The wall was a million miles away.
Waiting for him to come, I go inside and have no choice but to flashback for the millionth time to that day two weeks ago. The spot, our spot, was an impossible place. Deep in Sanctuary Forest, it was close to both the west coast of the flats and the Access Road, which was the only way in and out of the forest. Overlooking the Black River that runs through Madison Oasis, all the way from the cindered center of Mouth Hope down to the inlets at the southern tip of the last habitable place on Earth, it's like I was waiting for it to take me over. To carry me far. To put me in the undertow.
As long as it was with Priest.
"God. It's worth the trek out here just for the view." The tree closest to us seemed to lean to one side, extending its branches to give us more shade. "The flats look like diamonds." From up there, the toxic clouds were purple and perfect, the view bringing me the horizon in a new, beautiful way. As a butterfly fluttered past us, like four fragments of red stained glass joined at the center, I swore that everything I saw past the forest was diamonds.
He scoffed, our arms crossed, leaning against each other and ready to set the whole damn forest on fire. "Flats? I think you mean Wastelands."
Yeah. That was the official name for them.
He turned his head and took another puff. "Don't have to leave the city to know there's fucking nothin' but dead earth outside the Oasis."
When he looked away from me, it was death. "I dunno. I've always thought there could be some…"
He turned back around before I could react, I just about mustered up a …"thing" to finish my sentence, and pushed the cigarette in my mouth. The smoke entered my lungs before I was ready, because I was never ready, and I coughed so hard tears welled in my eyes. "Good job, champ!" He really enjoyed challenging me, pushing me, and his pure joy, his lyrical laugh, reflected that. "Most you've managed to take without dying."
"You bitch!" I squeaked out between coughs. "I wasn't ready!"
I wiped the tears away and he took my chin, cupping it in-between his thumb and the top of his loose fist, lightly brushing against my bottom lip. "No guts. No glory."
If only I had his freedom.
"You are lucky I don't just shove you right off here." I leaned into him, reaching down to hold that same hand that just shoved a joint in my mouth and brushed off the ashes.
"Well, why don't you?"
"Because then I'd never see you again, dummy."
He closed his eyes, sinking down into that place where I could never follow, and I leaned deeper into him. "About that, En...They're gonna close the bypass out here for the season pretty soon." He took a deep breath. "I won't be able to take you out here anymore."
I shrugged. "Oh, we can just make the river in the city center our new spot."
He sighed. "The city center is nasty as fuck, En. And don't get me started on that river."
He kept sinking deeper down to that place and I pulled away. "What are you saying?"
He chuckled. Nothing fazed him. Especially not my insecurities. "En is finally high, isn't she?" That's when I realized it wasn't a cigarette, but he wasn't about to know that. "You're reading way into my shit."
The diamonds weren't sparkling as much then. "Yeah, well it sounded like you were trying to…"
This is where he changes the subject. He retreats into another place I can't follow, that I can't touch, but this time, he's not below me.
He's above me.
"Just relax and enjoy this view!" Our legs dangled over the edge. "Our glowing one-of-a-kind, toxic city!"
I wanted to tumble over the cliff myself. "Can we be serious for one minute? Because it sounds like you're saying we shouldn't see each other anymore, and I'm thinking…" I wanted to not think. That was the whole point. Bad things happen when Enaia Jin starts thinking.
Or maybe I get myself into bad things when I stop thinking.
"...We've hung out all summer and all I know about you is your number and that your 'friends call you Priest.'"
Never had seen the friends. Just always assumed they existed.
He probably wasn't going to bring me around.
"Little thing called a 'phone,' dear." That's what he always did. Put it back on me. Made me feel stupid. I always wanted to prove to him I wasn't. That I wasn't insecure and an overthinker, and if I was, it was loving him that made me that way. "You can, you know, hit me up and all that. Don't sweat it, okay?"
I turned away but glanced towards him, all guard up and heart open. "Sure, I guess." I never could figure out if using my heart for a shield or a sword was a better play, because I wasn't playing. Not with him. "I just...don't want this to be it."
