The Open Road

by Quinn Loftis

  “Regardless, I drove to our apartment. At first, I just drove by without stopping, checking to see if his truck was in the parking lot. It wasn’t, so I circled back. Oddly enough, there was a different vehicle in one of our numbered spots—a red car. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I assumed someone had accidentally parked in the wrong spot. I was just so relieved he wasn’t there. I parked my car and ran inside. I went straight to my closet, yanked out my Roaster’s uniform, and ran back out. I jumped in my car and sped away before he could get home.”

  “How many times did you look in your rearview mirror?” Jessica asked. A compassionate softness filled her eyes. “It’s a wonder you didn’t have a heart attack or at the very least a panic attack.”

  “I’m pretty sure I lived in a state of perpetual panic attacks,” Samantha muttered. “I went to work and changed into my uniform in my car in the parking lot. I didn’t want anyone asking questions because I never came to work in regular clothes. At first, everything was fine. Tran asked if I was okay, but I didn’t want to talk about it so he dropped it. But he knew it was a Derek problem and promised to hack him into a million pieces with a butcher knife if he showed his face in the coffee shop.”

  “I’m becoming Tran’s biggest fan,” Jessica chuckled. “Sounds like a man everyone should have at their back, even if he is a racist, sexist, crazy little shit.”

  Samantha snorted. Jessica had Tran pegged perfectly. “My shift wore on and nothing happened. There was no Derek sighting, and he didn’t text me. I’d spent the entire shift trying to figure out what I would do when I got off work. I was way too scared to go home, but I didn’t want to spend another night on Charity’s couch.”

  “Pride cometh before a fall,” chided Charity. “And that couch is damn comfortable.”

  “Closing time came, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do,” said Samantha, ignoring Charity’s comment. “Tran and I closed up shop. He went back to the office to do some paperwork and count the day’s earnings from the register. I said goodbye and walked out. Then something happened that caught me entirely off guard. Of all the things I expected Derek to do, this was definitely not one of them. I was halfway across the parking lot when I heard Derek’s loud truck come roaring down the road. I knew the sound of his truck better than I knew the happy birthday song. It was a sound I had come to dread. I froze. He came flying into the parking lot and zipped by me, almost hitting me with his bumper. He made a circle around the lot then came to a screeching halt right beside me. He leaned out the window, leering at me from the driver’s seat. There was a woman in the passenger’s seat—a blonde,” said Samantha, stressing the word and cutting her eyes at Charity.

  “Hey, you can’t blame me for all the evil blondes in the world. She’s not representative of the entire species. Besides, she was probably a bleach blonde. I’m all natural.”

  “I was shaking all over. I was so scared I couldn’t even move,” said Samantha. “‘We’re done, bitch,’ was all he said to me. Then he punched the gas pedal and flew out of the parking lot, his tires screeching the whole way. That was the last time I saw him.”

  “Wow,” said Jessica.

  “And do you know what I did next? You’re going to think this is so ridiculous, and that’s because it is. But I just sat in my car and sobbed. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t believe he’d left me. He was my whole world. It was a completely screwed-up, totally unhealthy, dangerous world, but it was all I had known for over three years and, just like that, it was pulled out from under me. I had some grand plan for leaving him, but in the end, that was just a fantasy. I don’t think I ever would have left him.”

  “Then thank the Lord that he left you,” Jessica said. “Regardless of how it has hurt you, that is nothing compared to what kind of pain you would have endured if you’d stayed with him and he’d never left.”

  “I know,” Samantha agreed. “I must have sat in my car bawling for an hour. Then I heard a knock on the window. I looked up and Tran was there. He persuaded me to call Charity, and he waited there with me until she came. Charity sat in my car and cried with me for the longest time until I’d calmed down. Eventually, I was able to drive and she followed me home.

  “Was he there?” asked Jessica.

  “Nope,” said Samantha. “He was gone, his truck was gone, the red car was gone, and everything else in my apartment was gone.”

  “What?” said Jessica, her eyes as big as the bowls of queso and salsa in front of them. “No way.”

  “The place looked like it had been robbed. He had come back and cleaned it out those few hours while I was at work at the coffee shop. Furniture, TV, everything. Even all the damn food. Again, we didn’t have much, but what we did have was gone. He had taken everything. Ev—ver—ree—thing. The only thing he left was my clothes. And I’m not too sure he didn’t take some of those. I didn’t have a bed to sleep on. I didn’t even have a fork left to eat with.”

