52
There’s a bassline in my skull. The sun just starts to creep its pretension through the blinds and my ceiling fan spins quickly above. I’m in my boxers, sheets thrown about the floor. I’ve been kicking and thrashing all night. I sit up in the worst kind of state, sweaty and gut turning over like a colony of ants are inside of me feasting. I somehow grunge my way out of bed and put on my oldest pair of shorts. I open the bedroom door and step face first into the morning.
Rose sits patiently in the dawn. Somehow, I feel like an intruder in my own home. The night flashes through my mind, jagged and painful. I close my eyes as the headache stabs. I could wretch my entire self away if prompted. All of it comes back to me. Rose. Jimmy’s. Outside. Drive. Talk. Sleep. And now, she’s here. She’s stayed. She looks breathtaking while I embody the worst regrettable drunkenness. I’m rather pathetic, standing dumb in my dumbest shorts. I look like pure hell and Rose drinks a coffee in the burgeoning sunlight, sitting at my kitchen table. God, of all the ways I’d wished to awake one day to Rose, this isn’t one of them.
“Good morning.”
She smiles. I push my hair from my forehead and say.
“I’ll be back. Don’t, just don’t leave. Please.”
She looks out to my yard, then back.
“I won’t.”
“Thank you.”
I turn the shower on and tap my forehead on the wall. What a fucking disgrace I’ve become. I get my toothbrush and toothpaste and fall into the scalding water. I don’t care enough to adjust it. I deserve to be uncomfortably hot. I let it hit my face in penance. My back leans into the tub floor as the water almost burns me. I scrub the scum from my mouth with toothpaste. After a solid spin of the brush, I spit the stuff out and wash my body with vigor. Whenever I greet the day with a crippling hangover, I always feel so damn shameful and stupid. The only thing to do is to wash. To try and start again. The shower helps as much as anything can, but how much can a shower do for the soul? I’m killing what I can of the prior evening with soap, and the rest would have to slowly fade.
I turn off the faucet and dry myself. Even my softest towel feels abrasive. In between thoughts of self-hatred, there is Rose. I have half the mind to believe that when I exit my room she’ll have gone. I’ll be alone and things will make sense.
Coffee helps too. Outside there’s one of the finest late fall mornings you’ve ever seen. Turns out we’re right in the sweet spot.
“Look at that, you see ’em?”
“I do.”
She’s pointing off to a little Bambi and her mother taking turns at the salt lick.
“So cute.”
We’re at the kitchen table taking sips and admiring the morning. Rose watches Bambi and I watch her. She purses her lips without knowing, scrunches her nose as thoughts play across her freckled face and I wonder what she’s thinking. After the deer leave us for another pasture she asks.
“so, what are you going to do?”
“’Bout what?”
“Your father.”
“Oh.”
“Too early?”
“No. Good question. I don’t know.”
“Where is he staying?”
“No idea.”
“Hm.”
“He said he drove straight into town from, God, I don’t even know, Illinois? He didn’t say where he’d be staying.”
“Right.”
“I doubt he’ll be back.”
“Something tells me he will be.”
“We’ll see, I guess. He just left, ya know.”
“Yeah.”
“Just fucking, disappeared.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe I imagined the whole thing.”
For all I know, it could have been a creation of my subconscious. Maybe I was sleep deprived and neurotic enough to conjure something.
“How was home?”
“It was okay.”
“Just went back to your place?”
“Yeah, right back to the heart of it. I don’t know. I didn’t have anything waiting for me. Some friends. Not sure what I was looking for. Went looking anyway.”
“I get that.”
“I think I didn’t want to admit I was settling somewhere.”
“And now? Do you want to be here?”
“I do, yeah. I do.” She nods.
“I’ve always wondered what it’s like for people moving to Johnston. You don’t have all the earlier years to grow fond of it.”
“Yeah, but you can feel it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah of course. It’s special. Really is.”
“I agree.”
“Isn’t everywhere?”
“Probably.”
Rose sure moves through her turmoil gracefully. Her existential crises don’t result in her spinning out of control. Her eyes stay steady and locked. When she speaks it’s soft but definitive. Her gentle fingers spin the coffee cup in small circles on the table.
“I didn’t know when I was gonna see you again,” she says.
“Same.”
“I should have said something to ya.”
“I don’t know.”