He took another drag of his non-cigarette. "What, this isn't good enough for ya? Fooling around in the bush every Sunday with a dude you hardly know?"
I ran my fingers through my hair. If I could've tucked my knees any deeper into my chest I would've. "By that logic then, I'm the girl you hardly know…"
Things started happening. My pulse was racing and I was coming alive. He wanted me to get a little unruly. To be free, the way he was. Before I knew it, I was tucking my feet back under my thighs and into a crouch, the way you do when you sneak behind a guard in a game for a stealth kill. The wind was blowing my hair south, pointing toward the forest and away from the city. "...And I can still surprise you. Let's do this."
Joint drooping out of the corner of his mouth, hanging there by a thread, he turned to me, and for the very first time, was genuinely shocked. "Wait, for real? Grew some balls on the last day of summer?"
He was such a guy sometimes. Like, alot of the time. That was the whole point, other than the fact that there was no point at all. "Ovaries, thank you. And what can I say…" If I was gonna be in love with him and he was gonna challenge me, if what I wanted from him most was his freedom, it was time to get free. "...No guts, no glory."
I reached down to offer my hand, because his bony, sandy, admittedly super nice ass was finally following my lead for a change, and he took it. "Well I'll be damned."
We clutched each other's hands tightly, astonished at how well our fingers interlaced, more powerful than a fist and even bigger than a heart. "Oh, we're both damned."
Ever since I'd met Priest that summer, I was doing things I never would do. I wanted him to free fall with me, the way I did when I couldn't keep my hands off him, when I felt no fear.
I felt our feet leave the ground. I felt a rush of blood to the head. Adrenaline was taking taking over my body and we were jumping off the world. We were taking the leap without a parachute. His hand never left mine, all the way down. We were at once falling to our potential deaths and completely and utterly weightless, flying until we were dropping, the beautifully toxic, pastel sky of the Oasis our backdrop. I felt his fear, but I had none. It was a strength, a weakness, or both, but I forgot my fear when I found something beautiful.
I hit the water and created a whirlpool around me. At the moment of impact, I was deaf, blind, weightless, and more alive than I'd ever been. I regained my senses underwater and reached out for him, but he wasn't there. Running out of oxygen and way past out of sense, I began swimming back up towards the surface, but felt his pull from underneath me. I descended into his arms and in a whirl of currents and bubbles we kissed deeply.
He was always diving into me so slowly, making it so easy to convince me, and I would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean with him, because, in a ugly world, when you find something beautiful, you'd do anything to keep it.
We emerged, the rumble of the waterfall matching the beating of my heart. "I can't believe you did that!"
Words I never thought I'd hear him say. Made it all worth it. "Honestly, I can't either."
He pulled a flask out of, well, who knew where really, and went to build a fire. "Hafta say, I'm impressed. Not one chick I know would jump that."
"Bringing lots of 'chicks' out here, huh?"
"Har har."
He laughed sarcastically, but the fact was, most people who grew up in the Oasis didn't need to really know how to build a fire. "Too bad we won't be able to swim in the city center without growing a third eye or something."
I sat next to the fire and to him, maybe I didn't know the difference, and he offered me the flask. "Here."
Taking a swig before I knew what was good for me, I choke on it. He was using it to build the fire. Maybe it was actually lighter fluid. It burned like the infected sun that hung above our heads. "Don't tell me I just defied another non-committal subject change...What is this?"
"Moonshine? Shit, I thought everyone in the Red Sec drank moon jizz."
I happily handed it back to him. "Well, now I know why I don't." He took it, forearm extended and exposed, and I glanced at the ink right below the underside of his elbow. It looked like a crescent moon with a thin triangle wedged in the middle, with two dots perpendicular to the tip.
He glanced down at it, brown eyes filled with sadness. "Oh, this. Uh...It's kind of a long story. I don't usually...I mean...what the hell. Okay." He leaned into me. "The spike...that's me." He meant the thin triangle. "The crescent is...like...my life cycle." He points at the dots. "And these...they represent...my debts." He was deadly serious, for possibly the first time in his life. "They say if we each pay our 'three great debts,' our souls are saved."
