* grab yourself a steamy beverage and a cozy chair, this one is long! 5100 words and 65 pictures!
** warnings: briefly NSFW.
What are you going to do in Nevada? Not stay there, Maria would soon find out, because Jordan mentioned the wild horses in Arizona and Johanna lost her little mind over the idea. So now they were in Arizona, scouting the canyons for wild horses. Among this and many other things she never would have guessed her life could include, there was the sound of yodeling on the canyon walls. Back and forth, a booming manly echo answered by sprightly little girl song, growing closer and mixed with laughter. He taught her to yodel. Maria never would have guessed that he knew how to yodel, but so he did, and now they both did.
Long after their sound gave them away, Maria saw them emerge around the bend of the trail, carrying back their sacks full of treasure. Would it be rocks, pine cones, sticks shaped like swords?
“Did you see any horses?”
“No, we found bugs! We’re gonna eat them!” Johanna’s face was bright with the idea.
“Oh, God, no! You can’t eat a bug!”
“Jordan said we can!”
She gaped at him in horror. He shrugged with a sheepish grin. “How’s it different from eating any other animal?”
Maria was prepared for there to be bugs on this wild adventure, but she never imagined they were going to eat them!
They were serious. He was already laying out supplies on the picnic table, spices, sauces, and a bowl to gather their bounty of bugs. They weren’t all dead yet. Maria could see one still moving in the canvas sack. The two of them moved around the table with a curious hunger in their eyes. This was an experiment, an experience, and Maria stood out of their way. Jordan lit the campfire and Johanna gathered some sticks. “I can’t even believe this is happening,” Maria muttered to herself, because they weren’t listening. They were pulling the legs off the grasshoppers and popping them onto long sticks. Jordan drizzled each bug with a drop of olive oil and sprinkled them with salt. Then he held the skewer of bugs over the campfire to roast, turning slowly, evenly.
When they were done, he pulled one off and popped it in his mouth. “Mmm, tastes like fried shrimp.”
Maria’s eyes went wide.
Johanna giggled and bounced. “My turn!”
“Ask your mom,” he told her, noticing Maria’s displeasure.
“Mama, can I? Please? Please?”
“You cooked liver at work,” he said. “You cooked scallops and shrimp. You had to peel the shells and legs off.”
Maria winced. “Well, I made Drake do that.”
“These aren’t much different from shrimp.”
“But I didn’t eat them!”
They both stared at her like she was the most alien thing in the world. It was two against one and Maria was the oddball out, and that happened more often than not with these two. How could she deny them this worldly experience? “Go on, but I can’t watch.”
Johanna sniffed the bug, nibbled on the end of it—was that its head or its butt?—then chomped down on the whole thing. “Yum! Tastes like shrimp! But we need ketchup.”
“Coming right up.” Jordan dashed over to their seasonings on the picnic table and came back with a bottle of ketchup. He put a dollop on another grasshopper for her.
“Yum! Mama try it!”
“Nope, Sorry. No way. Not now, not ever!”
After they laughed for a long moment, Jordan asked, “Chicken? The bird kind?”
“You don’t have to,” Maria said.
But that was no use. He was already up, handing the skewer of cooked bugs to Johanna to nibble on. He made another skewer of cubed chicken, drizzled it with olive oil and salt, no bugs in sight, and returned to the fire. He turned this skewer with just as much care as he had done with the bugs, slowly and evenly, until it glistened oily and golden.
“Chicken for the lady,” he said. He handed her a paper plate, showcasing a perfect skewer of chicken and a tidy dollop of ketchup. A playful bow and a smile that said, Forgive me?
What could he ever do to need forgiveness for? If there was anything, this wasn’t it.
———
Maria tucked Johanna into her bunk, and Jordan put a couple of fresh logs in the wood stove. They settled onto the couch together. The camper was warm and cozy since he’d installed the wood stove. Too warm, sometimes. He found some scrapped pallets to make a wall for their bedroom and a discarded door that closed and locked. What more did they need? Well, the electricity was still hit or miss.
Maria found it a comfort to return to this space after their days of adventure, somewhere familiar when her whole life had been swallowed in a whirlwind of unknown. Exciting unknown, sometimes scary unknown. So if she wanted to make this camper homey, it felt like a fair enough exchange. “Is this blanket new?” he asked.