“I should have.”
“You did what you thought you had to.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s not like I expected you to stick around this place just for me, you know.”
“I know.”
“I was just down about it, is all. End of the day I know we only had the one night, really, so, yeah.”
“We’ve had a few.”
“We have, haven’t we?”
“Who’s counting?”
And that one sentence fills me with an assurance that life rarely seems to offer. Had she counted the nights, like me? Did she hold close even those brief moments of passing?
“You know I remember them all. All of the times,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Every single time I’ve seen you. Talked to you. Yeah. Of course I remember.”
“Me too,” she admits softly.
“What are you going to do, Rose?”
“I think I’m doing it.”
My heart swells. I look back out to the yard, shake my head and smile. If only it could stay fall forever. All the boys and girls of America are in the prime of it now. This is the time.
“Whatcha smiling at?” she asks.
“I have a very hard time believing you’re here.”
The potential of all beautiful humanity lights up her face as she blushes. Red cheeked, humble, graceful.
“Me too, a little bit.”
“I’m sorry you saw me like that last night.”
“It’s okay. You weren’t that bad.”
“My head is a fuckin war zone.”
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
And for the first time in years, I feel willing. Her kindness, her honesty. Her vulnerability. Here she is, in my home, with enough courage to come back. To see. For the first time in years, I want to tell someone everything.
“I’ve just been all over the place this year.”
“Same.”
“Just insane. Restless. Confused. So many thoughts of my mom. About this place. What I’m doing. Now my fuckin dad shows up at the doorstep.”
“Yeah.”
“And you.”
“What about me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been in this town all my life. I’ve never seen anyone like you in Jimmy’s that night. Not in Johnston, not my whole life. I wasn’t lookin for anything, ya know. I swear I wasn’t. Or I didn’t think I was. But that night was the spark of something. Everything’s changed since. It’s crazy. It’s like you set everything into motion. I’m trying to keep up with my own life.”
“I saw you that night too.”
“You did?”
“It’s not that big of a place, Cash.”
“Suppose not.”
“You were with Prince and Leon.”
“Yeah, yeah I was.”
“I just got into town a couple days before that. I didn’t know what the hell I was gonna do. Everything’s changed for me too, since then. Wild how that works.”
“You must have known how I felt right away.”
“I didn’t know anything about you.”
“I just wanted to be next to you.”
“All I knew was that you were one of Saul’s friends from way back.”
“Yeah.”
“He didn’t say anything about Prince and Leon. But he told me you were a good guy.”
“Effusive, ain’t he?”
“For him? Good’s a hell of a lot.”
“True.”
“Anyway, I asked him about you one day.”
“Really?”
“After you guys pitched your idea.”
“Ah.”
“I was curious too. I think. Why he didn’t sell. Then he got to talking. I couldn’t help it.”
“Couldn’t help what?”
“Asking about you.”
“What’d he say?”
“You’ll never believe it.”
“God.”
“He told me a story about you two.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Swear. Saul told a whole story.”
“Which one?”
“You’re really not gonna believe it.”
“Go on. I can take it.”
“Okay.
Well.
He told me a story of when you two were in eighth grade.
I don’t know if you’ll remember this but maybe you will.
Anyway, it was this really nice story about how one day he had to go to school even though he had a couple bruises from my father.
Jimmy was drunk the night before and Saul forgot to take the trash out, I think.
So, he got a little physical with him and Saul had to go to school the next day with some bruises on his neck and cheek or something like that.
Anyway, some of the kids in class saw the bruises and were making fun of him for it.
Calling them hickeys and shit, I don’t know, just making fun of him.
And, the way he tells it, instead of going out to break that day, he went to the bathroom and locked himself in the stall.
He told me he couldn’t stop crying no matter what he did.
Said he was in there the whole period just crying over everything.
But before the hour ended, he told me that you came into the bathroom.
And apparently, he tried like hell to stop crying but he still couldn’t.
He was in really bad shape, ya know? Well, he says that you could tell it was him right away and you wouldn’t leave him in there.
You wouldn’t leave the bathroom because you had to make sure he was alright.
He said you told him everything was going to be okay, that you were pals and what not, and that he could talk to you if he needed to.
He said you told him everyone needs someone to talk to, Saul .
