Chapter 9
Nine
FELIX
T his is a confusing set of sensations.
On one hand, she's naked in my arms, soft skin silk smooth and warm, her big lush tits pressed against my chest and draped on my arm, knees drawn up to present her ass in a broad, intoxicating curve that my hand naturally rests upon as I hold her; yet, on the other hand, she's bawling raggedly, her whole body wrenched with sob after sob.
There's nothing I can do or say, so I just hold her. Rub her arms, caress her thigh and ass, nuzzle the top of her head and inhale her scent.
I lose track of time again, and this time she doesn't fall asleep. She slowly calms down, the wracking sobs subsiding to hiccuping whimpers. Her hand rests on my pec, curled up like a sleeping sparrow. Her breath washes warm on my skin.
"His name was Richard Declan James," she whispers. "But everyone, his parents included, called him Dutchie. The story, as he told it to me, is that his grandmother, who was from the Netherlands, made Dutch Apple turnovers one day when he was four or five. He loved them so much he ate six or seven of them and got sick, but even after that, whenever his grandmother came to visit he demanded she make dutchies, as he called them. It became a whole joke in the family, and they all started calling him Dutchie, and it stuck."
"His name was Rick James?" I ask.
She sniffs a tiny laugh. "Yes. The other reason he went by Dutchie." She shivers. "I'm cold."
I shimmy and tug the blanket out from beneath us and drape it over us, settling it on her shoulders. She grips the edge, tucks it under her chin, and then settles her curled-up hand on my chest once more.
"I met him when I was twenty. A year after Mom died."
"How'd she die?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "Forgot I didn’t tell you—I told Faye. Um. She was a Phishhead. Like, as a lifestyle. I grew up nomadic, living in that same van out there, following Phish around the country. I was homeschooled by Mom's friends—by her commune. She was a real deal hippy, smoked pot, sold drugs and merch to make ends meet. When they weren't touring, we'd stay in a long-term rental hotel and Mom would get a real job and save up for the next leg of the tour, or we’d head to Florida to spend time with GramGram. But mostly, we were on the road.”
"Jesus—for real?"
She nods. "For real."
"That's…kinda crazy."
She sighs. "I know. But it was my life. I've never stayed in a real actual house for more than a few weeks. I've never owned a TV."
"So living in your van is just…normal for you."
"Exactly." A long sigh. "So, when I was nineteen, Mom cut her leg somehow at a show. It got infected, like a staph infection or necrotizing whatever it's called. Fasciitis… something like that. I don't know. The show was in the country, way out in the middle of nowhere, far as fuck from a hospital, which she wouldn't have gone to anyway, since she hated the government, hospitals, doctors, all of it. It happened so fast, Fee. She got cut, didn't think anything of it, started feeling sick, and then by the time we realized how serious it was, it was too damn late. She died not even a week after it happened."
"Fuck me, that's awful," I murmur. "I'm so sorry."
"It was awful. I was so lost. She was my life. I went where she went. Did what she did. Her commune was my family. And then she was just fucking gone in the blink of an eye and I was alone in the world. For most of a year, I just wandered around the west coast from San Diego to Seattle, doing nothing, going nowhere, just…lost." A pause, rife with the weight of her memories. "I ran out of money outside Portland, so I lived in the bus and found work at a farm. Dutchie's family's farm. They grew hops for a local brewery and raised goats and pigs. I was sad and lonely, and Dutchie was an only child. So we…clicked. It became a romance. He was patient with me, and god, I needed patience. I was angry and shut down and so sad, and I liked him but I didn't know how to—" she shrugs. "How to express it. He drew it out of me. I lived on their farm for a year and a half, and in that time Dutchie and I…became a couple, I guess. His family accepted it, accepted me, took me in. Showed me kindness. But I got restless, and when I told Dutchie I wanted to leave he decided to come with me. He'd been talking about leaving home for a while, and I gave him the excuse. So we left together."
"What was he like?" I ask.
I feel her mouth curve with a private smile. "Sweet. Endlessly sweet. He was kinda short, only five-eight. Slender, but strong—he was a farm boy. Sandy blond hair, brown eyes. Real puppy dog eyes. The boy had a smolder for the ages—he could convince me to do just about anything with this look he'd give me. He knew it, too, and definitely took advantage of it."
I chuckle. "I bet he did."
She tilts her head to look up at me. "Does it upset you? Hearing about him?"
I shake my head. "Not at all."
"Sure?"
"Absolutely. You can tell me anything."
Another thoughtful sigh. "He was a virgin when we met, and because of how I was, we didn't sleep together until after we left his farm."
"How you were? What does that mean?" I ask.
"I've identified as a demisexual for a long time."
"Don't know what that is."
