Ivy

Departing

I wanted to hold this moment in for as long as I could, the moment of possibility, of calm, of perfection. The moment of anticipation and of conclusion; the confluence of the past and the unknowable future in this moment, and the feeling of power knowing that I was fully in charge.

A few short days ago I’d been awkwardly trying to get in her pants—literally—and now I was a different person.

I pressed against her. I needed no guidance.

I balanced myself with one hand and guided myself in, fully intending to go slowly—the pine needles were slippery, and I slid forward, entering her as I caught my balance.

Ivy’s hands pressed up against my chest, keeping me from falling any further. There was a look of bemusement in her eyes. “Forest will get you, cart boy.”

The forest had gotten me; I could feel a needle stabbed into my palm. I wasn’t going to stop and remove it, though. “I can work through adversity.”

“I know.” She relaxed her press against my chest, still holding up her hands in case I hadn’t gotten my footing back.

I pushed forward again, this time managing the slow pace I’d intended, one steady stroke until I bottomed out inside her, then pulled back out. My dick felt colder against the outside air—not that I intended to leave it outside for any longer than I had to.

Shifting around and arching my back let me kiss her, and we locked our lips as I began to thrust again, this time working into a steady rhythm, something I could keep up for the duration.

The fur on her legs caressed my thighs and tickled my stomach every time I pulled back. She ran a hand down my back, down to my butt, then traced along my spine, her nails a feather-touch against my skin.

It wasn’t a good position for extra contact—I couldn’t play with her breasts or any other part of her—but that was better for concentration, better for intimacy.

She ran her hand up my neck, around the back of an ear, and then combed her fingers through my hair as I shifted around on the pine needles, trying and failing to find a position where there wasn’t at least one trying to stab my legs.

And she was on the bottom, she was on a whole carpet of them, while I only had a few points of contact.

I didn’t want to stop, but I had to; I knew she was tough but I didn’t want to hurt her. “The needles aren’t a problem, are they?”

“I’ll have a few scrapes on my back, but that’s nothing new.”

“Are you sure?”

As a response, she wrapped her legs around mine and pulled herself back onto my cock.

That was all the encouragement I needed. I leaned down and kissed her nipples, ran my hand across her breasts—leaving a streaks of dirt and a couple pine needles behind.

Those were little things, things to be unconcerned about. As I got back in position, she released her legs, slowly sliding herself off her pole, letting me push forward again.

She grabbed on to my back and pulled me down against her. I hesitated, not wanting to have her support my weight, even though I knew she could. It felt wrong, and yet as we made full contact it was worth it.

I kept my pace, and she thrust her hips up every time I bottomed, forcing me in as deep as possible while also clenching her muscles around my dick. I could feel her breasts pressing against my chest, and I could feel all her abdominal muscles flex every time.

•••

Earlier, when she’d given me the option between sex and the woods she must have expected I’d pick sex, or else I was doing a really good job—I felt her tense under me, felt her breathing quicken, and I slowed my pace, taking long, languid strokes, driving deep inside her with each thrust.

Her hands clenched on my back, her fingernails digging into my skin. I held myself in as she squeezed around me, as her muscles went slack, and I gave her a moment to recover before starting anew.

This was the last time, and I was going to make it last as long as I could.

•••

When I’d finished, I didn’t pull out; I kept myself inside her and rested on her chest. We were both slick with sweat, and she was breathing almost as hard as I was. She’d had at least three orgasms, maybe more—towards the end I lost count.

I didn’t want to break contact, but we couldn’t just lie here forever, and it would be undignified for her to have to push me off. Still, I could feel the last twitches of her vaginal muscles around my cock. If I somehow rallied, I could just pick up where I’d left off.

But it was not to be; I felt my dick slip out of her and drop to the carpet of pine needles.

That was enough of a hint that it was time to dismount her. I rolled off to the side, noticed that I’d gathered a few pine needles on my dick, and then I rested my hand on her stomach and the two of us lay there, watching the sky through the branches of the tree.

“You know,” I began.

“Yeah?” Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper.

