029

Jon chuckled softly and smirked lopsidedly when the first notes of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah flooded the air inside the plum Chevy Cavalier while a green sign on the highway announced with white letters that they still had 140 miles to go before reaching Cleveland. Jon looked askance at June as he turned the volume up and she lifted her gaze from the edition of George Orwell’s 1984 she was holding with one hand while with the other she held a small flashlight. She was seated half cross legged on the passenger side, one leg tucked up underneath her, the other extended to the front under the dashboard. Her bare right foot rested only a few inches away from the driver’s seat. She threw him a brief but warm smile of appreciation before turning her gaze back to the book as she started humming softly to the soothing melody. She chuckled almost imperceptibly, in a rather intimate gesture.

“For the zillionth time, no, I don’t like him just because we share the last name”, she clarified with a faux-wary tone without removing her gaze from the book. Jon chuckled and shook his head slightly as his hand jumped from the wheel first to June’s bare foot, which was freezing cold and he started massaging until he felt it warm up. Afterwards, his hand rested on her ankle, under her jeans as they both silently enjoyed the melodious sound of the song.

They had been driving practically non-stop since they had left Detroit that Friday night, after having dinner when Jon had suddenly decided that he wanted to drive back home instead of having a jet arranged to take them back to New Jersey. Due to his job, Jon had come to regard travel as some kind of necessary evil, something to be endured once and again for the sake of his profession. He’d also been so busy the past half-decade with the tasks and responsibilities imposed on him - mostly by his own ego - and too content with the amount of earth surface he’d already covered in his short life to care about rediscovering the pleasures of traveling. This time, however, even though he possessed the means to arrange for a faster way that would allow him to be at his apartment at four o’clock of Saturday afternoon, - just in time to receive his children, who would be spending the rest of the weekend with him -, with every line that passed on the road, every mile they left behind, he became more and more satisfied with the decision he’d made. It all seemed so easy: driving, talking, the radio on. A random glance, a light comment, a smile, apparently meaningless gestures that his mind would usually brush aside instantly, were now experience, emotion and adventure. Secretly, he almost prayed that the morning would never come.

Every now and then he turned his head to admire June’s face, smooth and glowing under the flashlight light reflected on the white pages of the book, her lovely lips slightly parted as she read. Besides her beauty, however, there was that other side of her that had always fascinated Jon: how wise she was beyond her years, yet she almost never talked about her past. Curiosity usually took the best of Jon when he surprised her stranded in one of those silent moments when she seemed lost inside herself.

“You know…”, he spoke almost in a whisper over The Mama’s and the Papa’s Ain’t noboby else like you. “You never told me what happened with…what was his name? M-“

“Michael?”, June snapped her head up and frowned, “what about him?”, she asked, not without a considerable amount of bafflement, unconsciously hoping that the sole mention of his name sufficed as the entire explanation.

“Did he break your heart?”, he dared, no matter how much she denied it, or despite the fact that she’d admitted to never have fallen in love, it was evident to him that she had, at some point, been bruised and certainly disillusioned, and that this guy had something to do with it. Maybe she had just been “loved” by assholes.

“No…”, she denied, pursing her lips. “Not my heart…”, she looked up, insightful, “…maybe my pride…a little bit”, she smiled in spite of herself before turning her gaze back to her book.

They remained quiet for a while, but June finally spoke calmly, without taking her eyes from the pages of the book.

“Why do you ask me this now? Did John ever tell you anything?”, she inquired and turned a page.

“No”, Jon shrugged, “You know he’d never…”. He trailed off, thinking about the times he’d observed June and her brother and noticed that rare, invisible bond that he perfectly understood and felt blessed to be able to share with his own brothers.

“But I’m sure he talks about me…What does the moron say?”, her tone was light and playful and made a husky chortle escape past Jon’s lips.

“Of course he does, he adores you”, Jon said with a sincere tone and turned to look at June’s face, though the flashlight prevented him from looking into her eyes.

“Read some to me”, Jon asked once another song was over. “Co-pilot’s duty”, he cleared before she had a chance to reply and softly patted her thigh.

“Alright”, she said before sharply clearing her voice in an exaggerated gesture of preparing for an important speech. She squared her shoulders, straightened her back and slightly twisted her body so she could partially face Jon. She began reading aloud as he listened attentively, not without finding it peculiarly coincidental what the name of the character was.

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speak written corrections to the appropriate copy of The Times and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

Noticing his stare, she stopped and lifted her head up.

“What? Too boring?”, she asked softly with a smile, which he mirrored.

“No, no, just…go on”, he replied and turned his gaze back to the road, his incredibly perfect profile drawn by the green glow of the dashboard controls.

