WITHOUT YOU (STRIPPED) (8 page)

June 25th

“This is our last night together,” Quinn says softly, changing the channel on the TV again. It’s not the words, but the catch in her voice that makes me turn from my desk and face her. I’d expected her to avoid the subject all together, act like tonight was as normal as any night. Not bring it up, agonizing as it is.

A single tear drips down beside her nose. The sight crashes through my chest, ripping my heart in two. This is because of me.

I rush to the bed, lay beside her, and gather her in my arms. She smashes her face into my chest and shakes her head. “Sorry. I was trying really hard not to be a big baby about it.”

“Being a big baby is much better than being unaffected and emotionless.”

“Turning off my emotions is easier.”

“It’s also scarier.” I push her back. “Not that I didn’t like the old you, but this”—I dry her face with my thumb and hold it up to show her the wetness—“is why I fell in love with you. When you feel, it’s intense and penetrating and oceans more than any normal person.”

“It’s because I’m a vampire.”

I lift my brow. “Huh?”

She shakes her head with a giggle. “Never mind. Just some show I was watching.” Her hand captures mine and she cradles it against her chest. A serious expression straightens her features. “Torrin, are we going to be okay? Like deep down do you think we’ll make it through this?” The worry in her voice—disquieted and glazed with sadness—tightens a screw in my heart.

I tip my forehead to hers. “You said yourself couples do this all the time. That we’re stronger than them…”

“But do
you
believe that?”

Eyes fixed firmly to hers, I answer as truthfully as I can. “With every cell in my body.” My lips lower to hers, and then I spend the next few hours memorizing and savoring every inch of her body.

~*~

I told Quinn I had an early flight, but the truth is I couldn’t stand to say goodbye. Not after last night; I didn’t want to erase the bone-deep, soul-to-soul connection we’d had with that one ugly word. So after lying with every possible inch of my skin pressed up against hers, wide awake until the clock read 3:00am, I quietly snuck out.

Again, I glance down at Quinn’s words on my phone:
What happened to goodbye?
and watch as the bright morning sunlight casts a glare over them.

The taxi driver, a balding man with an ungodly amount of black arm hair, squints his eyes into the rearview mirror. “Terminal four, you say?”

“Yeah,” I mutter in return, and then type back:
Love you too much to say goodbye. Check inside your wallet.

A few days ago, while moving all of my belongings from my dorm to a storage unit, I came across a crumpled piece of paper tucked into the tiny garage’s dusty cement corner. Not sure why I didn’t throw away the scrap like the rest found on the floor, but opened it. Inside, scrawled messily in red ink, was a quote by a woman named Gretchen Kemp.
There’s this place in me where your fingertips still rest, your kisses still linger, and your whispers softly echo. It’s the place where a part of you will forever be a part of me.

I guess I took it as a sign. If I could put my feelings for Quinn into words, those are exactly what they’d say. I scribbled them onto a clean sheet of paper and, last night when Quinn left her room to brush her teeth, I stuck it into the billfold of her wallet.

The taxi screeches to a stop in front of terminal four. I hand the driver a twenty, grab my two suitcases—one loaded with camera gear, the other with clothes—and, without so much as a glance over my shoulder, replace the muggy California sky with recycled airport air.   

Morning turns into afternoon as I kill the hours required to sit and wait for an international flight and then, finally, a woman in a blue uniform calls my flight to board. I stand with the rest of the crowd, scanning the faces of who I’ll be in the vicinity of for the next six hours. The mass of people steps forward, and I glance over my shoulder with a nervous tingle in my stomach. As if my life will suddenly turn into one of those romance movies and Quinn will come bounding around the corner begging me not to go.

“We will now board Zone 3 of flight 263 to Alajuela,” the airline employee says into the intercom.

On the plane I find my window seat and, just as the flight attendant makes the announcement to turn off all electronic devices, my phone buzzes with a message from Quinn.

I miss you already. <3 <3 <3

July 17
th

“Let me guess…” Joel nods at me from behind his lens and says, “You left someone back home to come traipse the Costa Rican jungle with me.” Silently I smile at the word
traipse
, thinking about the fun Quinn and I had in the locker room almost a month ago.

Joel’s actually a pretty cool guy. In his late thirties, he looks a lot like Hugh Jackman only with a tribal bracelet tattoo around his right wrist and hair as black as the fiberglass of our camera frames. I guess if I had to
traipse
the jungle with anyone, I’m glad it’s him.

I tuck my lens cloth into my pocket then return to my shot: a small group of capuchin monkeys foraging for food. It’s not the shot we’re searching for—a succession of black and whites for December’s story on the local foliage, but Joel, unable to pass up basically anything that moves without taking its picture, insisted we might need it for another story. I kinda like that about him, his spontaneity. The guy is brilliant and funny and not all that bad to spend time with. 

Kneeling to steady my elbow on my knee, I say, “Am I that obvious?”

He laughs, and I hear the click of his shudder snagging a shot. “Don’t worry. It’s not like you’re some lovesick monkey or anything. But sometimes I can see it in your expression.” From the corner of my eye I can see him inspecting his shot. His brow wrinkles when he’s got it—I’ve gathered that much in our three weeks together. “It’s like you’re constantly searching for something.”

“We are on the lookout for the December shot, are we not?”

Joel bends, slipping his camera into its case. “Come on, smartass. Let’s call it a day.”

In the Jeep, as we head back to the main road, Joel starts up again. “So, tell me about her.”

I throw my feet up onto the dash despite his disapproving look. Whatever. If I have to spew about my love life, I’m at least going to be comfortable.

“Her name’s Quinn.” I pull out my phone and show him a picture—one I caught of her at the beach with her hair full from the wind, the sun half-eclipsed by her head. He nods with a smile, downshifting into second gear to cross a small ravine. Just on the other side is the dirt road that leads to the paved road. 

