Her lips are dry and cracking, and she licks at their edges hoping to take away the sting as the skin peels away. Her mouth is cotton, sticky and raw. She drinks water, gallons and gallons, piling the clear casts of water bottles in the back seat. It's never enough.
When he kisses her she scratches against his lips and he feels raw.
Everything is quiet as she leans against the door of his car. Except nothing is quiet. In the distance Logan hears the whirr of traffic. The chirp of crickets singing into the hot, dry air fills his ears. Somewhere a snake rattles through the underbrush, a rabbit startles. The air hangs heavy as everything he wants to say mixes with everything that will go unsaid.
She stares out across the flat landscape dotted with dry sagebrush, casting strange shadows in the moonlight. Her denim jeans ride low on her hips, her t-shirt rides up, exposing the soft underbelly that Logan is never allowed to get near. She scratches at the skin there, her fingernails leaving red marks across her white skin. Logan wants to kiss the marks, trace them with his lips, but he knows he's not allowed. Only in the dim morning light when he wakes to find her next to him, her lips trailing down the side of his neck, only then is he allowed to touch.
The air is hot for the middle of the night; dust tickles his nose and makes him want to sneeze. Logan kicks at the ground with his shoe, watching the way the pebbles scatter through the dirt. Out of the corner of his eye he sees something scurry further into the corners of darkness that surrounds them.
Veronica is like grit stuck in his eye that he couldn't get out. He rubs and rubs at it, until his eyes are red and weeping, tears coating his cheeks, but it never leaves, sitting between his eyeball and delicate membrane, irritating, until he learns to live with the strange discomfort.
Then one day the discomfort is gone and he watches her walk down the hallway, her arm tucked in his best friend's, a smile on her face and he wondered why she never let him see that smile.
The water bottle is tossed onto the rocky ground with a hollow clunk and Logan looks up from his thoughts to find Veronica standing in front of him.
"We should go."
He reaches into his pocket and feels the familiar weight of keys, silently nods at her and slowly walks around to the driver's side. She jumps into the car and kicks off her shoes, throwing them into the back seat. He glances over at her bare toes that are now propped on his dashboard. They're covered in bright pink, chipping nail polish. He thinks he may have seen the same shade on Lilly's toes once as she lay sunning herself by the side of the pool. He remembers the way her lips curled into a sneer as she watched him walk toward her. He remembers the way lust shot through his groin like fire. He remembers that her parents were in Europe and how he fucked her in her parents' bed that night, her pink coated toes wrapping around his waist, her glossed lips whispering dirty secrets in his ear.
Lilly was sweet and sexy, all pastels and chiffons and nothing else.
Kissing Veronica is different. It's rougher, scarier. When he kisses Veronica, her lips are dry against his, rough and cracked as she opens her mouth and swallows him whole, taking his soul and his body into a dark hole Logan's afraid he'll never be able to crawl out of. She never says his name, just straddles his hips as she rolls the condom on his erect cock then slowly lowers herself down. He watches her face as she moves up and down, watches her eyelids flutter shut, her jaw grow slack.
He glances over and steals a quick look at her profile as they barrel down the deserted highway, the headlights cutting a swathe through the darkness. Out here you can see the stars. There no streetlights or blinking neon signs, no light creeping out from dining room windows where families sit and eat their dinners, no ice blue headlights from luxury cars, nothing to distract from the bright white pinpoints of light the sparkled across the velvety night sky.
She's staring out the window, across the sagebrush, the dark grey rolling hills, and into the darkness and he wonders what she's thinking? He wants to ask her why she's here, with him, on this crazy road trip to nowhere. Why isn't she back with him, tucked safely in crisp hotel linens?
He's afraid of the answer.
"Take me away." He can still hear her whispering in his ear as they stand in the middle of Duncan's hotel suite, her lips still swollen from Logan's kisses, still feel the way her mouth had crushed against his, the way her fingers slipped across his skin. When he closes he eyes he can feel her breath, hot against the side of his face and he wishes he could have had the courage to reach around her pull her across the mere inches that had separated them. He wished he had found the courage to hold her close but was afraid that he might never let her go.
He didn't ask questions. Just took her hand and they walked to his car, got in and started driving. The air was thick and hot, the result of a strange mid-winter warm spell that had all the forecasters puzzled.
They stop in cheap hotels for the night and Veronica washes her face with the tiny complimentary soaps as Logan wishes they at least had a room service menu. He scans worn, smudged pamphlets singing the praises of local attractions or flips through bedside bibles with dog-eared pages. They eat greasy food in diners, and Logan watches the way her dry mouth closes around the straw, the way her cheeks become concave as she sips sweet sugary orange flavored soda. Soon the people they meet speak less and less English and the food becomes more beans and rice and warm homemade tortillas with salsa and chilies that burn his mouth, the locals laugh when he has to gulp glass after glass of water, the skin on his face turning bright red. The sky above them is muted blue; the land is dry, brown, and dusty with cacti and desert rodents who shelter from the heat wherever they can find it.
She never says anything about going back. She never says much of anything except the one time when her knees were pushed back and her fingers were digging into the skin of his back as his hips pumped, dirty and quick, then she says his name, a dry hiss from her mouth, a raspy whisper in his ear, and maybe even something that sounds like…
I love you.
Logan tries not to think about it the next day, tries not to figure out what her slurred ramblings mean.
He doesn't say much either. Just "Do you want to stop for the night?" or "Want to get something to eat?" He never says what he wants to say, except when he traces his fingers down the curve of her spine to the top of her buttocks. Then he says everything except never in words. Just in touch and a slip of tongue and the tears the well in his eyes just before everything starts to explode. Sometimes he watches her as he comes, his eyes lock hers in a blurry gaze until she gasps and looks away.
She never says she wants to go back. He never asks.
Sometimes he catches her watching him, her blue eyes gazing across the car, steady and strong. He glances over and she startles, almost looks away but something stops her and she stares back. It's then that he wants to ask her what this is all about, why they are on this crazy journey toward nothing, but he can never find the words and soon he has to tear his eyes away from hers because he can feel himself getting more and more lost.
Sometimes he does say the words he wants to, the things that seem so elusive in the morning light slip out in the middle of the night when she's sleeping next to him and he can hear the slow, heavy rhythm of her breathing. Only then will he allow the words to become real, to slip from between his lips and fall into the silence as he watches her chest rise and fall, feels the soft twitch of dreams in her legs which are wrapped around his. Only then does he tell her what he will rarely admit to himself.
I love you
In the morning it's always gone, a whisper in the darkness that was never meant to see day. They're back to the same routine, Veronica drinking bottle after bottle of water, watching as the landscape drifts by. Logan is watching the flashing lines on the road, the taste of dust thick on his tongue. She licks her lips, bites at them with her teeth, and for moment Logan remembers how they felt against his the night before.
Then he looks back at the road and presses the gas peddle down. He doesn't know where they're going and he's not sure how much he cares.