Deep End

Skylar wakes the next morning to the grainy sound of the radio playing ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’. When she cracks an eye and pulls the covers away from her face, Kris is playing her iPod through the room’s clock radio. She breathes deep and swallows the smell of bacon and maple syrup. He catches her eye and smirks from across the room, trying to imitate her wake-up dance from that first morning. He knows he doesn’t look nearly as cute doing it as she did, but it makes her laugh, which is what he wanted. He has discovered in the short time he has known her that one of his favourite things to do is make her laugh.

“Traditional wake up song and breakfast? Impressive. But you know, we’re not really dating, you don’t really need to go to all this effort.” She laughs again, rolls out of bed and grabs her bag.

“I try to be a gentleman and all I get is sarcasm?” he pops a piece of bacon in his mouth and feigns an offended look.

“Oh,” she fans her face with one hand and raises her voice into a high falsetto, “I’m ever so sorry. I can be just ever so foul, thank you so very kindly for the lovely meal my handsome gentleman caller. Be a dear and just let me go freshen up a wee bit before we sit down to eat, it’s ever so rude for a lady to be unkempt in front of a male caller.” She throws her bag - in a surprisingly dainty motion - over her shoulder and saunters off in her most ladylike manner to the bathroom. While she’s behind the closed door, Kris does his best to fold the paper napkins that came with the take-out into paper swans. They end up looking mostly like blobs.

She reappears from the bathroom with a bright smile, hair pulled into a high ponytail, wearing these faded skinny jeans that ride low on her hips, topped with a thick leather belt and a loose leopard print purple t-shirt. From behind her back she pulls a room service menu that she’s folded into a fan and holds it demurely in front of her face.

“Shall we dine?” she asks in the same wispy falsetto voice. He pulls one arm in front of his body and crooks his elbow at a ninety degree angle, pulling out a chair for her and bending slightly at the waist.

“A seat for my lady.” He sweeps one hand over the chair and she sits herself delicately, crossing one leg over the other lightly. He pushes her chair in a little and she sets her make-shift fan beside her plate while he settles himself across from her. She runs her eyes over the spread of food on the table and sighs.

“I don’t have to eat like a lady right? I’m starving.” She’s already piling several pieces of toast onto her plate.

“I don’t think it is possible for you to eat like a lady.” Kris says. He would never have said it to Bridget, who would have squeaked in indignation and been offended, probably for days. Skylar just mirrors the same feigned offense he had earlier and flicks the scrambled egg off the end of her fork at him. He catches it in his mouth and raises his arms in victory.

They’ve been sitting in traffic for over an hour, playing a rather rousing round of the question game.

“Okay, most unconventionally attractive body part. Mine’s collarbones. I have a really weird thing for collarbones.” She fingers her own softly. He laughs, watching her fingertips play against her skin and stutters some answer about wrists. Nearly half an hour later, they still haven’t moved an inch and he can tell Skylar is getting fidgety. He remembers her comment about always moving, just as she rolls down the window, slides her upper body outside the car and perches on the window’s edge, her feet up on the seat.

Knees, he thinks as he looks over at her. Knees are an unconventionally attractive body part. He thinks about what it would be like to press his hands against the backs of her knees, hold them up around his waist while he pressed her up against a wall or take hold of them to pull her down the bed towards him and settle her legs on either side of his waist, what it would be like to press a kiss to the soft inside of her knee caps.

He shakes the thought clear out of his head as she taps a staccato beat on the roof of the car. He can tell from the way her torso twists that she’s rubbernecking around and it makes him smile. He knows he shouldn’t, but he throws the car into park, rolls down his window and slides out to look across the roof at her. She has one hand shielding her eyes, staring forward into the distance.

“I think we’re going to be here forever.” She says, flattening her palms on the roof of the car. The cars ahead of them seem to stretch on, unending, for miles. Kris turns to stare out at the cars, mostly so he can hide his smile. Under any other circumstances, he would probably be cursing a blue streak right about now. However, the thought of getting to spend more time alone with Skylar makes this traffic jam look very inviting indeed. Until he hears a car door open and shut behind him and he knows without looking who is coming.

“Uh, hey.” Comes Adam’s uncertain voice, “You guys have any idea what’s up?” he gestures to the long expanse of traffic, rubbing the back of his neck with his other hand.