“I almost hope your neighbor was watching.”

Ivy smacked my temple with her hand and rolled on her side to face me. “Would have been a good show.” She traced her finger along my stomach, then down to my cock and started picking off pine needles.

•••

For once, Ivy was almost chatty as we walked back to the cabin. Maybe that was because I was right behind her, picking needles out of her hair. Or maybe it was because she had orders to pass on and not much time left to do it.

“I’ll set the stuff I’m taking back by the door, and you can carry it to the Jeep. Start by taking the tarp off. Use the bungees to hang it from the rafters next to the Diamond T so it can dry off. If you think you’re going to be hungry on the ride back, I might be able to find something you can snack on in the Jeep. Spam, maybe.”

“By itself?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d rather go hungry.”

“We won’t pass by any raspberry thickets on our way back to the house, or else you could grab a handful of berries to tide you over.” She sighed as I scratched at her scalp. “Maybe we’ll have time to stop at a gas station or something, depends on traffic. All the weekenders are gonna be headed back south, sometimes it’s really bad. Rain might have scared some of them off.”

“Well, if you need to, you can just ditch me at a truck stop, rather than drive me home. Not like I have to get to work in the morning.”

“I do that, and lot lizards would get you.”

“I wouldn’t—” I began, and Ivy snorted.

“Go on, tell me how you wouldn’t get in a truck with a girl who lures you with the promise of sex?”

I sighed. “Okay, yeah I would.”

•••

Removing the top from the Jeep was easy enough, even if I did manage to drench myself in rainwater. I should have realized that it would pool between the rollbar and windshield. Not that it mattered, I’d dry off soon enough..

I wadded it up and grabbed as many bungee cords as I could, then went into the shed. One last look at the Diamond T as I hung the tarp up—I ran a hand over the faded fender and the rust-pitted headlight housing, then I went back for the rest of the bungees. Ivy hadn’t told me what to do with the ones I didn’t use to hang up the tarp, so I hooked them in the grommets on the bottom. Then I closed the shed door for the final time and walked back outside.

It irked me that the wood bunker wasn’t completely full, but there was nothing to be done about that. Not unless she left me behind up here.

A weekend wasn’t long enough. But the weekend was all we had.

She might have trusted me enough to leave me up here alone, but I had no illusions about surviving that week. There would be whatever food she had in the cabin, and that would be it. The odds of me managing to shoot a squirrel were low, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to butcher it. I could recognize raspberries and blackberries and cattails and that was all the wild-growing food I knew I could eat.

What might I have learned in a week? A month? I hadn’t come up here to learn to be a woodsman, to learn how to live off the land, and yet I’d started down that path.

Ivy had left the door of the cabin open, and I walked in. She said she was going to set the stuff she was taking back by the door, and I’d imagined piles of things, but there weren’t. There was the cooler, and there was an Army surplus duffel bag.

And there were our clothes.

That was one trip of carrying if I was creative. I’d expected more, I’d been conditioned by other trips as a Boy Scout where we took what felt like tons of gear. Why would she have lots of gear with her? Her cabin was equipped, after all, and she didn’t have to pack a change of clothes.

I stacked our clothes on top of the duffle bag, put it on the cooler, and picked it up. Ivy had left her bra on top of the clothes pile, no doubt to tease me. On Friday, it might have worked; now I knew that the bra was for a different Ivy, the Ivy who had to fit into our civilization.

At some point we were going to have to get dressed again, and just thinking of it felt weird.

How much more would she bring for a week-long stay? Not much; there might be more food in the cooler, she might bring some extra ammo as well. A few items she’d have to stock every now and then: extra propane cylinders, toothpaste, a new toothbrush every year. Occasional repair parts, some laundry going back and forth . . . once everything got set up, she’d hardly need anything at all.

Was her city home as spartan? Or was it crammed with the usual knick-knacks that most people had? I didn’t see her taking comfort in stuff, but who knew?

How simply could I live? Did I really need all my things?

•••

The two of us walked through the cabin together as she shut down and secured everything for the week.

