The Field - Part 5
Zin's taillights blinked like a farewell he wasn't ready to accept. Her Porsche—sleek, black, indifferent—glided away from the wild field as if the past four hours hadn't tilted his entire inner world. The car was worth more than he made in two years, a fact that would have mattered before today but somehow felt irrelevant now. What mattered was the growing distance between him and the only person who'd ever seen him follow lights only he could see.
Richard sat in his Honda Civic, surrounded by the familiar smell of old coffee and synthetic air freshener, and felt the overwhelming need to tell someone what had just happened. The experience felt too big to contain, like trying to hold sunlight in a jar.
His phone felt heavy in his hands. The fantasy football group chat showed three unread messages, and for a moment he considered it—actually considered trying to explain to Danny from work and nine other guys whose real names he still wasn't sure of that he'd just experienced a spiritual awakening while going down on a woman who might be rich, might do drugs regularly, and had definitely just changed his entire understanding of what it meant to be alive.
His group chat lit up with the usual: "Wilson's cooked," "LMAO," "That's what she said." Noise. The same noise he used to mistake for connection.
He stared at the blinking cursor for five minutes, typing and deleting the same message twelve different ways. How do you explain enlightenment to people who think depth means fantasy football strategy?
The truth was, he didn't know anything about Zin. Not really. He'd spent four hours in the most intimate connection of his life with someone whose last name was a mystery. Why did she have a car worth more than his annual salary? She'd mentioned living in a yurt in Oregon, but people who lived in yurts didn't usually drive German sports cars. Did they?
And David—what was his deal? He'd appeared in that field like he had GPS coordinates, which meant either he was tracking Zin's phone or this wasn't the first time he'd had to rescue her from a psychedelic adventure gone long. Was he a dealer? Some kind of spiritual guide who looked like a yoga instructor? A very well-dressed pimp?
The questions multiplied in his head like fractals:
How often did Zin do acid? Was this normal for her—picking random guys from dating apps and dosing them in fields? Was he just another experiment in her collection of human experiences?
Where did she even get LSD? Richard's drug knowledge came mostly from movies and podcasts. He'd assumed you had to know sketchy people in parking lots, not beautiful women who appreciate poetry and drove luxury vehicles.
But the question that made his chest tight with something between wonder and loss was simpler and more profound: Why did that kind of sight require a substance? Why wasn't it just... available? What else had he missed by living life in default mode?
He thought about the lights, the way they'd pulsed beneath her skin like a living constellation. The patterns had felt more real than anything he'd ever experienced. More true than his cubicle, his fantasy league, his Friday night video games. So why did they have to fade? Why couldn't he just decide to see that way?
His phone buzzed. A message from Zin:
Thank you for today. Really.
Richard stared at the message, thumb hovering over the keyboard. What was the appropriate response to someone who'd just rewired your understanding of reality?
He typed back:
Thank you. For everything.
Three dots appeared immediately, then:
David says I should give you my actual number instead of keeping you on the app. Fair point.
A moment later, her contact info appeared. Zin Williamson. At least now he had a last name.
“Williamson,” he repeated to himself. It didn't tell him much, but it was something. A small anchor in the sea of questions threatening to drown his post-acid euphoria.
Richard didn't reply again. Instead, he opened a new document on his phone and began typing about bee vision. About what it felt like to perceive without judgment. To follow the vibrations of color and light, and trust them to lead somewhere sacred. He wrote until the words blurred.
Then his phone rang. It was Zin.
"Hey," she said, her voice softer than earlier. "Can you come over? Just for cuddles and conversation. I can't stop thinking about you. But... can we keep it mostly sober? And promise—no sex. Just... being."
He agreed without hesitation.
Zin lived in a high-rise downtown. The doorman operated the elevator for him—sleek, polished, more complex than any he'd seen.
Her condo smelled like candle smoke and citrus. She wore gym shorts that made it very clear Pilates wasn't just a hobby. They dropped into a beanbag chair the size of a mattress while an indie jazz artist—Drezz Drew—played softly in the background.
