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This is a story about cousins reuniting after years apart, embarking on an intimate road trip together in the time of the Pandemic. There’s plenty of navel gazing (sorry), plenty of erotic content, and where it does get erotic, it tends to fall more on the side of explicit pornography.
This story is a work of fiction. The characters are fictitious and certainly not intended to represent any living person.
As this story takes place in the context of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I should note that actions taken, decisions made, or comments made with respect to the pandemic are expressions of the characters, and do not necessarily reflect my position.
I would like to add a special thanks to Demiurging for editing this story.
Enjoy!
***
Road Trip Cousins
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can hear you perfectly,” Nick replied, offering a cheerful smile at the camera. It wasn’t normal that his boss asked for a Zoom meeting. She trusted him to deal with the clients independently and had been more than happy with the results. But as irregular as this call was, he was sure there was no cause for concern. It was probably only a checkup.
She brushed her hair, frowning into the camera, checking her teeth.
“I can see you too,” he said.
Startled, her head straightened up and she laughed. “Oh! There you are. Sorry, still getting used to using this.”
He produced a cheerful smile. “No worries, I am too.”
Though he sat at his kitchen counter, he wore a clean business casual look, a crisp dress shirt, and a well-fitted linen jacket.
“Yes, I feel the same way. You know I thought this could work for me, you know, with the kids and all… but God do I need time away from the kids.” She laughed nervously. Her anxiety really showed through the camera. Intuition kicked in, telling him something was off. That this meeting wasn’t about good news. He straightened up and braced himself.
“How are you handling the lockdown, Nick? How’s Sarah?”
“Doing ok, all things considered. Sarah and I, well, we broke up last week.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that!”
“Don’t be. It was a long time coming. Guess the pandemic just sped up the process.”
He tried smiling.
“Yes…well either way, it’s not pleasant to be all cooped up by yourself. Are you getting outdoors when you can?”
Nick could hardly stifle a frown at the small talk. He wished she would just get to the point. She looked awfully nervous, and he noticed bags under her eyes that were never there before.
It was the height of summer and four months since the pandemic reached the US and since the start of “the shelter in place”. It didn’t affect him much, and in fact, he felt he was more productive working from home. It saved him from the dreary commute from his Oakland apartment. He was the project manager for a mid-sized publicity agency (they gave him a lofty title like creative director, but he knew better). It wasn’t exactly a dream job, but it paid well. The dream had always been to be a creative (his role models were comic book artists). This job was creative-adjacent, so close enough. Having entered the workforce right after the 2008 financial crisis, he had learned quickly to appreciate job stability. And this job, so far, was stable. The benefits were good, and the remote work since the start of the pandemic restrictions was not such a bad deal.
“I have some bad news, Nick.”
A toddler began crying behind her. She picked the child up and bounced him on her lap.
“We’re downsizing.”
Nick swallowed. “Ok…”
“I know it’s not what you want to hear. I didn’t want to hear it. I fought like hell to keep you, Nick, believe me… but we’re really trying to stay afloat. It wasn’t an easy decision.”
Nick slumped his shoulders. “I – I don’t understand. I’ve been at this company for -”
“I know…,” she sighed. Her face contorted into an expression of pained compassion, and she bounced the toddler more quickly on her lap. “Look you’ll still get a severance, and of course you can always come to me for a recommendation.”
The toddler started to pull on her loose bangs. She continued, “I wanted to be the first to tell you, Nick. I’m really sorry…”
Nick was stunned. “So just like that? What about…”
He stopped before pulling at the straws.
“Look, Maggie from HR will contact you shortly to set you up. Good luck Nick. And if you need anything from me, anything at all, don’t hesitate to shoot me an e-mail.”
With that, she hung up. For a few stunned minutes he stared at his computer screen. True to her word, a little window popped up for virtual meeting appointment with Maggie from HR. He let the notice disappear from his screen, and when it did, he went to his fridge for a beer. At least she had the courage to fire him herself.
Well into the afternoon, he drank himself into a numb state. He had never been fired before. This was in fact, his first and only job after college. bahis siteleri Of course, he never thought he would ever make a career out of it. He always fantasized about leaving, about dedicating more of his time to his art. But those were only ever fantasies – the sort that lingered at the edge of the mind and came in playfully during bouts of malaise. He was happy there. He was good at his job. He liked his co-workers and his boss. He could say the same about his girlfriend too. Nominally, they were in love and had created a vague idea of a comfortable, happy life together, and now she was gone. At the age of thirty-two, his cushy job and his girlfriend of five years had both left him. All in the span of a week.
