"Fuck him yet?"
"Nope."
"Aren't you allowed to now? Haven't you got the 'whole thing'?"
A shrug. She chews on her split ends, something that always Brooke wince.
"I don't know. I don't know anything."
The redhead looks away.
"Let's hope you haven't forgotten how. It'd be pretty bad if it sucked after all this trouble. What're you gonna do if it does?"
She looks away, smiling faintly to herself.
"It won't."
Summer descending on Carolina reminds her scraped knees and mint iced tea, or of the bell on the door of the Veach gas station. She lets her eyelids fall closed, thinking of the shadows of the dusty interior, the gas pumps watching silently from outside. She used to steal candy with Brooke from there all the time (Stop being such a hotbox, Peyton! Dammit, go stand by the Slurpees, you so suck at this).
They were 12 when Brooke finally taught her how.
Brooke would stand by the counter with a pack of gum and smile up at 16 year- old Ricky Lemoine, who always looked at her a little bewildered, half amused, half cautious.
Her smile was like the world opening to you back then, and it would spring slowly and widen, glowing, as though the sun had cracked open and you could see into heaven.
She'd cross one foot in front of the other, bending her ankle and cocking her hip playfully, propping up her bony elbows on the counter so you could see an inch of damp, creamy skin and the lacy edge of a cotton cup, her hair falling into her eyes.
Ricky always looked away, and you could hear that small dry sound of his tongue unsticking from the roof of his mouth right before he spoke. He'd take a swig of his Coke and announce in a bored tone, "50 cents."
She'd plunk down two quarters, and grab his Big Gulp, curving her candybox lips around the straw, leaving a glossy little circle of pink strawberry lip-balm. Wiping her mouth, grinning, she'd saunter out, Peyton awkwardly following, tossing a nervous half-smile towards Ricky who'd salute her a little sarcastically and then look down at his straw, and pull at his shirt collar.
They'd go sit on the curb by First Baptist then, and Brooke would pull out the loot; Sugar Daddies for her, Sour Patch gummies for Peyton, Bubblicious gum for both of them so they could compete for biggest bubbles, lollipops so that Brooke could flirt.
In that world, it was always June, the marshes springing up fragrantly, the herons landing softly on the surface, breaking the perfect reflection in the evening.
"I'm going to be sixteen soon," Brooke would announce to her sometimes on those evenings, when they sat on her porch in the dark, looking out at the yard filled with the lacy white ghosts of dogwoods softly hovering in the gloom. "Only four more years. Then everything's going to be perfect, and Ricky Lemoine will stop charging me fifty goddamn cents."
Peyton would say little, and pick at the mosquito bites on her ankles.
Brooke would then look at her curiously, her eyes gleaming oddly in the dim light.
"Aren't you excited?"
The intimacy is sometimes too much for them to hold, this immense thing between them, half-realized and half waiting. They stave it off with conversation, hiding behind words and light touches, dancing around each other intricately in fear of coming too close, avoiding small spaces.
The kitchen, for example.
"Tell me first."
He looks at her quizzically, and shrugs an ok. He points to the pot in her hand.
"Fill it with water."
She complies.
"Put it on that burner over there. We'll use the front one. Got a match?"
She produces one with a flourish that makes him smile.
"Turn it on like this."
"I don't see anything. Is it on?"
He laughs silently.
"You light the match like this……and then come close…..be
careful!"
She yowls, flinging the match, and it falls in the sink, hissing.
He examines her fingers, ignoring the urge to forget the stove. Her hands smell like wet grass and charcoal. The match is smoking a little in the sink.
He lights another match, and with an expert flick, lights the gas flame, drawing back just in time. She pouts.
"Put the water on the flame and add a little salt – more – perfect. Now you've got to wait till you see big bubbles and it starts moving. That means it's boiling."
She presses her lips together petulantly.
"I think I could figure that out, Emeril."