She rested her head on his shoulder. "You said I changed your life today," she said quietly. "But you don't know anything about mine."
He nodded. “True! So tell me something. When was your first time doing LSD?"
She smiled, almost embarrassed. "Four years ago. David introduced me to it—and to the group I trip with now. Every summer for the last three years, five of us rent this house in the Canadian Rockies. There's this incredible infinity pool that looks out over a valley, and we just... exist there for a week. Swimming, talking, seeing things differently."
Richard shifted slightly, and she could feel the tension in his shoulders. "So... you and David," he said carefully, voice tight with something he was trying not to show. "What's that relationship like?"
Zin noticed immediately—the way his jaw clenched, the careful distance he was suddenly trying to create. She turned to face him fully.
"I should probably explain that," she said gently. "Because I can see you're wondering, and honestly, most people do."
Richard nodded, his eyes fixed on her face with an intensity that made her feel both seen and nervous.
"David and I met when we were kids. I was maybe eight, he was nine. We were both in foster care—I was there because my birth mother left me with a friend when I was an infant and just... never came back. I figured out who she was eventually, but I've never reached out. David's parents and sister died in a car accident.”
She paused, watching Richard's expression soften.
"We lived together in the same house for almost three years. Like brother and sister, really. Then we got separated when we were both adopted by different families. But we never lost touch. We talked almost every day through high school, college, everything."
Richard was listening with the kind of attention that felt like being studied, but not in a bad way. Like he was memorizing every word.
"There was one time, senior year of high school, when we... crossed a line. Briefly. It was confusing and weird and we both immediately knew it was wrong. So we never did again." She smiled ruefully. "But here's the thing—David is the most important person in my life. He's the person I'd call to help me bury a body, or to find my body if some Hinge serial killer murdered me in a field."
She reached for Richard's hand. "I tend to call him my ex upfront when I meet new guys because I've learned that if I don't, and people figure out how close we are later, they feel like I wasn't honest. But the truth is more complicated than that. He's my family. The only family I've ever really had."
Richard was quiet for a long moment, processing.
"So when he picked me," Richard said slowly, "he was being protective."
"Extremely. He's been vetting my dates since I was sixteen." She laughed. "You should feel honored. His approval rating is pretty brutal."
"That sounds amazing."
"It is. But that first time..." She paused, pulling her knees closer and changing the topic, "I cried for two hours because I finally understood why people write love songs. Not because I was in love with anyone, but because I could feel what love actually was. Like, the molecular structure of it."
Richard felt something warm spread through his chest. "What about the others?"
"My friend Sarah—first time, she spent three hours staring at her hands because she realized they'd never belonged to anyone else. That her body was hers in a way she'd never understood before." Zin's voice got softer. "And Marcus, this guy who's usually all cynicism and dark humor, he called his mom and apologized for being distant. Just like that. Fifteen years of therapy couldn't do what four hours of acid did."
"And David?"
"David..." She laughed. "David's first time, he became convinced that clouds were just sky trying to remember how to be water. He spent the entire day narrating the weather like it was poetry."
Richard could picture it perfectly—David's earnest face explaining atmospheric phenomena as emotional metaphors.
"I have this theory," Zin continued, "that first trips are always life-changing because they show you that everything you thought was solid isn't. That your normal way of seeing things is just one channel on an infinite radio."
She looked at him directly then, something vulnerable flickering in her expression.
"But I'm probably making this sound more profound than it is," she said, half-joking. "I mean, it's also just a bunch of privileged yuppies playing with brain chemistry in an expensive house. Don't mistake me for being deeper than I actually am."
Richard studied her face—the way she deflected with humor when things got too serious, the way she offered profundity and then immediately questioned it.
"Too late," he said quietly. "I've already seen you guide someone through ultraviolet maps using nothing but intuition. You can't downplay that now."
She leaned into him, and they let the silence stretch, carried by candlelight, beanbag comfort, and the faint rhythms of music that seemed to glow.
The field had opened something. And now, whatever this was, it wasn't over. Not yet.