She continued her reading, but her mind drifted, and it wasn’t long before her mind was flooded by visions of the loneliness that would invade her after she left, not only because of this newly found dimension in their intimacy, but also because she genuinely enjoyed his company. She hoped that once on the other side of the continent and the ocean, her activities would keep her busy enough. And there it was again, rumbling deep in her womb the urgency he made her feel. Maybe if she had as much of him as she could get before she left, she wouldn’t miss him so much.

June abruptly interrupted herself and moved to lean her head on his shoulder. He instinctively wrapped his right arm around her in response while through the speakers, Bob Dylan sang Mr. Tambourine Man.

“How much further?”, she asked after filling her lungs with his exquisite smell. Concentrated on the book, she’d missed the road signs.

“6,7 hours, maybe”, he replied, “Tired?”.

“No…”, she began and slipped her hand from his knee up his thigh, “I was just thinking”.

“You were…thinking, huh?”, he knew that tone, “When you speak like that, you’re up to something…and it’s usually naughty”, he spoke from deep in his throat and craned his head to kiss her crown. His dick throbbed in the confines of his jeans. June chortled softly and lifted her head from Jon’s shoulder, then putting aside with one finger a strand of light brown hair that covered his ear, she softly kissed his earlobe, letting the tip of her tongue slip between her lips and caress the extremely sensitive spot. “You think you can hold on to those naughty thoughts until we get to Cleveland”, he asked, stifling a sideways smirk while his hand moved from her waist to her ass. He gave it a soft squeeze.

“I might”, she spoke seductively against his ear and rubbed his short sideburns with the top of her nose before placing a kiss flat on his cheek. “Can you?”, she asked as she placed her hand on his crotch and squeezed. A soft groan slipped uncontrolled past his lips. He turned his face slightly and she kissed his lips chastely. He nimbly removed his right hand from June’s ass and placed it back on the wheel.

June, feeling how his erection grew under the fabric of his jeans, was baffled by his apparent request for distance and with a smirk on her lips sat back on her seat. She was preparing to continue her reading when Jon spoke again.

 

“Bad, bad copilot”, he shook his head and spoke with a faux-scolding tone as his eyes fixed on a road sign that conveniently passed by them. “Look what you make me do”, he said, and before she had time to  answer, she felt how the centrifugal force slightly pressed against the car door as Jon took an exit and the following round-about.

“What are you…?”, the part of the question that died on her lips transformed into an amused chortle as they drove past a sign that read “Picnic area”. In less than two minutes, Jon had pulled up in a dark spot amongst a group of trees that surrounded what seemed to be a concrete set of table and chairs on a rectangular platform. Her heart started pounding heavily inside her chest.

“We are gonna have to be quick”, he said as he unbuckled his seatbelt first and then hers, wrapping his arms around her and pressing her against the back of the passenger’s seat, his lips glued to hers. She moaned loudly when he unzipped her fly, slid his hand under her panties and started diddling her clit. “Mmm…you’re so wet”, he breathed for an instant before continuing his attack on her lips. She clumsily reached in the dark for the handle by the side of the seat and in an instant the back fell completely into horizontal position, taking both of them with it. Before undoing the buttons of his fly, Jon managed to peel her jeans and panties down to her knees and turn her over until she was on her forearms and knees on the seat. It wasn’t the most comfortable position, but she wasn’t going to argue so she grabbed the headrest of the seat and moaned throatily when Jon buried himself deep inside her. During the course of the following minutes, they spoke through grunts and groans, combined with deep breathing as the car rocked slightly to the rhythm of Jon’s thrusts.

June pushed her face against the headrest to muffle her voice when she came, hard, as Jon pounded her, his hands firmly gripping the flesh of her hips. Feeling her walls stretch and expand around his cock made him come as well, and he cried out, leaning over her, his hands resting on her ass. He swallowed hard and pressed his forehead on her back as he tried to catch his breath, physically exhausted but really satisfied. He recovered just in time to react to a distant pair of headlights that flashed in the distance among the trees. They both snapped their heads up and hastily moved to rearrange their clothes, put the seat back up and drive away to resume their journey.

Their breathing still labored both due to the physical effort and to the thrill of their scurry, once in the highway, Jon slid the back of his hand across his forehead to remove the bids of sweat that had gathered above his eyebrows. As they both buckled their seatbelts, they smiled at each other knowingly, his moisture still on her lips.

After they stopped for gas and coffee at around 8 o’clock, June could hardly keep her eyes open, and Jon convinced her to take a nap in the backseat. After all, he’d had a few hours of good sleep when in Detroit, but June couldn’t remember the last time she’d had 8 hours of continuous sleep. While he kept an eye on her through the rearview mirror, Jon took the time to entertain lawless hopes that circumstances would somehow change to his advantage, thoughts that were time and again proved worthless and insubstantial by sensibility. For the time being, then, he’d just drive, and be satisfied with possess her in every place and way he could manage, if there was ever such thing as “possessing” June.

