“Where are we going?” I ask over the engine and the radio and the mower.
Those green eyes flash at me for a second before he says, “For professional help.” Then he reaches down, shifts smoothly, and guns the engine so hard that it drops me back into my seat.
When my parents were in high school, back before the spring dried up, when the water was still clear and cold, they used to come out here to the quarry to park and swim. Now it is just a graffiti-covered hole in the ground. Digging equipment is still parked at the bottom, rusted out and rotted. If I squint, it looks like a tiny scale model of the Grand Canyon, just way less colorful and much, much smaller.
Porter turns toward me, holds his hands up with his palms out, and tries to look like the picture of innocence as he says, “Let me start out by saying that I am not actually a professional.”
“Okay.”
“But I do think I can help you with your problem.”
I sit back, slightly offended.
“I have a problem?”
He nods. “You know, they say the first step is admitting it.”
God, I think, shrinking back and wrapping my arms tight across my chest, he knows I am addicted to him. Well, maybe it is obvious, but it’s not like it warrants an intervention or anything.
“Let’s switch,” Porter says suddenly. He hops out of the car, leaving his door open while he runs around to my side.
Suddenly his white T is right there, at eye level outside my open window. He swirls his finger in the air impatiently.
“Switch!” he commands as he pulls my door open, and I barely have the time to step out before he drops into my seat and whips his finger around again, signaling me to go to the driver’s side.
I crunch my way around the front of the car, watching Porter suspiciously out of the corner of my eye as I go. The sound of my door closing echoes across the empty quarry as I slide into Porter’s seat. I reach up to adjust the rearview mirror. I check my hair.
I turn toward Porter and ask, “Sorry, but what exactly is my problem again?”
“One step at a time,” he says calmly, and if I knew this guy better, at all really, I might think he was being condescending.
“First,” he says as he reaches over, his hand wrapping warmly around my fingers, “let’s get you comfortable handling the stick.”
He lifts my hand, slowly pulls it toward him, and places it carefully onto the leather and chrome gearshift. He leaves his hand on top of mine for a second that simultaneously melts my fingers and my brain. He gives my fingers a tight squeeze and moves his hand away.
“Pistol grip,” he says proudly with a tilt of his head toward the silver stick wrapped under my throbbing fingers.
“You’re serious?” I ask incredulously, catching on to what he is after.
He nods at me with a smile.
“You know, I do have a license.”
“Are you serious?” he asks, and his grin cracks open.
“Yes,” I huff. “You want to see it?” I am already twisting, letting the prized pistol grip go as I reach into the tiny backseat for my bag.
Now, I don’t know why it bothers him that I don’t drive or why it bothers me that it bothers him. Other than my dad, who did buy me a brand-new car that just sits in our driveway, collecting dust and jealous glances from every teen in town, my lack of driving ability seems to bother no one at all. Well, maybe Yorke and my mother and probably Shane a little bit sometimes, too. But really, that’s it.
I finally snag the padded strap of my backpack and pull the whole thing into my lap. I start digging around as Porter leans back, relaxing into that little space between the bucket seat and the passenger door.
Somewhere at the bottom of my bag, next to the whistle and some orphaned tampons, I find it, only slightly gobbed in a pool of melted lip balm. Legal, laminated proof that I can drive.
I hold it up for him to see, push it right into his doubting face, and say, “See?”
He takes it and studies it as if he can’t believe it’s real. He wipes it on his leg, leaving a cherry smear of lip stuff on his jeans, before he looks over at me.
“Nice picture,” he says, tapping the plastic.
I snatch it back and drop it into the depths of my bag.
“Very funny,” I mumble, feeling an unexpected flush rising on my cheeks.
I keep my head down, never meeting his eyes as I gather up the stuff that landed in my lap during my search. Keys, hairbrush, a bottle of dark blue nail polish that my mother banned from the house as soon as she saw my painted toes, assorted ponytail holders. I toss it all into my bag and throw my bag toward the backseat.
