Be Not Far from Me(3)

“Probably better your dad said no more contact sports,” Duke says, eyeing me over the top of his beer, a sly smile showing his crooked incisor. “Cross-country is a good fit for those legs, anyway.”

“Truth,” I agree, unable to stop my answering smile. “And a scholarship rolled up in it, so . . . cheers.”

“Cheers,” he says, touching his can to mine, but we don’t say much past that. The fact that my legs are taking me to college and his wallet won’t let him follow is something that we both know but haven’t talked about yet.

Duke is like this, a lifelong friend that suddenly became something else and knows how to call up that shared history while still making me a little loose in the knees. Meredith could say the same words to me, but she doesn’t have that dimple in her left check, or the glint in his eyes that’s entirely concentrated on me, making me care much less about the imminent arrival of his ex.

“When’s she coming?” I ask, leaning back in my chair.

“They weren’t even packed when we left, so Tom and Cory asked to come with me and Jason.”

“Packed?” I raise my eyebrow, and Duke huffs a small laugh.

“I know, right? Everybody’s acting like we’re going hard-core or something, not spending one night in the woods. Shit, I bet your pack weighs eight pounds.”

“Five,” I correct him. “And half that is tampons.”

He squeezes his eyes shut against that. “Nice, babe.”

“Hey, man, everybody menstruates.”

“Not me,” he says.

“But I bet I can make you bleed,” I tell him, getting a real smile.

“Definitely,” he agrees, and reaches out to rub the back of my neck.

It’s been like this our whole lives, a little push and pull for sure, but somewhere in between there’s a point where we meet, a place no one else is invited. We both grew up in the woods, aware that our friends had other toys like dolls and cars, video games and traveling sports teams our families couldn’t afford. We had rocks and sticks, patches of mud and vernal pools where long lines of mosquito larvae hatched.

We discovered this about each other not long after we started dating three months ago, and while it’s true we don’t always talk a lot, I feel the same way about Duke as I do about the woods. You don’t have to be making sounds to communicate, and there’s a lot that has passed between us under the stars and leaves that I would never say to anyone else, in words or otherwise.

Duke’s mind is following the same track because his hand trails down the edge of my arm to rub the inside of my wrist, the work-worn tips of his fingers leaving a tingling there I’m more than familiar with.

“So you’re . . .” He trails off, leaving an edge of disappointment in the air.

“Yeah, I’m bleeding,” I tell him. Growing up with just my dad taught me a long time ago that I’ve got to be blunt about that kind of stuff if I want tampons added to the grocery list.

“Sucks,” Duke says. “I kind of wanted to . . .”

“You only kind of wanted to?” I tease. “I’m not doing anything with a boy who only kind of—”

He cuts me off with a kiss, letting me know that he is more than a little interested in being alone with me, and I’m pretty invested in it too, if it weren’t for my current situation, the fact that somebody needs to start the fire, and that we have an audience.

“Ash—ley!” Jason yells at us from his rock perch overlooking the ridge, a fresh beer raised in toast to me. I push Duke back and flip Jason double birds.

“Later,” I tell Duke, to which he looks dubious. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” I remind him.

“Girl,” he breathes, pulling me close so that I can smell pine resin on him. “You are absolute shit at seduction.”

“We’re here, bitches!” Stephanie yells two hours later, Natalie trailing behind her.

“You’ve got the geography part right, anyway,” I hear Kavita mutter under her breath. Steph and Kavita have never exactly been close, but in a school as small as ours your friends are limited to people you can stand for small amounts of time. Affection is secondary.

“Hey,” Jason says, standing up awkwardly to greet the two girls. He’s unsteady on his feet, and I wonder why he made the effort until I get a good look at Natalie. She graduated last year and went off to cosmetology school, leaving Duke in the dust—but adding about fifteen pounds, most of it in her bra. Natalie had always been pretty, but right now she’s hot in a way we don’t usually see in our corner of the woods, and that extends past the actual limits of the state forest.

Most people here are run-down by thirty, shitty food and cheap beer sagging on their faces and adding to their bellies. The prom kings marry the homecoming queens and age together, telling each other they’re still the hottest thing going while checking out the younger generation to see what they’ve got to offer.

But it’s all the same faces in the end, old genes recycled into new skin. We’re used to looking at each other and spotting which side of the family your nose came from, or whose eyes you’ve got. Sometimes a family trait that isn’t technically in your tree pops up, and we all politely ignore it.

The weight she’s put on hasn’t only gone into her chest. Natalie’s got curves she didn’t have before, and damn if they don’t look good on her. She’s always had cheekbones you could cut yourself on, but somebody taught her how to use eyeliner, and it’s only made her genetic gifts more obvious. Her wide-set eyes always made her look innocent—and while that might have been true at one time, I can tell it’s not anymore. She wastes no time giving Duke the once-over, holding his gaze a second longer than she should.