Maria shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You shouldn’t spend all your money on this rust bucket,” he said. “It’s not fair. I’m going to fix it up, you can’t have much saved from that kitchen job.”
He was touchy about money, so it was hard to have that conversation about how much money she had, her cushion, her safety net. He wanted to take care of them, and it was sweet.
“I just wanted to make it cozy.”
Unspoken compromise—she would try to limit the pillows and candles, rugs from the thrift store, throw blankets and fake flowers, dishware and storage bins… and maybe he might pretend not to notice when new ones appeared.
“You make it cozy by being here.” He pulled her in for a kiss.
She was still thinking about the bugs and laughed in his mouth.
“Are you still mad about the bugs?”
“No, I’m not mad. I wasn’t mad earlier. But I can’t stop thinking about them being in your mouth.”
“I brushed my teeth.”
“Brush them again,” she said. “And floss.” She was joking, but also not. He went to the sink to brush again.
Putting Johanna to bed each night was a sweet relief. She was a fun child, and they were all having a blast together. But there was no job to go to here, no babysitters, no grandparents or a trusty aunt Lou, and being with that three-foot-tall spitfire, day-in and day-out, was a really big change. Maybe even bigger a change than uprooting their whole life to live in a camper.
But Maria wasn’t mad about the bugs, because he took Johanna searching for treasures while she sat by the campfire in peace for an hour, and that was the true treasure of it all. She’d never had a partner in this before. It was nice.
But they both craved and cherished this quiet time together in the evenings. They wore their little spitfire out all day and she always slept beautifully for the first few hours of the night.
Jordan came back to the couch with a grin. “Brushed and flossed.”
Maria managed to offer a chaste lip kiss before she started to laugh again.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said. “Okay, I’m ready. Try again.”
“I can do better,” he said.
He kissed her better, starting at her collarbone, trailing up her neck, fingers in her hair, teasing that spot at the nape of her neck that made her melt. His kisses reached her jaw, her cheekbone, one on her nose for good measure, and then finally her lips. A light tongue traced each lip, top, bottom, then slipped between her teeth and met her own. Hello.
“Did it work?”
“Shh, more.”
More, more, more.
But not right here, because their bedroom had a door on it now, and they intended to make use of that blessed lock.
———
Maria had never been properly hiking before. That much was obvious when the only boots she packed were pale taupe-colored suede with three-inch heels. He took one quick look at her feet and said, “We need to go shopping. You’ll break your ankle in those.”
So they went shopping, and now she had the appropriate footwear for the task, but she lacked the skill and fitness. The boots were new and stiff and she felt blisters rubbing themselves raw on her heels. He was fast. Johanna was faster because she was made of fruit snacks, goldfish crackers, and defiance. And Maria trailed after them both, huffing and puffing, sweating and dying a little. She should have done more Zumba.
She worried sometimes that she wouldn’t love this, and that he would be devastated if she didn’t. So would Johanna. Look at her, thriving, little legs keeping pace with Jordan, leaving her in their cloud of dust. She was a wild child in her natural element, and he was her trusty guide.
But he promised she wouldn’t hate this. He would make sure of it.
He looked back to find her languishing behind them, slumped and panting, meeting her gaze with a sympathetic smile. “Water break,” he declared.
He reeled Johanna back in. He found them a large rock, which was mostly flat and large enough for their three butts to sit on, and he poked around the leaf cover beneath for snakes and spiders. “All clear.” It was the most delightful rock Maria had ever sat on. She rested while he opened his pack to pass out water bottles and snack packs of cheese and crackers. She had offered to carry some of it, but he said no, no big deal. They rested and ate their snacks in front of a beautiful stream, glistening in the sun, side by side by side, their happy little trio. There was still no sight of any wild horses, but they saw some lizards and a few hawks high overhead. Johanna happily told them all about which animals were sleeping right now and which were awake, to the cadence of her heel kicks against the rocks. The river gurgled peacefully as a backdrop to it all.
And Maria didn’t hate this. She really, truly didn’t.
Jordan reached around her shoulders and squeezed playfully. “You’re doing great,” he said, and she laughed out loud because she was certainly not doing great by any measure. But he meant ‘thank you for trying,’ and she appreciated that.