They cross each other delicately, moving to the side to make room for each other's body, eyes bent away from that infinity and proximity of space. She heads toward the fridge, he towards the cabinets. The dance. Her face is hidden behind her hair. He takes down the spaghetti from a shelf, and she smells a long-ago opened jar of tomato sauce.
"Still good,"she grins, swiping some with her finger. He looks away, rubs his neck with his hand. Pausing for a moment, he seems to remember the pasta, and pulls it out, checking the water.
"Alright. It's close to boiling – take it and break it in half, unless you like humiliation."
"Humiliation."
"Super," he says. "I'm fond of it myself." She watches him drop it in, crunching on an uncooked strand. She bends close to inhale the steam, and jumps back a little.
"It's hot!"
"No, really. I'd prefer it if you didn't unclog your pores over my dinner."
She stifles the urge to laugh.
"Next: are you aware of how to make a salad?"
She looks at him incredulously.
"Right," he replies. "Speaking to a cheerleader. But I can bet you're never cut your own tomatoes."
Her doubtful look gives her away, and she sighs, bringing out two sad tomatoes and a half-shredded head of lettuce. She massacres the first one in her usual style. He shakes his head as though deeply distressed.
"Here," he says lightly, moving to stand behind her. She feels the stiffening in her body when it is too aware of his presence. Her elbows draw closer to her sides, a softness in her knees starting. His hand takes one of hers, placing her fingers on one side of the tomato.
"Thumb on top," he says, but she can sense the change in his voice, the underlying tension. "Index finger on top of knife," he says, placing his over it. His hands cover hers almost entirely. The tip of the steel slices cleanly through the red, two halves, than four fourths. "Too tight," he says, and she clenches numbly. "You're holding it too tight – squishing it – easy- there."
Eight slices. Tomato juice on her fingers. Cold blade of the knife, his warm hands. Neither of them is moving now; they stand still as statues. She's ruined only one slice, the seeds fallen away from the flesh, leaving a perfect, empty half moon. His head falls a little forward towards the back of hers, eyelids half closed. She looks down mutely.
The water on the stove boils over with a sudden harsh hiss, making both of them jump.
"The sauce," is all he says, moving away, and she feels empty suddenly. Like a perfect half moon.
Friday night, after the game, he comes by late after the sun has set and evening's become night. The moon gleams oddly above the black-crowned trees, throwing shadows onto the grass, and he seems at first to be one before she recognizes the distinct movement, the roll of his walk.
She opens the door and lets him in silently before he even knocks, time moving fluidly between them like a ghost which reads both of their minds.
In the darkness of her living room, they stand like shadows, breathing, listening to each other. She hears the sound of a soft movement, and he puts his hand on the door.
"Get a jacket," he tells her. "It might get cold."
She obeys.
He pulls her along rapidly, his fingers circling her wrist, and she opens her mouth to protest but nothing comes out; inside her there is something thumping, like the heart of the butterfly inside the cocoon before that terrible moment.
The branches of the azalea bushes in the front yard brush past them like fingers; the moon reaches out towards them, slivers of light caressing their faces in rapid, dizzy succession. He slams her car door shut and leaps into the driver's seat, reversing violently out of the driveway. She primly keeps her mouth shut.
The cicada chorus echoes in snatches when they have to slow down for a turn or a stop sign. The night is black and silent, houses sleeping around them, one lone red stoplight swinging mutely in the thick air. He turns onto a road she remembers suddenly, sharply, a narrow two-lane where the tall field-grass grows on both sides, crowding the asphalt. The headlights sweep the darkness, the sweet marsh scent entering and leaving her rolled-down window, snatched by his sudden acceleration.
She doesn't ask where they are going.
He stops the car in a place she knows very well. When the engine cuts and the headlights die, they are left in silence and darkness, only the chorus of the crickets and tree-frogs filling the moist air, louder, drowning out their erratic breathing.
"Marsh Downs?" she finally says in a whisper, but it isn't really a question.