After his fourth beer, he was ready to commit himself to this abrupt loneliness. He wasn’t ready yet to tell his mom or anyone else. It was a Friday night, and what he was ready for was a weekend withdrawn into his shell. But his phone buzzed, and a text message notification popped up from someone familiar. Someone he hadn’t talked to in years.
Hey! This is your cousin Alice! I’ll be swinging through SF for the weekend. Thought it’d be nice to meet up! That is… if you’re cool with meeting during this whole pandemic thing. Let me know what’s up! XOXO
That message cheered him up immeasurably. The last time he saw Alice was the summer of his rising sophomore year in college. She had just graduated from high school. Their families celebrated on a weekend camping trip to Avila beach, near San Luis Obispo. Their families often took camping trips together for as long as he remembered. That was the last time he saw her.
To the surprise of everyone in their tightly knit family, she had decided to go to a recruiter and signed up for Navy boot camp, then shaved her hair to a neat stubble to add a dramatic flair to making the announcement. She told them on that graduation trip that she signed up to be a Navy Corpsman. A sort of combat medic, she explained. Her mother bawled, then fainted.
He smiled as he looked at the message. He called the number. It rang twice and she picked up. He heard the loud droning of the highway in the background of the call. She was on the road.
“Hey Alice, holy crap has it been a while!”
“Heeey cuz, how are you?”
“Good. Really good, now that I’m hearing from you.”
“Aw. It’s good to talk. I missed your voice. Anyways, what do you think? Are you free this weekend to hang? Totally cool if you’re not comfortable with the whole quarantine thing. Just really wanted to hang out with my favorite cousin. I’m cool with wearing a mask and socially distancing and all that stuff.”
“I’m your only cousin, but yeah, come on over. Where are you staying by the way?”
“My van.”
He recollected hearing from his parents that after the Navy she had been tramping around the country in a camper van. That was years ago. Seems that she was still living that life.
“Stay with me tonight. Fresh shower and a guest bed. For as long as you want.”
“Look at you with the fancy guest bed. That’s an option.”
“When do you think you’ll get here?”
“Driving through Tracy now, so… less than an hour?”
“Great, I’ll text you my address.”
“Awesome, I’ll grab beers at the gas station! See you soon!”
This was a serendipitous and much needed cheer in his life. He and Alice were like siblings growing up. They were inseparable, despite being completely different. He remembered once believing, in the innocence of childhood, that they were destined to be together, just like his parents were together, and her parents were. Once even, they got married in a secret grove. His pet tortoise presided over their wedding.
They grew up almost neighbors in LA. He lived in Simi Valley, and she, only a few miles away in Thousand Oaks. Their families spent weekend camping trips together. Big Sur or Los Padres, and ski trips to Mammoth or Big Bear. He always looked forward to these weekend trips, where she, the rambunctious, and knobby-kneed girl with straws in her dirty blonde hair, would drag him away from his books by the hand to the most harrowing adventures she could think of – hopping rocks in the tidepools, climbing redwoods, searching for lost Spanish gold. He got his artistic chops drawing comics about their adventures together – She the adventuring heroine in the comics, he the hapless sidekick. She loved them, and for every one of her birthdays, from eight until eighteen, she had always demanded a comic book from him, and he had happily produced one.
In her adolescence, she graduated from knees and elbows, and awkward ears, to a confident, athletic girl with a honed rebellious edge. She wore ripped jeans, loathed summer dresses. She skateboarded and dyed her dirty-blonde hair a bleach blonde, or jet-black, or purple, or a variety of other colors in between. Nick, on the other hand, was the straight-A student, the comic book nerd, the cross-country runner and swim team swimmer, and his canlı bahis siteleri social circle consisted of the same. She was his foil, introducing him, on the weekends, to punk, ska, and weed to the scorn of their parents.
They talked about going off to college together, like how best friends would make plans to continue their antics after high school. So, he was surprised to learn that she wasn’t going to join him at UCLA, opting instead to join the Navy. When she made the announcement, it was like she had just announced she was in the late stages of an aggressive cancer. Her newly shaved head helped with the impression.
