Dizzy Hurricane

I’m sure I’ve had more uncomfortable car rides in my life, but at that moment it certainly didn’t feel like it.

I swallowed, the sound easily audible with only the radio’s low hum and the muffled rumble of the engine in the background, and attempted for what must have been the thirtieth time to make conversation. “So, did you like Jeanie’s?”

I caught his shrug out of the corner of my eye. “Yeah. I told you, I love ice cream.”

“Yeah, but their ice cream is amazing,” I enunciated. What, a guy can’t be passionate about his frozen dairy products?

“And yeah, it was good.” I took my eyes off the road for a brief moment to glance over to the passenger side, just time to catch his smirk before he turned away to look out the window.

I sighed and returned my gaze to the road.

Yeah, definitely uncomfortable.

Then again, I don’t know what I expected. The fact that he was still in high school was enough to put some degree of tension on almost any situation between the two of us, and the ginger’s personality wasn’t helping matters. I’d only been around him for a few weeks now, and I’d already noticed that merely Alan’s presence had the mystical power to make almost any social situation awkward as fuck within a matter of minutes. I’d be impressed, if I wasn’t so busy being insanely attracted to him.

Why I thought taking him out alone would be a good idea, I don’t know. The date had basically been a string of broken conversation, all colored by varying degrees of awkwardness, and punctuated by the speed-walked journeys from shop to shop as we tried to entertain ourselves in the city on a rainy night. By the end, we’d run out of things to say about the weather, and Alan’s hair had turned from a dazzling, sunset-lit gold, to a messy tangle of deep caramel by the rain.

I tried to think optimistically. This was definitely far from the worst first date I’d been on; there hadn’t been any major catastrophes, unless you counted a spilled drink, and that situation was quickly remedied by the rain. Not to mention that there were a few things that I couldn’t get off of my mind that might make it better. I wondered if Alan was ready for the evening to be over. I hoped not. I certainly wasn’t.

“Are you warming up?” My voice was soft and croaky. I kinda wished the night hadn’t been washed in rain. Kind of.

“A little,” he mumbled. Almost without thinking I reached over to touch his bare arm. His skin still felt cool and slightly sticky. I wanted to warm him up.

I kept my eyes trained on the windshield, which was merely being misted compared to the drowning we’d received when we’d been outside earlier. Go figure. “Do you wanna go home yet, or . . . ?”

“What else are we gonna do?”

“Um,” I ran my fingers, which still rested lightly on Alan’s arm, down to his hand to interlock it with mine. “I don’t know . . . find a place to be alone . . . loiter a bit . . .” Loiter? God, I never usually had such a problem stating what I wanted. This kid was fucking cursed or something.

There was only a moment of hesitation, time enough for a billion droplets of rainwater to fleck the car, and then, “Okay. Yeah, sure.”

“I mean, we don’t have to,” I backtracked quickly.

“No, we—we should.” Alan led our linked hands to his thigh, and I can’t deny that my heart sped up just a tad when he untangled his fingers from mine, leaving my hand to its own devices, slightly damp black denim warming under the heat of my palm.

“Where should we go?” he asked, reaching up to brush a strand of not-even-remotely-dry hair from his eyes.

I whipped my gaze back to the road in front of me. “Are your parents home?”

“What do you think?” I could feel his eyes rolling at me and I grimaced, already regretting bringing up the topic of Alan’s mom and dad, or should I say his wardens. You should have seen their faces when a college kid showed up on their front porch to pick up their son, despite the fact that it’s a mere two-year age difference between us.

“Well we can’t go to my place either,” I mused. “Phil probably has people over, he usually does on Fridays . . .”

I trailed off, as though waiting for Alan to provide some immediate, simple solution. When all I got was, “Hmm,” a few moments later, I had to repress another sigh.
Looks like it would be up to me to figure something out.

