Chapter 8
Lanston
I setmy black helmet over Ophelia’s head and can hear her soft giggles from beneath. Even though they are muffled, they bring a smile to my face. I notice the ends of her hair are wet but don’t think much of it.
“So you’ve really never ridden a motorcycle before?” I ask as I swing my leg over the bike. She shakes her head. I can’t see her expression but the way she grabs at her dress uncertainly sends a thrill through me.
Even though I want to let my gaze linger, I pull it away.
I think of last night again.
We returned to our separate sofas after our encounter. I had a fitful night’s rest with a handful of things running rampant through my mind. Yesterday was the first day since being a phantom that I didn’t feel so hopeless and melancholic. I didn’t think of Liam and Wynn for the entirety of the day like I usually do. My mind was encapsulated by Ophelia. Wholly and entirely.
We rose as the sun did, slowly and with drowsy eyes, and decided to head to Harlow together. A nervous vein has spread through my flesh, worrying over how she’ll like the residents I’ve lived with for so long and if she’ll find therapy as helpful as I did.
“Do you want to learn or to ride behind me?” I tease her, thinking she’ll sit behind me, but of course she doesn’t. My eyes widen as she straddles the bike in front of me, her dress hiked up to her waist and the soft flesh of her ass is practically in my lap.
I swallow hard.
“Well? Teach me.”
My brain takes a moment to catch up. “Um, first, you need to learn how to use the clutch and throttle.” I show her the parts on the crotch rocket and she observes, memorizing everything I say.
We try a few times, but the first gear is always the toughest. So after she can’t get it to catch, she sighs. “Can you get it going and I’ll just steer?”
I laugh and lean over her so I can reach the handle; she lifts her foot so I can control the clutch.
“Ready?” I shout over the roar of the engine as I rev it loudly.
She nods vigorously. The excitement is evident in her motions, and I wish I could see the light in her eyes right now. With my chest pressed so close to her back, I wonder if she can feel the erratic beat of my heart. The way it dips and stutters.
Have I ever felt this nervous around someone? That timid grin that you get from being around someone who lights your heart like a match spreads across my face. The giddiness she releases is contagious.
I take a deep breath before letting the clutch fall and twist the throttle. The motorcycle takes off fast. Ophelia dips down, scream-laughing as we race down the street onto the highway. Her shrills of fear quickly turn into excitement and she sits up more, letting go of the handles and spreading her arms out wide.
It’s my favorite sound—the laughter of someone’s first ride. The thrill is addicting.
The sun hits my eyes as she turns her head a bit. The helmet shields her face, but I know she’s looking back at me, enduring the patterns of my quickened pulse against her back.
Suddenly, I become acutely aware of myself. What is she looking at? My eyes, my lips, my nose? Perhaps I’ll never know. She turns to face the road again and juts her ass out more as she leans forward against the wind. Her hand smooths over mine, feeling the throttle and the strength I hold it with.
This is the moment I know I’m in trouble.
The way every cell in my being reverberates and responds to her. Ophelia is liquid in my veins. Her laugh forever haunting.
Halfway to Harlow, we stop and switch. She sits behind me and I take over driving. Her thighs wrap around me and I look down more than once. The heat of her core warms the bottom of my spine. Ophelia’s hands spread across my chest, securing herself firmly at my back.
The ride back is torture. I’m thankful she can’t see the boner that tents my pants, and I may take a few alternate roads to prolong our trip to Harlow so the blood can return to my head.
Take it easy, Nevers, I chide myself. She’s probably not even into me.
But that thought is hard to enforce in my mind as she lets her fingers glide up and down my sternum. The motions are languid and slow. Her cheek presses to my shoulder and I jolt at the realization that she’s ditched my helmet.
“You didn’t toss it, did you?” I shout sarcastically, knowing as well as she does that I can just steal one again. Nothing we touch or move actually changes in the living world. We only take fragments of them, small, insignificant pieces like their shadows. Everything is false here. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t still fun, not any less real for us.
She rests her chin on my shoulder and says, “We don’t even need them. Can we stop somewhere first?”
I grin, not that she can see. “I like the way it looks on me. Makes me more mysterious. Sure—where to?”
She laughs. “It’s just up this road. Take a left when you get to the forest line.”
