The road stretches for miles, straight and narrowing to a pinpoint that looks as if it will lead us right off the edge of the Earth.

I press the accelerator of my vintage, seafoam-green pickup to speed us along the pencil-drawn freeway at a steady clip. Dips in the pavement gather puddles of thermal waves in blurry reflective undulations; each vanishing as we approach. Hills line either side like outstretched welcoming arms sleeved in the waning day’s amber hue.

Harper’s bare feet perch against the front of the passenger’s side dashboard like she is pinning the glove box shut with her heels. She hums along to the treble-laden tunes that play through the Chevy’s tired speakers. Her toes wiggling any time it’s a song she likes.  

‘Where are we going?’ The words float around in my mind like fluffy aimless clouds.

At the time, they seemed to form such a simple question, as far as questions go. But then, Harper always poses her questions so they seem simple. It’s the answers that are difficult to grasp long enough for me to formulate any reasonable response. One second they’ll make perfect sense, the next, they are as elusive as the fugacious nature of love and life itself.

This particular question felt more like an innocent inquiry. Innocent, yes. But, a deep-seated rhetorical query that now—whether she intended it to or not—manifests itself in my overly contemplative mind as a thought. Yep, the dreaded thought.

‘Where are we going?’

Not just physically...going. We had taken road trips before with no defined destination. No, that’s not what was tying my fucking brain into intractable knots. It is the depth of the pool that her question had plunged itself into that begins pressing its weight on my chest.

‘Where the fuck are we going?’

I pull my gaze from the road, turn to her, and smile. Harper turns too. Fuck, those eyes. Emerald-green, and so beautifully bright even when she is pissed-off or sad. And when she is happy, like she is at this moment... Christ, they pull me in like some force of expressive gravity that I am powerless to fight against. I swallow hard then grip the steering wheel even harder.

“You’re tense,” she says.

“Yeah,” I reply.

“You know I don't care where we go.”

“Yeah,” I repeat.

Harper pinches the radio’s knob to turn up the volume, pushing the tinny speakers to their limit, then wraps her arms around her knees. Her sundress rides up so I can see the side of her milky-white thigh. She is picture-perfect with strands of jet-black hair that float like ribbons in the rush of sixty-miles-per-hour air. She stares out to the expanse of nothingness in front of us. Her toes are wiggling; she really does not care.

Not in the apathetic sense. I know she cares about me, but she has this innate ability to let the small things just roll off her back. I have yet to be able to figure that part out.

How can she sit there so laid-back and poised, bouncing to the music as if her only concern in this world is whether or not the next song will be one she likes? I once again take my eyes from the road to look at her.

Why is she all the way over there and not next to me on this bench seat? Is that a sign? A sign that maybe we are drifting apart. My overthinking starts to elongate, spiraling around and around tying into more knots...

“Hey!” she blurts out turning in my direction. “Do you think there’ll be strawberries there?” Her voice is raised above the music and the rush of the road. “Wherever it is that we are going?” She smirks, an uptick in her brow as she fights a giggle. Our eyes meet briefly before I turn back to the windshield.

A dig, I know her.

I don’t answer immediately, I turn quickly again to face her. There is a brief moment of silence while the song changes. She smiles. I smile. Definitely a dig, an adorable fucking dig.

“I’m sure we can find some,” I finally say.

I’m not as clever as she is, especially when my mind is slipping into that world I fight so diligently to keep it from. Harper has helped me see how destructive it is when I retract into my shell. It’s so fucking hard, though. That slope is slippery and when all you have to grab on to are crazed thoughts that make about as much sense as overlook and oversee having opposite meanings, you tumble rather quickly.

Though, there is no denying that she’s perfect for me. Maybe that’s it, the answer to why I obsess. Maybe my fear of losing her is what distorts any thought process from being based in rationale or reason. There are no other Harpers out there. Certainly none that would look past our twenty-year age difference and find interest in me and my quirks. At least, that’s what my brain whispers as it hoses down the already muddy slope my treadless soles feebly try to cling to.

All my life I have been this way, taking every aspect and overanalyzing it, but never this much. Never to the point it becomes debilitative. So, I suppose you could say that meeting her has changed me. Then again, that’s not really fair to put on her. It’s mostly my own self-destruction that has changed me. Harper, if anything, is the only thing trying to save me.

More spiraling.

More knots.

“This reminds me of a movie,” she says.

“Which one?” I ask.

