Chapter 16 #2
I hold at the edge. I have never in my life held at the edge like this and the holding for Max in the bed of her truck under a navy sky is a holding I do with my mouth open and my knees wide.
"Max."
"Two… One…Now, Evangeline. Come with me.” Her voice is a growl.
I come.
I come on my own hand under the sky with her watching from the back of the truck bed.
I come the way she said come, into my own palm, with my hips rocked up off the wool, with my left hand pressed flat at my own bruise, with a sound out of me that goes up over the pines and down over the valley and is the loudest sound I have made since I have been in her care, and she comes a count after me with her head back against the cab and her mouth open and a single sound out of her that is not a word.
I lie back.
I am breathing hard.
She is breathing hard.
The sky is full dark. The stars are out.
The wind moves the pines. The wool is rough at my back and warm at my front where the coat covers me, and my hand is wet against my thigh, and her hand is hidden inside the wool of her coat, and we are feet apart in the bed of a truck on a forest service road outside the city, and we have just come for each other without touching once.
"Max."
"Yes."
"Come here."
She moves.
She comes up the bed of the truck on her knees.
She bends over me. She does not push my legs up.
She does not put her hand in. She lies down beside me on her side and she puts her arm across my stomach above where I am wet, and she puts her face into the side of my neck, and she breathes out long against my skin.
"Was that all right?”
"Max."
"Was it?”
"It was the second-best thing you have done for me.”
She is quiet a count.
"What was the first?”
"Yesterday."
"Yesterday."
"Yes."
She lets out a breath I feel against my throat.
"All right."
We lie like that. I do not know how long. The wind moves. A single hawk-cry comes up out of the valley. The truck is cold but our bodies are warm where they touch. After a count I tug the second blanket up over us, and we lie under the blanket on our backs, and we look at the stars.
"Max."
"Yes."
"Take me home."
"Yes."
She sits up. She buttons her own trousers. She helps me into the sweats. She buttons the top button of my coat and she pulls the wool hat back down over my ear, and she lifts me down off the truck bed, and she folds the blankets, and she puts them in the toolbox.
She drives us home.
I sit against her shoulder. The cab is warm.
The radio is off. The pines pass black against the dark.
I put my hand on her thigh on the wheel side and I leave it there, and she takes the wheel in one hand and lays her other hand over mine, and we drive the fourteen miles back to the county road and the four miles up to the cabin in the dark.
The porch light is on at the cabin.
She left it on for me this morning.
---
She kills the engine in the drive.
She does not get out.
She turns to me. She lifts the wool hat off my head and she puts it on the dash. She puts her hand in my hair where the hat was, and she fixes a piece that has gone flat, and she leans across the bench seat and she kisses me.
The kiss is not the slow kiss.
The kiss is the kiss of a woman who watched a woman come for her in the bed of a truck and who has spent the fourteen miles since thinking about putting her hands on her, and the kiss is hungry, and it is at the side of my neck before the front of my mouth, and her hand is at the front of my coat undoing the top button before I have my mouth open, and I make a small surprised sound and she swallows it.
"Max."
"Get out."
"Max."
"Out of the truck. Now."
I get out.
I get out and I am laughing a little, and I close my door and I come around to her side, and she is out of the cab and she catches me at the back fender of the truck and she pushes me up against the side of the bed, and her hands are in my coat and her mouth is at my throat, and her knee is between mine.
"In the cabin."
"No."
"Max."
"Here."
"I just."
"I know you just. I'm going to do it again."
"Oh."
She kisses me.
She kisses me with the side of the truck cold at my back through the coat, and her body warm at my front, and her thigh between mine, and her hand sliding down my stomach inside the coat and inside the henley, and I am laughing into her mouth a little and gasping into it a little and her hand goes lower, and lower, and she has the front of the sweats pushed down with two fingers and her hand is sliding into me and I am still wet from the truck bed and she makes a sound low in her chest at the wet, and I make a sound back, and her fingers are in me at the side of the truck under the porch light.
I do not see the headlights.
I do not see the headlights because my eyes are closed and my mouth is on her mouth and her hand is in me, and I do not hear the engine because the heater of the truck is still ticking down beside us, and I do not know there is another vehicle in the drive until the headlights wash across us and Max goes still against me and lifts her mouth and turns her head.
A car door closes.
A voice.
“Hale.”
Max does not move for a count.
I do not breathe.
Then she pulls her hand out of me slow. She fixes the front of my sweats.
She buttons the top button of my coat with one hand at my collar.
She does not turn around. She is between me and the headlights.
She is wide enough that the woman behind us cannot see me.
I hold very still against the side of the truck.
"Chief."
"Hale."
"Yes, Chief."
"I'm terribly sorry to interrupt." The chief’s voice is saccharine. Sweet and sticky and not genuine.
"Yes, Chief."
"Could I possibly have a word?”
A silence.
I cannot see the Chief.
I have not seen her. I have only heard her voice.
The voice is the voice of a woman who has caught someone in the act and who is being polite about the catching, and the politeness is more frightening than the catching, and I press my back against the cold metal of the truck and I keep my face down at Max's collarbone and I do not move.
"Yes, Chief."
"In the cabin or out here?”
"Out here."
Max's hand is still at my collar. She bends a count. She puts her mouth at the place under my ear, low.
"Go inside," she says. "Lock the door. I'll be in."
"Max." I’m worried for her. The chief has an aura of danger and I don’t like how the air feels with her in it.
"Go."
I go.
I walk past her on the side of the truck that the headlights do not reach.
I walk to the porch with my coat closed and my hat on the dash inside the cab and my hair down.
I do not look at the figure standing at the front of the headlights.
I do not look at her car. I keep my eyes on the boards of the porch. I open the door. I step inside.
I close the door.
I lock it.
I stand with my back against the door in the warm of the cabin, in the smell of the cold stew on the stove, with my coat still buttoned at the top and the rest of me still loose under it, with my hand still wet, with my pulse loud in my ear, and I listen.
I hear Max's voice low at the front of the cabin.
I hear the woman's voice answer.
I do not hear words.
I slide down the door to the floor.
I sit on the floor in the warm with my back against the door I have just locked, and I put my hand flat on the boards of the floor, and I think about the woman outside who has just seen Max with her hand inside me at the side of a truck on a porch lit drive.
The woman outside is the woman Max has lied to.
The woman outside knows.
The woman outside has known. She is here because she has known. She is here because the porch light at eight o'clock at night told her the rest of what she had been guessing all week.
She knows who I am. I know it. I feel it.
I think about whether the woman outside is going to come into the cabin.
I think about whether I should put on a different shirt.
I think about whether Max is going to come back through this door in five minutes or in an hour or at all, and the at-all is a thing I let myself think for one count and then I do not let myself think it again.
I won’t lose her.
I sit on the floor and I wait.