And of course he didn’t really talk to you that day, but you still didn’t leave until you thought he was at least a little better and had stopped crying.
He said he made you swear not to tell anyone about it and that you never did, and that you never brought it up again.
He also said that you almost fought those kids in class later that day when they tried saying something to him about his bruises again.
He said there were three of them but you woulda fought them anyway and wouldn’t have cared if you lost.
Yeah, so.
He told that story about you.
He said, that’s all you need to know about Cash .”
“I remember that,” I say softly. I can’t believe Saul still thought about that, or that it meant enough to him to tell Rose about it on my behalf. God. The whole thing nearly makes my eyes water.
Of course I remember, Saul.
“Well. It’s because of that story that I said I’d go with you to dinner.”
“No kidding.”
“That and your smile. I love your smile. And your eyes. Okay. That’s enough.”
“You can keep going.”
“No, I can’t give everything away.”
“I love your smile too. And your eyes.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m happy you got dinner with me.”
“Me too. Tell me more.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
So, I tell her about Cambridge and my days out there. What I’d done, not done, and all about my existential experience, all the ghosts and the whole messy plot of it.
How I had thought, at the time, that it was a brush at near death. How when I made it back after that exodus, I felt more whole somehow, and when I finally returned to Johnston, Leon mentioned he’d seen her, and how that spun me out again a bit. Then I get to the guts.
“My father was always a huskier, hardened sort, ya know. He fought in the war. He was stoic, mean sometimes. I think only my mom saw the side of him that was soft enough to really know or love.
He always had this sharpness to his gaze, ya know, but he was quiet, always. He was harsh and dismissive, but mostly, hard. Closed and stubborn and tough. No affection. Not that I could find, anyway.”
How the hell is she doing it? She’s just listening and the details are spilling from me. I have the impulse to tell her anything I can think of. Any secret I’ve buried, any lie I’ve told.
“I didn’t know my father very well. But I might describe him like that, just like that. I know they were the best of friends,” she says.
“They were. And you’re right, Jimmy was similar. They were as good a pals as men like that can be.”
“Crazy.”
“But the thing is, when he was out there the other night, just standing there looking at me. All of those things were gone. Maybe I imagined it, but I swear it wasn’t even him. His form had shrunk. He was skinny. His eyes were deeper and heavier set, but they were sad, ya know? Fragile almost, but sad. Yeah. He was sad.”
“What’d you say to him?”
“Just told him to leave. I was shaking. I thought I might hurt him, honestly. I don’t know. I’ve seen sadness in his eyes before, but it was always buried. It was like concrete in his stomach or something. If you blinked you might miss it, but this was different. He seemed hollowed out. Scared.”
“And he left?”
“Yeah.”
“Then how’d you feel?”
“Sick. Angry.”
“Right. I used to feel that way about my dad too. Every time I’d see him that’s how I felt. I could hardly have a conversation with him. I kind of regret that now. I sort of wish he’d show up on my doorstep.”
“What would you say?”
“I don’t know. I’d forgive him, I think.”
“After everything?”
“I think so. Set us both free, ya know?”
“Yeah.”
“I think your dad will visit again, Cash.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“And if he does?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you forgive him?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. I watch a fox run through the yard. What a question. That’s something my mother would have asked me. Could I forgive him?
“Freeze.”
Rose smiles.
“Freeze?”
“It’s what mom used to say when she’d catch me daydreaming. She’d say that, and I’d have to tell her exactly what I was thinking.”
“I see.”
“So?”
“I think what you just said is beautiful. About forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness is beautiful.”
“I think you’re beautiful, Rose.” I reach over and take her hand in mine.
“Thank you for coming back here.”
“Right back at ya.”
I stand up and walk around the table. I sit next to her. Whatever it is we’re looking for, we’ve found some of it here. We reflect one another.
“Your eyes are like sapphires,” she whispers.
And I kiss her in the sunlight.
Life, we both know, in its entirety, is more and more fleeting by the second.
Nothing exists but this moment.
She slowly moves and sits on my lap, her arms crossed behind my neck.
She brushes the hair off my forehead and softly kisses me there, her lips warm and gentle.
Her hands border my jaw and her mouth hovers near mine.
She is intoxicating.
We sit there, eyes closed, her breath, mine, the small crashing winds of life.
There is nothing I’d rather feel, there is nothing I’d rather taste, smell, nothing.
