Once we were both up at the top of the hill, I looked all the way down the tracks and could see the red stoplight start to flash.
“Quick!” I said, then I reached into my pocket and grabbed two pennies, handed him one, set mine down on the train track, and motioned for him to do the same. He lay his next to mine.
“Is this legal?”
“No. But we do it anyways. Come on, we need to get down from here fast before the train gets here!” I said. Just then, the rusted metal track began to rattle, and I looked up to see the headlights in the distance. “Go!” I yelled and gave him a light shove. He took off down the hill, sliding clumsily, with me right behind him.
At the bottom of the hill, I grabbed his hand and pulled him behind the trunk of the largest pine tree that I could find, and I pushed him up against it.
“You know you’re crazy, right?” he said, with a smile. Before I could reply, he grabbed my face and kissed me passionately. Our mouths both opened slightly, and our tongues crashed into each other, tangling as the oncoming train got closer. Its whistle blew loudly as Chris’s hands held me tightly. The vibration of the passing train coursed through my body as he kissed me in the pines of my past. Car after car chugged by on the tracks as our bodies held tightly against each other. As the last car finally passed and the tracks were finally still, I pulled away from him, and he frowned playfully.
“This is the fun part, come on,” I said, as I walked back towards the tracks, Chris following close. I climbed back up the gravel slope with my heart still beating fast from his hands on my body. When I got to the top, I dropped to my hands and knees and started searching for the pennies that we had laid on the tracks. “They’re here, it just always takes me a minute to find them, they never go too far,” I said, as I searched the dimly lit railroad ties below the faint yellow light arched high over the tracks.
“How can you even see anything?” he asked, as he crouched down next to me to help me search.
“Here!” I said, as I held up both pennies that had landed side by side in the middle of the railroad ties.
“Okay, I’m impressed that you found those,” he said as I handed him one of the pennies to inspect. “Wow! This is so flat and shiny! Cool!” he said, as he looked up at me. “You’re full of surprises. Dance with me?” he asked, as he stood back up and held out his hand.
Still crouching down, I looked back up at him like he was insane. “I guess I should warn you that I’m a terrible dancer. It’s not too late to back out of taking me to Homecoming,” but he just shook his head.
“Nice try, Superstar,” he said, as he waited with his outstretched hand. I took it, and he pulled me to my feet.
“We don’t have any music,” I said as he pulled me in close and then spun me away. We moved around the train tracks haphazardly, then I spun myself out of his arms. I stepped up on the metal rail and walked along it, arms extended out like a balance beam. As I looked down the tracks, it occurred to me that I had never been down far enough to see where the train disappeared around the bend.
“Allie,” I heard Chris say from behind me. I stopped, stepped down from the rail, and turned back to him.
“Yeah?” I asked as he came closer. He reached his arm around the small of my back and pulled me in to him, his body pressed up against mine. “You’re incredible.” He said, looking down at me. His mouth was close enough for me to feel his breath upon my lips. As I looked back up at him, I was speechless at the light of the full moon trapped in his eyes. It was still difficult for me to understand why someone as hot as him wanted to be with someone like me. I decided not to jinx it by asking. Instead, I leaned in and kissed him.
We stood there on the train tracks, kissing softly among the lightning bugs as they flickered all around us in the dark. The world stood still with nobody else around, and the tracks would be quiet until the train passed through again at 4:00 am. These train tracks were once a happy place from my childhood, the memories now stained. I wanted this new moment to last forever. Sharing these tracks with Chris was healing. It gave me the chance to see them in a new light, even if they were as dim as I remembered from so many years ago. Someone really needed to change that bulb.
“I guess we’d better head back,” I said. “I don’t want to get in trouble with my Mom.”
“Okay, let’s go,” he said, as he grabbed my hand and helped me back down the loose gravel.
As we walked out of the pine trees, I felt a shift in my unresolved feelings about this place. I felt a sense of peace. I had let Chris into a space that I had always held sacred, and I hoped this was a sign that I was learning to break the pattern of pushing people away.
We made our way back across the air strip towards the three-board fence that led back to my house, and as we walked, I wondered if Chris had learned to love the silence, or if he wondered whether I was still doubting everything about us. I reached my other hand across my body and gently squeezed his arm, which held my hand as we walked. He looked down at me, and I leaned my head onto his shoulder. My head bumped slightly against him as we walked, but he didn’t seem to mind.
When we got back to my driveway, I let go of his hand, stopped for a moment, and reached for the knot of his hoodie around my waist to untie it. The temperature had dropped, and I was starting to get cold. His hands met mine and rested gently on top of them to stop me.
“I’ll do it,” he said, as he pulled my hand away and slowly untied the loose knot at my hips. As the sleeves loosened, his fingers gripped the fabric, and his thumbs traced the bones of my hips. He bent over slightly and reached around me to catch the rest of the hoodie before he fell to the ground.
When he stood back up, he opened the body of the hoodie and invited me to dive into it. As he pulled it down over my head, I scrunched my nose. My hair was still caught inside, so he ran his fingertips behind my ear, then slid his hands behind my neck and pulled my hair out to let it fall down loosely onto my chest.
“Mmm,” he said. “Seeing you in my hoodie is such a turn on, I can’t explain it.”
I pulled the sleeves down past my fingertips, then bowled into him with a hug. He wasn’t expecting my sudden arms around him. He laughed, and we rocked back and forth in the driveway by his truck until I realized it was probably getting late.
“Thanks for coming with me tonight,” I said, then I reached into my pocket and held out the flattened pennies in my hand.
“Thanks for trusting me enough to show me a place so important to you,” he said, then he looked at the pennies, picked one up, kissed it, and put it back in my hand. “That one’s yours.”
I followed suit. I picked the other penny up, kissed it, and handed it to him. He clutched it tight, put it in his pocket, and then leaned in for one last kiss before climbing into his truck.
“Goodnight,” he said.
“Goodnight.”
