She didn’t stop moving, just gave me a thumbs-up as she vanished behind the tree. I saw the spade moving, a pause, and then a long groan of relief. A few minutes later she returned with the spade and the toilet paper and a disgusted expression.
“Not my favorite thing ever,” she muttered. “I appreciate toilets a lot more, now.”
I laughed. “Wait till the first time you have to do the other. Be glad I keep toilet paper on hand.”
She shuddered. “Can we talk about something else?”
I just laughed harder. “It’s just nature, baby.”
She shook her head. “A little too much nature for this city girl.”
“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
She went red. “Let’s just say next time, I’ll have to remember to make the hole deeper.”
I chortled. “Yeah, well, that’s how you learn. My first time taking the long drop out in the wops, there wasn’t a long drop and I didn’t know you had to dig a hole.”
She cackled. “Long drop?”
“Outhouse, but I’m using it as a polite euphemism for taking a shit.”
She shook her head and covered her ears with her hands and closed her eyes. “YUCK! Can we reserve a little bit of mystery, please?”
I set out the camp stove and a carton of eggs, put on a pan of scrambled eggs and some bacon. Except for the fact that it was well past noon, it was a nice pleasant morning. We ate and I made coffee and we didn’t talk about anything heavy.
I was about to suggest we head out when her phone rang from somewhere deep in her bag. By the time she found it and dug it out, the caller had given up.
“My sister,” she said, by way of explanation to me. “I’m gonna call her back.”
I shrugged. “All right. I’ve got no plans.”
She just laughed, and called her sister. It rang a couple times and then was answered.
“Hi, Lex.” She listened. “Actually, I’m sure Mom told you already, but I’m not in New York anymore. Uh, Wisconsin, I think.” Another minute or so of listening. “Lex, girl, I love you, but you suck at small talk. What do you want?”
A pause.
“You are motherfucking shitting me.” She tugged on her braid. “Lex—Alexandra, don’t bullshit me. You? You are getting married.” Another pause as she listened. “After that video, I figured you guys were pretty serious, but getting married?”
Pause, listening.
“Wow. Okay. You really love this guy, huh? Not just because he’s a hot, famous superstar?” A laugh. “Okay, okay. You do. You love this dude. I never would have thought it, but okay. As long as he makes you happy. So, big question is when is the wedding?” She coughed in surprise. “You’re fucking kidding me. Less than two weeks? What the hell is the rush? Okay, okay, whatever, your business. Well, I guess it’s a good thing I’m like halfway there.” She glanced at me. Meaningful, but I couldn’t fathom the look. “I, um…no, I’m not exactly alone. I mean, we’re still sort of…figuring things out, you could say. Lex, don’t, okay?” A pause. “Is he coming to Alaska with me? Like, for the wedding?”
Ah, that was the meaning. I grinned at her. “Yes, I am.”
She didn’t grin. It was a deep, serious look. “You can’t make a big deal out of it, Lex, but yes, he’s coming to Alaska with me.” Another stretch of her listening. “All of us together again, at last. It’ll be fun. Okay, yeah, I gotta go too. Okay, love you, Lex. And congratulations. See you soon. Bye.” She hung up the phone and set it aside.
I moved to sit beside her in the open sliding doorway. “What’s up?”
“My sister Lexie is getting married to Myles North. In Ketchikan, in two weeks.” She huffed, wiped her face. “So my leisurely time frame just got shortened. I can’t believe it—my sister is getting married. In two weeks. I didn’t even realize they were that serious.”
“What else? Something is bugging you.”
“Not bugging, just…” Her eyes lifted to mine. “You and me. This. It’s not even new yet, and now you’re coming to Alaska with me, to meet my whole family? Including all four of my sisters’ boyfriends whom I’ve never met, and my mother’s new boyfriend whom I’ve also never met. I just…are you sure?”
