Isaac
Sunday afternoon, I had lunch with Benny and Yolanda, then went over to the trailer to check on Pops and give him some money. He wasn’t there, and the mess was worse. The coffee table top was completely hidden by bottles, cans, stubbed-out cigarettes and fast food containers. I did a quick clean-up, washed some dishes and set them to dry in the sink. Then headed out to the edge of our grounds, toward the gas station. God, it looked so dilapidated and shabby. I could practically feel the gravity of the unpaid bills and royalties pulling it down into a bottomless sinkhole, swallowing my father with it.
Pops sat at the gas station window, staring at nothing and smoking a cigarette. I slid a thin envelope under the glass—most of my paycheck from the auto-shop in Braxton. Pops’ smoke danced and swirled against the glass.
“I’ll bring more next week,” I said.
He nodded and slid the envelope toward him, eased off the stool and disappeared in the back.
Conversation over.
He’d hardly spoken to me after the incident with the beer bottle. But I didn’t like this silence, or the look in his eyes. Whatever light he had was fading. Or drowning.
Being poor will do that to you, I thought with sudden anger as I strode back to my truck.
The constant heavy weight of want and need was a giant hand pressing you down. I know what people in Harmony thought: if my dad got his shit together, he’d be okay. He was the boxer in the ring, and they were the spectators who didn’t have to fight his fight. They lounged in seats, yelling, “Get back up!” As if it were easy after you’ve been kicked so many times.
I’ve got to get out, I thought again. I had to take care of my old man. He was blood. Family. That was all there was to it.
And Willow?
“Nope, not doing this shit today,” I muttered, getting into the truck. My Hamlet script lay on the passenger seat. My plan was to run lines at the hedge maze. Alone. Learn all my lines cold and keep to the words. Be professional.
But when I got to the windmill shack in the center of the maze, Willow was there. Wearing jeans and a loose peasant blouse with flowers. Eyes lighting up in surprise as she called, “Hi.”
Oh, Christ.
Her smile was full of expectation and possibility. Every nuance of her thoughts playing over her beautiful face.
Knock it off.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“I came to run lines.”
“So did I.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, well…” She twirled a lock of hair around her finger, shrugged. “I was here first.”
“You were here first? I’ve lived here my entire life.”
She held up her hands as if to say, “what are you going to do about it?”
She was so goddamn cute. She was stunningly beautiful, but sometimes she was just damn cute.
I tapped my script against my leg. “We might as well help each other out. Since we’re both here.”
“Might as well,” she said. “We’re professionals, right? You first. Where are you struggling?”
That’s a loaded question.
“I have a giant monologue at the end of Act Four.”
Willow flipped open her script, her blue eyes scanning the page. Her neck curved elegantly down into her collarbone, and the swell of her breasts beneath her shirt…
Professional. We’re being professional.
She looked up. “How all occasions do inform against me…?”
“That’s the one.”
“I’m ready when you are.”
I got up and started the monologue, pacing the area in front of the windmill. When I finished one shaky run-through, Willow cocked her head. “What’s it about?”
“Hamlet’s ruminating on war and what drives men to risk their lives for it. What’s worth dying for. Honor. He’s saying that Claudius is still the King, his mother is still married to a murderer and he’s done nothing.”
Willow read from my script. “From this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.”
I nodded. “The time for talk is over. Now he must act and do what’s right for the honor of his family and his name.”
“He should.”
I looked over her and found her watching me softly. “Now my turn.”
I sat down on the bench and she plopped her script in my lap, pointing.
“All these little songs at the end of my mad scene,” she said. “They’re so hard to keep track of. I know I know them, but then I start to second-guess myself.”
“Try this,” I said. “Go to the beginning of the hedge maze and do your stuff as you walk it.”
She scrunched up her face. “How will that help? I’ll be lost and screw up my lines.”
“You just told me you know your lines. Your brain needs something else to worry about. Let the words just come to you while you concentrate on getting through the maze.”
“But how will you cue me?” she asked. “Gertrude and Claudius have a lot to say.”
I shrugged. “You’re going to have to shout and I’ll shout back. That’ll be good practice projecting to the back row.”
She went back into the maze, her long hair swaying behind her. “Are you sure no one is going to hear us?” she called.
“Shakespeare-in-the-park.”
“Very funny.”
The afternoon was still and quiet, the air warm but not yet thick with summer humidity.
“Can you hear me?” she called, her voice came like a bell.
“Yep,” I called back, projecting my voice toward her. “Go.”
Willow began her lines. I smiled to hear them punctuated with cursing as she ran into a dead end of the maze.
“How should I, your true love, know from another one? By his—shit!”
I laughed silently. “That wasn’t it.”
“Goddammit,” she muttered.
“Wrong again,” I called, and laughed harder.
“You’re not helping,” she yelled.
