Overlooked(2)(78)
“What’s the matter with the town?”
“It’s small.”
“And full of people who don’t mind their own damn business?”
“You got it. Is your car parked in town?”
“Don’t got a car, I hitched.”
“Okay, at least we don’t have to worry about it.” How can he not have a car?
Putting my car in gear, I carry on down the country road. I intend to go to Woburn, the nearest big town, just to make sure no one sees us. It won’t take long. Thirty minutes max, once I get back to a decent-sized road.
“Where’re you staying?” I ask. I don’t want him to stay at the one motel in town, everyone will figure out who he is sooner rather than later, and someone will probably confront him. Most likely my father.
“Haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Huh?”
“I just got to your town this morning, and I’ve been hanging out on the street.”
“Good thing you didn’t do that, my father might have seen you and kicked your ass.”
“What the hell went on here after I left?”
“You don’t even want to know. Let’s just say, my father freaked out and the whole town’s talking.”
“So leave,” he says.
“I can’t just leave.”
“Sure you can.”
Stranger in a Strange Land (Steel)
“There’s a place up here we can get a coffee at and talk,” Emily says.
“Sounds good to me.”
We carry on driving down the country road, eventually turning left onto a main road. The closed space of the car is filled with her rosy scent. It’s exactly how I remembered it, and each inhale makes me want her more.
“Did you freak too, like your dad?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
“I think you didn’t, not after the way you yelled my name in the bunkie.”
Her cheeks turn bright red and she stares at the road ahead of her.
“I’m just kidding, Goldie, it wasn’t just the way you yelled my name.” She’s the only person I’ve ever talked to, really talked to, instead of just shooting the shit. I’m sure it was the same for her.
“I knew there was something more between us,” she says, her voice quiet and hard to hear over the noise of the car.
I reach over and put my hand on her thigh, the way I did that evening in The Zipper. The warmth from her leg fills me, washing away the freezing cold stuck in my bones from the three days it took to hitch here.
We spend the rest of the twenty-minute drive talking and laughing. It’s like we’ve never been apart. Or like we’ve known each other forever.
The coffee place looks like a truck stop, the kind of place I feel at home in after all the years spent on the road, going from town to town and state to state. I get out of the car and glance down the road, tall signs advertising gas stations, fast food joints and motels line the street.
We each have a drip coffee and sit on opposite sides of a booth. We continue to talk, through three whole cups of coffee.
“What are your plans?” Emily asks, changing the subject.
“My plans?”
“Yeah, how long are you staying in town? Are you still working at the carnival?”
Fuck if I know, I haven’t thought that far ahead. All my focus has been on getting back to her.
“Don’t know. All I was thinking about was finding you.”
“Well, you found me,” she says with a coy smile while tilting her head.
Plans don’t matter much to carnies. I feel like a fish out of water.
“My plan was to find you and now I’ve done that, it’s to be with you.” Emily’s eyes sparkle and she hooks her foot around mine under the table. Her actions cause a huge smile on my face. “And that’s my plan.”
“I like that plan. But where are you going to stay?”
As if I’ve thought that far ahead. Doesn’t she get the way I live? Looking out the window, I see a Motel 6 sign down the road.
“Figure I’ll stay at a motel while I figure out what we’re going to do.”
“Isn’t that going to be expensive? I mean, how long are you going to stay there?”
“Don’t matter how long I have to stay there, as long as it’s near you, I’ll pay the price.”
What am I going to do? Find a nine-to-five job? The same jobs I’ve been criticizing my whole life?
“Shit,” Emily says, pulling her phone out of her purse. “I didn’t text my parents, they’re probably wondering why I’m not back from the coffee shop.”
“What business is it of theirs?”
“I don’t want them to worry. Normally, I would’ve been home hours ago.”