  “Oh, no, please don’t tell me,” said Jessica with a groan.

  “Yep, the flour canister was gone, along with the two thousand bucks I’d saved for college. There was only a couple hundred bucks in our checking account, but he cleaned that out for me, too, before he left.”

  “Damn,” Jessica whispered. “Charity was right. This dude’s gotta die. That’s all there is to it.”

  “I just want to forget about it,” Samantha grumbled.

  Jessica shook her head. “As nice as that must sound to you, you can’t forget it. You mustn’t. You went through hell, I get that. But if you don’t learn something from it, then you risk the chance of repeating it. I know, believe me, I know about pain and making stupid choices. But forgetting it isn’t the way to heal or to move on. You own it, you learn from it and then you move on more knowledgeable than you were before, which, in turn, will make you stronger.”

  Charity cocked her head to the side as she looked at Jessica. “Are you secretly a therapist and just don’t want us to know?”

  Jessica winked at her. “I grew up with a wise grandmother and thankfully some of that wisdom actually took root in my hard-headed brain.”

  “So, maybe she doesn’t forget, but tonight is about letting go,” said Charity, holding up her glass in the middle of the table. The others followed suit. “To never seeing Derek again as long as we live, and to new beginnings,” she shouted with a flourish, and they all clinked their glasses.

  “Now that that’s over with,” said Samantha, suddenly feeling fifty pounds lighter, “if I don’t get some real food in my stomach to soak up some of this alcohol, I’m going to be facing a very quick ending, and it’s probably going to involve lying on the floor of my bathroom wishing for death.”

  “Good point,” agreed Jessica, waving over the waiter.

  “Beautiful toast,” he said as he approached the table.

  “Oh, you heard that, did you?” asked Charity, “It’s not polite to listen in on other’s conversations.”

  “I think the whole dining room heard it,” he replied. “You’re kind of loud.”

  “What can I say?” asked Charity. “I’m a wordsmith. The world needs to hear my brilliance.”

  “Well, the manager is giving you dirty looks, so you might want to tone your brilliance down just a bit. I’ll get you some bread. That’ll help.”

  “And we thank you for that. You’re a gentleman and a scholar,” said the blonde in return.

  After the server had returned with the bread and taken their dinner orders, the trio decided to switch to water for the time being.

  “Though I do dance much better when I’m a little tipsy,” said Charity, “I don’t want you girls to have to carry me out of here.”

  “What makes you think we would?” asked Jessica. “I say we leave her if she passes out. What about you, Sam?”

  “Agreed,” responded the curly-haired brunette. “She’d only slow us down anyway. After all, we’re the single ones, right? She’s already found her Prince Charming.
Is she even allowed in the club anymore? Don’t they revoke your membership after you’ve been in a monogamous relationship for longer than a year?”

  “Only if you’ve been engaged for a year, I think,” said Jessica nodding.

  “Well, then, it’ll be soon,” said Sam. “How long have you and Brent been planning this stupid wedding?”

  “One year, next month, but we haven’t really planned all that much—” Charity stopped and looked down at her phone as it buzzed. “Oh, look,” she said, holding up her phone and showing the others. “Hot, sad, travelling guy just uploaded another video. Let’s watch it.”

  “Really? You have your phone set to notify you when he uploads a video?” asked Samantha.

  “I sure do.”

  “Me, too,” said Jessica, tilting her own phone toward Sam. Jason O’Neal’s smiling face, partly obscured by a little white play symbol, was staring back at her. Jessica punched the play button, and Jason began to speak to their table.

  “What up, America? So, I made it to Oklahoma safely, in case you were wondering. And if you thought I’d never driven a motorhome before, let me assure you, you are one hundred percent correct. I haven’t, but I watched some videos online. I figured it couldn’t be too difficult, right? Turns out, it’s really not that bad mostly, just gotta make wide right turns. I did fine, only had a couple of near misses, no big deal.

  “Anyway, just a quick update. Gonna stay in OKC tonight and watch some basketball. I’m in a sports bar right now called Tornado Alley in a place called Bricktown. It’s really pretty cool. Lots of rowdy fans in here enjoying some b-ball on the TV.” He took his phone and panned it around the room. “Say hi to America, everyone,” he yelled. Several fans, almost all wearing sports jerseys, held up their drinks and shouted “Hello” at the camera. “I wanted to introduce you to a couple of people that I’ve met here. This is John and Nancy,” he said, turning the phone to show a middle-aged couple sitting with him a high-top table. “They’re really cool people. They live in Norman, Oklahoma, right outside of Oklahoma City. They saw me sitting alone and offered to buy me a drink. Couldn’t say no to a free drink, right?”