Porter sits still and quiet. The highway in the distance, the road we took to get here, is the only sound I can hear over my short, heated breaths. Every other sound seems muted and swallowed up by the quarry in front of us.
It’s as if Porter knew, somehow he knew, that if he just waited, I would get over this momentary bout of anger and bitchiness. That it is just temporary, ’cause I know he was joking, really only kidding, but I am nervous and scared, and I don’t like to do things that I suck at. And I have a feeling that I am going to suck at this. Big time.
I breathe out. “Are we really doing this?” I ask.
“Just push in the clutch,” he says.
Clutch? I am not really even sure where that would be. I look down toward my feet, hidden somewhere under the polished dashboard.
I wiggle my toes to prove to myself that they still exist and ask, “Can’t I display my talents with, you know, a regular shifter?”
“An automatic?” he asks, and in that second I know he has lost all faith in me or at least in my professed driving ability.
I cautiously glance over and see him working his hand through his hair, ruffling it up.
“Let’s see what you are really capable of,” he says calmly as he smiles at me. “Then the rest will be easy.”
I exhale again, loudly this time, blowing my hair out of my face as I turn toward him, my hands all tense and clammy, hoping that he will change his mind and somehow find his way back into the driver’s seat, hoping that my nerves don’t show on my face, but sure that they do.
“Just show me what you can do,” he requests. “You told me yourself.” He puts his hand over his heart as if he were reciting the pledge of allegiance and says in a crappy falsetto, “Your inability causes an aversion.”
“For the record,” I say, “I don’t sound like that. And . . . ” I continue as I reach down, fingers feeling gingerly along the edge of my seat with my left hand, “I need to be closer.”
I fumble around for the lever to adjust things, but there is nothing there.
“In a real car,” Porter says as he reaches over and leans close, his arm between my legs, “we keep it here.”
I breathe him in as he finds the right part in exactly the right place, and I slide forward, while he leans back.
“Thanks,” I say.
I like the seat nice and close so my arms can be at the required ten and two, with a slightly bent elbow and a firm grasp on the wheel. You know, just firm enough to make my knuckles white and shiny.
Porter raises his eyebrows. “It’s common practice to drive with your arms and legs, not your boobs.”
I am not a confident driver. I am not a confident driver who also happens to have big boobs, and I am sitting so close that they practically touch the steering wheel. Scoot me in a couple of inches, and they would push right through the steering wheel and wipe the classic dash clean.
“Hey,” I say sharply to Porter without a glance in his general direction, “I passed my test this way.”
“I bet you did,” he agrees, and I look over to see that his eyes are now locked on my chest.
It’s weird to hear comments about your goods from someone who has actually touched them. I mean, I know he’s touched them, I can remember it vividly, but it feels weird thinking about that when he is sitting right there, and I am sure he re
members he’s touched them and he is probably remembering it right now, and maybe now is not the best time to be thinking about all this. I am about to drive after all.
I consider sliding the seat back a bit, but then I wouldn’t be able to see clearly over the humongous striped hood to the rubble-filled death hole looming in front of us.
“I can drive, you know,” I say, sliding my grip around on the slick wheel.
“You keep saying that,” Porter replies, nodding toward the open lot around us. “Now let’s see it.”
I can’t seem to get the hang of the clutch. Apparently it is a feeling, or at least that is what Porter keeps telling me, repeatedly, as we lurch forward just to end up stalled again, five feet from the last place we lurched and stalled.
I hold up my hands, warding off any sound that Porter might make, any instruction, any comment or criticism or useful nugget of wisdom. I don’t want to hear it. I look over my shoulder to see my latest batch of little burnouts in the gravel. You can follow my embarrassing path across the lot pretty clearly from bald spot to bald spot.
Afraid that one of these times I am going to lurch us right over the edge and into the quarry, I adjust the rearview mirror and sit up straight. God, how hard can this be?
