On Top Of The World
Riley came to pick me up on the boat...
Riley came to pick me up on the boat. Well, me and the rest of my family. We were staying in a cabin for a week at the lake where he was working. On the dock, we had brought out all our supplies of suitcases, grocery bags, towels, river shoes and fishing poles. As we loaded them onto Riley’s boat, ready to be towed faithfully to our cabin, we were the ruckus; the tree-lined canyon and the lapping water that stretched out ahead of us were vast and calm.
There was something in the air that late afternoon. I couldn’t tell you where it was coming from. Maybe it was the sweet scent of the mountain pine trees that made Riley’s cheekbones stand out to me. Maybe it was the way he pulled up his biker sunglasses. He rested them on the crown of his blonde buzzcut to get a better look at me, it seemed. Or maybe it was the way he glanced at me, his eyes, that warm cerulean blue.
My stomach tingled as I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my high-waisted jean shorts. I was trying to seem cool. Did Riley feel it too? I scooted up closer to the rumbling boat engine as he steered us across the lake. Perhaps it was the details of his life that most enthralled me.
Riley was 22 years old, and a construction worker from the outskirts of Sac. A guy who liked to work with his hands, he told us. He had a half-Pitbull, half-Rottweiler named Buddy that his ex-girlfriend had stolen from his house in the middle of the night after they broke up.
“I’ve got to get my dog back,” Riley said. It was his absurdity, his honesty, his determination which enchanted me. He handed his phone around to show us pictures. The lack of cell service in the mountains didn’t sway him from his fight to save his best friend.
To me, this all sounded incredibly dreamy. At the time, I was 18 and a prim English girl from the city, at that. I had one thing going for me, though. I’d spent the last two months working at that same lake, before I’d now arrived as a guest. I’d chopped wood, fuelled the tractors and cleaned The Showerhouse. The California sun had bleached my hair blonder than ever. I gazed out at the peaceful canyon, trying to look beyond my squat, pale English father, sitting next to me in his fisherman’s cap. I pondered to myself: I had never looked so good. In fact, it was quite possible that I would never look this good in my entire life ever again.
I had finally gotten hips. I’d broken up with my first serious high school boyfriend, so I wasn’t a complete novice at doing it. I felt like I was a bud about to burst into full bloom. I was ready for Riley’s awakening. Or, so I fantasised. But first, I had to ditch my family. Deep in the remote mountains, this would be far from easy. It would need planning. It would need strategy. I chuckled to myself, as I remembered what I had said to my co-worker at the lake, Sam, only a month earlier. I had tried to sound very philosophical,
“One does simply have sex at the lake,” I said.
“So what you’re saying is, you want me to drive you to the gas station so you can buy condoms?” she asked me. The nearest one was ten miles away.
“Uh. Yeah, actually that would be great. Thanks,” was my measly response.
Now, I was ready. I had planned for this. Prepared for this. But, with the family mechanics and the dynamics of work schedules, I would have to do without the spontaneity this time. It was the only way.
Later that week, in the early afternoon, I lay next to Sam on the dock. We had gone for a swim and were trying to tan. I had manoeuvred myself in Riley’s direct view. He was painting the dock with linseed oil. I hoped that me wearing a bikini would be enough to distract him from his work. Yet it was hard to tell if he was even looking at me.
“I was thinking about trying some open-air camping up on the ridge by that giant pile of rocks,” Sam said, “But I just don’t know if I have it in me anymore—”
“Why not?” I said, flicking my hair over my shoulder, “I love camping. Come on, it will be so much fun. What do you think, Riley?”
Riley smirked at me. I noticed how tanned his arms were, and how the linseed oil dripped off his yellow Ace Hardware gloves and rags he had been using to scrub the deck.
“I’m game,” he said, cool as a true California bro as he scrubbed harder, “I’ve been meaning to use my new tent—”
I butted in,
“Of course, traveling all the way here from England means I don’t even have a sleeping mat.”
Riley paused for a minute.
“I might have a spare in my tent,” he said, “It sleeps two.”
“Oh. Are you sure?” I said, my heart aching in my chest.
“I don’t see why not,” he said. He repositioned his sunglasses with a smile. That said it all. I winked back at him, surprising myself with how garish I was becoming. Riley seemed to blush back. Or maybe his face was just red from the heat of the day, and the fact that he was obviously too cool to wear sunscreen? I couldn’t be sure.
Sure enough, the day after, Riley and Sam and I hiked up to the ridge. Well, us and the rest of the staff at the lake, and a couple of my siblings. Word had gotten out about our extra cool camping trip, and somehow food for the night and extra sleeping bags and mats had been scrambled together.