When their response came, it wasn’t supportive. Isn’t it dangerous? Will they make you go to the desert? It must be tough for a woman…
She walked away from the critique, disheartened, though not so shocked at being treated like a pariah. Nick found her that at sunset sitting alone on a driftwood log hidden in a secret cove they had always played in as kids. She smoked a cigarette and watched the full moon rising above the shimmering ocean with a pensive sadness. He sat next to her.
“I think it’s pretty badass that you’re joining the Navy.”
She smiled at him. Cigarette smoke wafted around them in the windless cove. He took the cigarette from her and took a drag. He smiled back at her, noticing how beautiful her face was, despite the shaved head and the reddened edges to her hazel eyes that came from recent tears.
“You know I’ll kill you if you get hurt out there.”
She laughed, bumped him with her shoulder and took the cigarette back. “Well, I’ll do my best not to get hurt then.”
“When do you start?”
“Next Thursday. Got a flight to Chicago for boot camp.”
“I’ll miss you,”
“I’ll miss you too.”
She put a hand atop his on the driftwood log. The tenderness of her touch jolted him. There was a nervous energy there. He looked up at her, gazed into her eyes, and saw a silver moonglow in them. That moment was the great divide between childhood and adulthood for her. It was a point of no return. The Alice on the other side was not going to be the same Alice. Nick’s internal voice screamed out at her: you’re making a mistake! Don’t do it!
Though he was confused, he knew better than to argue. She was stubborn, and a contrarian.
“Thanks for being on my side, Nick. It means a lot,” she said.
Her smile had disappeared. She took a drag of the cigarette, keeping her eyes fixed on his, studying his eyes, drawing him into her like a strong gravity. The waves beyond the cove crashed like a long peaceful roar. Like a distant, roaring lion in a twilight savanna. She swallowed uncertainly, snubbed the cigarette on the driftwood log and then kissed him on the lips. Her tongue found his. It tasted of cigarette smoke, and oranges. He kissed back. He held her face and closed his eyes. Her eyes were closed too. The world, even the sounds of the world, faded. Or they faded from the world and existed only for that kiss.
But then a shock came to him from the back of his mind. This is wrong. He flinched and pulled back and went to say something, but words didn’t come.
She blushed and winced. “Oh God. Don’t… I don’t know why I did that.”
He drew in closer and wrapped his arm around her and placed a kiss on her cheek.
“No sweat,” he said.
“You know, I’m kinda scared.”
“I’m kinda scared for you. I really will miss you. Make sure you call me.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “Yeah, I’ll call you.”
In silence, they watched the moon fall into the feathered clouds above the ocean.
For whatever reason, she never called. That night of the kiss was the last moment they shared. That kiss, he thought about a lot over the years, and despite the taboo that it represented, held onto it as a cherished memory.
***
In almost exactly an hour later, her cream orange VW bus announced its arrival with its gargling engine, and its squeaking leaf springs in the street below his apartment. She jumped out from the driver side of the van wearing a wide brim sunhat and a yellow summer dress. Nick smiled remembering how much she derided summer dresses. She had certainly changed.
He whistled, and she looked up and smiled a wide toothy smile when she spotted him and waved cheerily. “Hey, let me just get my suitcase, and I’ll be right up.”
“You need any help?”
“You just stay comfy.”
She grabbed a banged-up suitcase and a six pack of beer from the back of her van and went up the stairs to his apartment.
“Nick!” she screamed when she saw him at the door. She dropped her suitcase and went to hug him but stopped herself abruptly. Instead, remembering her obligation to social distancing, she offered her elbow. She had on a cotton mask, so he could only really recognize her by her hazel eyes.
Nick opened his arms up. “You wanted a hug. I’m cool with hugging,” he replied. Her eyes smiled and she came güvenilir bahis in for the hug.
“And you can take the mask off too… as long as you’re cool with it, I mean.”
She took the mask off, unveiling her delicate chin, and her small lips. She breathed in deeply. “Oh, it’s so hard to breathe with those things on. I don’t know if I can ever get used to them.”
“I won’t tell anyone, if you don’t,” he said.