  “The poor boy looked like a whipped pup,” said Nancy, frowning. She had kind eyes, long yellow hair, and skin that suggested she spent a fair amount of time outside or in the tanning bed. Her husband wore a blue golf shirt bearing a professional basketball team’s logo and a ball cap. It was clear he, too, spent a fair amount of time out in the sun.

  “I just couldn’t stand it any longer,” Nancy said. “No one should look that sad, not when our team is playing and about to stomp the Warriors,” she yelled, and several others at nearby tables joined in. “He showed me his other videos online, and I just want everyone out there in internet-land to know Jason is a great guy. He’s been telling me about Bethany, and my heart is breaking right now.” Nancy held her hand over her chest. “But we are going to cheer him up, at least while he’s in OKC. And I want to tell everyone in America that if you see him in your state, be nice to him. He’s been through a lot. Way more than anyone should have to endure.”

  Jason was blushing when he pulled the camera back in front of his face. “I didn’t know she was going to say that. She’s great. John’s great. They’ve really been trying to cheer me up, and it’s working. I’ve agreed to give them the first lilac. Nancy is going to frame it and hang it in their living room, which I thought was pretty cool. Anyway, wanted to tell you one thing before I sign off. Tomorrow, before I head out, I’m going to give you guys a tour of the motor home, then I’m going to get out the map and see if I might get some sort of plan of action together about where to go next. I’ll see you on the open road,” he said before hitting the stop button.

  “Well, he seems better,” said Sam.

  Charity made a noise in her throat. “Hmm, yeah, but he’s hurting bad. I can tell. He’s trying his best to take his mind off things, not unlike what we’re doing with you,” she said, tilting her head at Samantha. “So, I guess it’s working for both of you.”

  “I guess,” she had to admit.

  After a few minutes, their food arrived, and they wolfed it down like a trio of hyenas on a gazelle. Then they spent almost three hours at Club Sprocket, dancing and laughing until they were all so tired they almost collapsed on the dance floor. They were repeatedly approached by men and women alike wanting to dance, but, true to Jessica’s promise back at the coffee shop, she and Charity fought them all off, ensuring that the evening was truly a girls-only night. When Samantha’s head hit the pillow just after 1:00 a.m., she fell asleep almost immediately. She didn’t even remember to pine after Derek, or curse his name vehemently, which she normally did each night as she drifted off, depending upon her particular mood. She simply nodded off, thinking of absolutely nothing, which was the first time that had happened in as long as she could remember.

  Chapter Six

  Light streamed in through the slotted mini blinds of Samantha’s tiny apartment bedroom. It passed straight through her thin polyester curtains and splashed across her face, causing her to squint and groan. Her head pounded, and the light assaulting the outside of her eyelids felt like thousands of tiny needles being pressed into her eyeballs. She groaned and rolled over, grabbing the pillow and squeezing it tightly around her head. She hadn’t overdone it enough to spend the entire night in the bathroom floor praying to the porcelain god, but she’d come close. Now she just wanted to find a nice damp hole in the ground to crawl into and hibernate until winter … of next year.

  She was just about to doze back off when her phone chirped. She made a noise that sounded like something a banana slug might make if it could talk … and was also extremely hung over. Without pulling her head out from under pillow, she slammed her hand down on the bedside table and groped for her phone. She felt it briefly before it decided to leap off the table and onto the floor, where it landed with a thud. Now the banana slug that had become Samantha uttered a few choice words that even banana slugs should be ashamed to say in mixed company. The woman wiggled herself over to the edge of the bed and cracked open one eye. She saw the phone lying where it had bounced several feet away, looking all innocent, as if hadn’t jumped out of her reach on purpose. With another groan, Sam wiggled herself even further onto the edge of her bed and reached for the phone, stretching as far as she could. She felt it brush the tips of her fingers just before she overbalanced on the edge of the bed and toppled into a tangle of sheets on the floor. She cursed again as she hit the ground.

  “This better be good.” She growled before sitting up, snatching her phone, and punching in the unlock code. She noticed the time, 11:30, and lamented the fact she hadn’t been unable to sleep all the way past noon. “My one day off,” she grumbled. She checked her text messages and saw one from Charity, the chirp that had ruined her wonderful, delicious, much-needed sleep. The text read,

  Bet you have an awesome headache right now.