Chapter 5: Mystery Date
“Just a few more feet,” Avery said. One of her warm hands was draped across Brooke’s eyes, the other holding her hand, guiding her forward towards whatever uncertain date awaited them. The ground was uneven, so Brooke assumed they were outdoors. She could feel a cool breeze on her skin, giving her goosebumps. “Aaaand, here we are.” Avery lifted her hand and Brooke looked around, blinking at the sudden brightness.
Brooke caught her breath as she marveled at the gorgeous vista in front of her, donning sunglasses to cut down the glare.
they stood on the bank of a stream. There were reeds, berry bushes, and other water plants all around them, most turning brown and beginning to shed their leaves. The setting sun gilded the top of every ripple in the stream, creating a glorious array of dancing lights. The sky was full of the colors of the sunset, the clouds seeming to glow in an ever-moving kaleidoscope of hues.
“Do you like it?” Avery asked. Brooke whirled around to face her, beaming from ear to ear.
“I love it!” Brooke said. “I can’t wait to paint it!”
“That was the idea, yeah,” Avery said, leaning down over the rushes to their left. “Check out what I got for us.” Brooke turned and saw that she was holding a full length canoe. In one hand. Avery swung the canoe around carefully, never letting it waver an inch, then set it down gently into the water, making sure to keep one end in the mud so it wouldn’t float away. Brooke was at her wits end trying to figure out how Avery performed such impossible feats of strength. But, then again, Brooke had been chronically ill years before she even hit puberty. In some ways, all able-bodied peers often seemed to Brooke to have superhuman physical abilities. This was probably just that. Right?
“I don’t know how to row a canoe,” Brooke said.
“Don’t worry about it, that’s what I’m here for,” Avery replied.
“Not to go out with me?”
“That too, but also to provide the dumb muscle while you capture this vista in a work of art.”
“You are muscular,” Brooke said. “But you’re hardly dumb. You’re smarter than me.”
“Maybe at memorizing facts and math and stuff, but I don’t have a creative bone in my body.” Avery got Brooke’s bag from her motorcycle where it was parked about 20 feet away from the riverbank, and deposited it in the boat. She stepped down into it and it wobbled precariously. Brooke eyed it warily. “I got you.” Avery held out a steadying hand. Brooke took it and as Avery’s jacket hitched up a couple inches she saw dark black lines of tattoos peeking out from her wrist.
Brooke sat down on the bench at the nearer end of the canoe. If she tried to move more than a few inches, she was certain she would tip the boat over within 5 minutes. Avery leaned past her to push them off from the bank and Brooke was captured in the intoxicating scent of Avery’s perfume. She closed her eyes and imagined she was in the middle of a rainforest, willing the scant inches between them to evaporate. Then Avery leaned back and she was back in her own body. Avery rowed them out into the middle of the stream with swift, powerful strokes. Brooke watched the scenery drift by, the setting sun glittering off of the water in a thousand ripples of warm evening light, the silver-gold precursor to golden hour. Alex was going to be so jealous when she told him about it later. Whenever she next saw him. He hadn’t come back to the dorm the night before, and Brooke assumed he was somewhere hooking up with Rachel. It wasn’t unusual for him to disappear for a bit, especially when he was seeing someone new.
“This is such a beautiful place, it makes me want to paint,” Brooke said, smiling at the beauty all around her, fingers flexing in her lap.
“That’s what the art supplies are for,” said the beauty in front of her, flashing her a dazzling smile.
“Oh, yeah,” Brooke had almost forgotten why they were there. She was so lost in the moment. Brooke reached into the bag at her feet and pulled out her sketchbook, a mechanical pencil stuck in the spiral binding, and her oil pastel palette. She set the sketchpad on her lap. Straightening up to get a better view, she shivered. There was a chill breeze coming off the water. In retrospect she might have assumed that Avery would take her somewhere outdoors again and dressed warmer, but she had been picturing dinner in a restaurant, and worn a thin button-down blouse that did nothing to block out the cold. Why had she left thepleather jacket back at Avery’s bike?Avery must have seen because Brooke felt the boat still and when she looked over at her date, she was shrugging off her own pleather jacket and handing it to Brooke. She took it gratefully and slipped it on. It was at least a size too large and she had to push up the sleeves to free her hands, but it held all of Avery’s warmth, and smelled like her. Brooke felt like she was in a warm cocoon.
