e l e v e n

*

The sun is setting, sinking lower beyond the dusty mountains that glow a warm orange in the dying light of the day. I feel the same glow in the pit of my stomach, spreading throughout my body as I float in the lazy river. I’ve only had one beer, and I drank it on a full stomach, but it’s been a few weeks since I had a drink so its effects are already kicking in. The knots in my brain are loosening, aided by the gentle lapping of the water, and the leftover heat warms my cheeks.

This, I think, is what people mean when they talk about bliss. Right here. This moment. Floating in an iconic river six thousand miles from home, surrounded by new friends and the gentle strumming of Sam’s guitar. He’s perched on a rock, his feet in the water, playing his own medley of country songs as we chat and float.

Young-mi and Arjun are both on their second can of Bud. Carrie went the extra mile and bought a few canned gin and tonics, and even a plastic glass. The twins are on the shore with Adedayo, soaking up the last of the sun. The light may be fading, but the heat will stick around. The desert sand holds the warmth. So does the air.

It may be nearly ten o’clock at night, but I’m not remotely cold even with most of my body submerged. Next to me, Young-mi is idly treading water while lying on her back, jet black hair floating around her like a sombre halo. Every now and then it grazes my shoulder and makes me jump, because every time I forget it’s her hair and assume it’s an Arizonian river creature tickling me.

“I think I will stay here forever,” she says as she floats near me.

“Mmm. Me too. Shall we just let the river carry us?” She smiles and I call out, “Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah, bud?” He keeps playing the guitar, only halting his singing to respond.

“Where does this river end up?”

“Sea of Cortez, my friend!” he calls back. “If you floated all the way down this here river, you’d drift through Mexico and into the Gulf of California. Except you’d probably die on the way, so if you did reach the end, it’d be as a corpse.”

“Way to ruin the mood!” Arjun laughs. He sounds distant, then I feel the swish of the water as he slowly makes his way over. I look up, splashing when I lose my floating balance, to see that he has three cans in his hands. “Fancy another?”

I nod and watch as he cracks it open and puts it in my hand. I take a long, appreciative sip. It’s still relatively cool thanks to Young-mi’s genius idea to keep it in the river, and I relish in the sensation of the bubbles sliding down my throat. My muscles are loose and relaxed and all I care about right now is this. Basking in this moment, with Arjun floating next to me and Young-mi bobbing around on my other side.

I’m so full after our cookout, a mish-mash of everyone’s favourite camping food, that it’s a wonder I don’t sink. I stuffed myself on tender, juicy chicken and a pasta salad that Klara – I think – made, as well as a vegetarian hot dog courtesy of Brannan. After we’d somehow managed to polish off everything savoury, Carrie stuffed chocolate into bananas that she then wrapped in foil to cook over the fire.
Plus a beer, and soon a second one.

Maybe it’s the bubbles keeping me afloat. Maybe I’m buoyed by bliss.
Arjun drifts past me as I look over and I can’t help but notice the dark hair on his stomach that trails down below the waistband of his trunks. I tear my eyes away only to meet his gaze, and I clock his slightly raised eyebrows; the slightest quirk of his lips. He lifts his beer and taps it against mine.

“Cheers,” he says. I swallow hard and try to tame my blush. At least my cheeks are already red from my drink. Alcohol always gives me warm cheeks, and it pulls down my guard, which has never been particularly high anyway.

“Cheers,” I say, almost choking on the word when it gets lodged on the sudden awkward lump in my throat. The heat in my cheeks increases, and spreads.

"What'd I miss?" he asks, lazily paddling when he lies back.

"Not much," Young-mi says. "Just floating, and dreaming."

"Mmm. Sounds good to me," Arjun says. "What're you dreaming about?"

You, I think. And I scold myself for thinking, and then I scold myself for overthinking and not actually saying anything.

"Just ... everything," I say at last, after a long sip that cools my throat. My answer is not cool. "Marvelling over this place; thinking about the rest of the trip."

He hums his agreement and drifts on his back, his foot grazing my calf when he bumps against me.

"This place is pretty fucking incredible," he says. "I still can't quite believe I'm here." He swigs his beer and gasps, a happy little sound. One of his hands brushes my waist and goosebumps erupt all over my body.