“I wonder if the water is cold,” Maria mused.
He grinned at her. “Why don’t you go touch it?”
Like this never occurred to her, but she could just go touch it and see. “What if the rocks are slippery? What if the sand feels mucky? What if there are leeches?”
“There’s no leeches in that one. But yeah, the rocks might be slippery. Come on, you can hold my hand.”
He took off his boots and tucked his socks inside. She did the same. He went first, barefoot into the stream, his expression giving nothing away. Then he held out his hands to her as she stood waiting on the side of the river bank like she was a princess stepping down from her chariot.
Her toe touched the water first. She gasped. It was freezing. But it also felt nice, because her feet were sore and battered from the new boots. Flesh-eating bacteria, she wondered, or is that only in stagnant water? But before that thought could materialize out loud, Johanna was already hopping down the rocks into the water, splashing down the stream.
“How did that child come from me?”
“JoJo! Arms reach!” Jordan called out to her. Johanna stopped in her tracks and wandered closer. Maria was impressed by his authority and her obedience and how naturally they worked together.
She clung to Jordan and looked down at their feet in the sandy riverbed, crystal clear water rushing past them, some twigs, an errant strand of aquatic grass. With him, she felt she could do anything. Like the world was so much bigger and open than she ever dreamed of, and they were going to see it all and do it all. She believed him.
“Don’t worry, Mama. If there’s a fishy, I’ll catch it.”
“I bet you would.”
Jordan laughed. “You might see one. There’s supposed to be trout in here.”
Johanna was unhindered by the cold, bending to a crouch to pick up clumps of mud and fling it at rocks, much of the mud ended up on her forearms and a little landed in her hair. Splat, splash.
“I see a fishy! I think it ate my toe.”
Maria squealed, “Out, okay, I’m done, get me out.”
She all but climbed up his torso, hanging her weight on him, trying to defy gravity. He laughed. “Hop on,” he said.
“My hero,” she cooed near his ear.
Her brave strong fixit man, handyman, hero. Maria wasn’t too proud a woman to enjoy how they were together because she suspected he loved being that for her, too.
He carried her up the riverbank and Johanna followed along. Not too quickly. She had something slimy in her hands. “It’s okay, Mama, it’s not a fishy. It’s just a frog. Can I keep him?”
On dry ground, Johanna dripped with mud. “No, you can’t keep the frog,” Maria decided. So Johanna let him loose back into the river. But that didn’t concern her much, because she quickly found a stray chicken wandering down the path. It must have wandered away from some local farm. Maria grimaced, but she was trying to ditch her habit of saying “no” to everything all the time. “Be careful, it might bite.”
Maria shook her head. “She’s a mess.”
Jordan shrugged. “Eh. Clothes are supposed to get dirty. It means you lived in them.”
Maria liked that. It felt refreshing. “I hope she doesn’t wear you out. You’re so good with her, but it’s been a while since you lived with a four-year-old.”
“But when I did, I lived with two of them.”
“Fair point. I guess that’s why you’re so good at this.”
The playful grin washed straight off his face, the levity of the day dispersed, and he looked shook. Then he tried to hide all of that behind a shattered smile, but she knew it was forced. “Eh, I don’t know about that.”
She hadn’t meant to cause a short circuit in his brain over what seemed like such a basic compliment. She didn’t know what he was thinking specifically, but you didn’t need to be a mind reader to know that he missed his boys terribly.
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
“It’s kind of exactly my fault I’m here and they’re not.”
“But not all your fault. Not all of it.”
“I mean, I knew she would make it hard, but I didn’t think she’d make it impossible. I should have known. I’ve known that woman for ten years. But I hoped. I was stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.”
She rested her head quietly on his shoulder. She didn’t know what to say, and she didn’t know how to make it better. He seemed so full of regrets, and her being here didn’t fix it. Johanna being here certainly didn’t fix it. Did it make it worse? Maria feared knowing the answer to that question.
And she suspected there was a lot she didn’t know about his ten years with Colette, because there was still so much he didn’t tell her. She hoped he knew he could trust her deeply, but he still didn’t tell her everything. He still had these moments of panic and desperation at war inside him, and he sank into that deep well of quiet where she couldn’t reach him. Please talk to me, she wished.
