A Summer Nowhere

Rick Dulworth was a little bit taller than his oldest son, but he was about half as wide. Whereas Gary had broad shoulders and a hard, well-muscled torso, his dad was thin and wiry. He looked like a weakling, but he could haul hay twice as fast as Gary could and was just about as strong as an ox. Eileen joked that her husband ate a can of spinach every day so he could be as strong as Popeye the Sailor Man.

When you walked into Gary's house, it was a big, open common area. I vaguely remembered there being a wall that separated the living room from the kitchen, but they'd knocked it down a couple of years before so that Eileen could see everybody while she was cooking. She said she hated having people over for dinner and not being able to talk to them while she worked. So now, the only thing that separated the living room from the kitchen was the dining room table that Rick and Gary had built for her. It had a bunch of leaves in it so that you could push it together when it was just the four of them eating, or pull it apart to make more room.

Right then, there were eight chairs around it because Sam was eating dinner with Chris. Or doing whatever she and Chris did when they were by themselves, which I guessed wasn't eating dinner. Gary stood in the bathroom with me, with the door open so his dad wouldn't throw a fit, and playfully threw a towel over my whole head to dry my hair.

“Stop!” I laughed. “I can do it myself, thank you.”

“Fine.” He kissed me on the top of my head, through the towel. “I'll go grab you a t shirt.”

“Thank you.” I said, uncovering my face so I didn't feel like I was about to suffocate.

“You guys are gross.” Jeff said, coming in from the kitchen with Polly behind him.

They were around the same age and seemed to get along really well. I thought it was because Polly was just about as far away from being a girly-girl as a girl could get. Jenny could get just as dirty as any guy could, but she also liked to look nice every once in a while and Polly didn't care about that at all. I was pretty sure she'd never played with a Barbie doll in her whole life.

“Your face is gross.” Gary teased, smacking him gently in the back of the head.

“You two kiss a lot.” Polly observed, looking like she was in deep thought.

“One day you'll meet a boy and you'll wanna' kiss him a lot, too.” I told her.

She scrunched her nose up like she smelled something awful and shook her head. “That's disgusting.”

“You're not always gonna' think so.” I laughed. “Give it a year or two.”

Polly was a bit of a late bloomer. I remembered being boy crazy when I was her age. Actually, I remembered being boy crazy when I was in kindergarten. Maybe it was that I was an early bloomer.

“That's the nastiest thing I've ever heard.” She kept shaking her head. “Excuse me while I wash my brain out with soap.”

I loved how sassy she was. Most kids were annoying, but Polly was really entertaining. Even though she was mean as Hell.

Gary came out of his room with a shirt in each hand. He lifted them up like he was a scale, trying to get me to choose: white t shirt or navy blue t shirt. I picked the blue one and closed the door, took my wet tank top off, and pulled the dry shirt over my damp bra, hoping the moisture wouldn't seep through and make me look like an idiot. At first, I was shocked out of my mind that the shirt was good and baggy on me, but then I remembered that Gary was built like a linebacker. It was a relief.

When I opened the door, Gary was still standing there and reached for the wet shirt and towel. He was staring at me intently, like he wanted to say something important.

“What?” I finally asked.

“You look really good in that.” He let out a deep breath.

I looked down at the plain crew neck with a breast pocket. The hem reached the edge of my shorts and made it look like I didn't have anything on underneath, so I tucked a little piece into the front of my waistband and then looked back up at him. He was crazy. I looked a hot mess.

“This better not scar.” He told me, stroking the scratches on my face.

I hadn't even thought of that. If that happened, Gary wouldn't have to kill Brad because I'd do it myself. I already wasn't that crazy about the way my face looked, not to mention how it looked once it got all scratched up. Before I could start thinking of ways I could commit a murder without getting caught, Eileen called us for dinner.

She had fried up what looked like an entire flock of chickens, made a big pot of turnip greens, and a massive bowl of macaroni and cheese. Lynn had brought the potato salad, some coleslaw, and a peach cobbler. When I joked that I hadn't known that she could cook more than a couple of things without supervision, she admitted that Granny had talked her through the coleslaw and she'd called Mama for cobbler directions.

“So.” Rick said from the head of the table. “I heard last night was eventful.”

“Don't, Rick.” Eileen rolled her eyes. “Let them eat.”

“It's alright.” Gary shrugged.

“Did you get any good punches in?” Rick joked.

