First Love

by Patterson, James

  “I wonder,” I went on, “if it’s possible to go so far that I’ll stop being afraid of us not ever coming back.” I chewed on my lip for a while, then drank some more bitter coffee. “I thought I’d figured out the risks. I thought I had everything planned out. But I hadn’t counted on you getting sick.”

  I sneaked another glance at him. His eyelashes made a dark curve against his pale cheek, and his left hand twitched, moving in a dream.

  There was another thing I hadn’t counted on. And that was falling in love, as fast and irrevocably as you would fall off a cliff, and realizing that loving someone might mean to simultaneously want to slug them and hold them and possibly have to watch them die.… I hadn’t counted on that.

  I reached over and touched his cheek. “I love you,” I whispered. “Please stay with me.”

  In his sleep, Robinson turned and sighed.

  34

  ROBINSON AND I STOOD, OUR FINGERS intertwined, and stared at the ruins: crumbling buildings, burned-out houses, litter-strewn sidewalks, and the empty hulk of an old Ford factory.

  “Welcome to Detroit,” Robinson said happily. He was feeling much better today, and I was hoping our location had nothing to do with it. “Motor City. Motown. I could have been stuck growing up here if my parents hadn’t left.”

  “It was probably a little nicer back when they were growing up here, huh?” I said, all the while hoping it wasn’t symbolic that the first place Robinson and I visited together as a couple (because that’s what we were now, right?) was in total shambles.

  With the tip of his boot, Robinson sent an empty can of Red Bull arcing into the summer air. “Yeah, probably it was.”

  I took a picture of a mildewed sofa with a bunch of pigeons perched on it. To our left, a tree was growing out the side of a building.

  “I guess it could be beautiful, in a way, if you were into romantic decay or steampunk or something,” I said. “Or maybe we should imagine it like the Parthenon in Greece. A bunch of grand old ruins.”

  Robinson nodded thoughtfully. “That old Ford factory is where my grandma and grandpa met and fell in love,” he said. “On the assembly line.” He gestured off vaguely in another direction. “And down that way was the Chrysler plant where my mom and dad did the same thing.”

  I bent down and plucked a dandelion from a crack in the pavement. “So I guess this used to be a pretty romantic place then,” I said.

  Robinson was quiet, gazing out on the desolation. Thinking, maybe, about his family, wherever they were. So it took me completely by surprise when he whirled me toward him. He held me close for a moment, his arms tightening around me. And then he bent down and kissed me, long and deep, until I felt that familiar softening inside, my legs going wobbly. Like maybe if he didn’t keep holding me up, I might dissolve.

  When he pulled away, he smiled. “What do you mean used to be?”

  I kept my arms around his waist. I wanted to be as close to him as possible, for as long as possible. “I stand corrected,” I said, looking up at him, backlit by the sun, so the ends of his dark hair looked like they were on fire. “Two generations of your family fell in love here. That’s pretty amazing.” Thinking: Now three.

  He nodded, but he didn’t elaborate. His eyes had that faraway look in them again.

  “I guess you come by your car obsession naturally, then,” I continued. I wanted him to keep talking, because he was always so tight-lipped about his family that I knew almost nothing about them.

  “My dad always said his first baby was his 1967 Mustang,” Robinson offered.

  “So you grew up here?” I asked.

  Robinson began to whistle that Sufjan Stevens song about Detroit.

  I jabbed him in the ribs. “Seriously, you’re not going to answer? You tell me you love me, but you don’t want to tell me where you were freaking born?” I was laughing, but I was a little offended, too.

  When Robinson looked down at me again, his face was clouded. “I’m just not… in close touch with my parents these days. It makes me sad to think about them. So I try not to.”

  Seeing as how he’d had enough hardship lately, I decided not to press the issue. “Just give me a natal city.”

  Robinson smiled. “You and your fancy words. Natal. World, I ask you: Who says natal besides Alexandra Jane Moore?”

  I jabbed him in the ribs again. There wasn’t anyone but pigeons to answer him.

