The quiet, p.10
The Quiet, page 10
Next, I spread on my hibiscus-and-coconut-smelling lotion, coating my legs, hips, stomach, and arms. Then came the makeup. I applied just enough to accent my eyes and mouth. Finally, I blow-dried my hair, crunching it between my fingers so it would have the perfect wave.
For clothes, I wore my favorite dress, a light blueish-green thing that fell about six or seven inches above my knees and had a plunging neckline with cream frills that bordered all the hems. It was light and thin, good for summer frolicking, and looked adorable on me. Plus, it had pockets!
I forewent underwear and a bra, simply slipping the dress on. After bedazzling my wrists with an assortment of bracelets, and my neck with a couple of matching necklaces, I found a turquoise ring that I’d kept from my mother’s things and finally slid my feet into a pair of strappy sandals.
Inspecting the finished result in the mirror, I nodded to myself. If this didn’t seduce the socks off Zacchaeus Topper, then nothing would.
Ready to go, I checked the time. Four thirty. That was perfect. I could walk back into town slowly, without working up a sweat, and make it just before he got off work. I kind of wanted to watch him do that hand-washing ritual thing with the Fast Orange soap again.
Grabbing my poetry book, phone, and the condom Enzo had given me, I started off.
The heat wasn’t too oppressive, and the sky had good cloud coverage, hopefully meaning the sunset would be perfect tonight. Plus, the breeze was just enough to toy with the hem of my dress and keep me constantly cooled off.
I hurried through town, and there it was, just up ahead: Mr. Harvey’s shop.
When I saw Zac, first thing, carrying a bucket outside the opened garage doors to toss its contents out into the grass, my heart lunged in my chest. He was everything warm and safe, and I couldn’t help it; I took off running, needing to touch him at that very moment.
I had to get my hands on something good and bright and comforting in this world.
10
ZAC
Mari showed up about five minutes before closing.
And she wasn’t wearing a bra. I could see the wild sway of her breasts under her dress as she jogged excitedly toward me. And when she drew close enough, I could make out the dark outline around her nipples through the incredibly thin material.
With a thick swallow, I forced my attention up, trying to be a gentleman, but then she took me by surprise and plowed herself against me, hugging me silly.
Those unrestrained breasts pressed right up against me, and yeah…
I went as hard as a steel fucking pipe.
“H-hey,” I said uneasily as I tried to keep my hips back a respectable distance so I didn’t gouge out her stomach with my interest.
She probably didn’t even know what a hard-on was.
When she pulled away, she mouthed the word hi, and shyly tucked her hair behind her ear, blushing as if she knew she’d been too eager with me.
“Hi,” I repeated, feeling easier now that I wasn’t worried about unintentionally stabbing her with my overeager dick. Motioning back into the shop, I lifted the empty bucket I was still holding. “I just have one more thing to wrap up here, and then I’ll get cleaned up and ready to go, okay?”
She nodded, seemingly pleased by my answer.
It made me wonder if anything ever displeased her.
She trailed me back into the garage and avidly watched as I put all my tools away. And when I went to the sink to wash up, she once again joined in, lathering her fingers with the Fast Orange as well.
We were both drying our hands side by side when Harvey appeared in the doorway from the office. “Taking off?” he started to ask before noticing that Mari was with me. Then, he straightened and waved. “Oh! Well, hey there, little lady. I didn’t hear you come in?”
She made a sneaking motion with her fingers as if to tell him she was stealthy like that.
He chuckled. “Yeah, you are a quiet one.”
When his gaze shifted to me, I finally answered his initial question. “Yeah, unless you need anything else from me, we’re going to head off toward the river. Someone…” I motioned to the girl at my side with a jerk of my head. “Likes to watch sunsets there.”
“Sunsets, huh?” Harvey glanced at Mari with interest. When she nodded enthusiastically, the curmudgeonly old man smiled affectionately. “Well, who doesn’t like a good sunset?”
“According to Mari, only unnatural people,” I said teasingly, nudging her with my arm.
She grinned at me, then coiled herself around my elbow and rested her face on my shoulder.
I flushed hotly, still not used to her open displays of affection. And when I glanced uneasily toward my boss, he only smirked back.
“Well, enjoy yourselves.” He patted the doorframe next to him and then wheeled around before disappearing back into his office.
Mari applied pressure to my arm, letting me know she was ready to go, so I let her lead us from the shop and toward the walking trail.
We ambled along in no hurry, just quietly enjoying each other’s company for the first few minutes. She left her face on my shoulder and continued to hold on to my arm, stroking her fingers up the inside of it every few seconds.
It was distracting and felt too good to allow myself to focus on, so I cleared my throat and said, “I got online for a while last night and looked up Broca’s dysarthria.”
Mari glanced up at me in pleasant surprise, lifting her eyebrows to let me know she hadn’t expected me to do such a thing. But she seemed to like my interest.
