Harlow

 

 

The sight of Josh Stratford standing just ten feet away from me is a punch to my gut, my heart, and my ovaries. I light up like the sun for so many reasons when I see him. Reasons I remember immediately. Reasons I feel in every nerve in my body.

Reasons that kept me awake at night for months after I walked away from him.

I watch him and I wait for the anger to color his handsome face. It has to come. There’s no way he doesn’t hate me for what I did three years ago. I hate me for what I did. We can’t run into each other like this after all this time and not have it out.

But when his eyes meet mine, I’m stunned to see him smile.

Just like that, fast as lightning, he’s the guy I remember; big smile, deep brown eyes, and a mop of brown hair on his head to match. He’d never been one to keep it short. It was always on his brow, in his eyes, and when I cross the distance between us and pull him into a hug that feels like it’s simultaneously ripping me apart and stitching me back together, his hair is soft as silk on the side of my face.

“Hey,” he chuckles, hugging me hard. “Long time no see, right?”

“Too long,” I gush, squeezing him for emphasis. For myself and my sanity.

He feels like home, like the good times, no matter how few they were. He and his Pops were every happy memory I had growing up, and the scent of his laundry detergent wafting out of his shirt is like a slap in the face from Father Time. Suddenly I’m six years old running through sprinklers. I’m eleven in a tent in his backyard. I’m eighteen and torn between getting out and something else. Something I’ve never been able to name. Something I could never forget.

I smile as I step away from him. I feel both relieved and let down when he releases me, my body sending signals to my brain that I’ll never be able to sort out, but that’s the way I’ve always lived my life; completely confused by the way I feel. About everything and everyone.

“How have you been?” I ask him, scrambling for questions. For conversation. Anything that will hold him here with me. “How’s school?”

Josh brushes his hair off his forehead in an old, familiar move. It immediately falls right back into place. “It’s good. The classes are cool. Easier than I thought they’d be.”

“You were so worried you wouldn’t hack it.”

“College can be tough.”

“Yeah, for idiots. You’re smarter than half the fucking town. If any of the natives could take on Winslow College, it was going to be you.”

“I’ve been lucky, yeah.”

I stop myself from rolling my eyes at his humility. If Josh won the Nobel Peace Prize or whatever for curing cancer, he’d say he owed it to Nicholas Cage and the butcher before admitting he’s brilliant. That’s just the way Josh is.

“What are you studying?” I press. “Old Mrs. Mershawn cornered me in the grocery store last month and told me you were being headhunted by NASA.”

He laughs, heavy and strong in that quiet baritone of his. The melody I feel all the way into my marrow. “Nah, not even close. Last year I aced my Computer Science course. I think that’s what she’s talking about. Pops practically takes out an ad in the paper every time I bring him my grades.”

“So you’re not building a rocket that will take us all to start life on Mars?”

“Not today.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, sorry. It’s all rumors.”

“This place runs on them.”

“I heard one that you got married.”

“No,” I answer quickly. I wiggle my left hand in front of him. “No ring. No husband.

Josh nods silently. I smile reflexively.

He doesn’t ask about Devo and I don’t tell. I think that says a lot about both of us.

I smile brightly to cover my unease. “So, what are you doing out so late? Frat party?”

“Nah, not me,” he chuckles. “Not much of a partier.”

“Or a drinker. I never see you at the bar.”

“Drinking’s kind of lost its appeal, you know? Once you turn twenty-one and you’re allowed to drink, it’s not as exciting.”

“We all want what we can’t have.”

“Yeah, exactly. And I can have a hangover any time I want. It’s not fun anymore.”

I put my hand on his arm, unable to stop myself from touching him. From feeling the taut muscles under his shirt. He’s bigger than he was three years ago. He’s been working out, bulking up, and I can’t get over how strong he looks. Sturdy as stone. But when I touch him, he’s still electric. One brush of his body against mine sends a jolt through me that bubbles and burns under my skin. It’s the same feeling he’s always given me; like I’m humming. Buzzing. Like I’m a hundred percent alive for the very first time, every time.

“You should come by anyway,” I demand. “I’ll give you soda on the house and you can keep me company.”

He nods vaguely. “Yeah, I might stop by.”

“You should.”

“What about you? What are you doing up? Did you work tonight?”

“No, not tonight, but the boys are up playing poker and we ran out of shit at the club. They sent me on a munchies run.”

I pull the white scrap of paper from my back pocket. Six different sets of handwriting are scrawled across it. The boys each scribbled down their wants and desires, handed me a ten, some of them a twenty, and told me to keep the change. Everything they asked for doesn’t add up to more than twenty-five bucks, so I’m making a little money off my kindness tonight.