  “No, I wasn’t born here,” Robinson said finally. “Chrysler moved the plant before I was born. My parents went to North Carolina, and that’s where I showed up. My dad worked for a steel company for a while, and then he opened up his own auto repair shop.” Robinson began to whistle some other song I didn’t recognize, ending our conversation.

  I sighed. “At this rate, it’ll take me fifty years to learn about your childhood.”

  He reached out and touched my cheek with his fingertips. “Oh, Axi-face, who cares about the past? We have now.”

  “Axi-face?” I repeated. I took his hand and brought his fingers to my lips. Smiling, I kissed them on their tips, one after the other.

  He nodded. “It’s new. You like it?”

  “I’ll get back to you on that.” The truth was, I’d like any pet name he came up with. But I wasn’t going to admit it.

  For a while we just stood there, being quiet with each other, our fingers touching lightly. We watched birds circling overhead, and the clouds shifting. It struck me then that the earth could be covered in trash and wreckage, but you could always find something that seemed clean and perfect. Maybe that was a metaphor for something.

  After a while I leaned in to give Robinson a gentle kiss. He took my face in his hands. “So,” he said, “can I buy you dinner or what?”

  I smiled. “Does that make it a date?”

  Grinning back, he shrugged. “Depends. Am I going to get past first base?”

  “Pig,” I said, laughing.

  “Pig!” he repeated. “Speaking of which, let’s go eat some.”

  35

  WE PLAYED MOTOWN IN THE CAR—Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder—as we drove downtown. Robinson hummed and tapped his fingers on the dash, following the drumbeats and adding little flourishes of his own.

  We found a restaurant full of Christmas lights and orange-velvet banquettes, its walls hung with funky instruments and dozens of black-and-white pictures of Detroit in its old-timey heyday. Someone was playing the piano in the corner, loudly, and the place was packed.

  “It’s like a speakeasy crossed with a TGI Fridays,” I said as we sat down.

  “Or, like, if Liberace were a gangster and this was his living room.”

  “Or it’s the hangout of a pimp who likes jazz and antiques,” I said.

  Robinson grinned. “It’s awesome.”

  We found a table in the corner, and the waiter came by and set two small glasses full of clear liquid on the table. “Hungarian moonshine,” he said, by way of greeting. “It’s Ed’s birthday.” He seemed to think we should know who Ed was. “I’ll be back to take your order in a minute.”

  Robinson and I looked at the glasses and then at each other. “Should we?” I asked.

  He pretended to look disappointed. “I have so many fake IDs. I really wanted the chance to use another one.”

  We held up our glasses and clinked them together. “Sláinte,” I said.

  “Slan-cha?” Robinson said, frowning. “I’ve heard that before… what does it mean?”

  I shrugged. “Dunno. It’s just some old Irish toast.” But of course I knew exactly what it meant. It meant “health.” Because didn’t that matter more than just about anything these days?

  We knocked our glasses back, and the liquid burned down my throat, making me shudder. “Is that what radiator fluid tastes like?”

  Robinson was sloshing it around in his mouth. Then he swallowed. “This is more like rubbing alcohol, I’d say.”

  I could feel it in my stomach now, warming me. Was it possible that I felt looser, alm
ost light-headed already? “Funny how a tiny little shot makes me feel so rebellious, when I’m already a car thief.”

  “I believe your term was borrower,” Robinson noted.

  “Because that’s going to go over really well with the judge,” I said. “Oh, you were only borrowing that Porsche? No problem, then!”

  “You guys aren’t from around here, are you?”

  Robinson and I both looked up, startled. Guilty people are jumpy people, I guess. But it was only our waiter, who looked like he’d had a shot or two of the moonshine himself.

  “No, sir,” Robinson said, polite as can be.

  The waiter pointed a finger at us. “Well, when you go back home, tell your friends how the Big D is doing just fine. I know you went and saw the closed-up factories; everybody does. But don’t remember just the dead stuff. Remember this.” He waved his arm around the happy, noisy room. “Remember the music and the moonshine. Is that a deal?”

  Robinson and I nodded in tandem, and the waiter nodded back, satisfied. “Be back in a minute for that order.”

