Free Stay Until We Break by Mercy Brown Page B

myself from laughing anyway.
    “I’m not high enough for wherever this conversation is headed,” Travis says. He takes another hit from the joint and tosses the keys our way. “Cole, take the van, all right?”
    “Take the van where?” I ask, and okay, now I’m definitely high.
    Travis and Emmy laugh even harder. Cole picks the keys up from the floor and pulls me to my feet. He looks high but his hand in my hand is solid and sure as we walk to the barn door and he opens it onto the warm, starry night. When he looks down and sees I’m barefoot, he crouches down and says, “Hop on.”
    “Like, on your back?”
    “Yeah,” he says. “C’mon, cowgirl.”
    I climb onto his back and he stands up and hooks his arms under my legs and I giggle like a kid because I’m high as hell and it strikes me as hilarious to be riding him like a cowgirl while we’re on an actual farm.
    “Wait, wait, I forgot the yellow bag,” I say after the door closes behind us.
    “What, you need aspirin already?” he teases me. “Are you trying to tell me you have a headache?”
    “No, no, but what about the condoms?”
    “Oh,” he says as he walks in the direction of the van. “Don’t worry about that.”
    “But . . . I’m not on the pill or anything.”
    “Well,” he says, and I can’t tell if he coughs, chokes, or clears his throat. “That’s good to know.”
    “So what are we going to do about protection?”
    “Sonia, honey. I’m not going to fuck you in the back of Steady Beth.”
    “You’re not?” I say.
    “Don’t you think it’s a little fast?”
    “Well I thought we’d make out first,” I say. “I can give you a blow job, but I’m a little out of practice.”
    “Oh my God, Sunny,” he says. “Did you put that on the tour schedule or something? ‘Blow Cole: Monday, four a.m.’”
    “Are you normally the kind of guy who takes it slow? You have a reputation, you know. Ask Joey. Or anyone.”
    “Yeah, well, you’re not some girl I can just fuck in the back of the van, okay?”
    “Hey, I’ve done it in a van before,” I say. “I’m no van virgin.”
    “What?” He stops walking and tries to look at me over his shoulder. “When?”
    “Last summer.”
    “Who with?”
    “Um . . .”
    “Who was it?”
    “It was Hank,” I say, as much as I don’t want to be thinking about the social debacle
that
hookup was right now. “But just that one time.”
    “Not Hank Hanley. Red Hank?”
    “Yeah, at the Brighton Bar.”
    “Hank Hanley fucked you in the Betty Ford? He couldn’t just wait until he got you home?”
    “God, please don’t tell him I told you that. It wasn’t that great and I didn’t even come.”
    “Well now, that’s pretty tragic.”
    “Pretty typical, though. At least as far as my track record with guys goes.”
    “Okay, now that really is tragic,” he says. “We’ll have to fix that.”
    Oh, hell yeah.
    Cole opens the driver-side door and I climb in. The van is stuffy so I put down the windows and decide to turn the radio on. Hank Williams sings softly into the night and it seems right so I leave it.
    “Meet you in the back,” Cole says and hits the locks.
    I scramble over the console, onto the bench seat, and open the side door for him. All the quiet sounds of a deep country night mingle with “I Saw the Light.” A lonely cow, crickets, all amplified by my growing buzz. Cole leaves the door open so there’s a little bit more breeze, and I’m grinning so hard when he sits next to me on the bench my mouth hurts. I feel completely absurd and I laugh.
    “You’re baked,” he says. “Well done.”
    “Sorry,” I say, not sorry at all. “But it’s your fault, you know.”
    “Yeah, I know.” He grins as he leans over me, trapping me against the van window. “I take full responsibility for your actions tonight.”
    “That’s good to know.” My breath comes quick and shallow as he kisses the corner of my mouth. “Because I might find myself in a pretty