I nodded. “Yeah. And they said the more you try talking in a safe environment, the more likely you’ll continue to practice it, and the better you’ll get at controlling the words you want to say. So I just wanted you to know—you know—that if you ever did want to practice with someone, you’re safe to talk to me. I would never belittle your efforts.”
Tipping her head, she gazed at me thoughtfully for a moment before sliding her hand into the pocket of her dress and pulling out her phone.
After typing something, she sent it to me as a text message.
“You really want me to talk, don’t you?”
I shrugged and glanced up. “No. Not really. Hearing your voice yesterday was just fascinating, is all. But you don’t have to practice if you don’t want to. There’s no pressure from me either way, I swear.”
She made a face as if to say she didn’t want to practice, but then she texted me, “I just sound so awful when I try. I hate my voice.”
“Your voice is fine,” I insisted, but she sent me a dry glance, letting me know I wasn’t going to change her mind on that count.
“Okay, alright.” I laughed and lifted my hands in surrender. “I’ll leave it alone. But another part of the article that caught my attention was a line that said sitting quietly in nature helps you concentrate better. And it made me wonder if that was one of the reasons you liked coming out here so much.”
She nodded, then wrote, “Definitely. Busy places like the diner, with a lot of noise and commotion, make my head hurt. It’s harder to concentrate and understand what people say when I’m experiencing a sensory overload like that.”
“I wondered.” Wincing out my understanding, I had to ask, “So how do you keep working there every day?” Mari only shrugged, so I guessed, “You’re just that talented, huh?”
When she looked in surprise, I gifted her with a brief smile. “You know, at first, I thought you always wanted to head to the secluded dock because you didn’t want to be seen with me.”
She frowned as if that were a crazy suggestion and then shook her head to let me know that wasn’t the case at all.
After she flipped up a hand as if to ask why I’d even assumed that, I mumbled, “I don’t know. Maybe your family wouldn’t approve of us hanging out or something.”
With a roll of her eyes, she typed out an answer. “My family doesn’t approve of much of anything when it comes to me, so that’s not always a factor in my decision-making.”
“Ah. Understandable,” I answered, then cast her a sly, side-grin. “So I’m not your dirty little secret, huh? What a shame. It sounded kind of naughty.”
Mari laughed and bumped her shoulder into mine, knocking me off track.
I chuckled, loving the sound, and teasingly bumped back against her.
She giggled again, then retaliated with the same move, and my heart sang. We played around for a minute until both our shoulders were grinding against each other, and we came to a draw.
Sighing when her joy settled in, she hooked her arm back through mine and pressed close just as we made it to the water. But instead of going left as we usually did, Mari urged me to go right.
“This way tonight, huh?” I asked with lifted eyebrows before I shrugged. “Okay. I’m game.”
I followed willingly enough as she led us into a new narrow trail between trees. We hiked along the bank until we came to a small waterfall that was no taller than a person. Grinning back at me, she paused to take off her sandals and hitched her head toward the rocks that lined the top of the falls.
“You want to cross here?” I asked. “Barefoot?”
She nodded, encouraging me with one of her irresistible smiles.
I sighed and started to unlace my work boots. “Alright, but I’m warning you now... If you get a whiff of some funky foot odors, they’re definitely not coming from me.”
She rolled her eyes but motioned for me to keep going, anyway.
As soon as we were both barefoot, she reached for my fingers, and we crossed the river, holding our shoes with one hand and each other with the other.
The rocks were large and mostly flat, but there was one precariously wide gap, and I started to lose my balance, but Mari tightened her grip on me, and I straightened again with a relieved hiss.
When she glanced back to make sure I was okay, I laughed and lifted my shoes. “I’m good.”
Those dark eyes warmed with appreciation. Then she nodded and faced forward again, and the back of her hair caught my attention.
I exhaled through my teeth as my gaze dropped against my will to the backside of the dress she was wearing. But God. This girl. She was stunning, inside and out. I just wanted to wrap her in my arms and never let go.
On the other side of the river, she took us a little further to the right until we came to a small sandbank with a dry patch on it.
“You just know all the cool places out here, don’t you?” I praised as we waded out to it through the crisp, cool water.
Mari glanced back at me again with a mysterious smile. Then she sat on dry sand, and I followed her down.
But as soon as I settled myself next to her, I glanced around, immediately noticing how secluded it was here. The trees were tall and surrounded us on nearly every side.
“Uh… Are you sure we’ll be able to see the sunset from here?” I asked.
Mari ignored me as she typed on her phone. A moment later, mine buzzed with an incoming message.
“Can I show you something I’ve never shown anyone else before?”
My perverted mind instantly went there, thinking she wanted to show me her naked breasts. But then my logical mind took over, knowing that couldn’t be the case at all, so I cleared my throat and nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”
Her chest heaved and her shoulders rose as she glanced at me, looking suddenly unsure and nervous. Now, even my logical brain started to wonder what article of clothing she was going to remove first.
But then, she slipped her hand into the pocket of her dress, and she pulled out…a book.
I blinked, totally not expecting that.