Start the car. Push in the clutch. I can hear Porter in my head, calmly repeating the instructions, step by step, as I try again. Slowly let out the clutch, and slowly give it some gas.
I feel the pull of the gas before I really have the clutch all the way out. Then the whole car shudders slightly, so I press on the gas hard, harder than I ever did before, so hard I hear loose gravel shooting out behind us as the engine roars and we take off and I am so excited that we are actually moving and that I didn’t kill it that I just keep going and going, laying on the gas until I panic and scream, “Porter!”
The edge of the quarry is right there, just over the top of the dash, so I tromp on the brake with both feet, and we come to a violent jerk of a stop, a stop that flings us forward like crash test dummies and leaves me lost in a cloud of blond hair. I can feel the embarrassed flush of my cheeks as I push my hair back, fighting my way out from under the tangle of long golden strands.
Not many people see me this way. Messy. Out of place. Totally out of my element. Failing. I normally participate only in activities I know I can master, activities that my sisters have mastered before me and that I have watched and memorized and been properly groomed for. It’s easier that way.
“You do realize that’s not my name?” Porter asks quietly as I reach down, avoiding his eyes, and push in the clutch, starting the car again.
Hearing his instructions in my brain and not his voice, really, I slowly let out the clutch as I give it some gas. “What?”
He waits for the inevitable convulsion and then says, “Porter.”
I reach down again, push in the clutch again, start the car again, and ask, more loudly this time, “What?”
Over the rumble of the engine, with the clutch in and my right foot revving at the gas, I hear him say clearly, “My name is not Porter.”
Surprise pops my foot off the clutch, and I kill the engine, again. Resting my forehead against the steering wheel, I ask, “What are you saying to me?”
He leans forward and snaps the radio off.
“I am saying,” he repeats, “my name is not Porter.”
But this time he says it real slow and thick, like he is deaf or retarded. Or I am.
I picture the first night we met. See his red jacket. Porter is sewn right there, over his heart, in shiny thread that glows gold in my memory. Roger even called him Porter, I remember, and I am pretty sure he responded when Roger called him that. I consider the possibility that maybe he told me his name that night and I forgot it, that it just swirled right out of my brain with all the wine and the making out and rolling around in the soft grass.
I sit still, too confused to get worked up about his tone. The car, the quarry, even my brain get real quiet, and then it hits me. Here I am with this guy again, this guy I have clocked serious intimate time with, and I don’t even know his name. God, I could just die. Drive us both off that cliff right over there, plunge us past the pointy rocks and worn-out class of ’87 spray paint, graffiti and garbage racing past us, the last things we see on our way to the jagged, silty bottom and our certain deaths. And I don’t even know the guy’s name. Damn.
When they send someone out from the local paper to cover the tragedy, the headline will read, FUTURE VALEDICTORIAN LEAH JOHNSON AND SOME RANDOM DUDE DIE IN TRAGIC CAR ACCIDENT. There will be the obligatory photo of the mangled muscle car at the bottom of the quarry, with a spiral of smoke drifting up from its sooty black pinstripes. “Yes, she was driving,” people will say as they admire the carnage. “Did you even have to ask?”
Giving up my death grip on the wheel, I lean back and shake my head, trying to clear it.
Sighing, I give up completely and ask, “What is your name then?”
“Duffy. Jon Duffy. JD. Your choice.”
Duffy?
My eyes grow big, and I suck in a breath as I turn toward him, but before I can even ask, Porter continues in a long, singsongy way. “Yes, I am Jon Duffy, son of Don Duffy, Big Duff, as you probably know him.”
Well, of course I know him. Everybody knows him. Big Duff is almost as notorious as Sam, Sam, the UPS man, for nailing every recently separated or divorced woman in town. While Sam trolls town in his brown truck and brown shorts, making “special deliveries,” Big Duff works the country club with a five iron and a wicked grin. He is the golf pro at our club and a permanent fixture on the fairways and in the clubhouse.