I felt…uncomfortable, I had to admit. “I…I think two weeks to get from Wisconsin to Alaska is plenty of time. We’ll take it slow and we’ll figure things out on the way.” I took her hand. “Because yes, Poppy, I’m sure. I don’t know what the hell this is or what we’re doing, I just know I’m going wherever you’re going, and if that’s to meet your whole family, great. You’re amazing, so I’m sure your family will be, too.”
She shook her head. “They’re all in serious relationships.” A shrug. “Well, except Torie. From what I can tell, at least, but no one’s ever sure what’s going with her.”
“So?”
She held my gaze. “Errol…”
“No expectations, Poppy. No pressure. We figure it out, one step at a time. Whatever it is, whatever it looks like. We’re just two people who like to be together. You get me, I get you. That’s all it is.”
She shook her head, but not in disagreement, I didn’t think. A long silence, and then she looked at me again. “I had a thought, just now. Not sure how you’re gonna feel about it.”
“Okay. Hit me with it.”
“Have you ever had a relationship with a girl that wasn’t based on sex?”
I outright laughed at that. “Yeah…nah.”
She smirked. “Me either.”
I followed where she was leading. “You’re suggesting we take time without a physical, sexual component.”
She nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but I—”
“It’s not,” I cut in. “It makes total sense.”
“It does?” She didn’t expect my reaction.
“Poppy, I know I’m a guy and therefore expected to think solely with my dick, but…I have got a heart and a soul and a brain. And yeah, it makes sense. Neither of us have ever had a relationship, period, let alone anything like one that wasn’t entirely predicated on sex.”
“Was it sexual for you with Leslie?”
I nodded. “Sure. Met her at a bar, hooked up with her, kept seeing her, and it just sort of became…something. Sort of. Not really. It was mostly sex, and that’s why it ended, because she wanted it to turn into something not just sexual, and I wasn’t having any of it.” I jutted my chin at her. “You and Reed?”
“Same. He was in one of my classes. He was cute and funny. The sex was good, and it seemed like he was into me. Never had a clue otherwise until I walked in on him cheating on me.”
“So, we’re agreed. I think it makes sense for us to try it. I’m not saying I’m excited about it, but I think it’s smart. It’s something I’ve never done, never even thought about. Would never even consider, normally. Like, no sex? What’s the point in anything, then, yeah? But with you…there’s a point.”
She chewed on something silently, started to speak, but stopped.
“Out with it,” I said. “Whatever it is, just say it.”
She looked away from me. “I guess I’m worried, though.”
“About?”
“If we cut out sex, what if…” She ducked her head. “You’re gonna say I’m dumb, but just hear me out. I’ve been told my whole life that I’m beautiful, okay? By everyone. So this isn’t…it’s not exactly a self-esteem thing.” A sad laugh. “Maybe it is. I just…since I became sexually active, the only attention I’ve ever gotten from men has been sexual. I’ve been proposed to by strangers. Asked by random men on subways if I’ll star in their pornos. I was in Starbucks one time and this obviously super-rich guy asked I wanted to be his wife and move to…some country in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia, I think it was, and be his, and I quote, lead wife.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah. And guys I connect with, it’s sex. Professors have offered me the easy A if I sleep with them. I can’t have male friends because they always end up trying to hit on m
e. If a guy finds out I’ve slept with someone he knows, he assumes I’ll bang him too. It’s always all about sex. So…I guess part of me wonders…”
“If it’s possible for me to feel anything for you, enjoy being around you, without sex being a part of it?”
“Right,” she said, in a quiet whisper.
I held her hand. “Nothing I say is going to matter, not in this.” I touched her chin, brought her eyes to mine. “I’ll just have to show you.”
She swallowed. “Why would you want to?”
“Because I told you about Mom and Dad.” I dropped my gaze. “Because…you mean something to me. You matter to me. Because I want…I want something to matter, something that’s not sex, too, Poppy. A lot of what you just said is true of me, too. And I want something more from this.”
“How long?” she asked, searching me; the meaning of her question was obvious.