“Thanks,” she said, sighing contentedly. “But won’t you be cold?” Avery shook her head with a small chuckle. Brooke eyed her thin tank top. She saw for the first time that Avery’s arms were both covered wrist to shoulder in dark black tattoos. They were full sleeves, using bold, sharp strokes to depict an intricate pattern, the meaning of which eluded Brooke. But they somehow fit with Avery’s personality, at least, in a way. “I love your tattoos.”
“Thanks.” Brooke watched Avery’s muscles flex under the tattoos as she resumed rowing. “Do you have any? Tattoos, I mean.”
“Not yet, but I’m always thinking of the ones I want to get at some point. It’s a lot of fun thinking up designs and locations.”
“I know what you mean. I’d love to get a couple someday. I mean a couple more.” The ripples of light reflected onto Avery’s tanned skin, making her tattoos appear to move. Brooke picked up her sketchpad and began to draw. The longer she looked, the more Avery’s tattoos seemed to take shape. Brooke saw a wolf amongst the crisscrossing lines of intricate pictograms, then another, and a tree, and several human figures.
“What do your sleeves mean?” Brooke asked. Avery’s strokes faltered and for the first time, Brooke realized that she had been paddling them up stream. Her strength was astonishing.
“They-,“ Avery started, fumbling for words. “I guess you could say I inherited them. From my dad.”
“He had the same tattoos?”
“Yeah.” Avery looked away, her strokes increasing in frequency.
“I’m so sorry,” Brooke said, reaching out a hand and laying it comfortingly on the inky warm skin of Avery’s wrist. She stopped rowing and looked into Brooke’s eyes. The boat started to slowly drift back the way they’d come, the current turning it in a slow circle.
“It’s alright,” Avery said. “I still have Joseph, and my… grandma, Serena.”
“Still, it must be so hard for you to handle going to school, running your family business, and looking after your little brother without your parents. My mom has her flaws, but I doubt I would be here without her. I can’t imagine losing both parents and having to look after Ethan, too. He’s only 14 but already a bit of a handful.”
“Just wait a couple years.” Avery’s chuckle faded as her brows drew together. “Seriously, though, it is hard,” Avery said. She turned her head to the side, gazing off into the distance.
“How was practice earlier?” Brooke asked, picking up her pastels and starting to sketch.
“Not too bad, I guess,” Avery said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “They asked me to be vicecaptain again.”
“And you turned them down again?”
She felt compelled to capture the way the light shone on Avery’s perfect profile as she stared off across the water, contemplating how to respond.
“I did, yeah. I kind of feel bad because there are girls on the team who’d kill to be aske, but I really just…” She trailed off.
“Don’t need the added responsibility?”
“Exactly,” Avery sighed, relieved. “I mean it’s not like I want to go pro or anything. I like soccer fine but the only reason I joined the team is the academic scholarship that comes with it. I sometimes wish I was less noticeable. I’d love to just hangout in the background, serve my 4 years and disappear back into obscurity.”
“I get that.” The portrait seemed to take shape on its own. Brooke’s process felt effortless. Her fingers knew where the next stroke was supposed to go without her brain’s guidance.
“You really do, don’t you?” Avery stared into Brooke’s eyes, wondering.
“I try.” Brooke dropped the pastel she was holding, a small tap as it hit the sketchpad in her lap. Avery leaned across the space between them, cupping her cheek in her hand she planted a long, lingering kiss on Brooke’s lips. They kept their eyes open, each seeing their own reflected back, green and gold.
As she filled in the background, adding finishing touches, Brooke realized it was one of the best pieces she’d ever done. Avery took up most of the page, framed by the sunset and water behind her, a wash of pastel colors that couldn’t possibly compete with the gorgeous woman in front of them. Grabbing the black she’d set aside when she finished the hair, Brooke used bold, expressive strokes to sketch in Avery’s tattoos, the trail of spiky figures trailing off down her upper arm to fade into the bottom right hand corner of the page.