Josh nods to the paper in my hand. “Is that your shopping list?”

“Yeah. It’s more than I thought. I should have driven.”

“You walked here? At this time of night?”

“It’s not a big deal.”

He gestures for me to hand over the paper. When I do, he scans it quickly before ripping it in half. “I’ll help you. I’ll walk back with you.”

“You don’t have to do that. I can handle myself.”

“I know, Harlow, but I got time to kill.” He hands back my half of the shopping list. “You’ll be doing me a favor letting me tag along.”

I give him a small grin. “Well, if it’s a favor.”

We split up, each of us loading our arms with candy, corn chips, soda, energy drinks, and for some reason, an entire jar of peanut butter.

“Who asked for that?” Josh asks as we dump our goods on the counter.

The old man working the register looks down at the load like we’re ruining his night making him work.

I pull my wallet out of my purse, letting him see the cash inside. It perks him right up.

“Uh, Hyde, I think,” I answer Josh absently.

“Hyde? That’s his real name?”

“God, no. Nobody uses their real name at the club.”

“Not even you?”

I smile thinly. “Not even me. No one calls me Harlow anymore. When you said it, that was the first time I’d heard that name in over a year.”

“What do they call you?”

“Harley.”

He snorts lightly. “Of course.”

“You’re not judging, are you, Josh?” I ask, my voice harder than I intended.

I feel his eyes on me, looking at my profile that I keep carefully blank. Finally he nudges my shoulder playfully with his.

Zap!

“Hey,” he mutters quietly, “I would never judge you, Harlow.”

“It’s Harley.”

“Not to me it’s not.”

I don’t know how to respond to that or the dizzy, sweet, sick feeling it gives me, so I don’t touch it. Instead, I deflect because that’s what I’m good at.

“Go grab yourself something,” I tell him, fluttering the small stack of bills like a fan. “On the bar.”

“Nah, I shouldn’t.”

“You should. The extra cash is mine and I’m buying you something. What do you want? Beer? Cigarettes?”

“You know I don’t smoke.”

“Chew?”

He smiles ruefully. “I like my jaw, thanks.”

“Well, get something. And grab me something while you’re at it, okay?”

 Josh disappears down the aisle behind me. I turn to the clerk, expecting to find him scowling at Josh’s back for holding up the transaction. But his eyes aren’t on Josh. They’re on my chest, zeroed in on the deep cut of my cleavage.

You wanna know Victoria’s Secret? It’s a natural C-cup and a strong underwire. This guy knows it.

I whistle softly, pulling his eyes from my breasts to my lips. I give him a lopsided grin, the one I give Devo when I’m straddling his hips, about to slide down his dick. The one that says, ‘You’re gonna love this, baby.’ It works every time. The old guy fumbles the peanut butter jar in his hand. It slips through his fingers, bounces off the counter, and lands with a thud on the floor at his feet. I chuckle as he mutters a curse, stooping down to pick it up.

Men are so fuckin’ easy.

Josh reappears next to me, sliding a small jug of milk and a candy bar onto the counter. A Twix bar. Peanut butter.

The sight of that shiny red wrapper sends my body into a tailspin. Suddenly I’m eighteen again. I’m in my bedroom, in the candlelight. My finger is in his mouth. My heart is inside my throat. I’m under him, under the starlight of his eyes, and I’m whole. I’m complete and happy for the first time in my life.

Did he do it on purpose? Is he hinting at the piece of history we’re carefully dancing around? Or did he get me the candy because he knows it’s my favorite. Because he knows my favorite movie, favorite song, favorite ice cream, favorite color. Without a thought, he could tell you how I take my coffee. How I like my eggs. How I’m afraid of closets, any closet. And he’d know why. Josh is possessed of infinite, intimate knowledge of me, the kind that Devo will never have, despite the fact that they’ve both been inside me. But that’s just sex. Anyone can have sex with someone. There’s a big difference between a woman letting you inside her and letting you inside her, and I’ve let Josh see me deeper than anyone else on the planet.

“You okay?” he asks, his brow scrunched tight in innocent concern.

I shake my head, shaking my brain free of the fog it’s wandered into. “No, I’m good.”

The clerk finally finishes bagging our crap. I give him a wink as I walk away, and I know he’s watching my ass. That’s fine by me. I wouldn’t wear jeans so tight I nearly loose circulation if I didn’t want people to notice my ass. I’ve got a limited number of years to be young and hot. When my looks are gone, I won’t be shit. I have ten years left, maybe fifteen, to enjoy my only redeeming quality, and I plan to make the most of it while I can.

