he let me go. Cold water hit my lower back and thighs, replacing the warmth and protection of Duane’s body. Hugging myself I turned toward the forest and forced my stiff legs to move. This did not go well. I stumbled, slipped on a rock, and crashed sideways into the water.

  The wind was knocked out of me as I hit the lake, forced from my lungs by the shock of cold. Immediately my legs straightened, pushing my head up and out. Just as I was gathering a greedy gulp of air, I felt Duane’s hands reach around my side and lift me off my feet and out of the water, cradling my front to him and carrying me with an arm around my torso and under my legs.

  When I found my voice I said through chattering teeth, “Put me down.”

  He didn’t respond, just continued trudging to the embankment.

  “Duane Winston, put me down.” I felt breathless, confused, dizzy. Pressed together like we were, and without the chilly water keeping me sober, my body was warming to his. Our skin was slippery, my breasts against his chiseled chest, his strong arms around me. I was too exhausted to be aroused, but it felt improper.

  Improper? Really? Now you’re feeling improper? I’d traded lunacy for sense.

  “I’ll put you down, but I don’t want you running off throwing my pants in a tree.”

  “You deserved that.” I knew to which adolescent encounter he referred and I couldn’t help a very little smile at the memory.

  “Yes, I did.” He nodded then hoisted me a few inches in the air like I was a sack of potatoes, readjusting his grip when I came down.

  We were out of the water now, some feet into the forest, and I was just about to complain again when he set me down gently, but wrapped a big paw around my upper arm.

  “My clothes are back there.” I tugged halfheartedly away, my body too cold and tired to put up much of a fight. Goosebumps had broken out everywhere and I was shaking violently.

  Duane bent to retrieve something. In one smooth motion he released my arm, shook out what I realized was a large blanket, and tossed it over his shoulders. He then yanked me forward and wrapped me in the soft fabric and his embrace.

  “You need to dry off, warm up first,” he said, rubbing my bare back. It was then that I realized how cold he was, that he too was shaking.

  Without consideration or caution, I snuggled closer, instinctively wanting to give and share warmth. I hugged him, rubbed the broad muscles of his back, and buried my face in his neck. Yes, we were naked. But first and foremost we were near-frozen, heat-seeking bodies.

  Practicality won out over the lunacy of prudishness.

  The blanket must’ve been huge because it covered us from his neck and the tips of my ears, and pooled around our feet, giving the impression of a cocoon. I was grateful he’d planned ahead. Whereas I’d just run off into the woods, relying on my anger and inexplicable jealousy to keep me warm.

  The memory of and the reason for my earlier ire reared its ugly head: a flash of an image, Duane’s expert kisses shared with his ex. He was still clutching the blanket around us, holding me close, rubbing feeling into my arms and back. His hands were big and divine, strong and skillful. His heart beat against my cheek. His smooth skin, his granite stomach and shoulders under my fingertips made me feel greedy and muddled.

  He was muddling me and I began to hear my brain soundtrack, this time it was Touch Me, by The Doors.

  Suddenly I was warm, we both were, and it was much faster then I’d anticipated. As true physiological numbness receded, his hands on my body ignited something else. Soon the shared heat changed from necessary for survival to something evocative and abruptly ripe with decadent tension. His hands slowed and I realized belatedly that my breath had quickened. I wasn’t aroused, it wasn’t like before. I was…caught. This time my heart was involved, not the crazy part of my brain.

  I glanced up at him, found him watching me. His eyes reflected the stars and I was close enough to see they were on my lips.

  “Jessica,” he whispered, swallowed, his hands now motionless on my waist.

  I shook my head slightly; really, the small movement was me telling myself to cease feeling. Duane was all around me, and he felt intoxicatingly good. I need to end this, whatever it was.

  So I blurted, “I’m not kissing you.”

  His eyes lifted to mine, his expression unreadable, but I felt him tense. “Why not?”

  I huffed. “Because you lied to me, you pretended to be your brother—”

  He cut me off, yanked his head back. “And you want Beau.” His tone was cold, unfathomably resentful.

  I gripped his biceps to keep him from moving away. “No, no—that’s not it. It’s the lie, and my sexy bee cousin.”

  “Your sexy bee cousin?”

  “Yes. Tina Patterson, my dad’s sister’s daughter. Remember her? You kissed her. You kissed her right after you and I...” I couldn’t finish because I was confusing myself. I used to kiss boys all the time and it never meant anything. Yet I couldn’t finish my sentence because I was beginning to think Duane’s earlier kiss—even shrouded in a veil of deceit—had meant something to me.

  He licked his lips before he asked, as though reading my mind, “Did our kiss mean something to you? Not,” he shook his head and glanced around the darkness, “not when you thought I was my brother, but after, when you found out it was me.”