“Done,” Brooke said. Avery’s attention snapped back to her. Brooke held up the sketchpad and turned it towards her. “What do you think?” Avery’s mouth fell open, then drew up into a smirk.
“I meant for you to draw the scenery, not me,” Avery said with a chuckle.
“Well,” Brooke shrugged, “You brought me to a beautiful place, and I drew the most beautiful thing here,” She pulled her sketchpad back, turning it so she could once more admire her work. So she was completely caught off guard when Avery leaned across the boat and kissed her deeply. Brooke let the sketchpad fall into the bottom of the boat, running her hands up the soft, warm skin of Avery’s arms, the muscles flexing deliciously under her fingers. Brooke wanted nothing more than to bask in the heat of Avery’s embrace, but her pain was starting to get in the way. The sun was now low in the sky to the southwest, out from behind the clouds. It was one of those rare evenings where the sun seems to grow ever brighter as it’s setting. The bright golden light reflected off of every ripple until it was all Brooke could see, even when she closed her eyes.
“I’m getting tired,” she said. Which wasn’t untrue. “Can we head back now?”
“Of course,” Avery said. She leaned back, letting even more light assault Brooke’s retinas, picked the oars back up and began to row.
Now that she was working with the current, the boat cut through the water like a knife. Brooke held her hands around her brows, each beam of light a white hot needle stabbing in through her eyes and ricocheting around inside her skull. Less than 5 minutes later, Avery dropped one of her oars, reached out, and snagged a rope fixed to a pole on the shore where they’d started out from. The current pulled them out further until the rope sprang taught and Avery’s grip was all that kept them from floating away. And yet still she showed no strain, no fatigue. With apparent effortlessness, Avery pulled on the rope, hand over hand, until Brooke felt the thud of impact as, with one final massive tug, the bottom of the canoe stuck in the soft mud of the stream bank.
Avery helped her out of the boat and onto the motorcycle and drove her quickly back to campus. Brooke was getting more comfortable with the motorcycle, in general, but in this moment, her chronic illnesses weren’t having it. When she climbed off, her legs were shaky, her head was pounding, and there were white spots creeping in at the edges of her vision. Brooke wasn’t sure she would make it all the way to her dorm. Her head felt simultaneously light and full of molten lead. Avery was saying something, but she was having trouble concentrating on the words. She felt her eyes roll back in her head and everything went black.
**********
Brooke awoke in her own bed, warm and safe. She groaned aloud, her limbs heavy with fatigue, her head throbbing with the beginnings of a bad migraine. In a flash, there was a dark figure leaning over her bed. For a split second she was panicked, but then her eyes adjusted to the dark, and she recognized Avery.
“Are you okay?” Avery asked, her voice filled with worry.
“Did I faint?” Brooke asked, ignoring the question.
“Yeah, are you okay?” Avery pressed. “Maybe I should take you to a doctor.” Her dark brows were furrowed in concern. Brooke smiled slightly at the mental image of Avery catching her as she fainted and gallantly carrying her all the way back to the dorm. Her strength really was astonishing. She resolved to paint the scene later on. She was touched that Avery had stayed there for what might have been hours waiting for her to wake up.
“No, really, I’m okay,” Brooke responded, filtering the pain and fatigue out of her voice as much as she could. Right then she felt like shutting her brain off and sleeping for several days. “I’m just tired.” She yawned, punctuating her words.
“Are you sure?” Avery asked, still sounding worried. “Has this happened before?”
“Yeah, I just need some sleep,” Brooke assured her. “I promise I’ll be fine.” It was a struggle not to yawn through her words. She didn’t want Avery to see her in such an unattractive state, at least not yet.
“Oh, okay, I guess I’ll leave you to it then,” Avery said, sounding dejected. She leaned down and kissed Brooke lightly on the lips, like she was afraid of breaking her. “I’ll see you in class tomorrow?”
“Yeah, see you then. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, love.”
Brooke sighed as Avery left the dorm room, locking the door behind her. It would not be a good night.