“He got a lot of them.” Jenny piped up.

“That's my boy!” Rick smacked the table a couple times in lieu of applause. “I bet you didn't know you were hanging out with a prize fighter, Jobie.”

“Oh my Lord.” Eileen scoffed. “Stop encouraging him.”

“It was self-defense.” Gary reasoned.

I didn't know whether to feel bad or not. I hated that Eileen was upset. She always said she wanted her boys to grow up to be sweet and kind. Gary was sweet and kind and I was pretty sure Jeff would grow up to be the same way, but I knew Eileen hated the idea of either of them fighting. I felt like I should speak up and say it was all my fault and that he'd done it for me so if she was mad at anybody, she should be mad at me. But before I could, Eileen changed her tone.

“I'm proud of you.” She said, reaching over and patting Gary's arm. “You're a good boy.”

“Mom.” Gary rolled his eyes.

I couldn't help but laugh, because he was obviously embarrassed and I'd never once seen him embarrassed. Except for maybe when he admitted that he loved me, but he didn't seem embarrassed then, he just seemed crazy.

“You should put some vitamin E on those scratches, Jobie.” Eileen told me. “I've got some capsules I'll give you if you remind me. I don't want that beautiful face of yours to scar.”

Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. I could feel myself blushing like an idiot and it didn't help that Jenny was sitting across the table grinning from ear to ear.

“Thank you.” I managed, stabbing a piece of chicken with my fork and putting it in my mouth so I'd have an excuse not to talk.

I'd only ever had dinner at Gary's house a few other times, but it was always nice. At Sam's house, they ate dinner whenever whoever was cooking decided to cook. They ate wherever the wanted: the sofa, their bedrooms, in the floor in front of the television, or wherever. At my house, we usually ate around the same time every night, and we always sat at the table, but it was usually just Mama and I, unless Sam was over. Dennis rarely ate with us, which was fine, but we always ran out of stuff to talk about. Mama would pepper me with questions and sometimes I'd answer them, but it was just us.

Gary's house was different. Not only were there four of them, but they seemed to have endless things to discuss and Rick and Eileen were two of the friendliest people I'd ever met. It was so cute how in love they were with each other, too. I could see Rick smiling at her from across the table and it just made a person feel warm and fuzzy inside. But whenever they had dinner guests, they included them like they were family. I'd never felt uncomfortable at their table, because they acted like I'd always been there.

After we ate, I helped Eileen clean up the kitchen and load the dishwasher. She rambled on about what a good wife I'd make somebody one day. I knew that the somebody she was referring to was her oldest son, but she acted real coy and it made me laugh. We talked about cooking and I told her that I wasn't too bad at it, but I wasn't as good at it as her or my Mama. She made me promise to spend some time with her before school started back up and she'd teach me a few things. Then she took me to her bedroom and grabbed a little yellow labeled bottle of capsules off of her vanity table. She handed me the bottle and dug her thumbnail into a little seam on the tiny pill shaped looking thing. Eileen dabbed the oil on my scratches and I gritted my teeth because it stung a little bit. Then, for good measure, she dabbed some on my other cheek.

“That way you're not crooked.” She grinned, examining my bruises. “You look dew kissed.”

I laughed. “Thanks.”

Gary walked us all out when Lynn got ready to go back home.

“Hey.” He called to her from the bottom step of the front porch. “You think I could borrow her for a few hours?”

“Have her back by curfew.” Lynn told him.

“When's that?” Gary asked.

“Hell, I don't know.” She shrugged, laughing. “Sometime before dawn, if you don't mind.”

“I think I can swing that.” He nodded. “Thanks.”

He grabbed my hand and led me to his truck. We followed Lynn's van out of the driveway, but when she turned right to head to the house, we turned left.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked, buckling my seat belt.

“I don't know yet.” He shrugged, resting one hand on the bottom of the steering wheel and the other on my thigh. “Where do you want to go?”

“Somewhere quiet.” I decided. “And secluded.”

“We're already in the middle of nowhere.” He laughed. “That could be anywhere.”

“Surprise me, then.” I grinned.

“You know what my favorite thing is?” he asked.

“Horses.” I answered.

“Close.” He laughed. “Your smile.”

“You're corny.” I told him, laughing.

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “But I mean it. I love how your two front teeth aren't really centered because of that one baby tooth that never fell out.”