  I answered honestly, my words pouring out of me. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. And I don’t get why you’re pushing this so hard now. I feel like I don’t know you at all. One minute you’re the Duane Winston who throws rocks at my cat, kissing another girl, making me feel like I have heartburn, arguing about the color of the sky, and the next minute you’re telling me we’re suited for each other. I don’t trust you.”

  “Jessica, we’re standing in the forest naked. You trust me a little.”

  I pushed against his chest lightly, shaking my head, feeling sleepy and exasperated and not ready to let him go. It was the strangest of combinations.

  “Of course I trust you that way. I know yo
u’d never murder me or take advantage—well, not take too much advantage. I mean, you did get a penis stroke out of me earlier and did really fantastic things to my nipples.” A little shiver raced through me at the memory. “But now that I think about it, you stopped me before I could—”

  “Jessica, please stop talking.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because you’re making everything…really hard.”

  We stood motionless for a long moment as understanding dawned; his words held a delicious double meaning and, even in the inky darkness, I could tell he was struggling. I wavered back and forth between wanting him to do something, and hoping he wouldn’t. Our breath mingled. His fingers dug into my hips.

  Then his eyes closed and he set me away. He didn’t let the blanket slip. Instead he pulled it from his shoulders, stepping out of our little oven, and wrapped it firmly around my shoulders, tucking it under my chin. I was mummified in our residual warmth.

  Duane left and quickly located his pants. I watched his outline pull them on then move to the tree where I’d discarded my clothes. He brought them back and held them out.

  “Here,” he said.

  Once I had the folded pile I sensed him turn away.

  I stared at the back of his neck for a beat, just the dim outline visible to me, then slowly began the process of getting dressed.

  I rewound through the evening and our time together; all of my actions. I was too honest. He made me feel naïve and mindless. I wasn’t used to the disorientation brought on by excellent quality physical intimacy. Plus he and I knew each other. We had history.

  Maybe my immature, fantasy-based feelings for Beau had dispelled so abruptly because I’d been given a taste of reality, of an actual adult liaison. The way Duane touched me felt like a brand.

  I felt the beginnings of an uncomfortable blush creep its way up my neck to my cheeks. When I was finished dressing I cleared my throat and glanced at him. I could just make out the shape of his bare back.

  “I’m all done.”

  He twisted, his eyes moved over my body still wrapped in the blanket, and he nodded. “Okay, let’s get back.”

  Duane took a few steps, carrying him maybe ten feet, but then stopped. I hadn’t yet moved as I was more or less swimming in a sea of mental melancholy. He might be right, we might be suited, but so what? Nothing could ever come of it other than a few months—at best, years—of being together.

  In my typical fashion of getting ahead of myself, my mind leapt to a time two years from now when I would be ready to leave Green Valley. What if Duane and I were extremely well suited? What if we became serious? What if I couldn’t leave him?

  I glanced up just in time to sense then see him returning to where I stood. Instinctively, I took a step back; but he held me by my arms and halted my retreat.

  “Tina, your cousin,” he said, his voice thick with both hesitation and ferocity.

  “Yes, Tina is my cousin.”

  “She dared me to kiss her.”

  I pressed my lips together and swallowed, feeling again like I had heartburn. “You did kiss her, and she’s your ex-girlfriend.”

  “She was never my girl.”

  I didn’t want to argue semantics. “Right, you’ve been with Tina since before I left for college, but she was never your girl. What about her?”

  He hesitated for a beat, then said, “You remember who I was with before you left for college?”

  I responded through gritted teeth, “Duane, what about Tina?”

  He seemed to shake himself before starting again. “Tina…” He nodded, then took another step, bringing him firmly inside my personal space. “When I kissed her earlier, it didn’t mean anything.”

  “Well, it looked like something to me.”

  “It wasn’t. Not with her. But with you, at the community center, I meant what I said. I’ve always wanted you. And I am sorry you didn’t know it was me, because…” His voice lost its fierce edge, but roughened, his next words emerged sounding like an aching confession. “I’d really like for there to be a next time.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground.”

  ― Judith Thurman

  ~Jessica~

  I was distracted.

  Not even Rick Steves’ Europe could hold my attention.

  It was all Duane’s fault. His words and lips, and hands, and eyes, and his penis’ fault.

  He had a nice one; at least it had felt nice in comparison to the only other penis of my acquaintance, thick and long and smooth and rock hard. I didn’t get a peek at it backstage or when he’d dared me to go skinny-dipping. However¸ I could recall with surprising clarity what it looked like when we were younger, when he’d been naked chasing me through the woods, or the time before that when a bunch of us went skinny-dipping in the waterfalls near Burgess. He was circumcised. I’d noted it as a teenager because I’d just finished eighth grade health class (also known as sex education).