“It’s easier since I don’t have many amenities,” Ivy said. “Don’t have to worry about a storm bringing down a power line or a mouse chewing through wires and burning the place down. No pipes to freeze in the winter or propane to leak.”

‘What about animals getting in? Or people—they could break a window.”

“Most burglars aren’t gonna drive or walk down a fire access road to get to a cabin,” she said. “They’d have to be locals to even know it’s here, and if they were locals, they’d know not to fuck with me.” She ushered me out the front door and closed it behind her. Instead of a normal lock or deadbolt, she just used a hasp and padlock.

It felt like a tomb slamming shut. An official sign that the weekend was over.

•••

We still weren’t wearing clothes as we got into her Jeep. I knew it would still be a while before we got to a real road, and as much as I didn’t want to get arrested for indecent exposure, I also wasn’t going to suggest that we put on our clothes any sooner than we had to. When it was time, it was time. Until then, we could hold on to the last vestiges of the weekend, of the freedom that it offered.

As she reached for the ignition key, I had a moment’s hope that the Jeep wouldn't start, that we could extend our weekend until it was fixed. Instead, it happily rumbled to life—it was old, but of course Ivy would make sure it was reliable.

She let it warm up for a minute before releasing the parking brake and shifting it into gear.

As much fun as it was to watch Ivy drive–especially on rough roads–I instead watched her cabin fading in the rearview mirror. Would I ever see it again? Would I ever see her again?

I hoped the answer was yes, but even if it wasn't, this was a weekend I'd remember for the rest of my life.

Her drive curved around just before reaching the fire access road and when she made the turn her cabin vanished from sight.

I heard her sigh–Ivy obviously wanted to stay at her cabin, too.

•••

I had the honor of manning the gate. She stopped just past it and shifted into neutral, and I hopped out before she asked. I slipped the unlocked padlock off—upon close inspection, there was no chance it could have worked; while the body of the lock still looked clean, the lock cylinder was filled with rust.

She’d said that most people wouldn’t investigate an apparently-locked access gate, but I wondered if a practical consideration had also been at play. If the lock seized shut, she couldn't get her Jeep on the property, either; being exposed to the weather, there was a good chance if it didn’t rust shut, it would freeze shut in the wintertime.

Ivy pulled past as soon as I’d pushed the gate open, and then waited until I swung it shut. I hooked the lock back in position and twisted it so it would look secure, then walked to the Jeep and got back in my seat. I was still fastening my seatbelt as she let out the clutch.

She didn’t stop at the end of her drive, since there was almost no chance of cross traffic.

“Gonna keep it slow,” Ivy said. “Rain sometimes washes out sections of the road, leaves deep puddles. Could be trees or branches we have to deal with, too, just like on the way in.’

Her driveway wasn’t much better than the fire road, at least at initial appearance. There’d been some puddles and some soft spots, but nothing I wouldn’t have taken my car across. Still, while I would have dismissed her concerns before heading up north, now I knew better. Trees across the road hadn’t ever been something I’d worried about or seen before, and now I had.

Just the same, the puddles didn’t seem that bad until we caught the first one on my side. Some of the muddy water got past the fender and splashed me, soaking my arm and some of my chest.

“That’s more of being one with nature than I prefer.”

“The price of topless freedom is that sometimes you get wet. Be glad leeches don’t live in puddles.”

“I wouldn’t think that much does, not unless it’s a puddle that stays around for awhile.” I focused on Ivy’s jiggling boobs as the Jeep bounced across a small washout. “I wonder how leeches get from one lake to another one, anyway?”

“Might be carried by a host they’ve bitten,” she said. “Or their eggs might get carried. Maybe on the legs of a wading bird, like a heron. Or else they can swim to new lakes during a flood. That swamp behind my cabin? Some springs after the snow melts it’s a lot bigger and a lot deeper. The cabin is high enough it probably won’t ever flood the main floor, but I could see the basement and outhouse getting a few inches of standing water if it was a really snowy winter and a rainy spring. If that happens, I’ll haul a boat up here. Tour my property in a different way.”