But he said, “She’s getting too rowdy with that chicken. She’s gonna get bit.”
Maria sighed.
So they went to retrieve Johanna from the chicken she had tortured to madness in the road.
———
He promised she wouldn’t hate this, so sometimes that meant he carried four jugs of water to fill the tank so she could have a luxurious hot shower. She appreciated that, and she would take care of him in return. She massaged his tired muscles, kneading all that tension, the powerful shoulders and hard-working back, and turned him into putty. Then when he was melted to her satisfaction and dozing off to sleep—she wasn’t quite done with him yet—she traced the shapes of his tattoo, spanning shoulder or shoulder.
“Did it hurt?”
“Heh, yeah. It took forever.”
“Does it still?”
“Not anymore.”
“Wait, though, it’s a compass,” she said. “But what good is a compass that you can’t see?”
He chuckled. “Didn’t think of that. Maybe it’s not for me.”
“Who’s it for then?”
“You’re the only one who sees it, so I guess it’s for you.”
“Are you saying I’m lost?”
“No. Not anymore. You have a compass now.”
She could see the corners of his lips, grinning into the pillow.
“Hmm, that’s very suave, mister.”
“We’re gonna pretend I planned it that way.”
She tugged on his body until he rolled over, so she could straddle his front instead, then she leaned down to kiss him.
The close confines of their camper called for some romantic experimentation, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Jordan thrived on variety and the millions of ways and places he could cherish her body. He spoiled her with it. In the cab of the camper, window covers on, lean the seats way way back. A blanket under the stars, rolled up together into a frenzy. Save the moans for outside, though you might scare the wildlife. That could be fun, too. In the deep woods with only the nocturnal creatures as their witness. Don’t be shy of the owls and raccoons. They don’t care, they’re naked, too. A campfire crackling. Shirts kept on, or loosened, or scrunched up in a tangle. A wool blanket draped over her back and slowly falling off with each rock and sway. November brought a harsh chill to the nights, but they were always too hot together to ever feel the cold.
Or, just as often, inside, in their bed. So they devised some tricks, battery powered fans for noise, a makeshift wall made of pallet scrap, a haphazard door cut and fit from more scraps. It closed and locked; that was all that mattered. A carefully placed toy that would rattle when little feet crept out of bed. Keep it slow and rhythmic, so so sweet. Hush now, only whispers and sighs, muffled passions, bit lips, covered moans. Don’t rock the camper.
Another experiment, one that caused some mixed anxieties but was just as exciting, they’d been talking about skin to skin. Maria had been on her new birth control for a full cycle now. She was sure it was the right one this time. Double, triple checked.
“I want to feel you,” she said, “not a rubber bag.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure, very sure,” she said, sliding herself over him, up and down and around him, just waiting for the go ahead to push him deep inside.
“I’m just saying, the last time I did this, someone got knocked up with twins.”
“I won’t get pregnant. Not tonight, anyway.”
“Wow. Okay. Yes.”
And that was all she needed.
“Fuuuuck,” he moaned.
“I’m gonna need you to last more than two minutes.”
He was already far beyond words, so she got straight to work. She moved herself on him purposefully, hitting all her right spots while keeping it slow and steady, watching his face melt with pleasure, trying to slow him down, trying her best to beat him to the finish line because this was going to be a race. She would win, but it might be close.
The camper rocked, for sure.
They reassembled their clothing to lay for cuddles. Gone were the days of falling asleep naked together wherever they pleased, but it was too cold outside for that now, anyway.
He grinned like a schoolboy. That seemed appropriate, given the last time he’d done that he had been an actual schoolboy. “But maybe I should still wear one sometimes?”
“That’s up to you… But really? You guys never did it without one after the twins?”
“Nope, never.”
“Was that your choice or hers?”
“Both, probably. Mine for sure… I was just so scared about it for so long. Then, well, I knew I shouldn’t have another one with her. I didn’t want to take the chance. I don’t think she wanted more, anyway.”
Maria was quiet. She probably assumed he didn’t want more. He saw her mind spinning. But that wasn’t exactly what he meant. Not exactly.
“I was such a mess when they were babies.”
“Don’t you think maybe you were just a normal nineteen-year-old boy? You were, like, barely even a legal adult.”