  I never expected to be fixating on Duane’s circumcised penis. Yet there I was, sitting at my desk at work, grading pop quizzes, trying to recall the glorious weight of him in my hand…

  How irritating, because now I was having a lusty hot flash.

  I groaned, letting my red pen drop as my face fell into my hands.

  How had I even arrived here, in this purgatory? Yes, I was drooling over the memory of his sexual magnetism from afar. But it was more than that. So much more. And this more was beyond distressing. Duane’s admission—that our time backstage at the community center had been something he’d wanted for a long time and he wanted a repeat—felt overwhelming.

  I’d known him forever. I knew all about him, or I thought I did.

  His confession felt like finding out my cat—Sir Edmund Hillary, named after the first man to climb Mt Everest—could talk and wanted to give me a tongue bath. At best, Sir Hillary was indifferent to my existence. At worst, he may have been plotting my demise. He was an audacious Calico psychopath, always pushing his litterbox from its place beside the toilet in the bathroom directly in front of the shower, but only when I was in the shower…

  Anyway, I decided I was cursed by the spirit of J.R.R. Tolkien for my ironic sexy Gandalf blasphemy. That’s why I couldn’t stop thinking about Duane Winston’s body parts and his perplexing suggestion we were suited.

  Five days had passed since Halloween and my busy, bizarre night. Of course I’d avoided him since. What would I say? What could I say?

  Hi, Duane. I don’t know whether I like you or not, and you confuse the hell out of me, but I’d like to buy you a piece of pie so we can argue about the color of the sky. Let’s schedule that.

  Or how about,

  Hello, Duane. I obviously lack self-respect and common sense because—even though you kissed my cousin, your sexy stripper ex-girlfriend right in front of me—I don’t find that weird or creepy or disrespectful. Let’s go out for ice cream cones so I can watch you lick yours.

  Making matters more muddled, Tina had cornered me Sunday afternoon at Daisy’s Nut House. My daddy and I had gone out for breakfast after Sunday service. She’d been super friendly. She wanted to get together, hang out, do cousin stuff.

  We hadn’t really spoken to each other since we were thirteen. I hadn’t been cool enough to be her friend when we were in high school. When I went to college and she started working as an exotic dancer, we’d rarely interacted, and then only during family get-togethers.

  But now she wanted to re-establish a relationship.

  And I was having oddly whimsical and amorous thoughts about her ex-boyfriend.

  “So, are you ready to tell me what happened when you disappeared with one of the Winston twins?”

  I didn’t look up at Claire’s question even though she startled me a little. I could tell by the direction of her voice that she was standing in the doorway of my classroom.

&nbs
p; “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough to watch you stare into space for several minutes before plunking your head into your hands and making those lovely moaning sounds. I can’t decide what the sounds mean, but they sure are interesting.”

  I shook my head and peered at her through my fingers. “A circumcised penis.”

  I was gratified when she choked on air, “Ah…what?”

  “A circumcised penis. That’s what happened. And some hot looks, hotter kisses, truth or dare, then maybe we’re suited—I don’t know—skinny-dipping and rubbing for warmth and—”

  “Stop, stop right there.” She held her hands up. “We can’t have this kind of conversation at work.”

  “Why not? Is it against policy?”

  “Not precisely, but drinking while at work is a big no-no.”

  “I’m not drinking.”

  “But I’d like to be a little tipsy if we’re going to talk about the Winston brothers and whether or not they’re circumcised.”

  I let my hands drop and gave her a little smile. “You went to school with Billy and Cletus, sandwiched between the two, right? Billy a grade above, Cletus a grade behind?”

  She nodded and said quietly, “Yes, but I know Jethro best. He and Ben were best friends.”

  I could feel my smile turn sad before I could stop it, and regretted the unintentional pity that must’ve shown in my eyes. Claire looked away and cleared her throat, looking equal parts resigned and impatient.

  “Ben used to joke that he didn’t have the patience to learn the Winston boys’ names, so he called all of Jethro’s brothers Jethro Jr.” Claire addressed this to her feet and paired it with a small laugh.

  I smirked at Ben’s pragmatism as I studied my friend, how her face had fallen even though she tried to smile.

  Claire had no family to speak of…actually, by that I mean her daddy was the club president of the local motorcycle gang, the Iron Order. As well, her momma was his old lady. But together or separate, those two were the definition of dysfunctional. As far as I knew, Claire had no contact with her parents or siblings.

  I assumed she was still living in Green Valley because she wanted to stay near her husband’s family. She accompanied them to church every Sunday, and her house was within a block of theirs.