Probably Posting, Usually Updates

Wherefore Art Thou?

I'm fretting. I know I'm fretting because I keep finding new creases in the leather car seat, but pulling my gaze away feels like a lie. I revisit the crease and the dirt in the crease and I know he won't even notice the scuffed door or the dusty cupholder, but I can't unsee my humanity. I pull down the felt sun visor and flip open the mirror to meet more creases where my mascara has gathered and aged me. I am fretting and use my finger to blend it away. I did myself up pretty, with wet sparkly glossy lips and cheeks. Hair neatly gelled back into a tight low bun. I look wet, really, I think with some self-denigration.

Receiving equal attention are my phone and the right-side mirror. He texted me he'd be here after he dropped Tony and John at the car. Apparently, they're cross with him for not driving them back to the city and he keeps on telling me that he feels bad, really bad. I told him they're adults - they can drive themselves. 

Maybe he ended up driving them anyway. I don't know why it's hard to believe he will follow through on a promise, even ten minutes out from it being fulfilled-

Rap rap rap rap. "Grace!"

My body starts as I catch him in the rear window. When I witness that roguish smile, my traitorous thoughts are wiped like a sleeping agent. His dimples are so deep, to kiss them is like pressing my lips to the groove in a stone. He is pacing to my door. He is wearing sunglasses and whips them off to reveal shining rich brown eyes and full black lashes playing against eyelids so delicately pale as to be almost lilac. Before I can stop myself, I open the car door into him to get out - it's awkward as he grabs my face past the door - neither of us really has it figured out, how to navigate a physical world with feelings this strong. He says he can feel me through the telephone sometimes.

"Woah." Both laughing nervously. 

"You look so nice! You look so nice." I tangle up my fingers and my eyes dart to the earth, suddenly overwhelmed. He is wearing blue climbing shoes, which resemble chunky geometric socks. "You, too." "No way. God, I'm all chalky and beat up." Without responding, I kiss him - although the car door lodges into my hipbone. My stomach hurts from jumping up and down and up again. He smells metallic and there's a ruddy scrape on his delicate pink cheek. I hope he is bleeding on his hands and it stains my cream t-shirt. I hope he bleeds into my mouth and I can taste him for who he is. "Oh my God... I really do smell so bad, Grace... please don't...!"

I kiss him again, this time maneuvering around the car door and pulling us onto it until it slams shut, one fist bunched in his scarlet Patagonia jacket. His giggle is crazed, rising in pitch when I thumb away the hair from his neck, caress the sheen of perspiration with my fingers. Specks of dirt suspend within it. And - God, he smells just awful.

In early April, New Paltz changes its skin again. Minnewaska Preserve has parking lots that bleed into the dormant grass and hiking trails, the wooded basin dappled in unfurling yellow buds before the mountains. I adore him for letting me see him in this state. His flyaway chest length hair, his fine lines filled with mountain dust, the flat scent of sunscreen, and his freckles darkened by ozonic sunlight. He'd been nervous for the elements to affect him, for me to see his affectation. Feels like another way he gives himself to me.

I want him to know what I need never say. I wrap my hand under his skull, where he is godawful oily. He makes a face like I'm just throwing him off-keel... yet when my ministrations don't abate, his eyes flutter shut. "Oh my God." He says that a lot. "Well, you look so nice." He finds my neck with his sweaty dirty nose. "And you smell so good." I want him so much when he is careful with me... my arms sling around his neck to pull him closer, so close that my cheek becomes damp and my eye becomes blurry from his salt. 

His chest rumbles. "Hi."

"Hi, pretty."

Just like the first time, the seconds turn into minutes - I forget the car, the sun, the gravel, the bluff, my body and my head, also him, because he becomes the car the sun the gravel the bluff. Spring embraces me in cool heat. His curls kiss me like cloud cover and his breath's a rainmaker. Suddenly his sweat smells of the earth, and his teeth are as animal as white-tails. "Thank you for coming," he murmurs inside the wind. "You went so far out of your way."