“Hell if I know.” I stood up, paced away. “Until we know. Until…” I laughed. “I honestly don’t know. How about we say at least through your sister’s wedding?”
She bit her lip. “That’s a long time.”
I snorted. “Yeah, it is.”
“We could always change our minds.”
“Or we could stick to it and see what grows out of it.”
She nodded, eyes dropping. “Until after the wedding, then.”
“Pop?”
She just laughed, standing up and pacing away. “It just sounds impossible. As much as I feel like it’s the only way you and I can make any sense of this crazy thing, it just seems impossible. I fucking want you, Errol. Right now. All the time.”
“With you all the way across all points,” I said. “Do we need, like, rules of engagement?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “We’re adults. We’re choosing this.”
“So if we get to a point where it stops making sense, we just…go with it?”
She bored a stare into me. “We have to be careful with logic like that.”
I laughed. “Because one or the other of us could easily talk us out of it.”
Poppy laughed with me. “Exactly.”
I moved to stand behind her; she twisted to look at me, and then leaned back against me. I held her, non-sexually, my arms around her shoulders and middle. “You know what’s weird, Poppy?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s been less than three days since we met.”
She huffed a laugh. “That is weird. Feels like a lifetime has passed since then, somehow.”
“That’s what made me turn around. Feeling like I was missing someone who’d always been there, in that seat next to me. I’ve never felt that way about anyone. Not like this—this hard, this much, this fast.”
“Me either,” she whispered. A laugh, then. “Three days? How is it possible to go from not knowing someone to needing them in three days?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I always thought it was storybook romance bullshit. Like, a trope to sell books and movies.”
“Me too.”
“Joke’s on us, huh?” She sniffed, not quite a laugh.
Silence.
“So.” I squeezed her. “Ketchikan, Alaska. Two weeks. You and me, alone in that caravan, no sex. Just us and our thoughts and ideas and our emotions.”
She faked a shudder. “I’m gonna start regretting it, you put it like that.”
“Me too.” I laughed, then sobered. “Look at it this way—how we fell asleep, and woke up? Together like that? We have that. As much as we want, all night, every night.”
Her head twisted to press a kiss to my jawline, just under my ear. “I like that,” she whispered.
I melted, the way she whispered, the way she kissed me. Turned her in my arms and slashed my lips across hers, slow and hot and deep. She was the first to pull away.
“No fair,” she murmured. “Instigator.”
I laughed. “Sorry. You whisper to me like that, kiss me on the jaw like that, and it just…does something.”
“You mentioned rules of engagement, like how to avoid ending up fucking.”
“Yes?”
“What about nonsexual touching?” She put herself back in my arms, leaning against my chest, gazing up at me. Traced a finger through my hair, over my ear. A thumb over my lip. “Like this?”
I choked. Blinked hard. Felt my heart skipping beats, trying to grow three sizes that day, all at once. “I like it.”
She smiled up at me. “You do?”
I closed my eyes, afraid she’d think me less sexy and less masculine if she saw the emotion I was feeling.
“Errol?”
“Mum—” My voice broke. I cleared my throat, tried again. “Mum used to do that. What you just did, with my hair. She used to brush it over my ear. Ruffle it. I hated it, back then. I was a big boy, didn’t want my mum playing with my hair like I was some dumb baby, you know? Silly macho boy stuff.”
“I don’t know if that means I should do it again or not.” I couldn’t open my eyes. She touched my closed eyelids with her thumb. “Errol. It’s okay.”
I shook my head. “Dunno why I’m—it’s stupid.”
“It’s not.”
I heaved a breath, tried to compose myself. “I still miss her.”
Everything burned. Eyes, chest. Lungs.
I felt something warm and soft and wet touch my eyelids: she was kissing them, one and then the other.
“It’s okay, Errol.” Her arms went around me.
“It’s stupid.”
She laughed. “I know. Big tough guys like you aren’t allowed strong emotions.”
