18.
It is a stifling, dry heat.
The sun so close it washes out the blue, turns it to a desaturated, milky hue. The pavement boils, bare skin burns, fries to even the most accidental touch. My sandals scrape along the sidewalks of Tucson as cars rush past, their exhaust adding another layer of unending warmth. No one is outside, all taking refuge within the temperate, air-conditioned indoors, a string of chasms and tunnels designed specifically to protect against Arizona's oppressive summer climate. A network of little structures as if for hamsters, guinea pigs in their clear tunnels, a miniature world unto themselves within a larger, inaccessible, overwhelming one. I linger by the entrances to stores, restaurants, frozen yogurt shops, banks, garden suppliers, dentist's offices. I wait for the guinea pigs to enter, to exit. To feel that rush of cool, manufactured air, a shock against the sweat on my forehead, my temples, the sudden, welcome burst making the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up.
The direction is north, always north. Away from the heat. The long game. A compass, a magnetic beacon. Through Phoenix and its shining buildings, its stagnant palms, up and over the Grand Canyon's gaping chasm, through the omnipresent neon lights of Las Vegas, the gluttony and the guilt, to the shores of Salt Lake City, the white-washed buildings and populace, the towering redwoods of northern California and their thousands and thousands of rings, their endless history, the hills and dips of San Francisco, the mist, the fog, and the brine, the free spirits of Ashland, the roamers and the drifters, through to Portland, to Tacoma, to Seattle, the great fir trees of the Pacific Northwest, the dense ferns and the slick mud, the cool and the wet. The direction is always north.
Nothing ties to me to Tucson, not the place or the name. I have severed them with the methodical practice of a surgeon. My friends, my community. There is no one here for me any longer. I will go north. I walk steadily and with conviction, take the last burst of freezing air from a convenience store before heading for the highway, not knowing that one day I will live there, that the road will become my destiny and my home, the only constant in my life, built for me in this country built for the automobile. With my left hand out, thumb up, I signal for the hitch. I transition to my role of lost boy, never to grow up. Above me, in the cloudless, oppressive sky, I hear a rumble almost like a storm. A crackle of thunder, the distant tinkle of water on steel. A balm approaches. A break in the weather. How I have prayed for rain!
I wake to the flash of lightning and count. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. The thunder booms, so loud I am surprised the windows aren't shaking in their panes. I wait for the resulting earthquake, the ripple of such a forceful sonic wave, the cause and effect. It doesn't come. I stare at the ceiling, its popcorn texture, the dangling fan swaying only slightly, the reaching shadows of its blades. The couch beneath me is lumpy from years of seated bodies, all hills and dips, the streets of San Francisco, the mist and fog and brine. I take a deep breath, long inhale, slow exhale. I don't remember falling asleep. Whose hands turned me sideways? Who draped the quilt over my unconscious body? Who removed my hat, who untied my shoes, unrolled my socks, placed my phone on the side table? I picture Bella's small hands at work, the furrow of concentration between her brows, the persistent focus, the commitment she brings to each task. The very same expression when she reads from the children's books, examines the streets around her, searches for the deeper meaning within my words, the things hidden behind the man-made wall of steel, the pressure of holding back.
I curl up on my side, face the back of the couch. My jeans scratch against the fabric and I pull myself in tighter, a habit, an adjustment to account for the smallness of the cubby behind the driver's seat, not quite large enough to stretch my legs out all the way. I remember those first years, the ones I spent bumping into things constantly, a head, an elbow, the twang of the funny bone against metal. Waking up having rolled to the floor, the drop a mirror of a dream's tumble. The frustration of living in a world at once so small and so large. Another flash of lightning illuminates the room, a heartbeat of clarity, of crisp lines and sharpened edges. Bella is a specter, standing at the foot of the stairs, real and then gone, bright and then dark. I sit up, squint. She walks over slowly, cautiously, the tips of her toes sinking into the carpeting beneath her, quiet as a church mouse and just as wary.
I am living somewhere between reality and dream, where things are not quite wrong but not quite right, either. I wonder if I could manipulate this, somehow. If I stepped off this couch, would I dissolve right through the floor? Would I float into the sky? It seems as if either is possible and, still, Bella approaches. The blanket has fallen to the rug where it lands with a whisper, the rumbling chorus of approaching thunder the soundtrack to the scene. The only noise. She stops a few feet away as if waiting for an invitation, for the railroad gate to rise, for the crossing guard to say 'okay kids, you can go on ahead, it's safe now.' I reach one arm out, wondering how this dream Bella reacts, if she acts the same as reality Bella, if she feels the same, soft before me and around me and through me. Her hand in mine is hot as fire, the pavement in Tucson, the oppressive heat in temperature-regulated climate.