"Someone who has to establish a strong emotional connection before any kind of sexual contact is possible." She must feel me thinking, because she huffs a laugh. "Thus why I said that what we just did is so unusual for me. We just met. I barely know you. Maybe I never was demisexual, maybe I was just…a heartbroken kid who fell very slowly in love. I dunno."
"I couldn't say. Not sure a label is necessary, if you ask me, but that's up to you."
A shrug. "I dunno—I have a lot of reflection to do, I guess." A pause. “Things developed very slowly, like I said. It was a full year before I even kissed him, and then almost two months before I was comfortable going any further, and he never rushed me, never expressed any kind of impatience. He was just…so damn sweet all the time."
"Sounds like it. That’s a lot of patience for a twenty-year-old kid."
“That's Dutchie for you. Wise beyond his years. He was the definition of an old soul. Patient. Kind. Not an aggressive bone in his body." Pause. Her voice goes soft, hesitant. "Sex with him was…soft and sweet. Passionate, but always sweet. And that's what I needed. My, um…my first time wasn't great, and it sorta messed me up, but that's a story for another time."
"Doesn't have to be," I say. "Up to what you feel ready to share."
She sighs. “Okay, well, here you go, then. A quick aside to tell the awful story of how Ember lost her virginity and regretted it forever." A lip-fluttering sigh. "I was sixteen, and I'd lived my whole life, as previously established, with Mom and her commune. Being hippies, they were all about free love and were totally okay with nudity. That's why I'm fine showing a lot of skin—I grew up seeing people naked and being naked around people from a very young age. It was never a big deal—it’s just bodies. But they were also very free with sex. It was common to walk into a trailer or RV or whatever and see people having sex, or having just had sex. But I hadn’t been with anyone, and I was ready. But I was also looking for love. I was a romantic sixteen-year-old, you know? I wanted a big, crazy love, and I didn't want my first time to be with the person I loved. I knew it would be awkward and probably not great. So I…" she sighs, but it's more of a growl. "We were living in Atlanta between tours, and there was a guy who lived in the unit a few doors down from ours in the motel. We started flirting, and I made it clear I wanted to sleep with him. I told him I was a virgin."
Another long pause. I can sense that this isn’t going to go well.
"At first, he was cool about it. Kissed me. Touched me. All that first base, second base, third base stuff. But then, once he was ready to have sex, he…he just went for it. Turned into ramjet the rookie. He wasn't gentle about it. He just—" a shudder, a shake of her head. "He fucked me, hard .”
"Jesus," I snarl. "What an asshole."
"Yeah," she whispers. "I asked for it, so I can't say it was rape, and I do mean that literally. I gave him my verbal consent before we started. I just…I didn't think he'd do that . He was—it was painful . Excruciating. And he wouldn’t stop. Kept moving me around like it was a porn shoot."
This makes my blood boil. "How old was he?"
A long pause. "Twenty."
I go still, fighting my fury. I only realize how unsuccessful I am when she squeaks in protest. "Fee, you're squeezing too hard. It hurts."
"Fuck,” I snap, immediately loosening my grip. "I'm sorry, Ember. I just…that was assault, you know. Consent is one thing, so is it technically rape? Maybe not. That's not for me to decide. But it absolutely categorically was sexual assault. And statutory rape."
"I was sixteen, and the age of consent in Georgia is sixteen."
"Fuck that,” I growl, fury boiling my blood. "What's his name?"
"Felix, stop." She twists to gaze up at me, tugging my chin down. "It was over ten years ago."
"Doesn't matter. He oughta have his fucking skull caved in with a framing hammer."
"Felix!" she snaps, angry now. " Stop it!"
I growl again, a long rumble of fury. "You were sexually assaulted by a grown man. Makes me fucking furious." I try to calm myself with some deep breaths, but it doesn't do dick. "The phrase ‘murderous rage’ comes to mind."
She rolls to her belly on me, tits draped onto my chest like heavy warm silk weights. She cups my jaw in her hands, nuzzling my chin with her lips. "I'm okay, Fee. Really, I am." She shimmies higher, snaking her arms around my neck and burying her nose and mouth in the side of my neck. "No violence, okay?"
I let out a sigh. "As long as I never see that motherfucker."
I feel calmer; it has more to do with Ember's embrace, the warmth and softness of her skin against mine and the press of her curves than any deep breathing I might do, and certainly not because she doesn't like violence. If I came face-to-face with that fuckstain, he wouldn't be walking away. I don't tell him that, though.
"You're still stewing," she murmurs. "You gotta let it go. I'm over it."
"How'd you know?" I ask.
She snickers. “You're tensed up harder than a brick wall." She nips my earlobe. "Do I need to relax you again?"
