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320 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2014
San Bernardino to Barstow, Route 66, 70.6 miles. Interstate 40 east to Williams, Arizona, 319.5 miles. From Williams, Arizona Route 64 north, fifty miles to the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
I watch his profile and then the back of his head, the thick wave of hair, as he descends the stairs, and I feel this energy between us, an awareness that we're looking at each other, only not looking. He feels it too, I know. He feels it until he must turn around. He smiles. I don't know exactly what this smile means, only that it means something. Something immense. It curls around me like smoke, or like the arm of true love, and I wonder then if it's possible to fall ten thousand miles into the Grand Canyon and be held safe at the same time.
His lips are so soft, and he's not here with me at first because I've surprised him. But then, there. There we both are, and the kiss becomes that kind where you forget you're even in a room in a house in a town. You're just so present and transported that place has altogether disappeared, and it's only mouths and mouths and together and together and everything else has vanished, even- especially- sadness.
Instead, tonight, we have simply shared a meaningful event. And next we share this: a look between us that says we've gone from here to there, from shame to a shaky, mutual forgiveness; from a time when our lives felt like a to-scale model, three feet equaling one and a quarter inches, to now, where the whole wide world is ours.