As we hiked up the trail beyond the basin of the lake, the tree-topped mountains felt still, like they were frozen in time. The sun dipped in deeper orange beams before one by one the swaying trees were plunged into darkness. The odd star was beginning to emerge in the fading blue sky, whose the circling ospreys were long gone after catching their fill of rainbow trout to eat that day. Owls hooted and the gravel crunched beneath our hiking boots. At the top of the ridge, the moon glowed bright and grand. In the moonlight, we could just make out the view of the mountains that surrounded us, stretching hundreds of miles into the distance. Their ridges faded from muted purple into black, and cloaked our group of campers in the silhouette of night.
The others lit a fire, and were about to settle down with scary stories, when Riley glanced at me from across the circle.
“I’m feeling pretty beat,” he said, his blue eyes meeting mine, “Sally had me painting the whole deck again today at Cabin 5—”
“Me too,” I said, “I mean, I better rest up.”
Sam gave me a knowing look, which luckily none of the others seemed to realize.
Riley and I crossed the top of the ridge to his tent. We had set it behind the pile of rocks, slightly, just out of the way of the thrashing wind, and out of earshot from the others I hoped.
He kissed me before we even got to the tent. I stumbled slightly before he held me firm, almost losing my balance. Riley tasted like the hardness of late-afternoon instant coffee, and the caramel of chewing tobacco.
Next, I remember diving into his tent with him, making out as we fondled each other, not sure how it was going to work with the protective layers of wind breakers and sweaters and leggings and whatever clothing we had brought to keep ourselves warm. I remember he didn’t flinch as I ran my shivering fingers along the tones of his arm. The outside air, the side of me facing the mountain, was freezing. I rolled up into the panting warmth of his shirtless chest. I kissed him. I felt the boniness of his penis, throbbing against my leg. I was still wearing my thermal tights, too nervous of freezing to death to take them off. We huddled beneath the stretched-out sleeping bags. We locked our toes between each other, bracing ourselves against all the forces of nature beyond the thin, nylon tent walls.
“I’m so tired, baby girl,” Riley said to me. I had no idea what he meant. His fatigue and his naming of me felt a bit premature. Still, little 18-year-old-me was keen to please him. I skulked down his body, positioning my face at the entrance to his underwear. I put the tip of his penis in my mouth. It was salty. I sucked harder and harder still.
“You’re making me crazy,” Riley said, loud enough that I stopped for a second and paused. Beyond the roaring wind, I could just make out the sounds of the others talking in the distance.
“I’m…coming…baby…girl…” he cried only moments later. I pulled away just in time, until his semen half graced my neck, half graced the inner contents of his sleeping bag. The tenseness in his chest collapsed. He gasped and grunted. He pecked me quickly on the lips. I felt like I had done alright. It lacked the lustre of romance, but frankly, so did the whole camping situation. I didn’t blame him.
Riley made space for me next to him, before he collapsed onto his pillow. I wiped the rest of the warm, gooey liquid off of my neck and onto some nether region of his sleeping bag. It seemed futile, in the middle of the wilderness, to ask for a tissue. Then I climbed into the mat next to him. Luckily, he didn’t snore much. I felt, in my mind, satisfied, and comforted enough as I used his arm as a pillow, and his thin, muscular body to protect me from the wind and god knows what else at the top of that mountain.
When the sun rose in the morning, the tent felt like it was burning up. According to Riley's phone, it was barely 7am. But this was a moment of pure bliss, I remember. Possibly the purest bliss I had ever seen. Riley was shirtless, and I was lying beside him, spooning in some light combination of my mountain pyjamas. He had unzipped the entire wall of the tent on my side, and we gazed out together over the glorious view of the mountains.
“What do you want to listen to?” he asked me, as he pulled his phone down from the net pocket in tent’s roof.
“I like the Red Hot Chili Peppers,” I said.
“Gotcha. I think I got a couple of their songs downloaded.”
Riley rolled himself a cigarette as the song came on.
“What I got, you got to give it to your mamma…What I got, you've got to give it to your pappa…What I got, you got to give it to your daughter…You do a little dance and then you drink a little water… Give it away, give it away, give it away now…”
The guitars and drums and the baseline burst out into the glowing morning air. To this day, I think it was one of the best mornings of my life. The sun, rising. Riley and I. We were on the top of the world. Or, that’s what it felt like to me. The glee, the joy, the adventurousness of it all. I was a little sleep deprived, but with Riley’s hands gently caressing my back, as we lay down and gazed out over the world, I had never felt more alive.
A bit later, I caught up with Sam as we headed back down to the lake.
“How was the open-air?” I asked.
“It was freezing. And the wind was so loud, I couldn’t sleep for a second,” she huffed, “How was the tent?”
“Fine,” I said, figuring I’d spare her the entrancing details.