“And how long have you known Quinn?”

Jesus, he’s just as nosy as my sisters.

“Known her since January. But we’ve only been together a few months.”

His thick eyebrows jump up and down. “Friends to lovers? Or did she play hard to get?”

I smile, remembering my first few months with Quinn. She was infuriating and bad-mannered, and for some reason I couldn’t stay away from her. “I guess you can say both.” I leave it at that. Explaining how broken Quinn was, and that she was incapable of love back then, would surely give him the wrong impression of her. She’s not the girl she used to be.

The tires groan as Joel steers the Jeep onto the poorly paved road. The roads this far back toward the jungle look more like someone dumped out a few tractor loads of asphalt and raked it with a shoe. But it beats the nauseous pitching of off road. I uncross and cross my legs. “What about you? Anyone back home?”

“Nah. I’m sort of a solo guy. Too much traveling to make it back home much.” Not an ounce of sadness in that statement, though I can’t help but notice the pang it sends through my chest.
Photography is a lonely profession
. Professor Williams wasn’t exaggerating.

We ride in silence the rest of the way and once back to the small rental house Joel and I call “home,” Joel points to a small package on the porch. “Dish duty tonight says that’s for you.” He winks at me and steps right over the box as he enters the house, not even looking at the name on the package.

It’s for me. From Quinn. I sit on the porch steps, package on my lap, remembering our conversation from last night:

Her: “Anything exciting today? New?”

Me: “Joel took me scuba diving to test out my new underwater camera. The water here is so clear. Nothing like our ocean.”

Her: “Oh… Nothing else?”

On the steps, a smile grows on my face. So this’s what that was about.

I rip into the package, careful to preserve the box for the next time I ship her something. My first week here, I sent her a bunch of touristy stuff I’d picked up in the airport before meeting Joel: keychain, T-shirt, a little stuffed snake. Last week I sent her a pressed flower from our first jungle shoot. This is the first she’s sent me anything.

A folded piece of paper rests on top. For a second, I debate setting it aside to dig through the crumpled white tissue paper. But it’s Quinn’s voice I want to hear, and if I can’t have that then her words are second best. I unfold the paper. On it, cut out and pasted from what looks like a magazine, is a checklist.
Signs You are in Love
. And in her messy handwriting, the words
:
Don’t even ask why I was reading this in the first place, but you should know I answered YES to every single one
.

-YOU READ HIS TEXTS OVER AND OVER

-YOU WALK REALLY SLOW WHEN YOU’RE WITH HIM

-BY THINKING ABOUT HIM YOU SMILE FOR NO REASON

-YOU GET HIGH OFF HIS SMELL

-HE BECOMES ALL YOU CAN THINK ABOUT

-EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS NO NAME MENTIONED, YOU WERE THINKING ABOUT HIM AS YOU READ THIS

In the white space at the bottom, Quinn’s words again.

Torrin,

Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, falling in love with you was beyond my control…

I miss you.

-Q (See what missing you does to me? I’ve become a sap!)

I set aside the note and dig through the paper balls, my hand landing on a square metal tin. Like the kind Christmas cookies come in. Taped to the top is a note that reads
:
My new recip
e
and inside is a dozen or so impeccably round brown and white swirled cookies. She mentioned she’s been visiting her parents more over the past few weeks, cooking with her mom and maybe even discovering her passion.

I lift a cookie to my mouth and close my eyes, imagining Quinn sitting beside me savoring the perfectly-baked chocolate and macadamia nut cookies with me. God, I miss her too.

Later that night, she calls. “So…anything new today?”

I insert my SD card into Joel’s computer, ready to go over the day’s shots. “Nothing too exciting. Went to the jungle, saw some monkeys, ate some cookies.”

Is it possible to hear someone smile through the phone?

In the breath of silence my lips draw up, too. And in the next breath she’s got her comeback. “Cookies must’ve been damn good for Mr. I-Don’t-Eat-Sweets to mention them.”

“I don’t know. If any cookie could make me an addict it’d be those.”

“Honestly, what did you think?”

My thoughts skip back to that day at the beach, her comment about not having a passion. I turn away from the computer, look across the tiny living room to the balcony where Joel’s outside smoking a cigarette. “Babe, I think if cooking, or baking, or
preparing
makes you happy you should do it.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking that a lot lately, too. Do you think I should apply for culinary school?”

“Do you want to?”

“Kind of.”

“Then, yes. I think you should.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Outside, Joel smashes his cigarette into the ashtray then leans his elbows onto the railing and stares out at the sinking sun. Sometimes I catch him in moments like this, looking sort of sad and lonely.

I don’t know if I could live like him.

Quinn’s voice breaks into my thought. “The question is where. I’m sure there are schools all over the country.”

I grin. “Is that your subtle way of asking me where I’ll be?”

“No. But since you brought it up…”

I’m not about to let her pass up the opportunity to go to whichever school she wants in whatever part of the country because of me. “How about,” I say, “you apply to all the schools you want, and then when you decide on one, we’ll figure us out.”

“You make it sound so easy. Torrin, you’re going to be who knows where travelling the country after this internship.”

“Maybe not.”

A pause. I doubt that was what she was expecting. “What do you mean?”

I lean back in the chair, inhaling a deep breath. The thought has been on my mind for a few days, but until now I was scared to think it. This internship, I thought, was going to open doors and launch me into a new career. I didn’t anticipate it to turn me off from the very thing I love. “I don’t know, I guess I’ve just been thinking…” I lower my voice. “After meeting Joel and seeing the life he lives, alone with no family, I’m not sure it’s what I really want to do.”

“But you love photography.”

“I do. Just maybe not enough.”