-

When we pulled into the parking lot of the abandoned Walmart five minutes later, I noticed Alan hunched his shoulders in an almost self-defensive manner, like he was beginning to curl in on himself. I rubbed his leg soothingly, having kept it there consistently throughout the drive, only removing it when I needed to adjust the heat or windshield wiper settings. He seemed nervous.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked, sure enough, as I parked the car discreetly in the shadows to the side of the building. “Like, what if cops drive by and see us?”

“They won’t.”

There was a pause in the conversation after that. I began to feel Alan’s tension leaking over to me as I hesitated to turn the car off, dreading the utter silence that would engulf us when we no longer had the purr of the engine and the whooshing air vents and the soft murmur of the radio to fill in the gaps. The rain had quieted almost completely; we were about to be on our own.

I turned the key and yanked it out before I could lose my nerve. Alan’s gaze drilled into me as I unbuckled my seatbelt and stuffed the keys into my pocket, and when I turned back to face him he quickly looked away, staring at the black world outside the windshield.

After another strained moment, he said, so quietly his voice was almost a whisper, “It’s kind of spooky here at night.”

I grinned. “You think?”

He gave a little nod. “I’ve never been here at night. They should really light the streetlamps, don’t you think? It’s just, like . . .” He pursed his lips as his eyes searched the darkness. “An endless void out there.”

I watched as he looked down at his lap, having said his piece. I could barely see him—as he said, it was really pitch-dark out here in the abandoned parking lot at ten p.m.—but I was still somehow suddenly awed by how beautiful he was. I was content to stop for a second and admire him. He looked like an old black-and-white photograph, just a work of art composed in blacks and grays, until a car drove by and flashed us with its headlights, illuminating his brilliant hair for just a brief moment before it was gone again. I could hear distant motors and car horns under the sounds of our breathing.

I’d moved my hand off his leg to put the car in park but now replaced it, rubbing up and down the length of his thigh lightly, comfortingly, before moving my touch up his arm and finally down to grasp his hand. I grinned a little. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from the scaaary parking lot.”

I could catch a hint of a smile on his face from the light we received from the stars and moon and nearby commercial fluorescents, and without even thinking about it I leaned over and pressed my lips to his.

I’ll admit I felt a little nervous as I moved my lips softly, gradually. He and I had never kissed before, although we’d been talking and flirting for a while now. I could feel him shivering under my touch, from the cold or the nerves or a mixture of both I don’t know. I didn’t move my hand from his, not yet, just caressed his hand gently with my thumb as we both got used this feeling.

It wasn’t too long before I felt his tongue prodding forward and I opened my mouth to accommodate, at the same time automatically leaning forward to wrap my arm around him and hold him to me as much as I could. This space was awkward. The center console sat resolutely as a barrier between Alan and myself, a real frustration when suddenly all I wanted was to be as close to the younger man as possible. I could tell it was bothering him too as he tried to push forward more.

It meant something different now when I ran my hand down to his thigh. I actually felt him try to maneuver his leg a little bit over the hunk of plastic between our seats, just a bit, just an unconscious move.

“Hey Alan,” I said between kisses.

“Mm?” His tongue flickered over mine.

I whispered against his mouth, “You wanna move to the backseat?”

“Yeah,” he agreed quickly. He reached over to his door to unlock it and open it up. Meanwhile I shuffled between the two front seats and began shimmying my tall frame over the center console to reach the back.

When Alan reentered the car, shutting and locking the door behind him, he stared at me with a half-exasperated, half-amused expression as I pulled the rest of my body into the back area of the car and took a moment to readjust my position on the seat.

“You are so weird,” he said, an underlying laugh slipping into the comment.

I wrinkled my nose at him before taking the side of his face in my hand and kissing him again, this time quicker, the heat returning to our mouths immediately and pushing us closer together than ever. We took full advantage of the space the backseat had to offer; Alan’s leg began to shyly nudge itself onto my lap, so I hooked my hand around the back of his knee and pulled it over, guiding him onto me. I heard the pace of his breathing change, felt his fingers knot in my shirt, the weight of anticipation heavy in the air as our tongues mingled and my thumbs circled his hipbones fascinatedly.