•••

Besides the puddles, the road was littered with leaves and small branches, but nothing large enough that we had to stop and haul it away. Ivy tried to keep clear of both the branches and puddles when she could.

In hindsight, it was unsurprising that some animals also used the road. I saw a cluster of deer which ran off into the woods as we got close. And—to my amusement—a hawk bathing in a puddle. We were almost on top of him before he grudgingly took flight, his wingspan seemingly as wide as the Jeep.

“I had no idea.” I craned my neck up to watch as he flew overheat. “‘I’ve never seen one up close. Those are huge.”

“Wait until you see a bald eagle up close,” Ivy said. “There’s one who sometimes takes prey behind my cabin—it’s easier for her to find prey where there aren’t a whole bunch of trees around.

“You’ll see turkeys and turkey buzzards, those are big, too. Been turkey hunting up here a couple of times when they’re in season. Good eating.”

“Buzzards?” Westerns had put an image in my head, and they didn’t look attractive or edible.

“Normal turkeys. I suppose you could eat a turkey buzzard, but I bet they taste awful. Lots of animals do, sometimes no matter how you prepare them. Like, skunks aren’t all that hard to shoot if you see one—they’re not very fast—but even if you’re careful cleaning them, they taste . . . skunky. I’d take one if I had to in a survival situation, but not if I could find anything else to eat.”

“But you do know what they taste like.”

“Sure, it’s smart to know what you’re capable of when you’re not in a situation where you have to.”

•••

To an extent, I’d already prepared myself for the end of the road. Unless she was feeling really ballsy, we’d get dressed before we got back to main roads—especially since it was a lot easier to get undressed while driving than to get dressed. I was sure she could pull on a shirt while in motion, maybe even a bra, but there was no way she’d be able to get into her shorts or panties.

So when Ivy clutched in and shifted into neutral on a short uphill, I wasn’t surprised. I’d known it was coming.

The Jeep coasted to a stop almost at the crest of the hill, and she set the parking brake. “Gonna unlock the hubs and then we’ve got to put our clothes back on."

“I don’t want to.”

Ivy turned and looked at me, a bemused grin on her face. “Can’t get enough of my tits?”

Her left hand rested on the steering wheel, her right lightly gripped the shifter. She was relaxed in her seat, at home in the Jeep as she was in the woods—at home in the Jeep because she was in the woods, the sun dappling her bare skin, highlighting her fur, contrasting her with the forest beyond. If she’d been a photograph in a Playboy or a MetArt gallery, I would have enjoyed it, admired it, but I wouldn’t have appreciated it in the way I now did.

This was her element, this was her place, something I fully understood now. By putting her clothes back on, it felt like she was hiding her true self, and I didn’t want her to have to. She deserved to be her, rather than wearing a disguise.

“I don’t want to. I don’t want to go back,” I said. “Putting my clothes back on means that the weekend’s really over, and we have to put, uh—”

“The shackles of society.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re learning, cart boy.” Ivy grabbed the roll bar and pivoted out of her seat. “Hop off, stretch your legs, get one last moment of enjoyment before we have to begin our return to civilization.”

I couldn’t pivot out of my seat as gracefully as she did, but it didn’t matter. Ivy was right. We could enjoy the last moments of proper freedom we had.

We stood in the road and looked around at the woods and both of us thought our own thoughts until Ivy stretched, walked around to the front of the Jeep, bent down, and unlocked the hubs.

The two of us got dressed, both forgoing our underwear. We didn’t need all of the trappings of civilization, after all.

Ivy got back in the Jeep and with one last rueful look at the woods, I did, too.

•••

The fire road didn’t have a stop sign where it teed into the dirt road—why would it?

Ivy kept her speed down; this road wasn’t much better than the fire road to her cabin. Wider, but only marginally smoother.

It also still had puddles in the low spots, so she kept the Jeep in the center of the road except when a car coming the other way wanted to pass.

There was a stop sign when we finally reached the pavement, along with muddy tire tracks. Most people leaving this dirt road headed east, as did we.