  When he left again, Robinson reached for my hand. “He’s right. You have to remember the good stuff, Axi.”

  There was something about the way he said it that made a chill crawl up my spine. Like he was talking about much more than just Detroit. But I smiled and shook his hand anyway. “It’s a deal. Scout’s honor,” I said. “Pinkie swear. Blah blah blah.”

  Robinson smiled. “You really are beautiful, you know that?” he said.

  I looked down at the tabletop, but he reached out and tucked a finger under my chin, tipping my face up so I had to look right into his dark eyes.

  “I mean it. Someone should tell you that every single day of your life. And right now, it gets to be me.”

  “It’s always going to be you,” I whispered.

  He smiled again. “Get over here.”

  I went around to his side of the booth—and I sat down in his lap. It surprised both of us.

  “Axi,” he said, his voice soft and throaty. He ran a fingertip along my collarbone. “I never took you for the PDA type.”

  I shivered under his touch and pressed my forehead to his. When I spoke, our lips were tantalizingly close. “I’m learning how to live dangerously,” I said.

  He moved a fraction of an inch closer, so his lips almost brushed mine. “And what do you think of it?” he whispered.

  I could almost taste him, and I held out for another long, delicious moment before finally pressing my mouth against his. Pushing my fingers into the tangle of his hair. We kissed, and warmth flooded my body.

  “I like it,” I whispered. “A lot.”

  I was nearly dizzy. So this is what being intoxicated feels like. But it wasn’t from the shot I’d taken.

  I am here to say that moonshine has nothing on love—and lust.

  36

  “THE BLUE STREAK, THE MEAN STREAK, and the Millennium Force,” Robinson said. “I want to go on all of them. You only get to go on the Mean Streak, Axi.”

  He was pretending to be mad at me because I’d told him he couldn’t have a Slim Jim until he’d eaten a banana. Who are you, my mother? he’d asked. I told him I couldn’t watch him eat things made from mechanically separated chicken, aka slimy pink meat paste, anymore. Then he’d accused me of being a snotty vegetarian, and I had tackled and tickled him in the cab of the truck until he pleaded for mercy.

  Now we were inside the gates at Cedar Point, the roller-coaster capital of the world, nestled away in Sandusky, Ohio. Robinson, the daredevil, and me, the one who gets queasy on swings.

  “I feel like the Junior Gemini might be more my speed,” I said.

  Robinson snorted. “Axi, you’ve done things lately that were a lot scarier than a roller coaster.” He cocked a finger at me, miming a gun.

  “Don’t remind me,” I said.

  “So. Shall we?” he asked, and held out his arm.

  How could I refuse him? My scalawag, my partner in crime, my heart. He seemed like he was in perfect health. Was he? I didn’t know, but now was the time to enjoy it.

  We stood in the first line for an hour at least, surrounded by tired parents, their hyperactive eight-year-olds and sullen thirteen-year-olds, and a handful of sunburned retirees apparently willing to risk a heart attack to pull four g’s on a single plummet.

  Robinson saw me picking nervously at the hem of my T-shirt. “I’m telling you, this is going to be awesome,” he said. “You’re going to love it.”

  He reached out and stroked my hair, and then his fingers moved down to my neck, kneading gently, reassuringly.

  I almost moaned in pleasure. “Whatever you say…” Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about the ride at all anymore. I was thinking about his hands. “Just keep doing that.”

  He laughed, rubbing my shoulders now, his body long and warm against my back. “Is this all it takes?” he asked. “A little back rub and tough Axi Moore turns into a quivering pile of acquiescence?”

  “Ooh, that’s a big word for you,” I teased, trying to reclaim some measure of my sass. It wasn’t easy.

  “Maybe a good vocabulary is contagious,” he said.

  “Mmmmmmm.”

  “Although it seems like you might be losing yours.”

  “Mmmmm, lower…”

  Robinson pulled me against him then, wrapping his arms around me from behind. “Maybe we shouldn’t get too carried away,” he said into my ear.

  I sighed. “I guess…”

  “But you’re not afraid anymore, are you?”

  I shook my head firmly. I wasn’t.