Mari took a moment, shifting her hand over the cloth cover that didn’t have any words on it, only a swirly, colorful design. Finally, she opened a page and then turned to show me what she’d handwritten inside. I tilted my head noticing it was a poem. And the title read, “The Quiet” by Mariana Ruiz.
“You write poetry?” I asked, mildly intrigued.
She nodded, watching me intently.
I could tell just how big of a deal this was to her. She didn’t want to merely share a poem with me. She wanted to share a part of herself.
Treating it as the honor I knew it was, I carefully reached out to slip the open book from her hands, asking, “Can I read it?”
Her head bobbed once more, but she looked so frightened that I half expected her to close her hands around the notebook and pull it away as soon as I tried to take it.
Except she let me slide it onto my own lap. And there I read her words aloud.
In the quiet of the river, what do you hear?
Close your eyes.
There...
Have your ears captured it yet?
The creak of wood as the dock crests a lazy wave?
The echoing whine of the metal chains anchoring it to the gangplank?
Maybe you can detect the whisper-soft thump
of a heron’s feet landing on the nearby sandbank,
or the plunk of its beak dipping into the crisp water for breakfast.
What else? Certainly, there’s more.
Like the grumpy quacking of ducks downstream.
Cattails rustling against each other in the breeze.
Kayak paddles slapping at the channel.
Distant rapids rushing through the canyon.
The soothing thunk of a boat’s trolling motor.
Or muffled laughter from the beach around the bend.
Yes, it’s all there, hidden in the quiet of the river.
Can you hear it?
It’s called tranquility.
After reading the last words, I had to exhale and close my eyes, determined to hear everything she’d listed. Immediately able to pick out a handful of them—the lapping water, wind in the cattails, the creak of the dock—I sucked in a surprised breath.
“Holy shit,” I murmured. There really was a tranquility to just sitting there, picking out different sounds in the quiet of the evening.
Opening my lashes, I blinked at the girl in front of me in awe. “How did you…?” I shook my head. “This is just... It’s like you took everything drab and ordinary—sounds I’ve heard my entire life—and you made them fresh and new. It felt as if I was experiencing them all for the first time again.”
She smiled over my feedback, and tears glistened in her eyes. “Thank you,” she signed.
I reached up and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “How do you sign the word for amazing?”
Flushing, she waved a half-clawed hand over her face twice.
I repeated the action and then pointed at her.
Beaming, she took the notebook from my hands and slipped it back into her pocket.
“Ope,” I said as I watched it disappear. “I guess I’m only allowed to read one at a time, huh?”
She nodded, growing solemn as she turned to face me fully.
When she looked deep into my eyes and leaned forward intently, I think I swallowed my tongue. She was just so fucking beautiful. And her lips looked all dewy soft and plush; I wanted to kiss them more than I’d ever wanted to do anything.
My gaze dropped just as she licked them, making them glisten sensuously, and I immediately jerked my attention back up to her eyes. But that was no better. I swear even her eyes were begging me to taste her.
My skin prickled with over-awareness, and every sense seemed to focus solely on her. She was the entire world.
She smiled as if she knew exactly what she did to me, and I knew I needed to escape before I did something epically stupid like put the moves on her and ruin this friendship—or whatever it was—that we had going.
Losing her was not an option.
Looking skyward for deliverance, I realized what time it was, and I leaped to my feet. “Oh shit. We’re missing the sunset. Come on!” I held my hand down to her, wiggling my fingers urgently.
She looked startled for a moment, but then she reluctantly reached for my hand and let me tug her to her feet.
“I think we can still catch it if we hurry.” I pulled her after me, and we darted barefoot back across the rocks above the waterfall.
When we reached the other side, I paused and turned. “There.” We’d caught the best part just in time.
Standing side by side together, we watched the sky in silence.
I let my ear pick up the sounds of the river around us, and it meant so much more this time after reading her insightful poem.
I leaned toward her until our shoulders pressed against each other, waiting for her to wrap her arms around mine or for her to rest her head on my shoulder.
But she didn’t do any of that.
I glanced at her to make sure she was okay, except the night had fallen just enough that I could no longer make out her features.
“Ready to go home yet?” I asked.
Mari nodded without any resistance and immediately bent to slip her sandals back on. It took me longer to push my way back into my boots, and she was hugging herself, waiting on me, when I finished.
“Cold?” I asked, realizing the loss of daylight had brought on a slight nip in the air.
She shrugged, so I looped an arm over her shoulders and pulled her close to keep her warm.
She kept her phone in her pocket the rest of the way back to her place, and I felt too content to fill the air with idle chatter, so we walked together in silence.
At the Ruiz trailers, I hugged her and thanked her for sharing her poem with me.
I think it had honestly changed me. I mean, nothing in my life was different—my mother still hated me, the town hated me, and I wished I lived anywhere but in Peril—but tonight, it didn’t seem so sucky. Because my perspective had changed.
I still had air in my lungs, a pretty girl to share the sunset with, and a chance at a better life just waiting for me in the morning.
And all I’d needed was Mari to show me that, to instill a sense of hope inside me again.
