Upside Down

by Lia Riley

  “I…” I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I change my movement, make it shallower, lean forward enough that I put pressure on the place where it’s best for me.

  Oh.

  I do it again to confirm the feeling.

  Oh. Oh, wow.

  Before it was good, hot, sexy to ride him and watch his responses. The thrumming vibrations felt full, nice, but this is Bran. I don’t want nice.

  I want this.

  I press harder and his eyes roll back into his head.

  “Fuck, yes,” he says gruffly.

  I start to lose myself to the grinding rhythm, chasing something elusive, just out of sight. Bran’s made me come before, but always by using his hand. Or his mouth. This is the first time the sensations have ever happened from pure contact, and I’m not sure if I…

  Bran tilts his hips, raises them an inch, and things go from wow to holy-shit-I-am-hovering-on-insanity quick smart.

  He shudders and moans. “Talia.” He sounds like he’s choking, in a good way, and I know he can’t hang on for much longer. And he doesn’t have to because I’m there, too, and it’s beautiful.

  “Jesus,” he says when I finally collapse, spent, on top of him.

  My belly trembles in the aftershock. “Is that how makeup sex works?” I close my eyes and breathe in his hot soapy scent, our mingled sweat. Lights flash behind my lids.

  He holds me against him. I want to stay like this forever. Take root in his body. “Are you still upset?” he asks into the top of my head.

  “I’m lots of things.”

  “Me too.” He carefully withdraws and unrolls the condom. “Talia…” He sounds dazed. “I think I…I am…”

  I know what he wants to say. And I feel the same way.

  But he doesn’t say it.

  And I don’t either.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Bran

  Things are coming together for a change. My honors supervisor is willing to welcome me back into her lab without a word of censure. This is despite the fact that I bailed to Europe last year with only a hurried phone call and a subsequent apologetic e-mail by way of quitting. Then, Talia drops a bombshell. The day we arrived, after I pissed her off not telling her about Chris, she’d hit it off with a history professor at Knopwoods. She’d clearly made a great impression because he offered her a project, for her senior thesis, recording the stories of Somali female refugees resettled to Tasmania. She mentioned it offhand, not giving the idea any serious attention. Despite my few efforts to talk to her about it, she brushed me off.

  So I’ve decided to drop the subject. Focus on the present, this week, and our explorations. This is all we have before we return to Melbourne and begin the death march toward her leaving day.

  A date I can’t think about right now.

  Not when we are arriving at the Museum of Old and New Art. The MONA cleaves into bedrock, plunging several stories belowground where the giant, windowless rooms disorient us to time. Egyptian sarcophaguses are posed beside modern sculptures composed entirely from human hair.

  One exhibit is words appearing for a second in falling water: Killing…Disorder…Beautiful…Triumphant…Unsettled.

  “The piece picks up key words from the headlines,” Talia murmurs. “It’s supposed to reflect the transitory nature of the information age.”

  Is this exhibit mimicking Talia and I? A word falling in water, visible long enough for our brains to register that something amazing, life-changing even, is occurring?

  What will happen if we try to catch the moment? Will it puddle into our hands, become nothing?

  Maybe this time we share is enough, a fleeting and bittersweet moment.

  My heart pounds as we wander to the next exhibit. Lightbulbs, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, spread along the ceiling, turning on and off in odd rhythms. I give them cursory notice and start to walk away when Talia lets out a delighted shriek.

  “Wait, come back. Check this out.” She wraps her hand around a lever and looks to the ceiling, her face open with pleasure.

  I watch her instead.

  “Not me.” She gives a furtive smile, blushing in the way that spreads to other places. I’m hard in a second. “Bran, up there.”

  Reluctantly, I divert my gaze and watch the light in the closest bulb pulse.

  “The exhibit records heartbeats,” she whispers. “That one’s mine. Now it’s your turn.”

  I grab the lever and immediately the bulb lights up, her own rhythm moving down the line.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Talia murmurs. Thousands of bulbs flicker on the ceiling. “These are all people’s heartbeats. Each time someone holds the lever, another pulse is added.”