I follow her guidance and take the narrow road leading into the mountains. The pine trees are closer to the street here, creating a barrier that blocks out all the sounds of the world. Mountains should be visible straight ahead in the distance but the mist is still heavy in the air, blocking out the sun and creating an almost ominous world beneath it.
The motorcycle slows as I let off the gas a bit. “Where are we going?” I ask. This feels more like a horror movie than the basement at Harlow did.
It’s so quiet and void of life.
Ophelia’s hands are still tightly wrapped around my center as she says nonchalantly, “To my hiding place.”
Hiding place? All the way out here?
I open my mouth to ask more questions, but she cups her fingers over my lips gently. Cold air wisps between the gaps and sends chills down my spine.
“You’ll see,” she whispers against the shell of my ear.
Who are you, Ophelia Rosin, and why has it taken us all this time to find one another?
I want to ask her many things, such as what her favorite music is and where she finds all those abandoned plants she fills her opera house with. When she stumbled upon this place and how she was murdered.
There are so many aching thoughts that burden me. But I keep my lips pressed together, patient.
After a few minutes of driving on the winding forest road, a small wooden sign appears on the right. Ophelia points at it and I turn. The asphalt turns to gravel and the path leads to a small trailhead. A makeshift fence of rotting wood stands in place, along with an overgrown path. Wildflowers and weeds have long since crowded any trail that used to be here.
It’s vacant.
There is a stillness here, nothing but the sound of the birds waking above in the boughs, their songs laden with sorrow. Branches snapping beneath the feet of weasels or vixens. For some reason, the sound of them settles the affliction inside me. The anxiety and depression that lingers almost seems hushed here beneath the mist and pines—amidst the whispering trees and the chill in the air.
My eyes close and I let myself become one with this place.
“Lanston.” A whisper.
For a moment, I think it’s Wynn. The softness and light lilt to it is warm.
“Lanston.”
I open my eyes, slowly turning and finding a beautiful rose instead of my pink-haired wonder. Her cheeks are red with the cold spring morning; her eyes are brown and speckled with green, pale against the mournful pines that surround her.
My soul leans, agonizing and wishful, reaching for hers.
I realize that I’m not sad or disappointed that it’s not my kindred one. And that’s a somber thought in itself—that you indeed can move on from a love that ravished your heart to its entirety. I don’t want Wynn to be just a girl I loved once, but when I look at Ophelia, my entire being calls for her.
Familiar and coveting.
Like we’ve always been destined to meet.
Ophelia tilts her head. “Are you coming?” Her smile is loose and coy.
“Yeah, sorry about that. This place is just so—” I can’t seem to find the words to describe it. But Ophelia nods in understanding. Maybe there really aren’t any words to describe a place such as this. Even if it is just a forest.
I follow her as she leads us up the steep trail. If I were alive, I’d already be winded by our ascent. The mist grows thick around us and the moisture in the air grips my lungs.
We remain silent as we walk, taking in our surroundings and listening to the trees sway. I think about what she said, this being her hiding place. Who was she hiding from?
As the thought circulates my mind, we step over the final hill and break through the wall of mist. A chill spreads throughout my body, raising the hairs on my neck. The sky looks as though it extends forever, and the soft hues of the mid-morning colors make the clouds dance with pink, yellow, and an orange so fierce and angry one might believe the world to be ending.
We stand side by side at the lookout, fingers dangerously close to brushing against one another, as we stare out into the world that’s left us behind.
How bleak it is—yet I’m smiling.
“Why did you hide here?” I ask her finally, softly. It comes out as a mere whisper, yet it’s so quiet here above the forest and beneath the stars, that the sound of my voice is startling.
Ophelia looks at me, an ocean of misery in her eyes, and says, “Because no one would ever find me here, where the sky kisses the earth, where I was no longer an ailment to others. Here, I was the goddess of the forest—the only person to breathe the cold air and tell the trees my pain.”
I stare out where she has so many times before.
I see it now.
Why I’m drawn to her and crave to know everything inside her mind. It’s the sad smile. The almost words that are left unspoken.
“You hid here because you thought about not existing anymore.”
Her chin lifts to the faded stars still barely visible in the center of the sky, and she shuts her eyes. I turn my head and look at her. I watch her lips, pulling up into a reminiscent smile as if she is truly happy I heard her wordless confession.
“I hid here… because I knew I didn’t want to exist anymore.”