"Turn here."
I look at her with suspicion. There were three choices before me at this moment. Continue down the road and eventually make our way back to I-49's endless stretch. Turn right and creep our way through the sleeping country of Natchitoches parish. Or -- as she just asked me -- venture left onto a dirt road that I was certain had been clipped from a horror film and placed here to test college students who procrastinated during midterms.
"What? Don't trust me?" Her hand slips from the passenger side and over my right thigh.
"Are we talking about your sense of direction or the direction you hand is going?"
"Which one would you trust more?" she says with a sly smile.
I couldn't help but laugh out loud causing her to pull her hand up quickly. There was a line of defensiveness in everything we both said and did with each other. It was a charge of not knowing and a deeper charge of knowing too much that led to the two of us driving at back roads at 1am on a weeknight.
***********
I was very private about my affairs with women. I wasn't exactly "in the closet" but I didn't hook-up with women around my college town. To date, anything involving a woman and myself revolved around meeting in a club or bar 200 miles away in New Orleans. The Crescent City provided something my small college town couldn’t – anonymity. On such nights, you would find the tension of lingering glances across dance floors and scan the bar for the briefest hint of an interested momentary “friend.” With a few strategically placed bumps and a series of slides across the dance floor, I would use the dance floor as a jigsaw puzzle, working my way through the maze of thump-a thump-a’s to find where I best fit for the weekend. Each woman would become something of a game and each glance a new house rule to play against. Once someone’s eyes would transfix on me for longer than two minutes, I would find myself issuing a "pardon me" as I walk past the object of my lust for the evening, resting my hand across her hip bone and reading her reaction. If she smiled and said it was alright, I'd linger a moment longer. With some the moment was never necessary. Their eyes invited me to stay while the music gave them reason to push into my soft embrace and invite me to merge into their curves more intimately than before. Eventually the evening would finish with a slight buzz of a cocktail and riding a full high of lust as we'd make our way to her place. Saying goodbye was rarely an issue since much of my appeal was the “out-of-towner” introduction made earlier in the evening. Occasionally leaving my number and rarely including my last name, I would find myself back on the road by sunrise, working the concrete beneath my tires as I returned to pursue a "higher" education. After two years, my routine was familiar and comfortable (while my car was in desperate need of a tune up).
Her life was quite different. I was running full throttle into my fifth year of attempting to decide what the hell I wanted to do with my life. She, however, walking into her third year. While I skidded down the path of a Bachelor of Arts degree she was nose deep in science texts. Neurology was starting to consume her current semester. Our passions were polar opposite sides of the spectrum but we were both nerds in our own right. It was her intelligence that caused me to slow from a run to a brisk walk and pay more attention to the woman in front of me. We were both enrolled in the college honor’s campus and by definition this also translated the two of us being chronic procrastinators. I had come to learn that at an academic level, procrastination leads to finding distractions on a much larger circle. For both of us, it meant being involved in a countless number of campus extra-curricular activities. Our social circles where wide spread and full of hundreds of mutual acquaintances. Yet, we never seemed to really speak to each other.
She had dated around and recently ended it with a grade school chum of mine. It didn't work out, much to his sadness. My younger brother had turned his head to meet her gaze to find that she didn't return the same glances. Many people found it hard not to notice her. Well, I should say everyone noticed her except me. Had it not been for a guest lecturer one evening and sitting behind her, who’s to say if I ever would have.
Rumors had been around campus for some time that I may enjoy the company of women. However, much of the time they were simply rumors. Since breaking of the relationship and near engagement with my boyfriend of three years, I had kept my personal life highly private. Rumors were easy to start due to my silence. I have and will always be somewhat of a tomboy. Soft in voice and manners and feminine in my own ways, I enjoy jeans, polos and a comfortable pair of shoes, avoiding heels and dresses (even when the occasion called for it). While not stocky, I have the thighs of a soccer player and the calves of a working girl. All of my past boyfriends had been attracted to me because I could hold my own and they like "strong" women. Most of my weekend adventures enjoyed me because I rode the fine line of “gay” and “straight,” which would allow beer goggles to let my evening of release to see whatever it is she wanted to see.
She teetered on princess. Well, if you didn't know her you might think that. Her soft brown eyes against the glow of her Latina tone were thrown against a laugh that turned ears and begged you to mingle with seductive lips and fever-laced touches. If you didn’t pay any attention, first glances would highlight incredibly feminine woman. She liked it that way. Physically, to many, she was beautiful. This usually kept her date and inquiry card quite full. If you took time you’d learn that the feminine would make you biased to your assumptions of what she was like outside of your periphery. You wouldn't know that she hunted with her father or liked fast cars and cheap beer. Your mind would make you think she was vastly different.
She had made out with women before. We discussed this, ironically, before kissing ourselves for the first time. Past the drunken games of "pass the ice," a few spin-the-bottle evenings and the occasional curiosity, she had yet to experience a woman full-on. How the conversation began and how we ended up here at these crossroad (literally) is still quite a blur. A brief conversation in the halls of Morrison led to coffee which in turn led to a barista politely asking us to leave thirty minutes after close. A conversation of five minutes had been over two hours and the evening found us both driving to our own residence. The cliché of two women just "hitting it off" was slowly becoming a reality. Later that evening we found ourselves in each other's company again to share a kiss that would grace the pages of a teen romance novel or end up on a CW sweeps week episode.
The flirting and slowly getting to know each other had consumed my last week. It was a pace I wasn’t familiar with. In all honesty, it was a pace that made me more nervous and anxious than comfortable.
Desperate to return to something familiar, I had made plans with a former “buddy” for a quick visit over the weekend. I thought a trip to Shreveport to "get things out of my system" would be what I needed in order to continue this charade of “getting to know you.” A good fuck would be enough to calm me and give this – “thing,” more time. The trip was cut short by a phone call from her the morning of asking if we could grab a drink. This translated to a night spent on Cane River to talk about everything and nothing.
My standards were being destroyed as I willingly succumbed to each request she had.
**********