He was complimenting me on a thing that I hated about myself and it damn near made me want to cry. I always hated my teeth. Mama always used to say that it wasn't my teeth that were crooked, it was my smile, and that that gave me character. I didn't feel like it gave me character, though; I just felt like it was one more thing that I hated about the way I looked. And I already had a long, long list.

“You can say that.” I told him. “You've got perfect teeth.”

“That's because I wore braces for three years.” He admitted.

“No!” I gasped, slapping a hand over my mouth and then wincing. “Are there pictures?”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “Don't even think about it.”

“When was this?” I asked.

“Way before you came along.” Gary told me, pulling onto the street that would take us to my house, but passing the subdivision. “I was ten or so when I got 'em.”

“I have to see these pictures.” I said, shaking my head in surprise. “Where are we going?”

“I don't know.” He shrugged. “I'm just driving until you say when.”

“Until I say when?” I laughed. “What, are you just gonna' drive until you run out of gas?”

“That's a really bad idea.” Gary told me. “Wait, I know just the place.”

He turned around in somebody's driveway and headed back toward where we'd started. We drove past his house and then Sam's, too. Then he drove all the way out to Homer, past the little spring-fed brook that trickled across the road, and up the hill. There was an abandoned store on the corner that had started falling apart back in the seventies. It was to the right and the road curved to the left, where there were maybe three or four houses in a stretch of a mile or so. At some point after we passed an old trailer, the paved road turned to gravel and Gary turned right onto Homer Cemetery Road.

Underneath the gravel, the road was cracked in places and some of the cracks were so deep that I worried we'd get stuck. But Gary's truck bounced right over them like they were nothing more than speed bumps. The cemetery was small and there wasn't a single house in sight. The place was so out of the way that they didn't even lock the gate at night. There weren't any visiting hours like there were at other graveyards and most of the graves were from the eighteen hundreds.

I'd always thought graveyards were cool, and I think maybe Gary had remembered me saying that at some point. It was quiet and secluded, just like I'd asked. The sun was mostly gone and there were no streetlights whatsoever. The only light was from Gary's headlights and when he pulled up to the chicken wire fence and turned them off, we only had the dim light that the moon gave off from behind thick clouds.

I unbuckled my seat belt and looked out my window, realizing I'd have to get out on Gary's side. I was expecting him to be opening the door and getting out himself, but when I scooted over, he was sitting still, looking at me, and our faces smacked together. He laughed, rubbing my forehead.

“The grass is wet.” He observed. “I don't want you to get muddy.”

“How would I explain that?” I wondered aloud.

“We could stay here.” He smiled lazily.

“Does this go back?” I asked, patting the back of the bench seat.

He grinned and stuck his hand in between the seat and the door. Suddenly, we dropped and I giggled. If it weren't for the fact that the seat was on a little bit of an incline, it would make the perfect bed. I curled my legs up and rolled onto my side. Gary did the same and we just looked at each other for a while.

“You're so beautiful.” He whispered.

“Stop saying that.” I blushed, laughing uneasily.

“No.” He argued. “You are.”

“Ugh.” I groaned, rolling my eyes.

He shut me up by grabbing my hip and pulling me forward. His kiss was rough and his fingers dug into my waist.

“Listen.” He told me. “I'm crazy for you.”

“I think you're just crazy.” I joked.

He started to say something, but I kissed him and rolled him onto his back. I really wanted to get back to what we were doing in my bedroom earlier. Waiting was torture. Straddling his hips, I looked down at him.

“Am I too heavy?” I asked.

“No.” He rolled his eyes. “You're like a feather. You're tiny.”

“You're laying it on a little thick.” I told him, gesturing at my slightly pudgy, way too long stomach and too-large chest. “I'm like a beluga whale.”

“If you insult yourself one more time, I'm gonna' lose my mind.” He told me, sliding his hands up my waist to my rib cage.

I grabbed my hair and pulled it into a big knot on top of my head, then I leaned down to kiss him, putting my full weight onto him so he'd realize there was nothing feathery about me. But if Gary felt crushed, he didn't say anything; he just grabbed the backs of my thighs and pulled me closer. He felt so good, I couldn't stand it. This was what I'd always been jealous of other girls for. Girls who had boyfriends got to make out in their trucks in the middle of nowhere.

“I can't believe I'm making out with a boyfriend in his truck, out in the middle of nowhere.” I breathed heavily in between kisses.

