She’s cute when I’m torturing her. Because she enjoys it.
I don’t know how I got myself into this, but I do know that as much as my conscience is ripping into my fucking ears, telling me to leave her alone, I can’t. I don’t want to.
We’ve already gone too far.
I know I should’ve left it at the bus station, bought her a First Class plane ticket home so she would feel obligated to use it since it cost so much, then called her a cab and had it drop her off at the airport.
I should never have let her leave with me, because now, I know that I won’t be able to let her go. I have to show her first. It’s mandatory now. I have to show her everything. She might get hurt in the end after all is said and done, but at least she’ll be able to go back home to North Carolina with something more to look forward to in her life.
I take the shoebox from her hands and place the top back over it and set it on top of the opened duffle bag. She watches me as I throw open the top dresser drawer and fish out a few clean pairs of boxers and socks and then shove them down inside the bag, too. All of my basic hygiene necessities are in the bag out in the car that I brought on the bus with me.
I hoist the duffle bag strap over my shoulder and look at her.
“Are you ready?”
“I guess so,” she says.
“Wait, you guess?” I ask, stepping up to her. “You either are, or you aren’t.”
She smiles up at me with those beautiful crystal blue eyes. “Yes, I’m definitely ready.”
“Good, but why the hesitation?”
She shakes her head softly to say I’m wrong.
“Absolutely no hesitation,” she says. “All of this is just … strange, you know? But in a good way.”
She looks like she’s trying to untangle something in her head. Obviously, she’s got a lot on her mind.
“You’re right,” I say. “It is kind of strange—OK, it’s a lot strange because it’s not natural, stepping out of the box like this.” I peer in at her, forcing her to catch my eyes. “But that’s the whole point.”
Her smile brightens as though my words rang a little bell inside her mind.
She nods and says with a fun and eager air, “Well, then what are we waiting for?”
We walk back out into the hall and just before we start to head down the stairs, I stop.
“Wait one second.”
She waits there at the top of the stairs and I turn back, passing my bedroom and head toward Aidan’s. His room is as pathetic as mine. I see his acoustic guitar sitting propped against the far wall and I walk over and grab it by the neck and carry it out.
“You play guitar?” Camryn asks as I lead her down the stairs.
“Yeah, I play some.”
Andrew chucks his bag in the backseat with his smaller bag and mine and my purse. He’s a little more careful with the guitar, though, laying it neatly across the seat. We hop inside the vintage black car (with two white racing stripes down the center of the hood) and shut our doors at the same time.
He looks over at me.
I look over at him.
He thrusts the key in the ignition and the Chevelle roars to life.
I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m not afraid or worried or feel like I should stop this right now and just go home. Everything about it feels right; for the first time in a very long time, I feel like my life is back on track again, except on a very different sort of road, one in which I have no idea where it’s going. I can’t explain it … except that, well, like I said: it feels right.
Andrew punches the gas once we hit the entrance ramp and get on 87 going south.
I kind of like watching him drive, how he’s so casual even when he speeds past a few slow drivers. It doesn’t look like he’s trying to show off as he’s weaving between cars; it just looks like second-nature to him. I catch myself getting a glimpse every now and then of his muscled right arm as his hand grips the steering wheel. And as my eyes carefully scan the rest of him, I go right back to wondering about that tattoo hidden underneath that navy t-shirt which fits him so well.
We talk about whatever for a while; about that guitar being Aidan’s and that Aidan will probably blow up if he finds out that Andrew took it. Andrew doesn’t care. “He stole my socks once,” Andrew said.
“Your socks?” I said back with a rather screwed-up expression. And he looked over at me with an expression that read: hey; socks, guitars, deodorant—a possession is a possession.
I just laughed, still finding it ridiculous, but easily letting him slide.
We also got into a really deep conversation about the mystery of the single shoes that lie on the side of the freeways all across the United States.
“Girlfriend got pissed and tossed her boyfriend’s shit out the window,” Andrew had said.
“Yeah, that’s a possibility,” I said, “but I think a lot of them belong to hitchhikers, because most of them are raggedy.”
He glanced over at me awkwardly, as if waiting for the rest.
“Hitchhikers?”
I nodded, “Well yeah, they do a lot of walking so I imagine their shoes get worn out fast. They’re walking along, their feet are hurting and they see a shoe—probably one of those tossed out by that angry girlfriend—” I point at him to include his theory “—and seeing that it’s in better shape than the ones on his feet, he trades one out.”
“That’s stupid,” Andrew said.
My mouth parted with a spat of offended air. “It could happen!” I laughed and reached over and smacked him on the arm. He just smiled at me.
And we went on and on about it, each of us coming up with an even stupider theory than the one before.
I can’t remember the last time I laughed this much.
We finally make it back into Denver nearly two hours later. It’s such a beautiful city with the vast mountains in the background that look like white clouds at their peaks, sprawled across the bright blue horizon. It’s still pretty early in the day and the sun is shining full-force.
When we make it into the heart of the city, Andrew slows the car to a forty-mile-per-hour crawl.
“You have to tell me which way,” he says as we coast toward another entrance ramp.
He looks in three directions and then over at me.
Caught