The fire crackled in front of me. "Sounds religious."
He shrugged. Familiar look from him. "Something like that."
It was cold and I rubbed my shoulders. "Okay...But I only see two dots."
"Still working on that last one."
It lives. It speaks. It feels. I was beginning to worry. "So...what do you owe? It has to be something pretty special if it's gonna save any of us."
"I dunno, it kind of just represents life." The fire illuminated his face and gave his beauty depth, character, and color. "We pay our dues then our time's up. All we can hope is to see some beauty along the way."
"That's kind of sad." And hot. Seriously hot.
"Meh, I think we're all looking for a cause." Marginalizing everything, including his own conceptual framework. I felt less bad about all the times he did the same to me.
"Hey, I have a few of those. Wine, for one. If we're just sitting around waiting for everything to die, might as well be buzzed, right?"
"Can I give you one?" If he could have just chosen between being beautiful, non-committal, or having a penchant for changing the the subject, I wouldn't have gotten so deep.
"What, a buzz? Way ahead of you on that one." I think actual moon jizz would have stung less.
He lowered those eyes, serious and earnest, about as real and honest and open as he ever got. "No, a tattoo."
"Sure, right here on my ass, please!"
"I'm serious," he pleaded with me. "Just somethin' small to, you know, commemorate our summer."
So now the summer was ours. "Wait, you're serious? You can do that here?"
"Sure I can. It'll be stick and poke." He got a needle and vial of ink out of his satchel. "Shouldn't hurt too bad."
"Um, you just carry this stuff around?" I asked so many questions but never found the answers important.
"For such an occasion as this."
"But where would I put it?"
He took my hand but I didn't necessarily take it back. "Just on your arm or whatever." He should have gotten a tattoo that read, "Or whatever." "How about here?" He pointed to the part of my forearm just below my wrist.
"I...I guess so." I was deadly serious. "Just don't hurt me."
Don't hurt me Priest.
"Can't make any promises." He started and I looked away, even though I couldn't get away from it, couldn't run from it if I tried. "So what were you saying about your cause?"
"Well, in a nutshell: wine, borscht and pretty rocks. It's the little things, right? All I got." I struggled to get each syllable out over the pain and my own whimpering. "Oh, and I guess big bad Tempest University."
"Wait, you go to school?" His strokes were unfazed.
"Yeah, if we actually talked about real shit you'd know that."
"Thought you had to be pink for that."
"Well, turns out, butt loads of money means the same thing on both sides of the wall." When I starting thinking of her, it gave me the strength to look down at the tattoo as he was doing it.
"See, way back when I was just a ketchup-headed pre-teen..."
I proceeded to tell him the story of my mom, Noella Jin. She handed me her life savings on her deathbed and told me to do something that gave me hope. We collected rocks together, nothing much else to do when you're a red, so I tried to do her proud. I used her money to get into Tempest and flashed back to that first day I stood in front of the mirror, putting that jacket of theirs on.
Thought I was gonna save the Earth.
I told him the rest, up to a point. As he finished the tattoo, which was pain unlike anything I had ever experienced up to that point in my life, I told him about how all I'm learning is how to continue helping Tempest drill into the ground until there's truly nothing left, how if the toxins in the air don't get me, the Borscht-In-A-Box will. How I was losing hope, which is what she gave me her life and her money to find, but I found him. How whatever he just slashed into my wrist, it better mean that he would call me.
The tattoo still stinging, I never even got a chance to look at it. Priest gave me that glimmer of hope that kept me holding on, and as I now wore his ink on me, he took me by the light of the fire he started. We weren't completely dried off and it didn't matter. When he took me into him, kissing my neck the way only he could, taking me over completely, I gave in. I gave it all. I had no choice and he never had to offer me one. The way he took my face into his hand, gently, pulling my lips to his, looking into my soul with those brown eyes, I loved him and never wanted to lose him. I never wanted him to go away from me.
I woke up at daybreak the next morning and he was gone. The fire was out. He hadn't called since that night.
He had left his mark on me.