Page 5 of Roma Queen
As I’d started drinking, the liquor searing my throat, I’d hoped that the alcohol would take the pain away, and eventually it did. It took everything else first, though. My hope. My ability to think straight. Stubbornly, the pain was the last to go.
At some point, the girl found me in the backfield and came to sit with me. She was blonde, hair the color of the bales of straw that were piled up to the rafters inside the farm’s many barns. Her father owned the farm. Had told her to steer clear of us, and warned her of the consequences she would suffer if she was even caught talking to us.
She hadn’t cared.
She was two years older than me. Had already developed a skill for drinking Jack that outstripped mine by a long shot.
She kissed me first. Wrestled me out of my blazer and my shirt, even though it was below freezing. She’d pulled her own sweater over her head, discarded her boots, tugged her jeans off, and then laid herself down amongst the frost covered leaves, white and crisp with the cold, and…
…and who the fuck knows what had happened next.
I woke up the next morning in one of the barns, lying in a pile of puke, still clutching hold of the bottle of Jack. It was empty, though I couldn’t recall if I’d drunk most of it or if the girl had. I threw up again, head thumping angrily, and when I’d sat up, trying to clean myself off, that’s when I’d seen the blood all over my dick.
My first instinct: panic.
Upon very close inspection, I’d realized the blood wasn’t mine, which was a relief until I’d started wondering how the blood had fucking gotten there. I’d ether seriously hurt someone with my junk, or I’d screwed a virgin, and neither was a comforting thought, given that I couldn’t remember a single fucking thing that had happened after the girl had gotten naked.
I’d managed to find my clothes, still outside, made stiff and brittle by a layer of frost that had cracked and shattered like glass when I’d shaken out my shirt and pants. Archie had come across me, lurching between the tents and the trailers, still reeling drunk. He took me back to hisvardo, brought me coffee and something warm to put in my empty stomach, and then he’d made me drink a shot of Jack, promising it would make me feel better. Surprisingly, it had.
Three hours later, I saw the girl pull up in her rusting Jeep Cherokee, her hair flying like a silver-gold banner in the wind, and the secretive, knowing smile she sent my way told me that I hadn’t hurt her. It had just been the sex. Her virginity, and mine.
We left the farm three days later, and I never saw her again. I never even knew her name, and, as far as I can remember, she never knew mine either.
I’ve forgotten plenty of other sexual encounters since then. Plenty of other women, too. None of those experiences were important. None of those women meant anything. But fucking Zara on that couch in her apartment that smelled so deliciously of her, filled with all the art and the books she’s collected, the light on her answer machine flashing red in the hallway, the messy, jam-packed calendar hanging on the fridge, the Pink Lady apples in the fruit bowl, and the beads of condensation on the windows in the living room? I am going to remember every single, minuscule detail of that encounter for the rest of my goddamn life.
It’s burned into me. Branded, as if she’s taken a glowing red poker to the synapses in my mind and forged every tiny element of those few, blissful hours into the wiring of my brain. If she leaves me now, she will haunt me for the rest of fucking time. No other woman will ever compare to her. No one will ever be able to ignite the same roaring need in my veins the way she has. Her fiery hair, threaded through with copper, cinnamon and spun gold; the delicate, barely visible freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose; the ever-changing hue of her eyes, as unpredictable and inscrutable as the sea: every part of her is a fractured shard of a dream that has miraculously come true, and now the pieces of her have all blended together into the astonishing creature sitting next to me, and I’m too scared to fucking believe it.
Over the years, whenever I’ve woken up and tried to wrap my head around her, she’s evaporated into thin air, slipping through my fingers like grains of sand through an hourglass. Now, she’s a tangible, living, breathing thing, but I’m too fucking scared to admit that to myself for fear that she might go up in smoke and slowly slip away…
I watch her surreptitiously as we head north, getting closer and closer to the mountain. She’s focused on the world outside the window—the spruce, hemlock, and cedar all lining the road like sentinels, fifteen and thirty rows deep, forest stretching on and on in every direction as we wind our way through the crisp winter morning, and I feel like a fucking thief, stealing away these moments and locking them inside tiny boxes in my mind, just in case they’re limited and about to run out any moment.
We pass so few cars, the route so quiet and peaceful, that Zara nearly has a heart attack when a motorcycle comes hurtling down the mountain on the other side of the road. “Fuck, that guy’s got a death wish! There’s so much ice on the road.”
I see the cut the guy’s wearing in my wing mirror as he passes us—Widow Makers MC, New Mexico—and I shake my head. “I wouldn’t worry about him. He knows what the fuck he’s doing.”
She goes back to staring out of the winter landscape, and I go back to staring at her out of the corner of my eye. After a while, she says, “See anything interesting?” Her voice is quiet, tinged with amusement. She turns away from the window and arches an eyebrow at me. She’s clearly known I’ve been watching her for some time now, but I’m not embarrassed. Not even fucking slightly.
“Very,” I reply.
“My head feels like it’s a nut you’re trying to crack by sheer force of will alone.”
I smirk. She’s not really wrong. I’ve been trying to figure her the fuck out for the past forty-seven miles. “Tell me something, Firefly. Tell me your secrets.”
She laughs under her breath. “Which ones?”
“All of them. I want them all. One at a time.”
“That kind of greed’s gonna cost you.”
“I’ll pay you in orgasms.”
“Ha! Very tempting. I was thinking more along the lines of a secret for a secret, though. I’ll give you one of mine. In return, you hand over one of yours.”
I dig my thumbnail into the steering wheel, trying not to grind my teeth together. “You don’t want to know my secrets, Firefly.”
She makes a derisive sound, dismissing the statement. “Are you forgetting that you told me you thought you’d killed someone three years ago?”
“Yeah. IthoughtI had. I only just found out that I didn’t. Would have been a hell of a lot harder confessing that if I’d succeeded.”