“Don’t mock.”
“I’m not.” A laugh. “Okay, maybe I am. But it’s teasing, not mocking.”
“I just…I don’t know how to…”
She ran her hands through my hair. Brushed it back. Palmed my cheeks, thumbs grazing over my eyes, and I knew her thumbs would come away damp. Into my hair again, soothing. Caressing, again and again.
“When I tell you it’s okay,” she whispered, “what I mean is that it’s okay to let me see what you’re feeling. I won’t think less of you. I’ll still be attracted to you.”
“Not what we’re taught, as men.”
“So unlearn it.” She kept stroking my hair, and each touch of fingers soothed the ache in my heart. “I’ll still want to suck your cock even if I’ve seen you cry, Errol.”
I broke out laughing, even as I felt things break open inside. “Is that so?”
“It is so,” she insisted. “I could show you, right now.”
“Don’t tease, Pop.” I shook my head. Forced my eyes open, to meet hers.
“Who’s teasing?” Her gaze was serious, hot, open, frank.
“We just made an agreement about no sex until after your sister’s wedding.”
She bit her lip. “That could start after.”
“You do that, I’ll want to give you an orgasm or three, and then we’ll spend the rest of the day doing dirty and delightful things to each other.”
She moaned, rested her head against my chest. Sighed. “Dammit.”
“You started it.”
“I was trying to reassure you.”
I clutched her close, feeling her torso expand with each breath. “You did. More than you’ll ever know.”
She gripped my shirt in her fists, pushed away from me. “Let’s get out of here before I change my mind.”
“Next stop, Ketchikan.”
She snickered. “You may have a bit to learn about North American geography if you think that, Errol.”
“Figure of speech, you hard case.”
Hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, and also the most rewarding, were those days in the van with Poppy, without allowing ourselves to escape into sex.
It was always there, just under the surface. Threatening to boil over, or like a room full of explosives just waiting for a spark of ignition.
We slept together, and just slept. Curled around each oth
er in the back of the van, under the camper, under the stars. Every few days we’d take a room so we could shower and we’d restock supplies, and sleep in a real bed. And we’d wake up together, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Also the most natural thing in the world was to wake up with her body against mine, to feel want surging through me, and she, half asleep, would respond with a sultry shimmy of her ass against my desire, and more than once we nearly forgot our own plan. One of us would always remember, though.
With difficulty, I admit, and I know she felt the same way, too.
We had to create boundaries. I couldn’t let myself watch her strip for the shower, or when she got out and dried off and dressed. It was too hard to resist her, so when it was her turn to shower, I’d leave the room and go find food or bring back ice we didn’t need, or just stand outside wondering why I was doing this to myself. She did the same. Or went out to call one of her sisters, or her mom.
We talked almost every waking hour. About everything. Embarrassing childhood stories, bullies, victories, crushes. Hookup disasters, language misunderstandings, hated movies and times a movie moved us.
There was always something to talk about.
Even sex. We talked about sex a lot, actually, perhaps strangely. Since we weren’t having it, it was less weird to share things from our pasts. Things past lovers had done that drove us nuts in good or bad ways. Favorite positions—reverse cowgirl for her, and doggy style for me; and least favorite—sixty-nine for both of us. We talked about close calls with condoms going missing or coming off. We even, late one night while sharing a bottle of wine in a hotel room in Saskatchewan, tried to tally numbers of partners. That had been uncomfortable for both of us.
But it drew us closer.
She asked me things I’d never have told anyone else, like what my darkest desire was, and I answered.
It was as we were passing beyond Prince George, nearing the last leg of the journey.
Out of the blue, too. Listening to music, windows down, watching the scenery.
She just looked at me, chewed on a fingernail. “Darkest desire.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Like, fetish, or fantasy, or what?”
A shrug. “However you want to answer it.”
I hesitated over that one, for a long while. “God, not an easy one.”
Goode Vibrations Page 21