“Oh, I guess. I never thought of it that way. Maybe it would be different this time?”
She grinned and he knew he’d opened a can of worms. But he suspected when they started this thing that she was the type to have wanted more children. He wouldn’t have engaged with her if he didn’t intend to consider the idea. “How many more do you want?”
She lit up. “I barely got started.”
“Uh oh,” he laughed. “Sometimes I could imagine having a whole pack of them. But sometimes I wonder if that would be a bad idea. Where would we put them all? We can only fit two in this camper, and then a two-bedroom apartment wouldn’t cut it anymore, either. We’d need three bedrooms?”
“Sorry to break it to you, but we kind of already need a three-bedroom with the twins and JoJo.”
“Four-bedrooms then? Five?”
She giggled. “I don’t think they make apartments that big.”
“Two campers then,” he said. “I’ll drive one, you drive the other. How many kids can we fit in there?”
“Let’s just get a bus,” she joked, and they both laughed too loud. “Shhh, we’re gonna wake up JoJo.”
After their laughter tempered, he said, “Someday.”
“Someday we’ll get a bus?”
“I’m not talking about the bus.”
Grinning, she nodded, and they kissed, sealing the promise.
“But enjoy this while it lasts. Four is a great age.”
“Oh no, why? Does it not last?”
“Well, babies are hard, obviously. But also, by the time they’re about eight, they scam their way into staying up, reading under the covers, sneaking back onto their consoles after you watched them turn off. And they know more, they ask more questions, they’re nosy little boogers. But the good part is they let you sleep in. They’ll sleep until noon if you let them.”
She smirked at him. See? You are good at this. But she didn’t say so. She didn’t want to poke that wound again. Someday she hoped he would believe it. Perhaps she would have to give him a few more babies to prove it.
Someday.
———
Weeks went by and their life settled into its rhythms—not a routine, exactly, but expected variance. The familiar things they did anywhere they were. Life was still life, just with different sights to see every time they opened the front door.
This week, they lived in Copperdale, California on the cusp of winter. Frost crept through the forest with bare spindly trees and darkness that lingered late into the mornings. Maria woke to the violet glow of morning twilight. After she decided that she couldn’t fall back asleep, her whole spirit buzzed with the overwhelming desire to watch the sun rise over the lake. They were parked so close.
First she worried—would there be bears, poisonous snakes, serial killers? It was six in the morning and Jordan was still fast asleep. She nuzzled into his side, brushing her lips to his neck. He murmured in his slumber.
“Hey, I’m just gonna pop outside and see the sunrise for a minute. I won’t be far.”
“Yeah? Okay,” he said, waking enough to talk. “Bring your phone.”
Maybe her courage bone was growing. Did she really want to be the type of woman who was too afraid to walk alone in a quiet national forest in the early hours of morning? She could still see the camper, she was within shouting distance.
Inside, the embers from last night’s fire still burned orange and warm in the wood stove. Outside was another story. She pulled a blanket around her shoulders and stepped into the chilly morning. It was much colder here than it was in Arizona. The air smelled crisp with frost, and she could see it sparkling white on the tips of the pine trees. Mist rose from the lake where its retained warmth met the frigid air. The sky was tinted in mixed pastels, melted sherbet, like nothing she’d ever imagined before.
It wasn’t like she’d never seen a sunrise in her whole life. This was not better, exactly, just different in a way that told her there was so much in the world she hadn’t seen before, that she never thought to seek out. She didn’t know what she was missing. How the life she was living was so safe, so careful, so protected, but what else was out there to discover? She’d seen so little of the world.
That was what he was talking about, all those months ago. That was the pull that ripped him away from their generic suburban life. She felt a little bit of that now, wanting the unknown, wondering what else there was to discover. This morning, she wanted to discover this, to sit in this misty silence and listen to the birds and watch the golden sunrise melt the frost cover.
So she did.
After a while, the silence broke, and she saw a deer.
No, it wasn’t a deer. Was it a horse? They never did find those wild horses in Arizona. But it wasn’t quite a horse, either. It was bigger than a horse. Whatever animal that was, she’d never seen one before. She was thankful at least that it wasn’t a bear. It didn’t seem interested in her in the least; it only bent down to sip from the water. Then, another emerged. A baby this time. Two babies. And two more females. Then, leading the rear, a bull with majestic antlers crowning his head.