He might’ve realized then that he was pushing his hips down into mine ever so slightly, just enough friction to drive me wild, because he broke the kiss to bury his face in my neck and catch his breath. He didn’t stop the movement down below; I could feel quick breaths tickling my skin as I rolled my hips up against him as encouragement. His weight felt perfect and the smell of the rain was seeping through the cracks into the car to mix with our own scents, a smell like sweaty shower water and soap, like those cement stalls at camp where naked preteens rinse the grime from their bodies concealed only by plastic curtains. Sometimes dirt and mud and sweat are okay. Sometimes they make us realize how human we are.

“Hey Austin?” Alan breathed somewhere below my ear.

“Yeah?”

He pulled back to look at me, and from this angle I couldn’t make out hardly any details of his face but somehow I could sense his tense expression. “I’ve never, like. . .” he croaked, shaking his head in tiny, rapid movements.

“It’s okay.” I pressed our foreheads together. “We’ll do whatever you want.”

That seemed to be enough to comfort him. He leaned forward and resumed where he’d left off, kissing me fervently and grinding our hips together but now the movements were more certain, forceful, needy. I met each of his thrusts with my own, wanting more, unable to get enough. I ran my hands slowly up the backs of Alan’s thighs and when he didn’t stop me, I cupped his ass, attempting to pull him in and control his movements more.

I felt him grab one of my hands in his own and for a moment I thought I’d overstepped a boundary, until he guided it between his legs—one of the last things I expected.

“You sure?” I questioned in a low voice between planting kisses on his neck.

“Just—” He gulped. “Just like that.”

Understanding, I began rubbing him slowly through his jeans. I could feel how hard he was and I wanted so badly to touch him without these fabric barriers, but I did as he asked and tried my best to pleasure him like this. To my satisfaction it seemed to be working; he was still rocking forward gently into my touch, and when I asked, “Is that good?” after a few moments he answered in a thin whine.
With the darkness and all I couldn’t watch him, couldn’t make out the face he was making, so I had to make do with listening to his breathing and soft sounds to gauge his reactions to what I was doing; the rain had completely stopped a while ago so everything we did, every sound either of us made was enough to fill the car’s space. It was hot, so very, surprisingly hot. I soon realized that I was hard as fuck too, and I tried to grind up into him again but the angle was different now, more awkward.

Pushing aside my own need that I felt coiling in my middle, I shifted him off of me to make it easier to touch him. He sat back into the corner where the car door met the back of the seat, and continued to move his hips upward in tiny movements, faster and faster—

“Austin—” he panted. He pressed his hand down on mine urgently, his way of giving a warning, and a few seconds later he arched upwards and stayed like that as I felt a warm wetness seep through his jeans.

I pulled my hand away as he lay still against the seat, shaky breaths slowing to a steadier speed, one hand resting lightly on his chest. Eyes closed. Shirt ridden up to reveal a sliver of his small stomach. Again it was all so picturesque, it took my breath away. I briefly entertained the notion of capturing him in all his splendor using my phone’s camera, but had to dismiss it. That action would put at risk not only this perfect moment, but also his perception of me as being, you know, not a creep.
I shook my head just a little, my lips stretched into a slight smile. Who knew that this awkward, out of place, wallflower of a kid could be so strangely captivating?

I was knocked out of my thoughts by his hand on my arm and when I looked at him I was met with a soft smile. He sat up and, after taking a brief moment to look into my eyes, lunged forward and attached his lips to mine. I put my hand to the small of his back, holding him close, as the kiss deepened. The desire that had lain dormant as I’d tended to him now reared its head again, taking hold of me with a vengeance as Alan’s tongue probed my mouth and his hand gripped my bicep, and then slowly made its way underneath the collar of my jacket and down my chest and stomach . . .

I inhaled deeply when he placed his palm firmly over my bulging crotch and quickly moved to kiss his neck again while he rubbed the clothed area. My eyes snapped open as I distinctly felt him unzip my jeans.