  She turns to go when I stop her.

  “Let’s do one together.” I’m seized with overwhelming determination.

  Her wide-eyed gaze twists my guts. We both squeeze the lever and within seconds the closest bulb lights, an odd, slightly frantic pulse.

  “This is ours,” I say. Hope ignites in my chest, the glimmer of the craziest idea.

  She laces her fingers with mine and we watch as another person walks up, grabs the lever, and our shared heartbeats move down the line.

  A light that never goes out.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Talia

  The rest of our trip passes in a lightning-quick blur. Bran is filled with manic energy. We stay busy, almost frantic, like he suddenly wants to show me everything. We watch street performers at the weekly Salamanca Market. Check out a Gypsy jazz band at a bar in North Hobart. We drive the Kingswood to Tasmania’s southern tip, park in a muddy parking lot, cover ourselves in every piece of his Gore-Tex, and brave horizontal rain to gain a vantage point to see the Southern Ocean. The wild, frigid wind blows straight from Antarctica’s ice lands hidden beyond the horizon. We eat kangaroo pizza on Sandy Bay beach near the University of Tasmania, and Bran secures two boards from a guy in his new lab for a full-day surf session at Clifton Beach.

  Chris never mentions another word about Bran’s time in Europe or Adie’s pregnancy. Did he know Bran listened that night and wanted to push the issue into the open? That would be a pretty diabolical level of meddling. My feelings toward Bran stream together in a confluence of light and dark. When I’m with him, I can become incandescent, but there is no telling when a shadow might appear.

  Phillip Conway e-mailed me last night, told me again how much he enjoyed meeting me and reiterated his offer for a project. Even though coming back to Australia sounds cool in theory, it’s totally unrealistic. Australia is a temporary escape, not a permanent adventure. I traveled here because my life flipped upside down and I hoped that, maybe at the bottom of the world, I might discover a way to turn things around.

  How stalker would I look moving here, to Hobart, the exact same town as Bran? I get that he likes me, I like him, maybe even more than like…but after all the drama he had last year with Adie, I doubt he’s looking for a long-term serious girlfriend. If I tell Bran how much of a place he holds in my heart, he might wall me off again, and I can’t face that.

  We leave Hobart on a drizzling morning. Chris is dressed in a white shirt and khakis, what he calls his “civilian clothes,” for his day job at the office. He won’t let us leave until he’s pressed two more scones into our hands—not a hardship, as these lemon poppy seed revelations practically melt in my mouth. Probably best not to ponder the amount of butter necessary to achieve this delicious feat of physics.

  Bran exchanges a tight hug with his uncle and promises again to let him know the exact date he’s moving to Hobart. He’ll stay with Chris for a couple of weeks while he looks for his own place. I wonder if when he does, he’ll lie in that bed upstairs and think about us, hum the song “You Shook Me All Night Long.”

  I hope so—I would.

  “Good-bye, Talia.” Chris presses a dry kiss on my cheek, and as I turn to the Kingswood, he mumbles something low to Bran. I glance between the men, registering the blanching
on Bran’s face and Chris’s inscrutable expression.

  So it’s something about me. Good or bad, I don’t know.

  I wait until we get into the Kingswood.

  “What did Chris say back there?”

  “Nothing.” Bran throws the car from first into fourth and we jerk as metal grinds on metal. He swears violently.

  “It really seemed like he said something.”

  “This car is a piece of shit.”

  “You love this car.”

  Bran doesn’t answer and we drive through the old part of the city, the streets busy with commuter traffic and school kids in their uniforms. Whatever was said, it put Bran in a mood, one I refuse to indulge.

  “Why so quiet?” he asks after twenty minutes, turning onto the Central Highway.

  “It’s easier to throw stones at the moon than talk to you when you’re like this,” I say.

  “Like what?”

  “Are you for real? You’ve been a huge grump since we left Chris’s place.”

  “Have not.”

  Right when I think we’ve reached some deeper understanding, I collide into his defenses. “Remind me where we’re going again, Bullshitville?”

