"I'm restless, maybe," she finally said. "Or – I don't know. Maybe I wasn't ready to come back. It's like, everything I see tells me that what happened … didn't happen. Because you don't get kidnapped and beaten in the town you grew up in. It's all very surreal. Things felt a lot more real when I wasn't here. And it was kind of comforting, to be honest. The realness."
She looked at him, saw that his face remained impassive, unchanged.
"I'm not making any sense," she said, her words coming out rapidly now as a blush filled her cheeks. I must sound like a crazy person, she thought. Or a total moron. "It's just hard to … "
"No, you're making sense," Damon said. "I mean, not to me. I can't possibly understand. Because I've never really had a town or a place I called home. And I've never had it ripped away from me. I imagine very few people could understand that. But it doesn't mean you're not making sense. You're uncomfortable, right?"
"Yeah," Tricia said, cocking her head slightly to take him in. "Uncomfortable. Poignantly uncomfortable. That's a good word for it. Kind of simplistic, but good."
"Sometimes the simplest words are the best," Damon said.
"I guess so," Tricia said, fighting back a smile. She was torn between thinking the dark-haired man was full of shit, and thinking that he was smarter than most of the people she knew. Everything he said sounded like it could come out of a fortune cookie. But it also felt very right whenever he said them, like the timbre of his voice washed away any hint of cliché.
"No matter where I call home anymore, feel like a boat under the trees. Living is strange," he said, speaking in a strange rhythm. Tricia cocked her head, trying to figure out what that meant; his deferential smile was the closest she'd ever seen him get to blushing.
"Sorry," he said. "That was dumb. Just a line from a poem that seemed … to fit."
"Oh," Tricia said, repeating the line in her head and thinking that it did fit. "Who wrote it?"
"C.D. Wright. What are you going to do?" he asked, and though it didn't interrupt the flow of their conversation, it sounded sudden. It was so bold and all-encompassing. What was she going to do? Do about what? About the life that had so recently fallen apart, the life she was adrift in? About finding a new job, a new apartment? About the stuff in storage?
"Wait," she said, the answer coming to her in yet another simple word. "I guess all I can do is wait, right? Just do the things normal people do. See friends and find work and be an adult and just wait until normal feels normal again."
"Are you a patient person?" Damon asked, and Tricia felt like he was on the brink of asking her something quite different. The air between them almost seemed to have changed. The way he was looking at her – as though he was trying to decide what to do with her. As though she was a candy bar in the supermarket, and he was trying to convince himself not to buy her.
"Sometimes, I guess," she said, growing frustrated with the strangeness. If he was going to ask her something, he ought to just ask it. She had enough unknowns in her life – she didn't need to be pinned down by his enigmatic stare and wonder what was going on in his head. "We're all patient about some things and impatient about others, aren't we?"
"Do you have a sleeping bag?" he asked, and this time the question was definitely abrupt – he asked it almost before she finished her own question. Tricia blinked, and found herself answering without really thinking about it.
"In storage, yeah, I do," she said. "Why?"
"You should come with me," he said, gesturing with his chin to the car. "If you're not ready to be back here, take some more time away. I'll be gone about two weeks – maybe a little more, maybe a little less. I want to take my time on the drive. See the Outer Banks along the way. I wouldn't mind the company. But I plan on camping out most nights, so … "
"Damon," Tricia said, her voice flat and astonished. "That's crazy. That's a crazy idea. You realize that, right?"
He broke into a smile, and Tricia felt herself warming to that crazy idea; no, no, don't go getting yourself all twisted up in that smile, she told herself. That's the smile of a crazy man. A very handsome, sexy, magnetic, crazy man, but a crazy man all the same …
"It's a crazy world," he said, one eyebrow slightly raised. "Psycho boyfriends, insane bikers, ridiculous gypsy ideas about how the road can heal a soul. And then, of course, there's turducken, the Cotton-Eyed Joe, people who dye their poodles pink … "
Tricia couldn't help but laugh, but she put her hand up to stop him all the same. When the giggles faded out, she was still shaking her head and looking at him in awe.
"I mean, you're not serious though, are you? I can't just get into a car and drive to Florida with someone who is, no offense, basically a stranger. I don't have to explain why, do I?"
"Why don't you try?" Damon asked, a glint in his eye. "I'd like to hear your reasons."
Tricia scoffed, irritation flaring up in her. She calmed it as best she could before putting up a fist. She jabbed one finger up into the air as she began speaking.
"One: it's crazy."
Another finger.
"Two: what would I tell Ricky and Kim?"
Another finger.
"Three: I barely know you."
One more.
"Four … um … I don't know where my sleeping bag is right now and I don't feel like digging for it."
Her brow furrowed as her thumb joined the rest of her fingers.
"And five … uh … five: it's crazy."
"No fair using the same reason twice," Damon said, feigning criticism. "That's poor rhetoric. They wouldn't let you get away with that in debate team."
"Well, lucky me that this isn't debate team, or even a debate," Tricia said. Damon studied her for a long moment: her hands on her hips, her eyes gleaming like gold in the light, her hair gently blowing against her cheeks in the breeze. She would cave. He could make her cave.
"Listen, you may barely know me, but I think you know me enough. And I think that you know you know me enough. And why do you owe Kim and Ricky an explanation? Are you going to lose the deposit you paid to reserve Ricky's couch? You love them, and they love you, but sometimes you have to confuse your loved ones to make sense to yourself."
Tricia looked away, nibbling her lip. He was getting through to her. They both knew it, and Tricia willed herself to stay sane. But that was hard to do when she thought of how – through everything – he'd never quite left her mind. How even now, just seeing him almost seemed to fill up a little empty place inside her that she'd never known existed. Scratched an itch she didn't know she had. And how she wanted to keep that place filled, keep that itch scratched, for as long as she could. Nothing else made any sense; why should this?
Maybe you should just embrace the crazy, she thought, staring off at the rows of trailers, at the woods in the distance, where the sun was just beginning to kiss the tops of the trees. Trying to be normal hasn't helped much so far …
"Tricia," Damon said, calling her back from her thoughts. "If you can't find your sleeping bag, I'll buy you one."
"What made you think I'd want to go?" she asked, her voice suddenly quiet. What she really wanted to ask was: why do you want me to go?
But the answer might be: because you seem so lost and sad and broken and I feel sorry for you. And she would hate that answer, and she would hate him for it. He shrugged, still studying her.
"I don't know," he said. "Because you don't seem happy, and I don't think just ‘waiting' is conducive to happiness."
Here we go, she thought, ready for the anger that came whenever she felt pity directed at her.
"But I guess I'm mostly being selfish," he said. "I'd like the company. I'd like your company."
Now, Tricia's eyes widened. That was not the answer she expected. Not in a million years. But it wasn't a bad answer. Not at all …
"Why my company, specifically?" she asked, feeling bolder now that he'd put his side on the line. He wasn't playing games, this one. You knew he wouldn't, she told herself. You don't know how you know that, but you know Damon Volanis doesn't play games.
He smiled.
"I like you," he said. "I don't know you too well, but I like you a lot. You're a good woman. I'm always interested in spending time with a good woman."
Tricia blushed now, overwhelmed.
"You don't know me well enough to know what sort of woman I am," she muttered.