I can't help but laugh. “Yeah, maybe." I palm her ass. "Keep telling your story. Please."
“Okay, but no more murder talk."
"Is there any more sexual assault?"
"No."
"Then we're good."
She stays like she is, arms around my neck, fingers laced at my nape, cheek on my clavicle. "So okay—the point in telling you that was that Dutchie was the healing I needed. I didn't trust anyone after that. But he…he had the patience of a saint. I watched him sit in a meadow once with a handful of birdseed. He sat there and waited without moving for so long that a bird landed on his hand and ate the seed."
I snort. "Bullshit."
She raspberries my neck. "You calling me a liar?"
"Yes."
"I took a picture. It's on my phone. Remind me to show you later—I'm comfortable and I'm not getting up right now."
"I wouldn't let you get up."
She giggles, which does delicious things to her curves. The giggle vanishes, replaced by a sigh. "For a while, we just traveled. I let him pick where we went because by then I'd already seen pretty much all of the contiguous US. I don't remember which one of us had the idea, but we decided to try being van life vloggers."
"What now?"
"Hashtag van-life. It's a whole thing on social media. We were one of the first accounts. We bought some equipment and started recording our travels, our lives living out of my bus. Eventually, we got a sponsor, and then another, and after a couple years we were able to stop taking random work and live off our sponsorships."
"So you were, like, professionally nomadic."
"Yup."
"Wow." I nuzzle her temple. "Pretty fuckin' cool."
She grins against my cheek. "You really think so?"
"Hell yeah, I do."
She's quiet for a while, and then sighs. "It was a good life we had. Way outside the norm, but it was ours. Dutchie loved it. He'd lived his whole life on that farm, and I mean he never once left even the county he lived in until we left. So traveling the country, seeing so much of it? He fucking loved every second of it. He had a passion for life, Fee. Everything was an adventure, even when things went wrong. He was never cranky, never yelled at me. We almost never argued. And if we did, it was about stupid shit and we made up fast."
She shudders, shakes her head.
“We got married in a little white chapel in Roanoke, Virginia, two years after we left Portland. It was a justice of the peace and three people we'd met in town." Ember swallows hard. "My wedding dress was a little white sundress. I loved it because it had pockets, and he loved it because my boobs looked great in it. He bought a suit off the rack that fit like shit, but I still thought he looked super handsome."
"Mmm," I growl. "You in a little white sundress."
She giggles. "I don't have that one anymore—our luggage got stolen out of the van in Red Hook, New Jersey a couple years later. But I do have other sundresses. I'll wear one for you."
"Who the hell steals someone's luggage?” I grumble.
"Assholes," she murmurs, “that's who. Dutchie used it as an excuse to spend a week nude. That was fun. He only put on clothes when we had to go into a town. Eventually we got tired of it and bought new clothing."
"He sounds amazing."
"He was. I loved him with my whole heart. We were together for almost eight years." A long silence. "And then he got pancreatic cancer. It started as pancreatic and metastasized before we knew he had it. By the time we knew he was sick, it was everywhere. He didn't live a month past the diagnosis.” Her voice drops to a whisper I have to strain to hear, even with her mouth inches from my ear. "His death was fast and agonizing. Just…just like Mom. It was so fucking fast, I barely had time to process that he was sick, that he was gonna die, and then he was gone."
"What…" I clear my throat, emotion thick in my throat. "What about his family?"
She doesn't answer for a long time. "His father passed of a heart attack while plowing a field a few months before we got married. We drove back for the funeral. His mom died of a broken heart, essentially, just a few months later."
"The man buried both parents within months of each other?"
She nods. "Yeah, he did."
"Fuck, man."
"It's part of what bonded us. We were both alone in the world." She pats my chest. "There. Now you know."
“Thank you for sharing that with me, Ember."
She wriggles and then goes still. "Where are you, with us?"
I sigh. "I…I don't know. That was…fucking magical. But I…there's so much beneath it, you know?"
"You're not talking about my story."
"No."
She nods, sighs. "I'm struggling with it, if I'm being honest." She lifts up to meet my eyes. "Not you. And I don't regret it. Not at all. Just the opposite, and that's the problem."
"I guess I'm not following," I admit.
Sighing, Ember rolls off me and scootches up to a sitting position, tucking the quilt under her arms. "It's hard to explain, and I'm not sure how much you really want to hear."
"Why wouldn't I?" I ask.
“Because in order for it to make any sense, I’d have to talk in some detail about my relationship with Dutchie. Sexually, I mean."
"I mean…" I stare into space, taking the time to truly consider what she's saying and how it'd feel. "I'd really like to understand, Ember. I know it might be a little awkward or uncomfortable, but it's important. It's not my call, though. It's your story to tell, and only if it's not too painful to talk about."