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Her trailer smells like thick rose and the lingering spritz of fruity perfume. It’s nicely decorated, cosy with twinkling fairy lights strung up around her bed and a warm lamp seated on her little table by the other end of her living area. The bed you both lay on is covered in layered thin blankets, worn but cared for, and when you brush your fingers against the fabric it feels smooth and soft to the touch. Her trailer is homely, and well-lived in, well-valued for the privacy it provides.
Lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling of her trailer from the pillows she rests her head on to sleep each night - it is an intimacy, an intimacy that sends your heart racing and has your palms clammy. Entrance to her safe haven, sanctuary from the world and everything that lies outside that door. In here, it is only you and Zoe.
She swigs from the bottle, a quiet glug filling the air, before passing it to you with a hum. Drinking while laying down on your backs is no easy feat but you and Zoe valiantly persevere anyway. Her fingers glance off yours as you take the bottle from her and take your own mouthful. The drink is tart, sends your eyes pressing into a squint and your mouth puckering up as you swallow. It’s apple flavoured, helpfully indicated by its obnoxious (noxious) green hue, and Zoe picked it up instead of rosé because she thought it would make you laugh. “Like we’re kids again, sat in the park drinking whatever was cheapest.” You wish you’d known her back then, seen her with gangly limbs not grown into yet and cheeks still full from baby fat. Wish you could know more than just the insights from the universality of the teen experience.
Drinking from the mouth of the bottle after her, you can almost pretend that this too is a form of intimacy. Pressing your lips against the afterimage of hers against the rim, picturing tasting the alcohol off of her tongue instead of straight from the source.
Quiet music croons from her stereo, indie music mixed with bluegrass roots that you’ve never heard before. She likes her music obscure, says it’s more intimate that way. You like it that way too. It’s like she’s letting you in on a secret.
You pass it back to her but she doesn’t drink. She screws the cap back on and places the bottle between your bodies, cool glass glancing off the sliver of skin exposed by your hip. You watch her from the corner of your eye, flitting your eyes away the instant she shifts her gaze to you too. Your fingers twitch on the bed.
Why isn’t she saying anything?
She’s still looking at you, except now she’s not even trying to hiding it. She turns on her side, arm underneath bracing her against the yielding mattress. A droplet of sweat slides down your forehead, July’s dead heat granting no mercy to the bayou. You continue to examine the plain white expanse of the ceiling above you, intently focusing on all the variations in shade and the various scratches as if they are the most fascinating thing to ever capture your attention.
“Why won’t you look at me?”
Her voice breaks the silence, no louder than how she normally speaks, but unmistakably filled with something ugly. Zoe never sounds like that, never asked you a question so strange, and the abrupt shift in tone makes your mouth dry and your throat feel thick. Rolling over to face her, you mirror her position and prop yourself up on your forearm, lifting your eyes to catch her gaze already boring into you.
Her brows are furrowed into a frown, and you have to resist the urge to reach out and smooth away the crease between them with your thumb. Her fingers curl into her palms, her form on the bed unusually stiff. Her chest rises up and down with her breath, nostrils flaring as she inhales.
She’s angry. Why is she angry? She’s never angry, never at you.
Blue eyes burning into you, you feel like a deer in the headlights.
She must know. Somehow, she must know. Why now? Why she is doing this now? While you lay in her bed in her trailer after hours already of talking and sipping from the same bottle?
There’s nothing to say. Your mouth won’t form the words, your tongue won’t push them out. The best you can manage is a weak “I…” before you trail off and leave the syllable dangling in the air.
She won’t look away, except now her eyes that you have always admired too much are glossy and her bottom lip trembles. On the bed, inches away from your own, her knuckles are white with pressure.
“You can leave. I’m not keeping you here. I didn’ make you come over tonight and I didn’ make you get on the bed.” Even while you twist your face in confusion at her words, she keeps going. Her drawl, usually so musical to your ears, is filled with hurt but still obstinate and determined to say her piece.
She sits up while she talks, draws back to sit against the headboard and curl her legs up against her chest to wrap her arms around. Clearing a path for you off of the bed, you realise. Tears of your own well up and threaten to spill onto your cheeks, a deep shame burning in your tummy at being caught out even while her words don’t really make much sense.
She finishes with a shaky breath, words tumbling out of her like they cut into her tongue on the way out. “I thought you were different than folks around here, that’s all. I didn’t think it’d be a problem but clearly you’re bothered, so why don’t you just go on home?”
Her final words are enough for something faint to ding in your head. Blinking away your tears, you slowly sit up to face her fully. She regards you warily, nails digging into the pink flesh of her thighs, and you follow the movement down the column of her throat as she swallows. Breaking your gaze from the length of her neck, you meet her eyes once more.
You keep your tone low and guarded, laying your hands in your lap as you search her face for a sign.
“Zoe, what do you mean by that? What didn’t you think would be a problem?”
She crinkle her nose at that and scowls at you. “Wow, you really gonna make me say it? Well I ain’t. I’m not a performing monkey for you to get your kicks from.”
She leaned forward to snatch up the liquor from beside your knee but you beat her to it and grab her wrist, your other hand coming up to cradle her cheek before she can lash out. You don’t dare breathe, dare blink, while she freezes in your hold. Slowly and gently, no sudden movements, you loosen your grip from her wrist and trail your hand down to slip into hers, intertwine your fingers together. Feeling your skin against hers, the heat radiating from her hand into yours, is almost too much and your next breath shakes as it leaves your lips. You squeeze her hand, once, and then wait for her to understand.
A broken noise sounds from behind her closed lips, and her eyes hold such disbelief in their marine depths that something in your own chest aches at it. She doesn’t break your locked gaze, not even to look at your joined hands, not even when you stroke your thumb across her cheek. This close you can feel her warm breath skim across your dry lips and she dips her tongue out to wet her own, flick it across her plush bottom lip. You break from her eyes to follow the movement before even consciously considering it, and when you lift them back up again to rejoin her gaze something has changed in them.
An understanding.
Your voice breaks when you finally speak, confirm what she already knows. “You know why I couldnt look at you Zoe. Why I’ve never come to your trailer before.” You lean in, press your forehead against hers, breathe in the scent of her. “It would be too much.”
Her eyelids flutter shut, lashes brushing against yours as they slide closed, and she breathes out a sigh of relief. Calloused fingers tighten around yours and then she blinks her eyes back open to look back at you, soft now and rounded once more. Doe eyes, you’ve always thought. Her other hand lifts up to ghost over your knee to your hip where she curls them around your side and then tugs your body closer. And then she kisses you.
Lucas is drinking coffee at the kitchen table in the morning when you and Zoe amble in. He ignores you both while you murmur together by the hob, Zoe making you both breakfast and you passing her her coffee. Later, while you wash up the dishes, she pokes him on the shoulder and leans against the table in front of him. “You doing anythin’ important right now?”
He squints at her, curling his lip before returning his attention to his phone screen. “Maybe. What’s it to you?”
Clearing her throat and offering him a casual shrug, Zoe nods over to you. “My girlfriend wants to go to town, see the new movie in the drive-in. I need the car.”
Nodding distractedly, Lucas nods and takes a sip from his coffee. “Yeah sure, whatever. Keys are in the hall.”
Finished with the dishes, you slink up beside Zoe and she wraps her arm around your waist. The two of you toss out a goodbye to him over your shoulders as you make your way out of the kitchen and through the house. As the car starts up in the driveway, Lucas finally lifts his head up with a jolt and whips his head around the room in search of you two.
“Wait, what? Girlfriend?”