“You don’t have to—” I began, but the sentence dropped off into a low moan as he took my arousal in his hand, pushing down my underwear to get better access. I was heavily turned on by just watching him get off by my hand before, and I was already aching for release as he stroked me slowly, experimentally, a little hesitantly like he’d never done this before. Maybe he hadn’t. That thought drove me all the wilder.

“I want to,” he said. At his words his hand moved a bit faster, surer, and my eyelids drooped as I was flooded with pleasure that crept up my back and through my stomach and made my heart stutter and made me forget how to breathe—it was good, very good, tensing tighter and tighter.

As I thought of Alan and the small sounds he’d made only minutes ago, suddenly the tension uncoiled and I was coming onto his hand with a hiss. I was quicker than I’d anticipated even with how hot my partner was, but I couldn’t care. It was amazing.

He let go of me and I smiled a bit as the last tremors shook me, pleased and content with Alan’s work. When I opened my eyes and looked at him, he hadn’t moved; he was holding out an upturned hand slightly in front of him with a bewildered look, and I realized that there was still something shiny on his skin.

“Oh!” I said. “Umm . . .” I groped around the floor of the car and extracted a small dishtowel from the collection of items littering the floor. “Just use this.”

“Thanks.”

While he was wiping off I reached up to scratch in his almost-dry mop of ginger hair. He might have paused for a moment, but didn’t look up as he finished cleaning up and tossed the towel back down behind the front seat.

He almost scoffed as I took the opportunity to wrap my arms around his middle. “What, we can’t cuddle now?” I exclaimed teasingly. “Jeez, I’m hurt, Alan. If I hadn’t driven your ass here you’d probably be out the door already!”

“Shut up,” he chided softly, giving in and leaning into my embrace.

We were quiet for a few minutes, watching the leftover drops of water from the rain earlier race each other down the car windows. Through the glass I could still only catch the vague planes of cement, scattered puddles here and there glimmering faintly in the moonlight.

“I kinda like this place without the streetlamps,” I observed, breaking the silence.

Alan nuzzled his face into my shoulder. “Do you?”

I nodded. “Mhm. It’s like . . . We’re hidden away.”

“Yeah.” His voice was barely more than a whisper. “I didn’t think about it like that. I guess I could get used to it. Maybe.”

I smiled and leaned down to bury my face in his hair, but before I could, he suddenly sat up straight, knocking his head into my chin and causing my jaw to shut with a snap.

“Ow!” I complained, my eyebrows knitting.

He turned to me sharply. “Fuck, Austin, what am I gonna do about my parents?”

“What?” I asked, rubbing my jaw.

He gestured to his crotch, pulling out his phone and shining the light on himself to clarify the situation. I looked and then I realized the problem; the wetness had seeped through his jeaned, darkening them in an embarrassingly obvious way.

“Tell them you pissed your pants,” I snickered. How had this managed to turn into something so innocent so fast?

I didn’t need the light to sense his death glare. “I’m serious. They’re gonna be waiting for me when I get home, there’s no way they’ll miss that!”

Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I wracked my brains for a solution. As ridiculous as the situation seemed, I knew that Alan wasn’t overreacting; his parents really would blow a fuse if their son came home with such an obvious giveaway that he’d gotten some. And then not only would Alan get the chewing out of his life, but I knew that I’d feel the repercussions as well, if only in the form of Alan being banned from seeing me again. And right now, sitting in the damp air of the car, fog still clearing from the windows, that wasn’t something that I wanted. Jeez, I thought that I’d be free from parental dictatorship once I was in college.

I sighed, scratching my head. He was still looking at me expectantly, clearly waiting for a brilliant solution. “I don’t know, Alan,” I said. “Maybe you can—”

But my sentence was cut short by the abrupt, demanding, and very loud torrent of rain that suddenly began lashing against the car, as if the very sky had opened up above us.

Alan and I stared at each other. The rain grew unbelievably stronger, like white noise pressing all around us. And then, simultaneously, we threw open the car doors and leapt out into the downpour.