Memories came back as we neared the lake, how I’d been fumbling in her shorts. It felt like so long ago, I felt like I’d been a different person.

Fields and farms flashed by, barely even registering. I wanted to ask Ivy if I could come back again, but thought that if I asked now it would sound desperate. Then I started to think that if I couldn’t at least make some conversation, that would be a sign I’d just been interested in the sex and wanted more.

That second part was true; I would love to hook up with Ivy again. We’d long since moved beyond simple tomfoolery; another highway handy wouldn’t satisfy me or her.

I couldn’t explain what the woods meant, though. I didn’t know how to explain what they’d awoken inside me, nor could I fully separate that with my feelings for Ivy. Both were complicated, and it was too easy to take the obvious route, that I was horny and she was hot, and I would have done everything I did just to please her, just to get in her nonexistent pants.

That had been undeniably true in the beginning, but at some point during the weekend it had changed and I hadn’t realized it, not until later. I’d started to enjoy the other things, I’d started to want them just as much or—dare I say—even more.

If she asked me if I wanted to go see a movie or dig post holes, I think I would have chosen post holes. If she asked me if I wanted to go out to Outback for a steak dinner and a bloomin’ onion, or go into the forest and see what we could forage, I’d have picked the latter, and I didn’t think it was just because it was what I thought she would want, but it was what I would want, too.

I reached over and rested my hand on her thigh, just below her shorts.

There was a lot I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t have the vocabulary.

She took a hand off the wheel and put it on mine, squeezed it—I think she knew.

•••

Even if I’d finally found the words, I couldn’t have spoken them—as soon as we merged onto 131, that was effectively it for meaningful conversation. The wind noise ensured it. There was nothing to do but look at the scenery and quell my fears about being crushed by a semi or some weekend warrior in a giant SUV or motorhome.

Strangely enough, the thought of it didn’t bother me any more. Nature would do the same if she had the chance.

Even though I’d only been up this way once, and I’d been distracted by her, I could still broadly replay the route in reverse. It would be forests with occasional signs of human habitation, a few billboards, sparse exit signs, and then as we got more south, there’d be more fields than trees, more houses and billboards and fast-food restaurants, and sooner than I wanted to, we’d be coming up on Grand Rapids.

I put my foot outside on the running board and grabbed on to the rollbar and watched nature zip by at 60 miles an hour.

The Jeep didn’t like expansion joints or hot-patch; unlike a modern car that would smooth out irregularities in the road, the Jeep kind of hurtled across them.

Just like the Jeep, Ivy wasn’t made for the road, for all the trappings of modernity. It was necessary, though.

Wasn’t it?

What did my job provide? Low wages, no respect, enough pay to afford food, a shared apartment, and a crappy car. Assuming Mark hadn’t had that towed when I quit.

I figured he probably hadn’t: his laziness would have overcome his pettiness. Besides, he didn’t know what I drove, and he would have assumed that I’d have driven it home after I quit.

On the one hand, I did have the assurance that I could easily get a similar job, and that my jobs couldn’t be outsourced, not unless someone invented a robot to hang up drill bits and wrangle carts—but I didn’t want to be a cart boy forever.

•••

By the time Ivy turned into the parking lot, the store was closed. It was always weird seeing it empty: a purposeless field of asphalt, big lights on big bases illuminating nothing. Just like the lighting display inside—hundreds of fixtures meant to impress in their shiny emptiness.

My car was right where I’d left it. Ivy pulled up right alongside, set the parking brake, then turned back to get my underwear out of the duffle bag.

It would have been funny if she’d wanted to keep them for a trophy.

I’d had time to think of what I was going to say when the moment came. I hadn’t been expecting to be holding my underwear in my hand, but so be it.

“You want my number? For the next time you need post holes dug?”

She tapped her fingers on the gearshift, then nodded, slid her phone out of her pocket, and punched in the number as I gave it to her.

She hadn’t asked my name. I was certain that my contact name was ‘cart boy.’

I was also certain that she would never call me.