Shakespeare echoed back and forth over the hedges until finally Willow arrived back at the windmill. The sun behind her lit up her hair like gold as she planted her hands on her hips. Her eyes were impossibly blue as she gave me a look.
“Well, I hope that was fun for you because…”
Her words died away and the fun-and-games mood between us downshifted into something deeper. The moment held, naked and obvious and lying between us, waiting.
The time for talk was over.
I closed the distance between us in three long strides, took her face in both my hands and kissed her. She gasped in surprise but didn’t flinch or stiffen. It took all I had to keep my mouth soft on hers. Make it easy for her to get away. But she moaned softly, a sound full of ecstatic relief to my ears. Her lips parted, she pressed into me closer and her tongue ventured a tiny bit into my mouth.
Christ, it’s too good.
She tasted so sweet, her tongue soft as it slid against mine. A growl in my chest as I sank deeper into the kiss, my tongue sweeping her mouth. Her body melted against me, and I held her tighter, kissed her harder. Every turn of my head, every move of my mouth in hers, she responded. Willing. Eager.
My hands dug deeper into the soft, silken thickness of her hair. I wrapped it up in my fists, careful not to pull. Like ocean tides, her mouth drew me and released. We moved in tandem, back-and-forth, opening and closing, shallower tastes and nips of our teeth, tongues tangling and exploring. The need for her grew hotter, more urgent. Finally I forced myself to slow down, kiss her deeply one last time, then break away.
We stood together, breathing hard, her hands gripping the lapels of my jacket. I was loathe to take my hands out of her hair, but I slid them down her back and let them rest on her slender waist. One more deep breath with my forehead pressed to hers, then I took a step back.
Her eyes were full of tears.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Was it too much?”
“No,” she said, with a breathy little smile. “It was perfect. And I thought I’d never have anything perfect again.”
She craned on her toes to kiss me again, soft, slow, and deep. Taking her time, indulging in the victory over her nightmares. And me, I kissed back, reveling in the sweet ecstasy of her mouth on mine. Even if every taste and touch was going to make it so much harder for us in the end.
“What are we doing?” she breathed between kisses. Her fingers were grazing through my hair and I’d never felt anything so fucking good in my life.
“I don’t know.” My mouth was on her neck, dragging kisses down her throat. “We were supposed to be professional.”
We kissed until the erection in my jeans was painful. Pressed to me, she felt it and gasped. I pulled away.
“Sorry… It’s got a mind of its own.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “It’s okay. It really is.”
Her face was flushed, and her lips swollen from my kisses, her chin pink from my stubble.
That’s how she should be marked, I thought. With kisses she wants, not fucking black X’s.
My desire for her twined with a need to protect her and suddenly, getting out of Harmony felt like death.
Her dreamy expression faltered then, as if she saw the conflict on my face. “No,” she said, pulling me close to her again.
“No?”
“You have to go. It’s your dream.” She spread her hands wide on my chest, skimming over my shirt. “But I keep thinking about what Martin said when we first started rehearsals. He said Hamlet and Ophelia’s story begins before the play starts. Remember?”
“I remember,” I said.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen later. I know you need to leave Harmony and I’m not going to stop you. I would never try to stop you. So maybe it’s selfish of me to want you now. Or maybe…it’s just how the story goes.”
She slipped her hands around my neck. Her touch was brave and unabashed, though I felt her heart beat fast against my chest.
“Maybe we could have this time,” she said. “Before we take the stage and perform. Before you get discovered by big-time talent agents that take you away from here. Maybe we can live in the time before the play. Live where the story begins.” She looked up at me, her blue eyes clear and bright and unwavering. “The love was there first.”
I brushed a lock of her hair away from her face. “Yeah, it was.”
Willow smiled then, and my breath caught. No girl ever looked at me the way she did just then. As if I were valuable. I kissed her again and again, wanting nothing but to hold her and keep her safe.
“God, Isaac,” she breathed when we forced ourselves apart. “This is crazy.”
“It’s life,” I said. “Off the page. But how is this going to work? If anyone sees us…”
“We’ll use codes when we text in case my dad checks my phone.”
“Codes?”
“I’ll put you in my contacts as…Ham? Hammy? No, too obvious.”
“The Dane,” I said. “Or Dane.”
“Dane.” Her face lit up. “My new friend Dane. She’s in the play. She’s constantly forgetting which scene we’re rehearsing. If we want to meet, say, at three-thirty, we text Act Three, Scene Three.”
“Perfect.”
She gave me a playful, wry look. “And if we want to say something sweet to each other, because girls like that sort of thing, y’know…”
“You don’t say?”
“If you want to do that…” She bit her lip, thinking.
“Act Two, Scene Two. A2, S2.” I pulled her close. “Remember?”
Her lips parted, and her cheeks turned pink. “Of course I do. The letter. Never doubt…”
“Never doubt, Willow.”
I kissed her again. In that moment, it seemed so easy. So perfect, I could almost forget the words were written for a tragedy.