“I’m glad it was with you,” I whisper a few minutes later.
But he’s fallen asleep.
Hours later, I wake to an empty bed and the sound of running water. Cam is at the sink, and in the mirror I can see him shaving. Watching him feels intimate, like something a lover would do. But we’re not lovers. We’re… nothing. A one-time thing.
And it’s awkward.
Cam turns, his hand on the razor in mid-stroke. That hand was all over me last night. I shiver and shift in the bed, and as I do, I realize that not only do I feel a little soreness between my legs, but I like it. Tangible proof that last night wasn’t a dream. I’m no longer a virgin, and it’s because of the man I just met who’s standing bare-chested just a few feet away from me.
“So, when would you like to hit the road?” he asks before turning casually back toward his reflection to continue his task.
Okay, so maybe we’re going to pretend last night didn’t happen after all. “Um, I can be ready in twenty minutes?”
I hate that I end my answer on a question, my voice inflecting like someone young and uncertain. Like someone’s employee.
Which is exactly what I am.
“Sounds good to me.” Cam rinses off his razor, dries it, and sets it in a leather toiletries pouch that he then zips up. A place for everything and everything in its place. I randomly hear my abuela’s voice in my head. My place, from now on, is in the driver’s seat of my car transporting a man to Tucson, Arizona.
That resolved, I get up and duck into the bathroom to pee and splash some water on my body. There’s a little dried blood on my inner thighs and I scrub it off, feeling what Lucia would describe as dissociative. Am I the same person I was last night? Surely I must be. We were just two human beings, a momentary connection, a scrap of flesh. No need to make more of it than it was.
Fifteen minutes later, we’re pulling out of the hotel parking lot. I don’t even ask if he wants to get breakfast; I just swing into the first Starbucks drive-through that we pass.
“Breakfast sandwich? Coffee?” I ask.
“A wrap, please. The spinach one.” He sounds calm and formal. Nothing like when he was inside me, telling me in explicit terms exactly what he was doing. “Medium coffee.”
I repeat his order to the disembodied voice, add my items, and soon we’re back on the highway. Only five and a half hours of awkward to go.
Cameron
Last night, as I drifted off, I heard Marisa say she was glad that it—her first time—was with me. Her words were barely a whisper, but they wrecked me. I felt important and special and… like an absolute fraud. She’d given me no signal that last night was anything more than a means to an end, and here I am, wanting to treasure her until the end of time.
As if she didn’t have better things to do. Like her education. Like her entire life.
She hadn’t wanted it to be awkward today, and I couldn’t even give her that. I was a failure all around, apparently. As my father would say: performed as expected.
I’d stepped outside before Marisa woke. I called my stepmother. A woman I’ve never met in person, Caroline is my only link to the father I hate. The man who holds the future of the family property in his hands. Sebastian is still hanging in there, still alive. But he wants to pull the strings on me one last time.
As I shaved, I ran through what Caroline had said. Almost apologetically, my stepmother told me that my father is sticking to the terms of his will. But now, not only do I have to appear at his bedside, I also have to apologize. For not “respecting” him. For leaving. For a litany of failures.
If I can choke out this fake apology, I will inherit the place where I grew up. The few acres of property. The house with the kitchen where my mother made me cinnamon pancakes before she abandoned me.
Maybe fate will decide for me. Maybe I won’t get to Tucson in time.
I tersely tell Marisa about an alternate route that cuts south at a sharper angle. “We’ll get there quicker that way.”
“Yes, sir.” My groin tightens. Of course I imagine her saying that to me in bed. Who wouldn’t?
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
Isn’t it obvious? “Because it makes it sound like you’re in my employ.”
“Two thousand dollars tells me that I am exactly that, Mr. Cole.”
I want to punch the dashboard, but that’s something my dad would do, and also this isn’t even my car. “I’d be happy to do some driving,” I tell her, ignoring the comment about the money. That cash is the last thing on my mind right now. I haven’t even checked in with my office all morning, which is nothing like me.