He pulls her out of the car and into the night, and they race under the thick-hanging mossy trees; he pulls her along at breakneck speed, the branches whipping past them, the reeds whispering secrets in the darkness. She can only see shadows where the moon slithers through, and she feels as though they are really in a dream and not existing at all. Her feet don't seem to touch the ground; his fingers hurt around her wrist but she doesn't even notice. The crickets are screaming, a lone firefly like a warning signal suddenly blazing in the mute, black chasm to her right.
"Lucas," she tries to say, but the words don't come out. She wonders for a second if she has even spoken them.
Then they are in a clearing, and the wind from the marsh hits her, cool and clear. The water ripples darkly under the moon for what seems like an eternity, stretching out before them into an infinite lake that pours off what must be the edge of the earth. The hot air trembles around them, thick with the dark and the ink of the river.
"I used to come out here too when we were younger," is what he says at last. "I remember the first time I saw you. You stood up to your knees in the water, in the evening, and you were red and gold and pink like the sky, with electric blue streaks around your legs; your hair was wild and pale looking. You…looked like a reed….."
She shivers beside him silently.
"I was in love with you then," he finishes at last, and his voice breaks oddly, low and quiet and thick on the last word, painful. She is seized by something horrible, tearing at her throat, making her eyes fill with hot, thick tears. There is a hunger in her then, unfolding in her chest, her stomach, her mouth, to touch him, hold him tightly. She turns to him with eyes wide and dark, gleaming like the moon on the river. The reeds stir, rustling by the shore in the humid air.
Quietly, she peels off her shirt. She's aware of the thin, shabby undergarments underneath, the infantile daisy between the cups of her bra, the plain, slightly frayed cotton, the bruises on her knees. She steps out of her pants, folding them neatly and placing them on the ground.
He watches her mutely.
She reaches towards him like a chastised child, humbly, with her head bowed. Her hands undo the buckle of his belt, and pull his shirt up over his head, and down the length of his arms. The pale glow of the moon makes him seem marble, and she shudders at the sight of the beautiful symmetry, the maleness of him, the angles and planes of his torso and the shift of muscles under skin, all those things that move something tight and hungry in her.
She looks away as he steps out of his jeans. She is walking towards the water now, and he opens his mouth to say something but before the words come out she has disappeared.
Gone.
Her body, pale like a night moth, just turned into a heron and dove cleanly under the black, slicing the inky water. The slight wave lapped against the bank. A reed nodded.
He feels himself gripped by sudden fear. He races towards the bank, diving into the water. Underneath, in the deaf, mute darkness, he feels something brush past his stomach, light as a firefly.
His head breaks the surface with a gasp. The first thing he sees is her, floating there, watching him.
They crawl up on the bank into the hot, silky air, shivering a little. The wet cotton is plastered to both of them, and he can see the transparency of her skin, and then it is pressed against him. She is warm, alive, murmuring, crying; words come out of her mouth then, begging, pleading with him, but the only one he can truly distinguish is 'please'. The hot night presses in on them and her leg slides between his, and he's pressing into her, pushing her down into the ground now, his mouth buried in her neck, her hands grasping at his back. She's telling him things now, words that burn themselves into his mind, his body, making it hard to breathe, words that make her delirious.
"Don't move," is the only thing he can whisper.
But she does, pushing herself against him and it's over then for him; he shudders and collapses, hanging his head. She trembles under him, and he suddenly and violently pushes the heel of his palm upwards between her legs; he feels her jerk quickly, and hears a clear, ragged cry.
Neither of them moves from the bank.
Their wet, heated skin is pressed together, the grass and dirt of the bank against her back, the river whispering and rustling beside them.
They're frozen inside her eternity.
She says his name in two syllables then, her voice terribly odd, clear, almost melodic, before she goes limp underneath him. The heavy sound of their breathing mingles with the scream of the cicadas.
He lifts his head from her chest where it's sunk dizzily, and for the first time that night they kiss; a slow, quiet, long kiss, tasting of tears and river water.