When she was woken up from the “quick nap” by her cell phone, however, it was near 11 o’clock in the morning, and she noticed that Jon had reduced the speed. The phone kept on ringing as she woke from her slumber. Trees passed by against the blue sky through the window of the car. Jon seemed to have stopped at a street light and handed her the cell phone through the space between the driver’s and the passenger’s seats, gesture that finally made her react and sit up. When she answered, she noticed that they weren’t exactly where they were supposed to be.

“Hello?...”, she cleared her voice and greeted her brother on the other end of the line, “Yeah…gettin’ there”, she said, realizing that they were just a few blocks away from her house. “A little tired, yeah…”, she stifled a yawn. “No, no, I’m sure I have them with me…”, she leaned forward and reached for her bag that sat on the passenger’s seat, then sat back, placed it on her lap and started rummaging as she held the device pinned between her ear and her shoulder. “Fuck…, I can’t believe it”, her curse was more like a sigh of resignation. “Don’t worry, I have an extra one by the back door, just drop them by when you come back, OK?...uh-huh…seriously, no problem…mmm-hm…buh-bye”. After pressing the button to end the call, she sighed again heavily: forgetting things, specially keys, was one of the side-effects she usually experienced when sleep-deprived. She raked a hand through her slightly tousled hair.

“I thought I was gonna drop you off at Manhattan”, she addressed Jon, still with a sleepy and slightly confused voice, propping each elbow on either front seat.

“Change a’plans”, he said, and she could swear she could see his smile behind the sunglasses reflected on the rearview mirror. “There’s one place I haven’t been to yet”.

“You’ve already been to my house”, she said, noticing that they were turning round her corner.

“Not your bed”, he answered challengingly as a vivid smile widened his mouth.

…

Not long la later, June’s naked body lay on the white sheets that shone like washed silk, as Jon’s hand slid over her lips, her neck, her breasts, the same hands with which he adeptly held his guitar and the microphone under the spotlight and in front of crowds of thousands, now seemed to only find satisfaction in her delicate, bronze skin. Her half-closed eyes looked up to the ceiling as she squirmed under the onslaught with which Jon penetrated her between her shaky thighs.

June’s hands, grabbed his butt that glimmered with sweat and sunk her nails in his firm flesh, guiding him inside her with an almost animal eagerness.

Air escaped Jon’s lungs when he steadied himself while June, panting, also found her release and ground her body against his, licking his neck.

During the moments that followed, Jon lay on his side, unable to take his eyes off of June, covered in sweat, breathless, her ribs drawn under her tight skin, her breasts still trembling, pink from his kisses.

He dozed off while she took a shower alone, since he still couldn’t summon the will to get up, and woke up to watch her as she brushed her damp hair in the nude, standing in front of the big mirror of the bathroom that he could see from the bed, past the walk-in-closet that stood between the bathroom and the bedroom. He watched how her breasts lifted up when she tied her hair up in a lose bun, how the muscles in her back stretched and contracted under her skin, her perfect ass and the space between her lean thighs. However, he couldn’t avoid dozing off once again before she returned to the bed.

June remembered that he had to be at his apartment by 4 in the afternoon, so she woke him up for a light lunch consisting on salad, olives and pita bread that they had sitting on the gray, rustic armchairs by June’s bedroom window.

On his way to have a shower, Jon spotted a silky long emerald green evening gown that hung on a special section of her closet.

“Why haven’t I ever seen you in that dress?”, he asked with mischievous eyes once he returned to the bedroom and started putting on a fresh pair of jeans that he’d produced from his backpack.  

“’Cause I’ve bought it for special occasions”, she answered with a shrug as she picked up the dishes and glasses that lay empty on the round coffee table. Before he could mutter another word, she was out of the bedroom.

“The cab will be here in a couple minutes”, he announced warily, standing at the kitchen door once he’d finished putting on his clothes. His backpack hung from one of his shoulders and he kept his thumb hooked on the strap. To any ignorant viewer he was just an impossibly handsome young man, visibly exhausted from lack of sleep and excess of sex. The cab driver would probably be fooled as well.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive you home?”, she said as she approached him. He shook his head with a soft smile in his eyes, and she felt exquisitely naked under her robe as they wrapped their arms around each other.

“Green agrees with you”, he whispered against her neck, her hair smelled of raspberries. “I won’t be able to think about anything else until I see you in that dress”.

“I hope you’re patient, then”, she said with a soft, amused chortle: Jon was a lot of things, but patient wasn’t one of them. She released the embrace, since over his shoulder and through the front window she could see the taxi stopping at the gate. None of them felt like mentioning the fact that Jon was leaving for London on Monday, which meant they would probably not see each other until the following weekend. Given the lack of time they had to spend with each other, it felt almost like a punishment. “You’d better go now”, she said with a warm smile she managed to draw on her face.

“I’ll call you later, baby”, he said, and they parted with a warm kiss before opening the door.