“No, not a movie that I’ve seen, per se.” She pauses to think. ”I don't know, maybe it was in something I’ve seen and I just don't recall the specifics. But, what I meant is that it reminds me of what might be in a movie.”

“I can see that,” I say even though I really can’t but it seems like the right response.

“Look at all of this,” she says as if she could tell I was placating. She waves an upturned palm over the dash in front of her. “This road seems to stretch into eternity, we haven’t seen another car for miles, and there is absolutely no sign of civilization anywhere.” She sighs. Her voice slows and takes on an exaggerated, dramatic tone, “It’s almost as if this truck is what is stationary and it’s the world whirling past us on some kind of continual loop.”

“Would that change things?” I ask after a brief contemplative pause.

“Change things? Like what?”

“Like this. If we were in a movie, would it change our conversation? Your facial expressions? The way you act, the way you feel?”

She thinks and stares out in front. I pivot my head to look at her...then to the road...then back to her.

Her delicate features contort into a look of consternation. Then, the muscles in her face attach to her thoughts by tiny little strings, and her expression changes. Her eyes pinch, wrinkling into a vertical crease in her forehead, lips become pursed. One eyebrow pushes up slightly pulling the corner of her mouth along with it into a devious smile. Her chin ticks left.

“Mhmm,” she mumbles.

“Mhmm?” I ask, reaching to turn the radio’s volume all the way down.

“I think it would change things, depending on the genre, of course. Is this a comedy we are in? A drama? Ooh...a horror film? Maybe you are driving me out to that Zzyzx road in the desert where you have a field of shallow graves.”

“Sometimes, you scare me,” I say lightheartedly.

She pulls one foot to tuck under her and turns toward me so her back is at an angle against the door. Those raven-colored ribbons now pull out the open window. I can tell she is still thinking. I want to pull over just so I don’t have to keep pivoting my glance.

“I have an idea,” she says, licking her lips.

In my world, ideas are complex and usually revolve around running my cafe. Supply chain management, profit and loss statements, customer retention, and all the other bullshit that trails along with things like economic indicators.

“What if we are in a porno?” she interrupts my continually knotted thoughts.

“A porno?” I ask bewildered.

She laughs. “You say that like you’ve never watched porn. Yes, a porno!”

“I suppose that would definitely change things. Although, I’m not sure a porn production company would blow its budget just to—”

“God, Jess! You fucking think too much,” she chirps playfully.

I smile nervously and stay silent. She extends her foot out to run her leg along the back of the seat. Bringing her other foot off the floorboard to join, she now faces me completely.

“You think way too much, baby,” she repeats, this time in a whisper.

I read the words as they come off her lips and watch as she pulls her feet in, knees steepling. Her dress gathers at her waist, and before turning back to the road, I catch a glimpse of her pantiless quim. Her skin is smooth, bare, and flush; glistening as if the porn scenario had been on her mind most of this trip.  

I fill my lungs with the desert’s thirsty breath and realize that all I can focus on is how beautiful she is in the moment. The smile in her eyes, the outline of her pert nipples pressed into the thin material of her dress, the tiniest little gap where her front teeth never closed.

Everything else dissipates. The road, the unknown destination, the cafe, the woes of where this relationship is headed. Thoughts that will in fact remain tangled in my head, but for the moment, they vanish. Evaporating into the ether like those undulating thermal puddles in the pavement.

And all I can see is Harper…

She has once again done it. Pulled me front and center. Sliced through the Gordian knot in my mind with the swiftness of Alexander’s sword.

I lift my foot off the accelerator and the truck slowly coasts to a stop right there in the middle of this endless, seemingly abandoned road. I calmly push the gear shift into park and turn off the engine. Silence fills my ears, so heavy it has weight. A girth that suppresses more than just the external noises.

With her eyes pinned to mine, she bunches the material of her skirt into her waist then spreads her legs. An offering.

Her beauty. Her womanhood. Her cunt. All there for me to behold.

With my eyes still locked on her, I grope for the door’s handle to my left and push it open. I pivot on my butt so my legs swing out and then shift so I am on all fours. And I move toward her.

Once I reach the space between her knees, I feel her hands cradle my cheeks lifting my chin to look at her.

“Baby, we’re in the middle of the road,” she says to me softly.

“I know.”

“But, what if someone comes?”

“No one’s going to come.”

“And if they do?”

“They can pass.”

“And if they stop?”

“Then they can watch.”

She smiles, releases her hands, and inches closer so her body slouches a bit more, exposing the cleft of her ass.

“Look,” she says with a lopsided grin and angling a downward nod.