“I’ve been so good about staying away from people… not that that’s a hard thing for me to do. Just don’t get me sick, or I’ll kill you!”
He was in awe with how she looked. She had the same soft face, the same smiling eyes. She didn’t look much older than he remembered, but more worldly. Her skin was a sun-kissed brown, and her hair reverted back to its original dirty-blonde, cut short in a pageboy style with bangs that came down to her brow. The yellow sundress hugged the shape of her trim body well. The tomboy inside her still shone through, but she was more feminine.
“Alice, so good to see you!”
“For real!”
He helped her with the suitcase and showed her the guest room and put the beers, Modelos, in the fridge, but not before grabbing two, tossing one to her.
“Cheers!” he said.
“Salud,” she responded with a wink.
They sat on the couch in the living room, where Nick had been wallowing in self-pity since the great Zoom firing.
“Time sure flies, doesn’t it,” Alice remarked.
“Yeah. Guess it does.
“You have a lot to catch me up on. So, tell me all about it. Tell me about the Navy. And everything else.”
She shrugged. “Definitely way more bullshit than I thought there’d be. But fun too. I mean, you know how I was – the punk girl who smoked way too much weed. What was I thinking joining the Navy, hah! But it was a fun ride anyways.”
“Looks like it didn’t beat the rebel out of you.”
“Weirdly no. I think the Navy kinda embraced that part of me. If anything, it made me more of a rebel. Anyways, after the Navy, I couldn’t ever imagine finding myself working at a desk job, slaving away for some corporate overlord for something I don’t believe in… No offense.”
“None taken. By the way, I’m not a corporate slave anymore.”
“No? Congrats dude!”
“Wasn’t by choice, but thanks anyways.”
“Ah shit… Was it the pandemic?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s what they say anyways. Next thing you know, they’ll beat earnings forecast then show off how awesome they were at weathering the pandemic at the next shareholder meeting.”
“Hmm… never considered it that way. Could be.”
“Did you like the job?”
“Yeah, it was alright.”
“Aww… sorry cuz… Anyways, I’m sure something else will pop up sooner than you think. You’re a smart guy. And you’re super talented. A guy like you doesn’t stay unemployed for long.”
“I appreciate the encouragement.”
“Well, I’m serious! By the way, what’s up with your girlfriend? You look like a cute couple!”
“We just broke up.”
“Ah! Really? When did that happen?”
“Last week.”
“Damn, you really can’t catch a break. Um, there’s plenty more fish in the sea. And look at you, getting a fresh start. How awesome is that?”
She tried her very best to put his plight in the best light. She was always like that. He loved that about her.
“And right in the middle of the pandemic.”
“Hey, we’re all in this together, yeah?”
“Yeah… well, you do awesome shit like spend all summer climbing in Yosemite. Or surfing in Hawaii. I’m…”
“You’re what?”
“I dunno… unemployed now. And lame.”
Alice scooted closer and gave her cousin a consoling squeeze. A familiar scent came off her. An intoxicating scent of oranges. In a way it was like the comforting scent of home, except it was Alice.
“You’re not lame. And you can do awesome shit too. You just gotta get yourself outta here, you know. Go see the world. You got savings?”
“Al. I know you’ve been off the grid, but in case you’ve been living under rock, you probably noticed that the world is locked down.”
“I have been living under a rock, but yeah, good point.”
Then Alice’s eyes brightened.
“Come with me?”
“What?”
“What do you mean, what? Come with me. On my road trip.”
“Didn’t know you were on a road trip.”
“I mean it’s all I’ve been doing.”
“Where are you going?”
“Costa Rica.”
Nick nearly choked on his beer. “No way. I can’t go to Costa Rica right now.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I -”
He stopped, realizing that the only excuse that he had was that he needed to find a new job, to replace the job he had just lost, and that, to Alice, that would sound preposterous. She picked up on this and retorted, “because you need to jump right back into the corporate rat race? Dude, you’re like thirty! You’re single. You got no kids. You got the rest of your life ahead of you. Go on an adventure! Take a risk!”
“I’m thirty-two. But yeah…” He sighed heavily. You make a good point.
“Hell yeah I make a good point!” She punched him playfully in the shoulder
“I can’t go to Costa Rica though. I don’t think you can go to Costa Rica either. Aren’t the borders all closed?”
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