Only her.
I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her closer.
We are intertwined.
I want to kiss each and every one of her freckles.
I slowly press my lips to her cheek, then the other, then her chest.
She hugs me tightly, her hands moving through the hair on the back of my head.
She wears the cross around her neck.
I kiss that too.
And all that is love is then holy.
“I want you, I want you, Cash,” she whispers.
“I want you too.”
“Take me to your room.”
I gather her in my arms and lift us from the chair.
We stand there, lips meeting, slow dancing for a second on the wooden floor.
I carry her from the kitchen and push open the door to my room.
We lay our bodies down.
My hands move through her hair.
Our breath is like the warm summer in which we initially met.
She pulls up on my T-shirt and I take it off.
I lean her back down to the mattress and my necklace falls on hers, they lie together on her breasts, the metals shining in the afternoon sun, still tempered by blinds.
She stares into me, endless forests reflected in rivers.
“You are so beautiful,” I say quietly, and I know I’ll say it a thousand more times if she’ll let me.
She runs her finger down the bridge of my nose and then traces my bottom lip.
My hands drift to her stomach which rises and falls with her accelerating breath.
Her ribs are strong on each side and I slide her tank up to her shoulders and off.
No bra beneath, her breasts are sculpted by light.
Her nipples are round and light brown.
With my hands sliding down her back, we sit up, our bodies pressed together.
Chest to chest, heartbeat to heartbeat.
Our shapes fit perfectly.
She moves her fingers through my hair again and we kiss.
The passion builds in slow careful movements.
My lips brush her collar bone, her skin is soft and flushed.
I kiss her breasts with an ignited fire.
My tongue traces circles, and she sighs.
Could we live forever in this moment, if we tried? My hands cradle her back, fingers curl through the loops in her jeans.
She grips the sides of my face.
My jaw then my neck.
A smile of desire spreads across her face, her nostrils flare as she breathes.
We release.
Burning now, building.
Our tongues move in rhythm, in and out.
She tastes like a dream I once had of love.
I kiss her nose, then she kisses mine.
I kiss the lids of her eyes, then she kisses mine.
We play this call and response, and she giggles.
I love our mouths connected.
I have never in my life wanted to be so completely another.
I want to be one.
Our bodies aligned, her hands move to my shoulders and turn it all over.
I’m on my back and she is straddled above.
Her sandy blond hair is thrown about her freckled face.
She bites her lip, and she smiles.
Fireworks erupt in my chest.
She leans down and kisses me there, right above the heart.
She puts her hands to the waistband of my shorts.
She takes my briefs as well and pulls them down off my feet, somewhere they’ll wait on the floor.
I’m erect and alive.
There is nothing between us anymore.
I’ve never been so consumed by desire.
Our souls are our bodies.
Everything is connected, and I understand it all now.
The heavenly purpose of love.
How this is the top of the mountain.
There is nothing more sacred.
Rose leans further, kisses my abdomen and then down.
I pulse with need for her.
Her lips press soft to the top of the head.
She moves her tongue from the base and then up.
She kisses me all around.
I can hardly sit still.
I reach down for her and bring her back up to me.
I need to be with her now, here, and always.
Our lips come together again.
I turn her over.
Her chest rises her breasts, then descends, it moves heavy with want.
There are more freckles by her collarbone and a small birthmark by her neck.
She wraps my necklace in her hand.
Pulse racing, we’re enveloped by the nerves of the first time.
She sends a lifetime of feeling through her eyes.
Trust.
I take her hand and kiss it and hold it there by my lips.
I return the feeling completely.
I have you.
You have me.
I bring her hand just above her head, fingers still locked, and we kiss.
I kiss her breasts.
I lay my ear on her chest and can hear her beating heart.
I move my lips along her rib cage and then her pierced navel.
I take the bronze button of her jeans and push it in through the slitted fabric.
The zipper goes down in a slow-moving line.
My hands glide over the edges of her pants and bring them down over her hips.
A sensual dream, the jeans fall off her legs and careen to the floor.
“Kiss me,” she whispers.
I move my lips and bite around the top of her white panties before I move up to her lips once again.
Rose.
There is nothing else.
Her hands on my face.
Her wet lips and mine.
This is the one true limitless feeling of life.
She’s breathing more heavily, a flame.