  Bran gives me a sideways glance. “Do you want to know?”

  He’d intended the last part of the trip to be a surprise. This is clearly an attempt to fly the white flag, so I’ve two choices here.

  One: throw the effort back in his face and tell him “I don’t care,” or;

  Two: Hike up my big-girl panties and act like an adult who wants to be in a mature relationship.

  I really want to go with option one. I can taste how bad. “Yes, please. I’d love to know where we’re going.”

  His fingers relax on the wheel. “I’m taking you up a mountain.”

  “A what—wait, now?”

  “No, tomorrow morning. Cradle Mountain. I booked us a cabin tonight in the national park. We’ll head out at first light, hike for the day, and have enough time to catch the ferry back to Melbourne tomorrow night.”

  “We will?”

  “Sure.” He side-eyes me. “Unless you hike like a snail.”

  “More like a slug.” I’m not worried about physical exercise. I’ve been jogging almost every day. Not setting any Olympic records, but if I can run three miles in thirty minutes, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to manage keeping up with Bran on a trail, more or less.

  That’s not what worries me.

  The scary part to this plan is heights. I’m not a big fan of exposure. It makes me dizzy, like the sky is burying me.

  “I’ve wanted to go up Cradle Mountain since forever. I’m stoked.” He smiles at me. “I want to share this with you.”

  I choke down my rising fear. “Can’t wait.”

  “About what Chris said, before we left…” His voice trails off.

  “I’m listening,” I say quietly.

  “He told me you fit me.”

  “I do?” A flush of adrenaline courses through my abdomen.

  “I’m making you a promise.” He pinches his top lip with his bottom teeth. “From here on out, I’m going to try to be straight with you, on everything.”

  “Try?” I say, noticing his gaze cloud.

  “It’s the best I’ve got to offer, and I honestly don’t know if I can.” He doesn’t say anything else, but when he puts his hand on my leg, he only moves it from that point forth to switch the occasional gear.

  When we arrive and I see that the place he rented is literally a little cabin in the woods. A small kangaroo hops past the car window. “Check it out, we even have friendly woodland creatures.”

  Bran hefts our bags out of the car. “Let me get these inside. We can walk down and check out the view.”

  The mountain currently hides from sight behind this enchanted forest. Driving into the park, I glimpsed the steep peak. Still, not exactly Everest. The Tasmanian guidebook doesn’t give more than a cursory idea of the trail conditions, and the lack of information kind of freaks me out. Okay, it totally freaks me out.

  * * *

  A hike to the top of Cradle Mountain seems a fun, if scary idea until we’re here, signing our names into the trailhead logbook. The mountain looms like two stony fangs and I’m tempted to address it gladiator-style, We who are about to die salute you.

  I weigh up suggesting an alternative plan, maybe a leisurely stroll around Dove Lake, where the water ripples in the light morning breeze. Yes, an easy wander to an out-of-the-way corner in the park where we can make love among the boulders, lichen, and pencil pines. I open my mouth to suggest the idea—

  “This is gonna be great.” Bran tightens his backpack straps. His eyes are bright with excitement and there’s no choice. In for a penny, in for a pound, as my dad says.

  “Yeah, great. Awesome. Can’t wait to get all over that.”

  Bran tears up the boardwalk, blissfully oblivious to my misgivings. I’m in. All in. And need to keep my fear of heights to myself. What if there’s exposed rock scrambling? I should have poured over the trail map last night in the cabin. Why oh why didn’t I? That’s right—because we were too busy mating like Viagra-addicted rabbits.

  I bend down to tighten my laces one last time. Bran checks back and gives me a cheerful thumbs-up.

  “Be right there,” I call with forced enthusiasm. Bran is usually perceptive. He’s either ignoring my fear or more likely hyped up with mountain fever.

  I trot to his heels and we clamber scree slopes to where a bolted metal cord helps steady my balance. Bran plows on without a hand to any rock. O-kay, Mr. Mountain Goat. We reach a plateau; Cradle Mountain’s peak is still far ahead. We follow a twisting path through a scrubby forest; pandanus trees grow over our heads in wild green tufts like something from a Dr. Seuss book.

