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I jolt out of fever-dream horny-shower jail when he pushes open the shower curtain.
“I’m going to be using man shampoo,” I mutter. “What does that mean?” He laughs. “I’ll smell like something tough and manly—like cinder blocks.”
“What is your natural hair color?” “I have eyebrows, don’t I?” Hayden rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but I know people with blond hair who have brown eyebrows.” “Do I seem like a blond to you?” He remains silent. “Are blond girls your type?” I am an embarrassment. Absolute buffoonery. “Bold question, Nonbeliever.” He laughs. “Rest assured, you’re the only woman in my life right now.”
“I can stay on the couch,” I murmur. “No, you can’t.” “Oh?” “Cthulhu might eat you.” “Where are you going to sleep?” “Couch.” “Cthulhu might eat you,” I say. “He won’t eat me. I’m his human.” “Right.”
Five days away means at least twelve pairs of underwear, in case I shit myself twice every single day, and then some for options. I pack a nicer pair just…uh…in case.
“What? Typecasting you as the awkward virgin conspiracy theorist? Never. That’d be totally unoriginal of me. I am sure offering to tell someone about Project MKUltra gets everyone into bed with you. Who could ever turn down that dirty talk?” His eyes roll, but a smile tugs at his lips. “You know, everyone has a different type of dirty talk, and that’s okay.”
“Do you not want to see her?” I ask over the song. “I do. I just…My mom and I aren’t that close. I mean, I see her every few months, and I saw her back at Christmas, but I don’t imagine she’ll be thrilled to hear that I am here…to…uh, hunt Bigfoot.” “Most women do want to come before Bigfoot.”
I would like to personally thank every single Fresno Nightcrawler for dragging me into the middle of the woods, onto a termite-ridden bridge, to look for them in all their little white pants glory. Because, if not for them, I might not know what kissing Hayden feels like. Not now, not like this.
“I’ve been waiting for this.” I trace the curve of his smile with my thumb. “For how long?” “Since you woke up holding me on the Queen Mary.” He places the answer with another kiss. “You knew?” I say. He nods, sinking me like an anchor. “I knew, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Your warmth, your touch—the way you fit like no one else ever has.”
“Tell me what you want.” He only comes away from me for ragged breaths and ravaged words. “Anything at all.” And then, “I want you to have it all.”
“Repressed conspiracy theorist with a porn collection.” “Boring Nonbeliever who doesn’t know how to spice it up.”
His kisses aren’t a transaction. They’re something he wants to do because he wants me. He shows me with every trail of his lips down my throat, teasing and using the sounds of my giggles as a guidebook.
Hayden frowns. No, displays abject horror and misunderstanding like a child who had to learn the hard way that there’s a seventeen-year-old getting paid minimum wage inside every Chuck E. Cheese mouse. “I’ll never be done hunting.”
“Good night,” he whispers with one final kiss. “Don’t let the ghosties bite.”
I try not to judge a book by its cover, but Hayden’s mother is clearly judging me, so I feel no shame in thinking Jeff looks like he causes problems at the local Home Depot.
“I know. You said it yourself. Me and Nessie are the only women in your life.”
It’s not a bad deal for either of us, but I do understand how the decision between making me watch an alien abduction movie and feeling me up might be a challenge for him. Everyone has their kinks, and Hayden sure has his.
I just wish doing my best was good enough.”
Granted, I was cross-faded and delirious, but finding Hayden was one drunk decision I can never regret.
And you should know you were the easiest choice I’ve ever made,” I tell him.
A tear slides down his cheek and he wipes it away in a panic, like I shouldn’t have seen that. Like asking for any semblance of help would inconvenience me. God, I wish he didn’t know this feeling like I do, but it’s clear we’re cut from the same cloth. He can’t take care of other people if he’s busy taking care of himself. So he doesn’t.
“Is this…a joint?” I nod. “You said you’d never broken the rules. Never got stoned in a shady basement or passed an unhygienic bong around the room. So…while we’re busy disappointing your mom…”
We pass the joint back and forth a few times until it hits the bottom, and I stamp it out. “How do you feel?” I ask. My head is floaty. My limbs are light and I don’t feel as cold as I did before, but mostly, I’m just hungry and thinking about cookie dough. “Somehow, I thought colors would look different.” I laugh, rolling my eyes. “That’s LSD, not weed.”
Ellen steps onto the deck with us. Hayden freezes, eyes moving to me slowly like a Not Deer in headlights, and sits up. Surely his mom can smell the tinge of weed in the air, and she’ll be able to smell it on us in a moment. Of course her son brings home a chick with blue hair and he gets caught smoking pot.