Nestled between her perfect little cheeks, I see the glint of a ruby-red jewel.

“Naughty girl. When did you do that?” I ask her.

“Before we left. This morning actually. I thought it might make for a nice surprise when we got here.”

“You’re amazing, Harper Ann.”

I dip my head while sliding my hands around to cup the base where her ass cheeks meet the small of her back. Pressing my nose to her mound I inhale deeply. Her scent mixes with the worn leather of the truck’s interior and ignites a deep-seated hunger inside. I pull her so she leans further into the door.

It's not the most comfortable position, for either of us, but my mind is now focused on only one thing, her.

I run the tip of my tongue along the edge of her plug, it feels cool to my touch. She moans. Digging my nails into the flesh of her rear, I stiffen my tongue and delve deep in between her folds.

“Not wasting any time…” she moans breathily.

“Not much foreplay in porn, baby.”

“So you do watch it!”

I grin and press forward hard, pursing my lips around her clit. I suckle, purposely letting bursts of air seep in, effectively slurping on her.

Her hands tangle in my hair as she forces more of herself onto me; her heels resting on the top of my butt. My tongue plunges deeply, swirling her walls and that’s when I feel it.

If I push my tongue down hard enough, I feel the rigidity of that plug filling her. For some reason, the intrusion sets me on fire. My heart races and the eroticism of her jewel sends a wave of pleasure through my mind with an intensity that I don’t recall ever having.

Nasty, nefarious thoughts invade my reverie. Thoughts of her toying with it earlier that morning. Maybe even licking it, getting it wet with thick strands of saliva, making it easier to insert. Encircling its tapered tip around her rosebud, teasing herself before bending over the vanity and sliding it in. God, it must have felt so good as it opened her up, and even better inside her as we bounced along this deserted road.

I smirk with the realization that Harper knew where this was going all along.

I gnash down on her clit with teeth-baring nibbles like I am trying to devour her. Like I am punishing her for being such a naughty, sexy little vixen. Her cunt responds. Swollen. Dripping juices down my chin. I peel away to gain my composure and she seethes:

“Don’t you dare fucking stop!”

Leaning to my right, I swing my left hand under and push two fingers inside. I’m able to curl them up at first, pressing firmly into her g-spot and once again I feel it; my knuckles pressing onto that firmness of her lower wall. She tries to buck, but the confines of the truck’s cab prevent her from fully fucking herself on me. I get another sinful thought and swivel my hand so my fingers are now facing down.

I run the pads of my fingertips slowly along the length of the plug, gently pinching it into her lower wall. She moans, long and deep like she just bit into the sweetest tasting peach and the wetness of her pussy seeps like nectar. I can tell she is close to losing it.

Pressing down again, I see the jeweled head of the plug rocking against her ring. Internal and external stimulation simultaneously with the single motion of my sliding index finger. I play her as if I am the virtuoso and she's my own personal instrument.

Her hands pull from my hair, one slapping the back of the bench seat, the other palming the front windshield. Harper’s entire body locks. Her mouth gapes open and she spreads her legs as wide as this position will allow. I can feel her walls tighten and she shudders in a muted wave of orgasmic pleasure.

Breathless silence once again fills the interior of the cab. Arid desert air washes over us both like we are wrapped in it, connected. Slowly, her fervent rigor releases.  

“I think we may have found a new favorite toy,” I whisper as she continues to gradually melt back down from her high.

Taking a hold of my wrist, she eases my fingers out and brings them to her lips. She slides them into her mouth and sucks like she is enjoying a summertime popsicle. I watch for a moment before moving up to kiss her passionately, sharing in the treasure.

I’m not sure how long the kiss lasts, feels like forever, like the looping world has stopped and it is just Harper and me making out in the middle of nowhere. I feel a stir, a rapid beat, a fluttering hum of tiny wings within my chest. It quickens my breath, fills me with an excitement rooted in my nerves.

“We should probably get going,” I finally say.

“Where to?” she asks with that sneering taunt.

I squeeze her hand and bring it up to my face, kissing where our fingers intertwine. My stare plunges into those star-bright emerald eyes.

“Somewhere? Anywhere...” I say. “Truth is, Harper Ann,” I bend to kiss the inside of her thigh, "you bring me to a place where I can’t hear the static. Where I can finally be at peace with the fact that I don’t have a fucking clue.”

She looks at me, lips once again lopsided, a harnessed type of wild behind her visage.

"Well…” she says, “who knew a ruby-red butt plug could do all that?"