  Tussock grass sprouts along the rocky track. Every shadow seems to slant into the wiry black body of a poisonous snake. Australia is famous for deadly creatures and so far I’ve not glimpsed a single scale—a record that I’m hoping not to break this trip. I stumble and land on my hands and knees, breath gasping both from the sharp pain and the fear that a pointed head might flash from the underbrush, fangs poised at my knuckles.

  I glance up the trail. Bran is nowhere to be seen. He’s already skipped out of eyesight. Damn it. I gouge my eye sockets, irritated that I’m so annoyed. I don’t want him to leave me stranded. Run along pursuing his own adventure while I’m bumbling around in the background. But I should be able to do a classic day hike without whining like a baby.

  I clamber to my feet in a huff and wipe leaves and dust from my pants. I march double time. Eerie monkey laughter hoots on my left. I jump, turning to face a dead tree snag occupied by a gray-and-white bird—my first kookaburra, just like the old nursery rhyme:

  Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he, laugh, kookaburra, laugh, kookaburra.

  Great. The kookaburra is laughing at me. “Join the club, bud,” I mutter, giving the bird a dirty glare.

  The trail dips ahead and I spy a creek, beautiful, fern-lined, dappled in rich buttery light. Beautiful and Bran-less.

  My nervousness ratchets into full-blown irritation. Seriously, where the hell is he? At this rate he’ll be sitting on the apex of the mountain while I’m not even at the halfway point. “Dude, c’mon,” I mutter to myself.

  “Hey! This way.”

  I flick my head in the direction of Bran’s callout. He’s reclined against a fallen log, a granola bar in one hand. In front of him is spread out a dishtowel topped by apples, bananas, and a small pile of something that looks an awful lot like raisins and nuts.

  “You okay?”

  I’ve been cursing his name while the guy’s making me a picnic. So I’m a little bit of an ass. “Wow, so this looks pretty awesome.”

  “I was getting ready to mount a search party to help make sure you’d eat it.”

  I point at my mud-stained knees. “I fell.”

  “Oh, Captain. Get over here.�
��

  I drop my pack and trudge toward him. “I’m a dysfunctional hiker.”

  “So I can see.” He runs his hand up under my pant leg and I wince when he grazes my knee. “Are you having fun?”

  “Yeah, sure. This is great.” He’s beaming. I don’t want to ruin this for him.

  His gaze bores into my face. “You want to go back?”

  “No!” And I actually am being 100 percent honest. Failure is not an option here. If I ask Bran to turn around and scuttle back to flatter land, I’m going to feel like a total d-bag. Besides, I don’t want to climb a mountain to impress him. I want this mountain for me. I need to do this.

  “Look.” I crouch beside him. “So maybe I failed to mention this fun fact before, but I’m a teensy bit afraid of heights.”

  “Okay, like how big of a deal is this teensy fear?”

  “No big deal, pretty much borderline paralyzed by petrifaction. I once blacked out on the Ferris wheel at the boardwalk back in Santa Cruz.”

  “The—what? Jesus, Talia.” He clasps my hand between his.

  “I should have probably said something.”

  “Might have been helpful.”

  “I’m sorry. I…I didn’t want to give you a reason.”

  “A reason?” He pulls me closer, settles me into the crook of his arm.

  “To start rethinking things.” I address my lap. “That’s all it takes, one little difference, a flaw, it seems like nothing at first. Like I don’t prefer chocolate ice cream or Scrabble or gangster movies, and the next thing you know we’re screaming at each other over who last replaced a roll of toilet paper, filing for divorce, and engaging in a messy court battle over the custody of our traumatized two-point-five children who are now on the road to becoming serial killers.”

  “Does your mind always process like this?” He rubs my lower back in slow circles.

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’ve got one question. The two-point-five kids?”

  “Huh?” I reach for his picnic. Not hungry, but unable to sit still.

  “I’m curious about the point five. That poor kid, is he the top half or the bottom?”