“A boyfriend?” Gary paused. “How many do you have?”

“Just the one.” I grinned. “But don't tell him I'm here with you.”

Gary laughed so hard I could feel his stomach muscles contracting underneath me. He rolled us over so we were on our sides and covered my face in kisses. It took everything I had not to giggle like an idiot. He took the arm he was laying on and stretched it out so my head could rest on it, then he took his other hand and slid it underneath my shirt. He knew I was ticklish, so he didn't touch me softly. His hands were rough from all that farm work and I felt like I was vibrating all over when his fingers found their way to the hooks on the back of my bra.

He urged me to slide up so my head was resting on the back of the back seat and when he lifted my shirt and pressed his lips to my belly button, I freaked out a little bit. His face was scratchy against my skin and I wished he was kissing a belly that was a little flatter. I knew I wasn't really gigantic, but standing next to all the other girls I knew, sometimes I felt that way and I still wasn't really sure how Gary could say he found me so appealing.

“Wait, wait, wait!” I shrieked, giggling uneasily.

“What's the matter?” He breathed, kissing his way up to my rib cage.

The look of his head shoved under the shirt he'd given me to wear was too hilarious not to laugh at, so I lied and told him he was tickling me. He grabbed the hem in both hands and gathered it up as high as it could go, so I took a deep breath, let it out, and lifted my arms. Suddenly, I hated the bra I was wearing. It was a plain, black underwire number that was supposed to lift and separate, but I felt like I should be wearing leopard print or something that was supposed to be sexy. Stripes maybe? Did they make bras with stripes? I needed to tell Mama that I wanted to start buying underwear at Victoria's Secret or something, but knowing my luck, they probably didn't even make them in my size.

I forgot all about the bra when Gary pulled it down and tossed it into the back seat to go with the shirt. He took a good, long look at me and I'd never been so glad for pitch black darkness before; but he still knew exactly where he was going with his mouth. I felt like the wind had gotten knocked out of me and had to breathe in short little gasps for any air to come in or go out. When he got done with the left one, he moved onto the right, holding it in his hand and squeezing gently. I leaned my head back when his kisses moved up toward my neck and waited for him to get to my mouth because I loved the way it felt when our lips pushed together.

The night before, when we'd done it on the air mattress in the cabin, it felt different because Gary had been so nervous at first, even though he got over it in a few seconds. The first time, I was in charge. But I liked it better when he was calling the shots; plus, his weight on top of me felt real good. I loved hearing all the sounds he made when he was touching me. He turned his body a little bit and slid his hand down to the button on my shorts, pulling it out of the buttonhole and opening the zipper. When his hand slipped underneath my panties, it took him less than a second to find a magic little button that made my whole entire body clench up until I felt like I was gonna' get a charlie horse. I felt like all the muscles in my lower stomach were gonna' tie themselves in knots.

If Sam had told me once, she'd told me a million times about how good an orgasm felt. No matter how often I told her it was too much information and I didn't wanna' hear it, she always shared whether I liked it or not. But she never told me how scary it felt the first time, either. I felt like I couldn't breathe and my whole body was gonna' explode and I'd lost all control of my muscles, like my arms and legs didn't know what they were doing and even when my brain was yelling at them to stay still, they weren't listening. When it started to feel like my entire body was gonna' spontaneously combust, it was like fireworks went off all of a sudden and everything eased up until I felt like I was melting into a puddle and would drip down into the floor of the truck.

“Relax.” Gary laughed, cupping the back of my neck and pulling me toward him to kiss my forehead.

I didn't know why he sounded so out of breath, but I was glad that I wasn't the only one breathing like a Saint Bernard after a two mile hike. My mouth was dry and it took me a while to swallow enough times to get it back to normal.

“Are you okay?” he asked, pulling his hand out of my shorts and wrapping that arm around my waist.

“Uh-huh.” I nodded, suddenly feeling the urge to have him on top of me again. I pulled at his arm and he got the point real quick.

It didn't matter to me how uncomfortable it was being in the cramped space of Gary's truck. His head was like an inch away from the upholstered ceiling and his feet were pressed against the passenger side floorboard. I reached between us and yanked at his belt buckle, trying to get it open. It was hard to see what I was doing in the dark, so I had to feel my way to where I was going.

“You're so impatient.” He laughed, balancing on one hand and helping me with the other.

