Dark Wild Night

The words incinerate my lungs and I stop breathing again. There isn’t a word for what I’m feeling. It is the direct, razor edge of ecstasy and terror.

“Shh,” he whispers. “Don’t panic, okay? I’m just being honest here. I love you. I want you.” He exhales, and it’s a massive, trembling gust against my neck. “Fuck, I want you. But I understand it isn’t simple, and I don’t expect simple. I just want you to try. I mean, if—”

I nod quickly—my heart is lodged in my throat, pounding, pounding, pounding with need for him—and he jerks me tighter into him, relief evident in his posture. I didn’t think it was possible to be any closer, but it was. It just required our bodies to collapse, air to evacuate lungs.

We go quiet and I realize I’ve been dancing without thought. I’m not a natural dancer, but I haven’t considered what my feet are doing, how my arms or hands or hips are moving. But now that I am, I can imagine how it would be to be with Oliver: how he would fit against me, over me. He’s taller, broader, but his hips would still feel sharp on my thighs. His hands don’t do tentative; I can imagine the pressure of them sliding up and over my curves. I want the hand in my hair to form a fist, pull my head back. Even though he wouldn’t do that here, the promise is there, in the flexing of his fingers, in the way they haven’t shifted away. He found a spot, buried deep.

“I saw Aerosmith when I was fourteen,” he says, and I wonder if he’s thinking about how young that is, thinking about me at fourteen, alone in an apartment with a burnout guy. Or, if he’s just talking to get me to remember that this is us. This is what we do, with or without I love yous. “It was after they had that ballad out from Armageddon—”

“?‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” he says, laughing. “We went by ourselves and felt so fucking mature. We took a bus to Sydney—it’s nearly two hundred kilometers away and my grandparents were like, ‘Yeah, sure, go for it.’ I’m not kidding when I say every crazy personality in the world is represented on buses.”

“Wow.”

“I know,” he agrees. “Such kids, right, but I reckon it was the best night of my life up to then. My mate got tickets from his cousin. I didn’t even know any Aerosmith songs—well, I did,” he says, “I just didn’t realize they were Aerosmith. But it was brilliant. Maybe that’s when I decided I wanted to travel. Maybe it was before that, I don’t know. I think I learned to be a little fearless on that bus. Figured if I could head up to Sydney for a weekend, I could go anywhere.”

“My first concert was Britney Spears.”

He laughs outright, pulling back and smiling down at me. “That’s awful.”

“It was awesome,” I tell him. “I swear. Me, Harlow, Mia, and Luke—Mia’s ex.” I shake my head, remembering us dancing our asses off and Luke smiling through his teeth, being a good sport. “Poor Luke.”

“Taking three chicks to a concert? He could do worse.”

“Only one of us was putting out. Well, back then,” I say, reconsidering. “I think Luke gets more action now than 1979 Steven Tyler.”

Oliver laughs at this, but the song ends and he stops, easing his arms from around me.

“You did it,” he says, looking down at me with a half smile. “You danced with an Aussie in an empty bar and the world didn’t end. Check it off your list.”

“And we . . .” I start.

We talked. We admitted. We took that terrifying single step forward.

He waits to see how I’m going to finish this, expression warm, but neutral. “Yeah, we did,” he says finally, tilting his head toward the bar. “Let’s finish our drinks.”

And like this, it’s easy again.



* * *




I WAKE UP alone in an enormous white bed, in a bright pool of sunshine.

In the past few months I have traveled so often that the dusty blue walls and wide, white chair in the corner don’t immediately trigger a context for where I am. I roll over, see my leather pants folded on the chair, my shirt and bra lying neatly on top.