No, no, no. This is bad.

I am incapacitated by the sudden crush of a crush and for a few minutes, I'm glad that no-one feels the need to talk because my mind's operating on one track at the moment. My focus slips from trying not to sink or float away - which should be effortless, I know, but not for me - and my hand flies out when I get a noseful of water.

And a fistful of Arjun. My fingers clutch his elbow until I right myself and find equilibrium and he laughs.

"You ok there?"

"I blame the beer," I say with an awkward laugh, and I take a few desperate mouthfuls.

Arjun grins and winks and kicks his feet in the water, heading over to the shore where the twins are lying out.
Fuck. Maybe it’s just the alcohol, but ... his grin, his wink, his body, his laugh. The memory of his hug; the way he smells in the morning. It’s all so intoxicating and it’s stirring something in me that I’d really rather stayed unstirred right now. I probably shouldn’t finish this beer if one alone is enough to unlock feelings I shouldn’t be feeling, but I think I need it.

I down the rest of the can. Young-mi looks over.

“Are you getting another?” she asks, and I wasn’t going to but we bought a twelve-pack and this might be the only place I can actually drink without some kind of punishment from a campsite or a cop.

“Yeah. You want one?”

She nods and gives me a thumbs up and I do the world’s laziest breast stroke over to the shore, but Arjun’s sitting in the shallows with the rest of the beers and I can’t get out. Not if I don’t want everyone to see my state of semi-confusion. So I float in the slightly deeper water, thankful for the looseness of my trunks, and I hold up my empty can and shake it, like a total arsehole. Arjun laughs.

“After a top-up, m’lord?” he asks, beckoning for me to throw the can. I do. He catches it with ease, even though my throw goes wide, and even that gets in my head.

“One for Young-mi too,” I say. He throws two cans and I don’t catch either. Not even remotely close. They splash into the river, spraying my face with water. It makes him laugh again, which churns my stomach in way that could be good if it wasn’t so fucking inappropriate.

I’m supposed to be grieving the bang-crash-wallop explosion that was the end of my relationship with George. I shouldn’t be so attracted to Arjun. It’s just the beer talking, I tell myself, though another part of my brain knows that’s bollocks. I crack open my third can anyway, once I save it from bobbing down the river to Mexico, and swim over to Young-mi.

“Are you ok?” she asks.

Shit. Is it that obvious? Is Arjun looking at me right now knowing that my red cheeks are for him? I nod. “Fine, yeah. Fine. Why?”

“You can’t catch,” she says, grinning. “Are you drunk?”

Oh. I let out a quiet, relieved laugh.

“Oh, no. No, I don’t think so. I just can’t catch anyway.” I wave my hands around, spilling a slosh of beer, and say, “I have really bad coordination. It takes enough effort to not trip over my own feet, let alone catch stuff while swimming.”

But maybe I’m a little drunk. Like, barely tipsy. It feels nice, as though my brain is being separated from all the crap I’ve been fixating on for the past month. Right now, George and everything he did feels like a memory, something that happened in a past life. Arjun feels like something present, something happening right now, and-

No, I need to stop thinking about Arjun. I banish him from my thoughts and brighten my smile at Young-mi.

"What’re you most excited for?” I ask, hoping my eagerness doesn’t come off as suspicious. Young-mi seems unfazed. She kicks underwater until she’s floating on her back, moving her arms in slow circles.

“Grand Canyon, I think,” she says. “It seems so ... big. I can’t imagine how big. I need to see with my own eyes, not a photograph.” She lets the current take her for a moment, drifting downstream until she takes control and lazily swims back to me. “And you?”

“I really don’t know,” I say. It’s the truth. I don’t know what I’m most excited for, whether it’s the awe-inspiring sights at Yosemite or the crater drop of the Grand Canyon, or the Golden Gate City. I know it’s definitely not Las Vegas, but that’s only because I’m too young to do anything the city’s famous for. Except we’ll be staying in a proper hotel room there, which will probably be a nice break from the tent.

But I can’t wait for tonight, to bed down under the stars on the edge of the river. I think, right now, that’s what I’m looking forward to most.