"You fell asleep," she whispers, louder than the thunder and the rain, cutting through the darkness, words turned visible. "You missed the end of the movie."
I pull her down to me, wondering, all the while, what movie? What sleep? She wears soft cotton shorts and a tank top, her pale skin glowing under the distant street lights, the gentle haze like a ghost in the fog. Three freckles on her shoulder that I drop my lips to, giving in to my own wishes, repercussions left to the waking world. I am drifting in this distant, familiar place. She freezes, her hand tightens on my own as my lips skate over the warm skin of her shoulder, almost as if she is grounding herself, tightening the tether. I feel her thumb and forefinger lock around my wrist, stretched as long as she can manage, the tendons and bones turned vise.
Lightning followed by an immediate clap of thunder, so loud that she flinches, jumps, settles.
"It sounds like a summer storm gone on far too long," she whispers once the rain calms into background noise, its tempo a familiar rhythm. "In the desert, storms like this only last for fifteen minutes, maybe thirty. This has been going on all night."
"Are you scared?" I ask. I pull back to look at her face, her brown hair drifting down in tangles, her eyes dark, fathomless, unreadable.
"No," she replies, leans down, and kisses me for the first time. I expect panic. Guilt. Fear. Anxiety. The judging stare of the waitress, of Esme's concerned voice: she's young, Edward. Like I don't think about it every waking moment, like I'm the devout child I was always meant to be. Instead, nothing comes. There is a blissful emptiness, a surety, an undeniable rightness. I am drained and filled, one with the moment, with her, with the earth, the thunder and the rain and the balm of nature's gift. Her lips are cool and soft, generous and searching. I pull her down again, closer to me, against me. If I could, I would pull her inside me and keep her there. I would lock her up and throw away the key. The thought consumes me. Its danger and its reckless selfishness.
She gasps for air and I reluctantly fall back, sandwiched between the cushions of the couch and her warm body, the upturn of her nose brushing against my own, freckles there, too, one I never noticed right at the bridge. Her eyelashes, long enough to tickle the skin of her cheekbones, her eyebrows, dark, full. Her legs tangle with mine. We don't speak. We listen to the storm around us, through us. Our breathing synchronizes, inhales and exhales, the wind that flows between the branches of trees, the dance of succumbing, the give and the take. Her fingertips trace the lines of my face, my nose, my cheeks, my jaw, my lips. She is young but married. She can't drive but she wants to try. She reads me with a remarkable fluency, she sees straight through to the spine, to the notes in the margins long since forgotten, deleted, edited, and erased.
It is then that I decide to tell her my story. The beginning and the end of it, and everything in-between. I take a deep breath and begin to speak:
"A few days after I was born, I was left at a police station…"
I am warm, hot even. Disoriented. I force my eyes open, blinking and squinting. Bella's sleeping face beside me, the top of her head flush beneath my chin, her brown hair falling off the side of the couch, her arms tucked around my chest and grasping tightly even while unconscious. I flex my fingers against her back, a rush of awareness flooding through me, the trickle of memory as if through a sieve, small at first, then more and more and more. Her lips are swollen, her cheeks red from the insistent brush of my stubble. Once I started speaking I couldn't stop, once we started kissing we couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. I wanted–want–everything and more, even in the unforgiving light of day where nothing is hidden and all is strange and clear. The rain has stopped, the silence deafening. I estimate it to be late morning, if not early afternoon. Carefully, I reach for my phone on the side table. The clock reads 12:24PM.
We are in the living room in broad daylight under Carlisle and Esme's roof, intertwined like the plaits of the quilt, woven together, a blanket on the couch. They have surely seen. And yet…
I take these moments of peace. I steal them away and bury them within me, her steady breathing, the rise and fall of her chest, the way it reaches out to my own then away, the repetition of it, the reliability of it. I take the picture with my mind. The lost girl on the milk carton.
This is what her face would look like, so close to mine, relaxed and flushed after a night of confessions and of kisses, of wanting and taking and giving in. After learning everything about me, my beginning and my middle and my end. It's more than I ever could have imagined. It's like staring straight at the hot sun of Tucson, the great orb demanding sole attention in the endless sky.
It burns.
x
thank you for your lovely and generous response to last chapter!