She took a photo on her phone, and it looked like a speck. The photo couldn’t do it justice.
After an hour, Johanna broke the silence, bounding out of the camper with her coat over her pajamas and her snow boots unlaced, Jordan followed behind her.
“Shhh, look.”
Johanna quieted down in time to see the animals before she scared them off. “It’s a elk, Mama!” their resident animal expert declared. Johanna’s excitement bounced across the water and the elk looked up at them, mostly unstartled, but moved on nonetheless.
An elk. What a funny looking thing it was.
“How was the sunrise?” Jordan asked. He wrapped his arms around her, still warm from their bed. Her blanket kept off the chill, but his warmth was better.
“This is so beautiful! You really wouldn’t stay here?”
He laughed. “This is only the third place we’ve visited. You’re ready to plant roots already? You haven’t seen Montana yet, or the North Pacific, or the northern lights at Banff in the winter. What if it gets better?”
“Wow, I can’t imagine, but I believe you.”
———
Five years ago…
He was twenty-four. He remembered that because the short window of time that he and Colette were something of an attempted pair, a trial with mostly error, was approximately Halloween to Easter the year the boys were four. For those six months, he was allowed to sleep in her bed. They took family outings to the beach (she hated the sand, the sun, and the bugs) and the mall (he hated the noise, the crowds, and the materialism). People saw them together and offered to take a family picture. They smiled when prompted. They ate dinner together at the dining room table with their boys.
It didn’t last long, but she used to talk about marriage that year.
“Wait, are you serious?”
“Well, it’s not so crazy,” she said.
“Marriage is a cage,” he told her, sitting up to laugh. She was offended now, and he’d probably never hear the end of it.
“Marriage is just an institution,” she quipped. “Don’t over think it. We can fuck other people if you want. People do that sort of thing.”
He laughed incredulously. Sure, some people did that sort of thing, but it seemed quite a leap to go from the only woman he’d ever slept with to having more casual lovers than he could count on his hands. He wouldn’t claim he wasn’t curious, but he just didn’t think he was that type.
“Because you don’t have a drop of retirement savings, and news flash, you won’t get social security on my efforts either because you don’t want to get married. You could divorce me after ten years and it would still be yours.”
“You wouldn’t cheat the government for me.”
She turned up her nose. “It’s not cheating, it’s just the rules.” Hmph.
She was mad now.
She was always mad though, so it barely registered. He didn’t have an answer for her, and he didn’t assume she was formally asking a question.
Or was she? Was this her idea of a marriage proposal?
Marriage to her for another ten years? Didn’t that seem like a fate worse than poverty? And perhaps that was also the exact moment he knew he would never marry her for any amount of money.
He never really cared about money, anyway. She hated that about him, too.
And maybe that was also the moment he decided that he would probably never marry anyone. If marriage was a cage and if most women wanted generally the same kinds of things Colette wanted, it wasn’t a trap he wanted to sign up for. No thanks, no way.
Colette shook her head, expressionless. “You’re going to be old and frail and destitute. Not my problem to solve.”
He wanted to fire back, “I never asked you to solve my problems.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. And she knew it.
Now…
Marriage is a cage, he thought.
But does it have to be?
Could it be a lock without a cage? A promise, a vow? Simple and nourishing. Effortless and fun. Could it be companionship and support and dedication? Could it always be just like this?
He had nothing to compare this to. He never got to know his parents’ marriage, though he heard stories that it was a wonderful one. The only relationship he’d ever known was cold and combative and didn’t instill much faith in the institution.
But this was different, and if a marriage could be like this, then maybe he wanted it. He wanted this to go on and on. Two wild hearts and their combined feral children and a whole wide world of adventure. This, right here in these traveling walls, was everything he ever wanted.
Almost everything. It could be everything.
———
outtakes & extras:
- the first and last time Maria ever rode a horse
- what happens behind that locked door?
- snug as two bugs in a rug
- come walk in the river with me
- flashback toddler Felix & Milo
- sad baby wants his brother's food
- a walk in town
- chapter #5.1: outtakes, bloopers, gameplay, and picspam
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