My dad golfs with him sometimes if he needs someone to fill out a foursome on a late afternoon. He is a big, burly man with a strong backswing and a boisterous laugh. He may be called Big Duff, but my dad says, “I haven’t seen him duff one yet.” I’ll take his word for it, but secretly I wonder how anyone can swing a club around a stomach that big. Personally, I gave up golf forever when my boobs started getting in the way.
I’ve seen him in the bar at the club on social nights, talking golf and laughing loudly, his cheeks ruddy and his hairline receding. He usually has one arm wrapped around a tan blonde who comes complete with diamond studs, moisturized crow’s-feet, and two teenage sons, while his other hand stirs the limes around in his tall, clear drink.
“Your knees are shaking,” Don Duffy’s son says, nodding toward my legs.
I look down at them. They look kind of funny, as if they don’t belong to my body. Porter, Duffy, Jon Duffy, JD, Big Duff, clutch, gas, brake, clutch. There are too many choices.
Staring straight ahead at the quarry, I say, “I think I’ve had enough of this.”
“You’re right.”
He shoves his door open, climbs out, and makes his way around the front of the car, his fingertips trailing along the sparkly blue hood as he goes.
He reaches my side. “It is smelling a bit hot,” he says.
That’s not really what I meant, I think as I sniff at the air, trying to smell the difference between hot engine and hot boy. I didn’t mean I’ve had enough of this driving business, I meant more like I think I’ve had enough of this who the hell are you business, but here he is already, pulling my door open like a gentleman, and I really don’t want to get into it with him, since he’s practically a stranger and we are almost straddling a dark and rocky hole perfect for the dumping of dead clutch-challenged teenage girls. Don Duffy’s son has decided he should drive, and so it shall be.
I skitter across the gravel to the passenger side. He starts the engine as I slide into my seat, and then I feel it, like a strong yank to my gut—the pull and switch as the clutch lets go and the gas takes over in a perfectly smooth transition under Porter’s control, with no pause or gap or reluctance. So, I think as I relax, leaning into the cushioned leather, that’s how it’s supposed to feel.
We are barely moving, but I need to know before we go any farther or any faster, so
I turn to him and ask, “Do you know my name?”
He rolls the car along slowly, the gravel bumping and popping gently underneath the tires. He turns and leans toward me until our foreheads almost touch.
“Yes,” he says, smiling, “of course I do.” He kisses me on the forehead. “You’re Leah.”
I don’t know how he knows. Did I tell him? I thought I did, and I didn’t. I thought he didn’t know, but he did.
“Then why does your jacket say Porter?” My finger embroiders some invisible floss into my T-shirt, right above my heart.
“’Cause I am a porter,” he says simply as he turns the wheel sharply, pointing us away from the rocks and the danger and toward the hum of the highway. “At the club. It’s my job. Park the cars, wash the cars, porter the cars. And you know, occasionally,” he smiles over at me as he turns left onto the highway and we finally hit blacktop with a squawk and leave the dusty gravel for good, “drive the cars.”
“I guess that explains the cars.”
“Yeah, I guess it does,” he replies as he shifts into a higher gear and we take off.
The quarry has become a small strip of purple and bronze streaks in the sparkly oval mirror outside my open window when I finally figure it out. Duh, I think as I drop back into my seat, a little bit blown away.
“You looked at my license,” I say.
He laughs and takes my hand, rubbing his thumb lightly across my knuckles.
“Smart and hot,” he says, “Just my type.”
I grin, squinting into the sunlight. That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Chapter Seven
I remember the grass at our old lake house. It was like a green rug, cool and thick, the whole summer through. It was good for running in bare feet, and we had tons of trees. Oaks. Huge ones that made great shade and tree houses and could hold up the three of us tumbled into one hammock with no trouble.
I learned to golf on that sloped front lawn. With his big arms wrapped around mine, my dad helped me line up my shot with my tiny putter, and then we watched the dimpled white ball roll away, over and over, until it was almost too dark to see it in the thick grass.
Kiss Crush Collide Page 8