Ellen smiles. “Can I lure you back in with the prospect of munchies?” I can’t tell if I’m registering horror or feral hunger in Hayden’s eyes. “Why would I need munchies?” he mumbles. “Those are for people who are on drugs, which I am not.” Jesus. Ellen rolls her eyes. “I was a teenager in the seventies. Trust me. Come on.”
I feel the words on his lips between every kiss—questions. He’s asking if there’s anything about him I don’t want, any part he can shove behind armor. I tell him with another kiss that there is no part of him he needs to hide, nothing about him he should compartmentalize for me. This is the entire point. I want him completely, and I trust him to want me completely.
“You must not understand the way I would let you do absolutely anything at all to me, Hallie.” “Anything?” I raise an eyebrow. “I think you have an idea of what I mean.” He flashes a smile. His eyes drag down my body, then he follows with his hands. He’s enraptured by every curve. “And I would give you anything you wanted. I wouldn’t stop until you had it.”
Our lips meet again, arms folding around one another like we were made to hold only each other. It’s slow, full of quiet breaths and even softer pleas to keep going. I run my fingers over lithe, muscular shoulders, taking what he gives me and offering the same back. “Even if all we did was this, it’d still pull me apart,” he breathes, “piece by piece.”
“See, I knew you were into the conspiracy theory dirty talk.”
“Do you think about me?” I ask. “Constantly.” “When I’m not around? When you’re alone?” He registers what I mean now and responds with a shy smile. “Respectfully.”
“There isn’t a single part of you I don’t want to know inside and out.”
“I have, like, no boobs,” I laugh. “I don’t mind.” He says this between kisses. “If only you knew what you do to me.”
“What is wrong with him?” he whispers. “How was he not obsessed with the idea of making you come?”
Fuck, this is the kind of sex I’ve wanted my whole life. Tender touches and terrible jokes, every action steeped in authenticity. This is us. I love that the commanding side of Hayden can switch back to the absolute nerd he is every day in a split second.
I think of how low his tattoos go beneath his boxers and the intrusive-thoughts machine in my brain wonders if he has a tattoo of Bigfoot on his ass or something, but I’m okay to not discover it all tonight.
I swear I have taken a picture of Hayden in front of every single Bigfoot display we’ve passed. The Bigfoot Scenic Byway. A “Bigfoot Crossing” sign. A ginormous Bigfoot statue at the center of town. He’s like a kid in a candy shop if the candy shop sold exclusively hairy hominids.
“Are we positive this isn’t the world’s hairiest man?” I shout. “Hallie, this is really hairy. I mean really, really hairy. Astonishingly hairy. It’s also a female Bigfoot, for the record.” “We love that. Representation matters.”
If we’re going for the six-six estimate that a lot of people go with, I am a decent stand-in for Bigfoot.” “That’s a horrible sentence.”
Another mosquito bites my arm, and at this point, it feels like bullying. I do not like the woods. I do not like Bigfoot hunting, but I am beginning to hope we find something, because the money we could make off genuine Bigfoot footage would pay for a lot of calamine lotion.
“What happens if Bigfoot comes running out of the woods with a full hard-on? What do you do then?” “Well, in order for Bigfoot to have a boner, he has to be real, so check and mate. But if that happens, I suppose,” Hayden ponders, “that’s how God wanted me to go. Either that, or in the process of freeing an alien from Area 51.”
Against the unrelenting storm, I hear his words from last night in my head. I’m yours. Now I decide I’m his, too.
“I was actually hoping that this girl I just can’t stop thinking about would be interested. I have this conspiracy theory that she might like me back.” “Do you now?” He gives a sure-as-shit grin and nods.
He has my heart, and I can’t imagine asking for it back.
“Shocked you’re not talking about Finland not existing right now.” “That…” he begins, trailing his lips along my jaw, down my throat, “is a very niche conspiracy theory, my little Nonbeliever. If I didn’t know any better…”
Hayden has a few red-flag personality traits—mainly knowing where so many US military bases are and far too much about horrifying murders and monster sightings—but he also goes for runs early in the morning. I haven’t willingly run anywhere in fifteen years.
“So, I’ll know this is the real deal when I catch you wearing my X-Files T-shirt in public.” I nod. “Sure, we can agree to that.” “Good. You can keep it. I have three others.” I blink rapidly. “You…have three…you know what, no, I’m not going to ask you to elaborate.” “It’s better that way,” Hayden says with a wink.
And I have an image to uphold, goddammit. I can’t have anyone think I believe in aliens. “It’s…uh…it’s not mine. It’s Hayden’s.” Her eyebrows don’t lower. “Uh-huh. I see you’ve hit the sharing-clothes stage of being co-hosts.” And discarding clothes, clearly.
This has to be what falling in love feels like, and I know because it’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. It hurts in the best way.
I do like the idea that aliens come to Earth to do arts and crafts. That’s nice.
FlatEarthRoundAss
