“Wonderful.” I smile like I found someone else to kiss me under the mistletoe. “Better than two dead pigs in sunshine,” I add, just because I know how much he enjoys my Texas sayings.
“I thought it was one dead pig,” he says through a quiet laugh.
“Two doubles your happy.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh along with him. “I know.”
The parents visibly relax, as if they hadn’t quite trusted that Oliver and I had buried our aversion to one another. That’s progress.
Close to midnight I hand out poppers and cardboard horns and start counting down the seconds. Last year I partied in Alpine with Lida. The tequila shots flowed like a fountain, and DJ Randy Randy spun country and western till the break of dawn. For the most part, I’m partying with the sixty-and-older crowd this year. Surprisingly, I don’t think the world has ended. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not going to miss the hangover or because I know I’ll be partying in Marfa this time next week.
At the stroke of midnight, the lights in the house go off and fireworks explode from the beach. People blow their horns and fire their poppers, and beneath a hail of streamers and confetti, I turn to Oliver standing beside me. “Happy New Year.” I grab his tie and plant a friendly kiss on his lips. That’s all it takes for tingles to run up my spine and my heart to beat harder in my chest. I pull back as streaks of red, white, and blue burst in the night sky and flash across his face. He looks at me for several long moments before he says something that I can’t hear over the boom boom boom outside the window and inside my chest.
“What?”
He puts his hand on my back and brings me closer. “Get your coat,” he says, next to my ear. “We’re leaving.”
“Why?”
“Because when I kiss you, I don’t want my mother in the room.”
I’m shocked and not sure I heard right. “You’re goin’ to kiss me?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
I’ve only been sinning in my heart with Oliver for months. The old me doesn’t have to be told twice, and I slip my right hand into his warm palm. The new me moves with him through the crowd and halfway down the gallery to a sitting room where no one ever sits, and where I’d tossed my coat because I was too lazy to take it to the closet. The old me turns to him in the dimly lit room. The new me raises my mouth as he pulls me against him. His lips brush mine, and all of me responds to his hot kiss, wet and hungry and so good I never want to stop. The strap of my dress falls from my shoulder and Oliver’s hand follows it down my arm. “I’ve been picturing you in your short little pajamas since that night in your penthouse,” he says against my throat. “I’ve been thinking of you against my chest, looking up at me, your mouth just below mine.”
“Why didn’t you come for Christmas?”
“Because I knew I’d do this,” he says just above a whisper as he closes the door and backs me against it. “I knew I’d pick up where we left off eighteen years ago. This time I’m going to finish what we started. I’m going to give you something worth remembering.”
I’m supposed to have amnesia. I’m not supposed to know what the fire heating up my stomach means or recall tingles whirling across my skin, but I want more. I want him to give me something worth remembering, and I want to give him something to remember when I’m gone.
He looks at me and his warm breath brushes my cheek. “If you’re planning to stop me, now’s a good time,” he says, even as he raises my knee to his waist.
“You said I should stop you when you shove your hand up my dress.” He does just that, and I tear at his shirt and belt instead of stopping him. He pushes my panties to one side and we have sex against a closed door, in a house filled with people. It’s definitely worth remembering. So good that he takes me to his apartment and it gets better.
Oliver knows things. He knows a woman’s body and has moves the likes of which I’ve never experienced. I’m supposed to have amnesia, but I know a few things myself. Thankfully he never asks how a mental virgin knows where to touch and kiss and how to work him over.
He makes me breakfast at noon and takes me home. We spend the day in and out of bed, and he joins me and Magnus on our walk in the park. He tells me he’s leaving that night for Saint Thomas and is playing golf on a course he’s thinking about buying. He doesn’t say when he’ll be back and I don’t ask. He kisses me goodbye near Magnus’s favorite shop, and I wave with the big mitten covering my splint as he walks away.
It’s too bad I’m leaving just when things are starting to get good.
24
A hundred miles from nothing and on the way to nowhere, Marfa is exactly how I left it. Clear blue sky and desert monotony. Sun-bleached houses and cactus gardens. Abandoned buildings and questionable food trucks. Dust always kicking up somewhere, and the relentless battle to keep it from settling on everything. Even in January.
I’m home. Finally. I drive through the town as slow as possible, taking it all in. I’ve missed every building and tumbleweed. I’ve missed the ease of living and knowing my place in the world, and I raise my sunglasses long enough to wipe a tear from my eye.
Warm air flows through the vents of my brand-new Rapid Red F-150 while Toby Keith sings to me from eighteen speakers. I tap my thumbs on the steering wheel and join him, belting out “How Do You Like Me Now?!”
I still can’t believe I walked into a dealership yesterday, pointed to the shiniest vehicle on the lot, and handed over Edie’s black American Express. I expected the salesman to laugh his ass off or call the cops or kick me out of the showroom. Instead, he gave me the keys and I drove away from Rogers Ford in a Limited SuperCrew.
I flew into Midland yesterday and bought jeans with rhinestone wings on the back pockets, sparkly inlay boots, and a truck. I spent the night at the DoubleTree and headed out for Marfa this morning. I’ve always wanted a big truck and this one is everything I’ve ever dreamed of and more. It has leather seats and a moonroof and options that I’ve never heard of and don’t understand. It’s big and powerful and a far cry from the minivan I used to drive through town.
The Do or Dye is on Austin Street, not far from the little coffee shop where I used to get my morning horchata latte—cinnamon milk, please—and settle on the patio to watch Elliot Franco lift weights on the porch of his double-wide. I called him El Fuego on account of him being so hot. He never called me anything on account of him not knowing I was alive. I bet this truck will get his and everyone else’s attention.