“No idea.” Skylar answers, when Kris can’t seem to find the words. He doesn’t know why he can’t open his mouth, why he is so intimidated by this man he doesn’t even know, who is with a girl who he now knows for certain he never would have lasted with. Maybe it is because he knows that for someone Bridget will be great and so be wonders if Adam looks at Kris and thinks of him as the loser who couldn’t hold on to a great girl like Bridget. Maybe it is because he worries that if Adam could take Bridget, he could take Skylar too. Which is ludicrous, Skylar isn’t even his to be taken away.

“I just – er, we just figured maybe traffic radio would say something. The radio in the truck is broken.” All three sets of eyes turn towards the truck and Bridget, who had been sitting in the front seat, glaring, immediately brightens, smiling brightly and waving happily. Adam sighs.

“Needed a break?” Skylar asks Adam out of the corner of her mouth.

“Little bit.” Adam confirms, “I mean, we’re good, it’s just sometimes...” he trails off, looking awkward and embarrassed.

“Oh hey, this guy bugs the crap out of me sometimes.” Skylar says with an easy gesture in Kris’ direction, “But when the good times are so good, you put up with some crap, right?” she smiles and Kris is in awe. Just like that, he watches Adam’s unease fade away and he can’t help but wonder how in the hell Skylar has that way with people, that makes their tension melt away like butter on hot toast.

“Here,” she is saying as she slips inside the car, “We didn’t even think to check the radio, let’s give it a try.” Kris slips in awkwardly as Adam leans against the driver’s side door. Heavy silence descends as Skylar scans through talk radio until she finds the traffic information channel. It’s halfway through the automated message, so they have to wait for the rotation to start again before they get the full story. A transport truck overturned up ahead and set off a chain reaction of collisions, resulting in a nearly thirty car pile-up. Clean up is ongoing, but slow and the message warns that it will likely be hours before the highway is fully clear again, so anyone close to an off-ramp should find a detour.

Up ahead, the cars have started moving by inches, so Skylar is quick to pull out a road map she nabbed from the hotel and finds that the nearest off-ramp is only a few miles up the road.

It is almost an hour and a half later by the time they have inched enough space forward to pull off the highway and within Kris and Skylar’s car there is an audible sigh of relief. As they pull off and make their way to the hotel where Skylar has once again made advance reservations, Kris notices the way she spends a longer than normal period of time staring at a sign out the window for a nearby nature preserve.

When they get to the hotel, he insists on carrying her bag up the room for her and snorts when she pulls her fan from this morning out of her back pocket, flattens out the wrinkles and gives him an exaggerated batting of her eyelashes from behind it. This time, when a few people give them glances that are too long to be passing, he doesn’t even care.

He waits until they have gone their separate way from Bridget and Adam, are safely tucked into their room with their bags put away before he jiggles his keys at her.

“Come on.” He nods at the door.

“Field trip?” she bounces after him.

When they pull up the entrance to the preserve and he pulls into a parking spot, he turns to find her staring at him, her arms akimbo, her head cocked. Then she breaks into a grin and shakes her head.

“You’re the best boyfriend I’ve ever had and you’re not even real.” She wrinkles her nose, “Oh god, my love life is officially pathetic.”

Inside, she wonders if maybe, it could be real.

“Next to me, every man looks pathetic.” A joke, playing it off, but inside, he wonders if it could be real.

They are mostly silent as they decide on a trail marked as ‘easy’ and wander through the windy day. Their silence is only broken when one of them – usually Skylar – notices a bird, a beaver or once, a coyote. It’s a comfortable silence and Kris notices that they are growing gradually closer as they walk along, until the back of his hand brushes against hers with every stride. He also notices that whenever Skylar needs to brush her windblown hair from her face, she uses her outside hand, never moving the hand that hangs on her inside, brushed by Kris’ skin. He speeds up a little bit as they leave the park, intending to perform another gentlemanly act and open her car door.

“Ugh. Kris?” he turns to find her staring at him forlornly, holding a thick piece of hair above her head and flipping it from one side to the other.

“Help me!” she elaborates with a huff when he stares at her blankly. “The wind blew it all over the place and I can’t fix it without a mirror.” He barks a laugh and heads back for her, motioning for her to take a seat on an empty bench. Her face is level with his lower abdomen as his fingers go to work on her tangled hair.

“This is like monkeys.” She says after a pause, because his fingers on her scalp feel really good and she has to do something to stop from melting.

“What?” he laughs, mostly because she’s funny but a little bit because he’s nervous.

“You know, like on Animal Planet documentaries when they groom each other and stuff?” she pokes his hip, “It’s a sign of affection.” He laughs again because now that he remembers how good it feels he doesn’t want to stop.

“Well, then,” he pats her head gently, flattening the windblown hair as he finishes parting it, “I guess that means I like you very much little monkey.”