Chapter 5 #2
Besides, it was true that I no longer sang in public. Wolfe Marian didn’t, anyway. I’d stopped when I’d dropped out of Thornton. When music had become uncomfortable because it carried such weight of comparison with my famous father that I hadn’t been able to sing around him anymore.
“That’s a shame,” she said. “I love to sing.”
Imani said something to her too low to hear, and then Lena turned to me. “Maybe when we move on, you can come with us, Will.”
I shrugged. “Depends where you’re going, I guess.” I looked around at the star-filled sky. A sky huge and vast, with only the soft bumps of the Pinto Mountains breaking up the edge of the distant horizon.
I could be happy here for a while.
“We’re not in a hurry,” she said. “We usually stay until we need to dump our tanks and load up on groceries.”
As the night wore on and the temperature lowered outside the small ring of warmth from the fire, Lena kept up the chatter, sometimes with me, sometimes with others. I didn’t think much of it until she asked if I wanted company in my van.
I blinked at her. Maybe some of the secondhand weed smoke from Imani and the guys on the other side of her had made my reaction time too slow.
“Oh,” I said. “Um, no, thank you. But… thanks?”
Her forehead crinkled. “Er. Yeah, no. Like… cool.”
I leaned closer and smiled. “If I was into women, I’d probably be very tempted.” Which was a lie. My sexuality had nothing to do with why I didn’t want someone else in my bed tonight.
Her expression cleared, and she seemed relieved. “Ohh. Okay. Yeah. Sorry.”
I winked at her. “No worries. I’m flattered.”
She blushed and looked back at the fire for a few minutes before turning to me. “Friends, then?”
I nodded and held out my beer bottle to clink against hers. While I wasn’t particularly in the mood to make new friends, it seemed like the polite thing to do. “Sure.”
“Come hiking with us tomorrow! There’s a trail that goes from right over there.” She pointed with the lip of her almost-empty beer bottle.
If there was one thing I’d already learned about life on the road, it was that I felt better if I spent time outdoors. And being around other people gave my brain a break from all the fucking thinking I’d been doing.
“Sounds good. I’d like that, thanks.”
She grinned and took a final sip of beer before calling across the fire to the guy with the cooler to pass over another.
I stared into the flames and let the chatter around me fade. Trace would probably like this. Chilling around a campfire under the huge desert sky seemed like his kind of vibe. Memories of a childhood camping trip made me stifle a chuckle.
Papa wasn’t a great camper. Dad teased him for preferring indoor rock climbing to the real thing. So when we camped growing up, it was usually Dad and Trace who’d taken us, not Dad and Papa.
Dad mostly took us because it was something he’d enjoyed growing up with his dad and brother and thought it was some kind of rite of passage for a parent to do with their kids.
But for Trace… the outdoors was where he belonged.
He would come with us to Montana in the summers, and a switch would flip.
Suddenly, he’d seem more relaxed. Happier.
More himself. It was one of the reasons I’d let him go without a fight six years ago.
He’d needed to leave San Francisco. It had never made sense why he was there in the first place, other than his job with On Your Six.
My memory was a photo album fat with Polaroids of him.
Fly fishing, grinning by a campfire, setting rope at the bottom of a rock climb, carrying Rosie on his shoulders with warm columns of sunlight drifting over them both through the trees.
His wavy brown hair lifting in the breeze.
His bare shoulders and arms honey-gold from the summer sun.
His calves tight and flexing as he hiked in front of me.
Maybe I was here in Joshua Tree to make peace with those memories. To carefully pack the photo album up and tuck it away where it belonged.
If that was the case, then I was ready. I’d force myself to be ready.
Ready was the only choice I had, really.
It was time to move on.
Three nights later, I let a guy blow me under the wide, star-dusted sky.
I’d started the day with a trail run, remembering just how many different muscles were involved when the run was on uneven ground instead of a treadmill.
My lungs had burned and leg muscles twitched as I’d pushed harder just to see how long I could go for.
Music had blasted through my earbuds, the rhythm thundering along with my pulse and connecting to the thread of melody I’d been working on in my head.
This was why I was here. Nothing but me and the feelings bottled up inside, the music itching to make itself known in some kind of organized, coherent fashion.
Why had I been hiding away in the city for so long? With every crunch of my running shoes on the trail gravel and hot slide of sweat down the center of my back, the city felt more and more like the physical manifestation of the prison I’d built for myself.
It was so much better to be alone in a place meant for solo reflection. Somehow, it wasn’t nearly as lonely being alone in the desert as it was in a city thrumming with people and stories.
After the run, I’d showered and settled into my camp chair, picking out chords and recording notes in my journal for several hours until I’d given up. The song wasn’t coming together just yet, but I had time. I’d be patient.
That night, several new people had joined our group, including a vanlifer named Brennan who also had a guitar.
“This where the musicians sit?” he’d asked with a friendly smile, unfolding his camp chair with a vigorous shake before sitting down in it next to me in front of the fire ring.
He seemed younger than me. Mid-twenties, maybe. He’d been easygoing and flirty from the beginning, chatting up the people around us without taking up too much of the conversation. Lena had asked us to play a duet, and we’d spent a couple of hours playing together or taking turns.
After a while, he’d even convinced me to sing, and the reaction of everyone around the fire had been an immediate ego boost.
Lena had smacked me playfully. “You dog! You said you couldn’t sing. Liar!”
When I’d finally had enough social time and I knew another beer would only cause a hangover, I politely excused myself with a good night to everyone. Imani, Lena, Thierry, and Armand had waved with friendly murmurs of “See you tomorrow” and “Promise you’ll sing again!”
After a few moments, I’d heard the soft crunch of Brennan’s shoes behind me as I made my way to the far end of the large oval of vehicles to where my van was parked.
Earlier that afternoon, I’d noticed his own van pulling up in the large open spot a fifth wheel had left that morning.
It wasn’t exactly next to my own spot, but it wasn’t far either.
“You up for a visit?” he’d asked softly just as we moved out of the fire-lit area and into the shadows.
I’d turned to look at him, his friendly, open smile and teasing eyes so clearly offering fun without strings. The sky was wide-open, covered with handfuls of glittering stars. Why in the world would I turn down the opportunity to have this man on his knees for me?
Let him remind me that I was an adult, not a child who didn’t know what the fuck I wanted.
“Yeah,” I’d said, and then I’d led him around to the far side of the van and let him slide to his knees in the dusty scrub.
It had been nice. A solid ending to a good day. About as therapeutic as my run and the few hours spent picking out chords by the fire. The kind of encounter where the wet splatter of his release on the dry desert ground would be gone by morning.
But when he’d asked if he could come inside for more, I’d politely declined.
“You going to be here tomorrow?” I’d asked instead.
When he’d nodded, I’d brought the topic back around to playing guitar.
Something benign and neutral. Leaving the door open without stepping through it.
“Maybe you can show me some of that funk picking?”
His face had relaxed into a smile. “Yeah, sure. I’d like that.”
“Me, too.”
As I fell asleep in my bed, with the dark, sparkling expanse of sky outside my windows, I thought maybe, just maybe, I’d been telling the truth.