  Of course, my heart did begin pounding as soon as we climbed into the rear car of the Millennium Force, but I told myself it was because of excitement, not fear. I told myself that compared to all the things we’d done that were authentically dangerous, like stealing cars and riding motorcycles and breaking into people’s pools, this was a walk in the park.

  When we rose slowly up the hill, the tracks amazingly smooth beneath us, I grabbed Robinson’s hand. Ahead of us people were already screaming. My knuckles went white around Robinson’s fingers.

  “Here it comes,” he said.

  When it seemed that the car could climb no higher into the faultless summer sky, we came to the top, paused for one silent, anticipatory second—and then plunged down. Downdowndowndowndown.

  I screamed more loudly than I ever would have thought possible, and beside me Robinson let out a wild whoop of joy. We raced and looped above the park, the wind making my eyes water and the car whipping me back and forth. I never stopped screaming, not for one single instant. And Robinson, he just laughed and laughed, letting my fingernails dig half-moons into his skin.

  When we finally slowed down on the last approach and pulled under the awning to stop, I turned to Robinson, an enormous smile on my face. “Wow,” I declared. “I want to do that again.”

  He gave me a triumphant look. “I knew you’d like it. I know you better than you know yourself.” Then he reached up. “Give me a little help here, will you?”

  I bent down and grabbed his hand, felt the weight of his palm in mine. “Thanks,” he said. He brushed my bangs out of the way, and then his lips against my forehead were soft and sweet.

  Holding hands loosely, we walked out onto the concourse, which was lined with flowers, streaming with people, and fragrant with the smells of fried food and sunscreen.

  “Let’s get cotton candy,” I said.

  “And sodas as big as our torsos,” Robinson added.

  “And nachos and licorice ropes,” I cried, beginning to skip.

  Robinson laughed as I tugged him along behind me. “I think the roller coaster knocked a screw loose. Don’t you want some kale or something?”

  “Tomorrow! Today we’re going to act like normal teenagers!”

  Because today I actually felt like one. As if nothing made Robinson and me different from anyone else our age—not sickness, crime, or anything. We were carefree. Lucky. Immortal.
>
  “Have I ever told you I love you?” Robinson asked, catching up to me.

  “Yes, but tell me again,” I said, stopping to press myself against him.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you back,” I said.

  And then we kissed on the midway as crowds of people streamed around us and the roller coaster cars corkscrewed overhead.

  37

  “SO,” ROBINSON SAID, “ONWARD TO THE Big Apple?” We were finally heading for the truck, so exhausted it felt like we ought to take turns carrying each other.

  “No one calls it the Big Apple, you know,” I said. “That’s a tourist thing.”

  “And we’re not tourists?” he asked, lifting one dark eyebrow.

  “No, we’re adventurers,” I said. “Explorers.”

  Robinson handed me the souvenir key chain he’d bought at the last gift shop before the exit. It was a tiny model of the Millennium Force, tucked inside a snow globe. “Since you’re a driver now and all,” he said, grinning crookedly.

  “Of course, I don’t have any keys,” I pointed out.

  “Hey, if you don’t want it, I can hook it to my screwdriver or my cordless drill.”

  But of course I wanted it. It was a present from the boy I loved. “I’m going to get you something, too, you know,” I said, giving the snow globe a little shake.

  Robinson demanded to know what it was, but I shook my head and mimed zipping my lips. “It’s a surprise.”

  As I climbed into the driver’s seat of the truck, I caught Robinson eyeing a sporty black BMW parked next to us. “Don’t even think about it,” I said. “I can’t drive a stick.”

  “I’ll teach you that next,” he said. “And then, ATVs.”

  “Then dirt bikes,” I said. “Why not?” Because everything was going to be just fine from now on. Maybe we really did have all the time in the world.

  With Robinson as my navigator, I got us onto I-80. We had a long drive ahead of us, and the back roads just weren’t going to cut it. I wanted something lined with Starbucks.

  “Doesn’t time move slower the faster you go?” Robinson asked, staring out at flat green fields and signs for Pacific Pride truck stops.