There we stood, he and I, in the middle of an abandoned parking lot at night with the sky emptying itself over the city, like a scene from a post-apocalypse movie. I looked over at him there on the other side of the car; he had his arms spread out wide. Thunder rumbled overhead. He looked like he would let the storm take him away if he could.

I ran around the car and caught him in my arms. “Come on!” I shouted over the deafening rain, lifting him off his feet a few inches for a moment. “Let’s go jump in puddles!”

He laughed, his eyes shining. “Really?”

“Hang on.” I ran back around to the driver’s side of the car and opened the front seat door. Inserting the key and clicking it once, I turned to a random radio station, whichever one wasn’t full of static, and turned it up louder and louder until Mumford & Sons was blaring over the sound of the raindrops hitting the earth.

It was a stroke of genius—I don’t know how we would have danced in the rain had there been no music to keep us company and keep us moving. We grabbed hands and splashed into puddle after puddle, holding back nothing, unable to soak our clothes more than the rain already had in seconds, and then when we were sure we’d hit every puddle in the parking lot, we started all over again, even delving a bit into the earthy outskirts of the lot that had been rendered boggy by runoff.

Then we raced back to the car, the puddles and falling rain washing away any mud that had clung to us. As we came closer to the vehicle, the muffled, unrecognizable beats sharpened into sounds of another familiar top forty song, and without pause we both immediately started jumping like we were at a show, with the thunder clapping overhead as encouragement. Alan shouted the lyrics at the top of his lungs like he was trying to outshine the storm, and even though he was winded and off-key, he probably could.

The night and the storm seemed to last forever, but at the same time I never wanted them to end. The rest of the world has ceased to exist, all of humanity except for Alan and myself no longer mattered. The darkness stretched on endlessly around us, reinforcing the effect. Both his hands were slippery in my own as we continued to sing and jump, our movements sending even more water droplets flying around our feet, until the song ended and we ceased for a minute to rest. I caught his eye; he couldn’t stop grinning. The most genuine, beautiful smile I’d ever seen him wear.

“I love that song,” he shouted

The tinkling of a piano began flowing through the car’s speakers, and I mistakenly assumed we were done dancing—until Alan fell against me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders.

I never thought I would want to relive anything resembling high school prom, but now as everything seemed to soften, this was so obviously right. Slow dancing alone is so much sweeter, so gentle, and there was an air of silence and peace despite the unrelenting rain.

Closing my eyes, I wondered what Alan was thinking in that moment, whether he was as indescribably content as I was, whether he could taste the magic in the raindrops dripping from his lips. Tomorrow morning I would have trouble differentiating this dance from a dream, and even now reality was slipping away with the ease of a hallucinogenic trance, but if I was high on anything it was the smell of Alan’s hair and the feeling of his fingers curled on my shoulders. I wondered if Alan had ever done drugs before. I tightened my arms around him.

As the song came to a close, the radio DJ’s voice jumped in over the last gentle chords and Alan and I pulled apart just far enough to look into each other’s eyes. He looked like a cross between a rain god and a kitten who’d been fished out of a well. I couldn’t resist capturing his lips in a sweet kiss. I imagined that the sound of our heartbeats could hope to compete with the rumbling thunder overhead.

Our lips moved together slowly for a few moments. Then, without a word, we both climbed back into the car.

I had to turn down the radio a great deal in order for it to be a bearable ride, but when the sound had simmered back down to a low murmur and Alan’s fingers interlocked with mine on his leg, it was more than bearable. It was tonight’s home.

I couldn’t help but revel in the difference between the painfully uncomfortable ride to the parking lot, and this new, profound silence that we were now bathed in. The language of implications is often more powerful than that of the words we actually speak, and with Alan’s reserved nature this truth was even more evident; I found myself paying more attention to the emotional climate of the atmosphere between us than relying so heavily on dialogue. It wasn’t a bad thing; it wasn’t like walking on eggshells. It was just different than being around other people.

