Page 44 of The Woods

“That’s not what I said.”

Geoff holds up a hand to silence them both. “You’re not wrong, Beverley.”

Alice stops just short of an eye-roll, but Beverley can see the annoyance all over her face.

“Something did happen in those woods that changed me,” he continues. “I can’t say what, exactly, because I don’t remember any of it. All that I can say is that I went in there that night feeling horrible about myself. Feeling lost, full of shame and regret, sadness and anger and resentment. You name a bad feeling and I had it.” He locks eyes with Beverley and a shiver of excitement runs through her, like he’s a preacher on a pulpit ready to tell her the meaning of life. “When I came out of those woods”—he slices a hand through the air—“all of those horrible feelings were gone. I felt a thousand times lighter. Like my brain had been wiped clean of all the bad stuff and only good stuff was left.”

Beverley takes a sip of her wine. She’s feeling quite agitated now. Perhaps it’s because Geoff’s stare makes her feel like he can see the loneliness she works so hard to mask. Perhaps it’s because it’s similar to the feeling she got last night when she’d stepped out on her porch to look up at the stars. She’d felt as though she were being watched, studied to be more precise, by something that already knew her, that could see right inside of her. She couldn’t tell if it was something beyond the trees or the trees themselves, but the sensation made her want to run into the woods in search of it. At the same time, the feeling repelled and frightened her. Geoff’s stare is creating the exact same feeling.

She takes another large sip of her wine before saying, “Well, it sounds like we should all take a walk in the woods, then.” She chuckles so that they know she’s joking. So that they think that, in truth, she has nothing to change about herself, nothing to shed, nothing to hide.

“Beverley,” Geoff says, his eyes still locked on hers, “when you go into those woods, I guarantee you will come out a different person.”

Polly

She has to pee and she’s starving for something that isn’t a donut or a muffin and her hair stinks of coffee so she’s desperate for a shower. Those are her excuses for speeding home from work, despite the pouring rain. Those are her excuses for tearing up the driveway so fast that she doesn’t see the flash of gray until the very last second. She slams on the brakes but it’s too late. There’s a soft thud against the front of her dad’s SUV and a welp that forces a scream from her own throat.

Her hands are shaking as she puts the car in park. She can see the lifeless form of a four-legged animal lying a few feet from the front of the car, its dark gray fur spotlit by the headlights. She thinks it might be a big dog, or maybe a coyote. Bigger than a coyote, more like a wolf, but she remembers the police saying there weren’t any animals in the woods that would hurt you. Wolves can hurt you, can’t they?

She waits a few seconds, hoping it will jump up and run off. When it doesn’t, she slowly opens the car door and slides out into the rain. The light outside is neither night nor day but an in-between that confuses the eye and plays tricks on the mind. That’s what she tells herself when the animal lifts its head at her approach, and she finds herself looking into mossy-green eyes that feel more human than animal.

Like Gray.

The animal squirms on the ground before wriggling itself back onto all fours, its eyes still fixed on Polly. Wolf, Polly thinks, once she sees the size of the animal. Its head is easily as big as her own and she’s sure if it were to stand on its hind legs it would be taller than her. She takes a few cautious steps back, coming up against the car, trapped there, not sure what to do. The wolf is perfectly still, the only detectable movement the rising and falling of its sides as it breathes. Its eyes are still locked on Polly’s.

“Gray?” she asks quietly. She’s immediately flooded with embarrassment.

The wolf turns its large head and trots across the driveway and into the woods.

“Get a grip,” she whispers as she gets back into the car, soaked fully through by the rain. But she’s relieved that she didn’t kill it. She couldn’t have carried more guilt than she already does.

Only the other day she’d gone looking for Gray’s scent amongst the trees. Rubbing her hands with pine needles and leaves from the ground and putting them to her face to inhale deeply. It wasn’t quite the same, but it was close enough. When she’s not with him, she’s thinking about him, wondering when he’ll show up next, re-creating his scent when it’s not soon enough, and seeing his eyes in the face of a wolf.

She’d seen him two days ago but already it feels like too long. They smoked a joint outside together and then he agreed to come in again. This time she didn’t let him go wandering around her room. Instead, she put on that band he likes, Portishead, and led him to the bed. They started kissing and she tried to undo his pants, but like the last time, he stopped her. When she protested, he stroked the side of her cheek and looked into her eyes.

He said, “Let me get to know you first.” Then with great care, like she was a breakable object, he removed her sweatshirt and sweatpants so that she was lying there in only her bra and underwear. He kneeled above her on the bed, looking down. His eyes slowly roamed over her entire body like he was trying to commit every detail to memory.

For once in her life, she was speechless, afraid that anything she might say would ruin the moment. No one had ever studied her like that before. Most boys consumed her body in fragments, needing only to see her boobs, maybe a glimpse of her ass, to get them off. Gray wanted all of it. He lay down beside her and ran his hand over her bare skin, so lightly that it felt like feathers brushing her. “Close your eyes,” he whispered, and she did.

Surrendering completely.

He found the tattoo on her hip of the Gemini constellation. “What’s this all about?” he’d asked, tracing it.

“My sister and I each got one,” she answered, resisting the urge to move his hand away, to protect it. “It’s the Gemini constellation because of the twin thing. We didn’t tell anyone we got them. It was our secret.”

He kissed it softly and said, “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

Then he moved on to press dozens of kisses across her stomach, her chest and arms, even her bare legs and the bottoms of her feet. The coolness of his lips was like snowflakes landing and melting on her warm skin.

In the midst of it all, something broke in her—the flimsy box she’d built around her heart after her sister died. His touch caused the box to splinter and fall away, leaving her vulnerable. Exposed. Tears slowly began to slide from her eyes and drop down into the thick of her hair. She didn’t make a sound on the outside, but it was so loud on the inside. A deafening whooshing sound, like waves crashing through her skull bringing the strong tide of too much emotion—sadness, happiness, desire, loneliness, hope. All of it about to break out of her in the form of sobs, and then—he bit her.

On the fleshy part of her left side. Hard enough to illicit a yelp and cause her eyes to fly open. Hard enough to draw pinpricks of blood and leave a mark that resembled a crescent moon. When she looked down at him, he was smiling up at her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, although he looked anything but. “I got carried away. You taste so good.”

She laughed and pulled him up so that she could kiss him, tasting her own blood on his tongue. They kissed for a while and then he wrapped her in the blanket on her bed and said he had to go. He told her he might not be able to get back for a while, but when he did, they’d go on an adventure. Before leaving, he pulled a small piece of wood in the shape of a heart from his coat pocket.

On it he’d carved Polly + Gray.