I go back down.
I love the silver ring which is pierced through her belly button.
I bite at the edges again.
“I’m so wet,” she says.
And I feel it.
I love it.
I kiss her there above the fabric.
The damp warmth nearly overtakes me.
I pull her underwear away from her body and off.
We are naked, together.
Both vulnerable and on fire.
More alive than ever.
I will never forget this first image.
Her hand just beneath her left breast.
Her hair pushed back and thrown.
Her lips flushed in waiting.
Her right knee bent over her body, covering.
I kiss her with all of my being.
I will love you, Rose.
“Rose.” Her name effortlessly floats from my lips.
Now and forever.
I know.
I place my right hand on her knee and spread it to the side.
We are completely exposed.
I kiss her again.
“I want to taste you.”
And I spread her other knee to the bed. I kiss slowly down her thighs, strong and tan and soft. My tongue licks their distance then down and around, I lightly meet her lips. My tongue outlines her folds. I’m in love with the taste.
“Cash,” she says, biting her finger then running that hand through her hair.
“oh my God.”
I’ve never wanted to be inside a woman so badly in my life. My lips kiss the top, my tongue goes in and out. Her sighs of ecstasy are divine, they consume me in desire. My passion rises. I almost black out. I’m kissing her, I want to love her. I want to make her feel incredible. My tongue moves in rhythm as her hips rise and fall against my face. I bring my fingers to her opening, massage and then enter. Her hand comes down to my hair. She grabs tightly in pleasure.
We’re in a stunning new high. I could kiss her like this till I die. Her moans are tender, alluring, erotic. To take her further and further is to live all throughout time.
“Cash, Cash. I’m going to come.”
“Come for me, Rose.”
“Cash.” Her nails dig into my shoulders, they grasp at my hair, my fingers move in and out faster, I feel her walls closing in. Her thighs clench. She cries out. Her chest rises and falls. Her eyes slightly watered, she looks down.
“Come here,” she says, panting. And our lips meet again. She tastes herself on my mouth and I’m more aroused than I ever thought possible. She takes me in her hand and moves up and down while we kiss.
“I want you inside of me,” she says. I kiss her again and shift my torso to hers. Still in her hand, she guides me inside. Tight and warm and wet, we shudder with desire.
“You feel so good,” I say.
And all I can see are her eyes. I know Rose, only Rose, will matter in the end. Even in the darkest corners of my life, this will always exist. This will carry me through. My hand goes behind her head and as we start to move together, our foreheads are pressed together. Our tongues and our lips, we are something of ancient design. I move slowly, in and out. We are one body. There is nothing so pure in my life. Her hips move into me and away, her legs curling around mine. Her arms wrap me tightly. Her breath fills my ears. Her sighs of pleasure and beauty are the symphony. We accelerate. Rose, I knew it from the beginning. I will love you.
And in tandem we move together like the ocean, figuring it out one heartbeat, one rising tide at a time. And there’s sweat on our skin now. We are warmer and warmer.
“Cash.”
“Rose.”
“I’m going to come.”
“Me too.”
“Come with me.”
I can feel her muscles tense.
Our eyes lock and it’s transcendent.
We turn completely to fire.
I want to stay inside her as long as I live.
We are closer and closer and closer.
Nearing climax she kisses and holds onto me.
We need this.
It’s her and it’s coming and as I pull out, she takes me.
My hand takes her too.
We move each other and fall into our rapture.
The sensation takes us, shakes us.
We are wet.
We kiss, our moans mesh and are the same.
We kiss and we are eternal.
The entirety of life and the future.
Her eyes, mine.
The purpose of everything, life.
All the love we’ve waited for.
All the lonesome nights, poems, and broken guitar strings.
We’re breathing heavy, together, pulsing and melded in our arms.
We hold on.
And it could be the rest of the story, right here. We kiss lightly, our hearts calming. But we will never come down, not fully. Her eyes fill with tears and all that I once feared is myth. Fear doesn’t exist. It does not. It does not. There is nothing but this.
Rose, I will love you. I run my hand down her back. Rose you can have me—you, you alone.
“Freeze,” she whispers.
From the center of her heart, my great something.
In my bed, in the afternoon, here she is.
I do not want to leave. We are here.
We kiss.
“You.”
“You.”
We fall asleep in the arms of the day.