As we’re leaving, Josh picks up a black backpack from by the door. He’s able to stuff almost everything we bought inside it, carrying what doesn’t fit. Everything except my Twix. I’m already munching on one chewy, chocolatey peanut butter stick as we’re walking out the door.

“How’s Pops?” I ask carefully.

Josh sighs, his head tilting back until he’s looking up at the sky. You can see forever in a small town at night. Miles and miles of open sky and stars and space and so much nothing burning bright with the light of everything in the universe right over your head. All you have to do is look up and there it is. The whole of creation just out of your reach.

“He’s okay,” he answers softly.

“I heard he went into Golden Meadows?”

“Yeah.” Josh shifts the backpack on his shoulders, shrugging inside the movement. “He wishes he could be at the house with me but he knows he can’t. Not after the stroke he had a couple years ago.”

“You’re still living there?”

“For now.”

I don’t ask what that means. He’s probably planning on moving away once he’s graduated. With his grandpa in the local retirement home he doesn’t have a reason to keep the house. They’ll probably sell, Josh will move away, and I’ll see him in passing around holidays when he comes to visit Pops. Maybe not even then. Maybe the next time I’ll see him will be at the funeral.

The thought makes my heart seize painfully.

“Do you mind if I go visit him?”

Josh looks at me in surprise. “Why would I mind?”

“It’s been a long time.”

“He loves you. He’d be happy to see you.”

My chest unclenches under his assurance. “I’ll go see him then.”

“It’ll take some of the pressure off the nurses. He can sexually harass you for a while instead of them.”

I smile. “He’s still a player?”

“The man never stops,” Josh chuckles. “Every time I go down there he’s hassling someone new. They encourage him so it’ll never end.”

“Sometimes a woman likes a little harassment.”

“I’ve got three restraining orders that say that’s not true.”

“Well, it has to come from the right source.”

“I guess I’m not the right guy, then.”

“Or you’re harassing the wrong girls.”

“Story of my life.”

I laugh quietly, but it’s cut short as we approach the bridge.

The old Opal Bridge is eerie and infamous. The dividing line between Opal city limits and a whole lot of nothing on dirty desert roads, the river has a long history. A long, dark history. It was a big part of the settling of the town in the late 1800’s since it was the only source of water for miles. People flocked to it, settled around it, and died in it more often than seemed normal.

In the ‘seventies a kid was walking across the bridge when he told friends he heard someone calling for help. No one else heard the sound and they tried to tell him not to jump in, but he didn’t listen. He leapt into the water and never came out. In the ‘eighties a seven-year-old girl went missing and turned up tangled in the bare roots of a tree at the edge of the current. She was wearing only a thin cotton dress in the middle of winter. No shoes.

It’s one of those mysteries. The kind that can make a small town superstitious, so when Josh and I set out on the east side of the bridge and cross the water to the west bank, we don’t speak. No one does, driving or walking. Not even the boys at the club.

When we get to the other side of the bridge, Opal at our backs, Josh asks gently, “You see much of your dad?”

I shake my head silently, my lips pulled tight against my teeth.

“I didn’t think so.”

“I see him around town,” I admit reticently. “I almost ran into him at Grocery Plus last week, but I spotted him in time to dodge him. I ended up sneaking behind a display of baked beans. The old bitch on the label was judging me, I could feel it.”

“That old bitch doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“That’s what I told her.”

“Kinda hard to avoid someone in a town this small. Do you ever think about leaving?”

“Avoiding isn’t that hard. You and I seem to have managed pretty easily.”

He doesn’t reply, and I wonder what I expected him to say. I don’t think he’s been avoiding me on purpose. I don’t think I’ve been avoiding him. But we’ve been avoiding each other, like two magnets that were flipped one warm night three years ago and we’ve naturally repelled each other ever since.

“Where would I go if I left Opal?” I ask, filling the emptiness I’ve dug between us.

Josh shrugs. “I don’t know. Anywhere but here.”

“No. Never.” I glance around us; across the desert and over the dry, broken plain surrounding us. To the club burning persistent as death in the distance. “I hate my dad, I don’t exactly love this town, but this is where I belong.”

Josh follows my eyes. He nods to the club. “You mean that is where you belong.”

“Yeah. That’s what I mean.”

I wait for him to argue with me. To tell me that I’m better than a bitch on the back of a hog, being passed around the club like some party favor. I wait for the ignorance and hate that always comes with talking to outsiders about the life.

Only it doesn’t come.

Josh walks with me silently, his head held high, his shoulders squared, and not a whiff of condemnation on him. He never used to judge me before. I don’t know why I keep expecting him to do it now. Of all the people in the world, Josh knows better than anyone what I came from. What my childhood was like.

He knows that no matter where I am now, it has to be better than where I was.