*

Eventually, the water is too cool for me to float in it any longer. My fingers and toes are waterlogged prunes, my whole body shrivelled after nearly two hours of lounging in the river, and the sun is long gone. The sky is a dark, hazy shade of midnight blue, almost indistinguishable from the mountains that overshadow the river, but it’s still hot enough that I’m glad we’re not in a tent tonight.

Speaking of which ... the lack of a tent means that we’re not restrained to bedding down with our tent mates, but as I unroll my sleeping mat right up against the rail that separates me from the river, Arjun comes over with his stuff.

“Hey,” he says, so nonchalant as he arranges his mat just a metre from me.

The others are spread out along this bank just above the river, while Sam has strung up a hammock between two buildings that he’s now rocking in with his guitar. I wish he’d just keep playing all night, the gentle soundtrack to a night on the river.

“Hi,” I say, watching as he unrolls one of the thin foam mats and drops down a pillow. He sits down, taking out his contacts.

“Fucking stunning,” he says when he lies down. My stupid tipsy heart soars as though it was never broken, then crash lands when I realise that of course he’s talking about the view.

“I know, right?” I say, maintaining my composure.  “Who needs a tent when we’ve got the sky as our canvas?”

“Deep,” Arjun says. It’s not deep. It barely even makes sense.

I notice the slight looseness of his smile. He’s tipsy too. At least I’m not the only one. If I say something stupid, we can blame it on the alcohol. He’s lying on his back, hands folded over his stomach, and he lets out a long, happy sigh as he stares at the stars, the sky unmarred by the fog of light pollution. It’s crisp and dark and clear and it baffles me that this is the same sky everyone sees.

“How well can you see without your contacts?” I ask, my eyes on his and his eyes on the sky.

He holds up a hand, shakes it. “Eh. Ish. Enough,” he says, and he turns to face me. He doesn’t just roll his cheek against his pillow; he fully moves onto his side and he’s staring at me but I don’t know what he can see and I don’t know what enough is.

“I can see you,” he says, as though he heard my inner thoughts, and he smiles. “You’re an indistinct, blurry blob, but I can see that there’s a person lying about”—he holds out his hand, reaching for me, and his fingers brush my wrist—“a metre away. I can’t make out your features.”

Ok, that’s good. He can’t see that my cheeks are the deepest shade of red they can be, that I can’t tear my eyes from him, that I desperately need to readjust my shorts. I think georgegeorgegeorge because if I’m sad then I won’t be so turned on, but right now, that doesn’t work because right now, George is distant.

“I don’t need to see you to know that you have freckles and that your eyes are the colour of ... old pennies,” Arjun says, and my hand instinctively goes to my cheek.

Even if he could see right now, he wouldn’t be able to see my freckles. They disappear the moment I blush, and I blush hard when the guy I’ve just realised I’m attracted to is talking about my freckles and the shade of my eyes.

I can’t tell if he’s tipsy or flirting or both and it’s doing something crazy to my chest, which is achingly tight, and half of my brain is screeching at me to just lunge forward and kiss him and see what happens. But the other half isn’t as much of an impulsive idiot, so I dig my nails into my palms and roll onto my front.

Arjun smiles that loose, gorgeous smile and says, “God, this is perfect. There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

“Me neither,” I say, swallowing hard.
I’ve never felt this before. The crushing, painful power of attraction. With Lily, I knew I liked her and we got on well and I found her insanely gorgeous, so I asked her out. It felt easy and right, and I never questioned it.

With George, it was more of a gradual thing. We were best friends; we were together all the time. One time he kissed me, out of nowhere, and I was confused but I liked it. The next time he came over, he kissed me again. He touched me. It was all new. My feelings grew slowly, like the unfurling of petals from a bud, until I loved him with every sense.

This is like a fucking freight train has pulverised me.

Arjun drops onto his front and wraps one arm under his pillow, and I can make out the shadow of his abs when his t-shirt lifts and fuck.

“Night, March,” he says, his voice all sleepy.

“Night, Arjun,” I manage to stutter out.

He drifts off, and I am wide awake and totally sober.

*

I hope you liked this chapter! This was one of my absolute favourites to write! Below is a collage of photos from my night of camping on the Colorado River, one of a ton of highlights on this trip! Photos can't possibly do it justice, but it was phenomenal to sleep under the stars, right by the river!