All the way back to Alan’s house I was so busy taking in the deep, sweet feeling that resided warmly over us now that I barely spared any attention for the act of driving, letting my reflexes do all the work for me, so when the white house rolled into view, painted silver by the moonlight, I was surprised. It hadn’t felt like a fifteen minute trip—then again, the passage of time in dreams is always erratic, so with this date’s overall whimsical quality maybe it wasn’t so bizarre.

I parked by the curb in front of the mailbox and killed the engine. “I’ll walk you to your door.”

Alan flipped his hair out of his eyes, sending flecks of water flying, and nodded. As I was reaching for my door handle, he suddenly put a hand on my arm to stop me. I looked over at him, my eyebrows raised slightly.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

His genuinely concerned and apprehensive manner surprised me—I could hardly believe that I could still make him nervous after all that had transpired tonight. Curious, I settled back into my seat and took his hand, gazing steadily into his eyes as I lightly said, “Shoot.”

“Is this— I mean, am I—” He gulped and glanced down, his light eyelashes brushing his cheek. When he looked at me again, the words spilled out of his mouth, as if he was afraid that if he didn’t say them now, he would lose his nerve. “Are you serious about me? Is every night going to be like tonight?”

He maintained steady eye contact through his questions, despite his voice’s waver and lowness. I stared back, unable to tell if his last question was supposed to reinforce his first one, or contradict it.
Finally, I answered. “No. Every night isn’t going to be like tonight. But,” I squeezed his hand reassuringly. “We can have an ‘every night,’ if you want an ‘every night.’”

His lips twisted into a smile at that and he nodded. “Okay.” He glanced behind him at the house, its porch lamps gleaming alertly. “We’d better have our goodbye kiss here,” he mumbled, still smiling a little. “My parents are probably watching the porch with binoculars.”

“As long as you don’t cum in your pants again from this,” I answered before sweeping forward and kissing him softly.

“You’re an asshole,” he said when we broke apart a few moments later, but his smile had bloomed into a full grin, revealing white teeth that shone like opals in the night. I grinned back at him cheekily and opened my car door.

“Lemme get yours too. Maybe mom and dad will think I’m a gentleman,” I suggested. He let me come around to his side of the car and open his door for him. “M’lady.”

“Never say that to me again,” he groaned as he grabbed his jacket from the backseat and clamored out of the car.

We ambled our way slowly up his short suburban driveway to his front door, putting off the inevitable goodbye that would effectively end our night of magic. Luckily on the drive here the storm had calmed once again to a gentle sprinkle, which we couldn’t mind in our hopelessly soaked state. The water had been our friend tonight. Neither of us could voice a complaint about it now.

On his stoop we stopped for a brief hug, during which Alan asked quietly, “So I’ll see you again sometime, then?”

“You definitely will. In fact,” I nuzzled my face into his hair, taking a last sniff of its sweet scent. “We can go get coffee tomorrow morning if you want.”

He stepped back, and my heart leapt when I saw him grinning ear to ear. He was so cute. “I’d love that.”

“Then it’s settled. I’ll see you then.”

“Okay. Bye, Austin.”

“Bye, Alan.”

We gave each other one last smile before I turned to head back to the car, listening to the front door opening and closing behind me. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could hear the faint voices of Mr. and Mrs. Ashby immediately beginning their interrogation, and I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t in Alan’s position.

When I climbed into the front seat, the car’s interior already seemed desolate and lonely. But this feeling of having someone to miss filled me with hope as I started the engine once again and began to drive slowly up the street.

I hadn’t been lying to Alan. I would see him again—tomorrow morning for coffee, I reminded myself—and that was more than enough to sustain me through the Alan-less night ahead. The excitement was already starting to make me buzz with electricity as I got on the highway back in the direction of my university. An adorable ginger, a Saturday morning filled with romance and laughter and peace and the smell of coffee—what wasn’t to look forward to?

As my drive home went on and the lights of the city rushed past my windows like shooting stars, I knew that I could only fold my hands dutifully and pray to whatever god or entity lingered above, silently watching over our little lives, that He would send more rain my way.

Notes