I pushed at the waist of his jeans and whined a little bit when I realized that my arms weren't long enough to reach as far down as I wanted them to. Gary just kept laughing at me. It took us forever to get where we were going and as soon as we got there, I started thinking about how cool it would be to live on my own so that I could have all the room I wanted to be with Gary. Once I graduated, we could get our own apartment or something. I couldn't believe I was looking that far into the future, but I couldn't help it. Then I stopped thinking about anything because the whole muscle-exploding-melting-into-the-floor thing started all over again.

We laid there for a minute, catching our breath before Gary pulled the lever to lift us back into an upright position. I crossed my legs Indian style and leaned back against the door so I could look at him and try to figure out what he was feeling. His chest was still heaving up and down and it made me feel like I was some kind of magician to be able to take his breath away like that, even though I knew it was basically just biology that had done it.

“I love you.” He finally said, leaning his head to the side and smiling at me.

“I love you, too.” I grinned, leaning forward and giving him a quick kiss. “What do you wanna' do now?”

He'd started the truck so the air condition would cool us off, but he didn't put it in reverse for us to go anywhere. We ended up talking and I ended up letting out all the thoughts I'd been having earlier about living together and having more alone time and then about how I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with my life. He asked if I was sure I didn't want to go to college and I said that even if I did, I wouldn't know what to study and that I wasn't good at anything in particular.

“I could never live in an apartment.” Gary admitted.

“So we'll rent a house.” I shrugged.

It turned out that he had a plan and that he'd had it for a really long time. He said he'd thought about it every single day for at least a couple of years. He wanted to buy the ten acres that was next to his family's property and build a house there. Expanding the farm would be good for business, he told me, and he'd love nothing more than to have me with him every minute of every day. My chest tightened until it was almost painful and I had to fight real hard to avoid squealing like a little girl. He was being so sweet that I thought I was gonna' get a toothache.

“I dreamed about that one time.” I admitted.

“You dreamed about what?” He asked.

“I dreamed that you built us a house.” I said. “That night we went out to Briggs Lake. That's what I dreamed about when I went to sleep that night. I don't know why.”

“Where was it?” Gary wanted to know. He looked so cute, all fascinated.

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “Maybe on a farm. I don't remember.”

I tried to imagine what it would be like to live on a farm. It wasn't like I lived in the big city, but my house was only about fifty feet away from my neighbor's and Gary's parents' house was several acres away from Sam's. If his plan worked out, our house would be that far away from their house. All of that wide open space sounded real nice. I told him I wanted dogs and he asked what kind and I told him I didn't care, as long as they were big. Most farm dogs were some kind of shepherd or collie or something, he said; but since we wouldn't have any cattle, it didn't really matter. He'd always made fun of me for taking care of all the strays that came to my house. We didn't have any pets in the house, but there was always at least one or two mutts laying around the yard, waiting to be pet and fed.

“You can have whatever kinda animals you want.” Gary said. “I'll even get you your own horse as a wedding present.”

“Oh, we're getting married?” I laughed. “You didn't tell me about that part.”

“I thought it was obvious.” He nodded his head.

I blushed and rested my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands because I didn't know what to say. It wasn't like he was proposing. That was ridiculous. But I didn't know why it made me so happy that he thought about things like that. He was done with school and made money from working in the family business. I had a year left of school and had less ambition than anybody else I knew. Jenny wanted to be a mechanic and Sam had about a million ideas of what she wanted to do. Most of our classmates were already applying to colleges and some of them had already gotten in. Here I was, not a clue in the world. Having a future already laid out for me by somebody who just wanted me to be happy sounded good.

By the time Gary got me back to Sam's house, it was nearly midnight and my chin was chafed from kissing him. He walked me to the front door and looked at my face underneath the porch light, waving away a few moths.

“When does he leave town again?” Gary asked. It took me a minute to realize that he was talking about Brad.

“A couple'a weeks.” I shrugged. “Still, I'd rather be at home.”

He shook his head. I knew he didn't want him near me, but I felt like he probably had some kind of sonar in his head that told him whenever he was within a ten foot radius and he'd be there in a flash to protect me.

“I'm not scared of him.” I told him, pretending to flex muscles I didn't have. “I think I could take him in a fight.”

Gary laughed, kissing my cheek real softly. “Get some rest.”

I told him I would, but I couldn't imagine being able to sleep with all the butterflies in my stomach.