“I’m fine, thank you.” She keeps one hand steady on the wheel as she takes a sip of her coffee. I watch her lips hit the edge of the cup and I remember our kisses from last night. I remember how she let me touch every part of her. And now she’s barely speaking to me.
“This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” I say.
“I think we’re making good time,” Marisa replies.
“Are you being purposefully obtuse?” I’m on some level aware that I’m transferring my annoyance at my father to Marisa. (Thanks, therapy). Unfortunately, I’m not self-actualized enough to not be a dick about it.
“Look, Cameron, we agreed that it wouldn’t be awkward today and yet it is,” she says. “I don’t know if that’s my bad or yours. It is what it is. But I was hoping we could still be friends. Or at least on friendly terms.”
Marisa
Quietness fills the car, Cam’s lack of reply heavy and ominous between us.
I blink my eyes because I can’t shut them. I force myself to focus on the road. On driving. My job. What Cam hired me to do.
After this, he will go back to his life, his business, everything else that has nothing to do with me.
The tears fade as quickly as they’d appeared. Cam hadn’t promised me anything. Quite the opposite. We’d agreed, maybe by default, that this was a one-time thing, no strings, and definitely no relationship. I’ve built it up into something it’s not, maybe because of the sex or the forced proximity of the car ride, or the sharing of secrets. Maybe none of this was meant to be at all.
Then why do I just feel like I’ve lost everything?
A half hour passes before Cameron speaks, and it startles me so much that I tense up, clenching the steering wheel.
“I misled you about the reason for my trip.” His voice has lost the formal edge he’d been carrying all morning. “I’m not just visiting my father. I haven’t seen him in over a decade because he’s an asshole and I hate him. He’s basically blackmailing me into seeing him, and making amends for things I never did, just so I can inherit the property that’s been in my mother’s family for generations.”
My heart clenches. “I’m sorry, Cam.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he says sharply. “It’s not your fault, and it’s not your problem. And I don’t want to talk about it. It’s just… it’s too hard.”
My problems seem silly compared to this. I may be staring down a quarter-life crisis and a financial and academic shitstorm, but one thing I know for sure is that my family will always love me. I may disappoint them, but I will never be mistreated or cast out.
“I… left out some stuff when I was talking about my life earlier,” I offer. “I’m not the most reliable narrator here either.”
“Really?” He turns to me with interest, and I simultaneously feel the need to distract him and unburden myself.
“Yep. I’ll tell you if you want.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d love to hear.”
The word “love” from his lips makes me want to spill my guts about everything. I settle on just telling him about my current dilemma.
“I got into U.C. Davis on a soccer scholarship. That was my junior year, toward the end of my first semester. I was only sixteen and my future was already set. My high school posted about it on social media, and there was a little thing on the
sports page in the newspaper. My coach was so proud…” My mind travels back in time. That was another person I’d disappointed. My longtime soccer coach, followed by the coach who had recruited me. After I’d reached out, he watched videos of my game play and advocated on my behalf to the campus higher-ups. My parents bought me a blue-and-gold sweatshirt with “Aggies” on it, and I wore it everywhere.
“I don’t know much about soccer, but that sounds huge, Marisa,” Cam says.
I carefully take another sip of coffee before continuing. “It’s Division 1, NCAA. Full scholarship. A big deal.”
“That’s impressive,” Cam offers warily, because he can probably tell where this is going. This man knows what it’s like to excel. He owns a successful company. And he has an MBA. In this moment I feel young and stupid, but also old and jaded, as if I’ve squandered my potential.
“It was a short celebration.” I add a lightness to my voice that I don’t feel. “A few nights later, I got in the car wreck. My boyfriend wasn’t drunk, but he was driving unsafely. I should have made him stop, but I was hooting and hollering and hanging out the window like a dumbass. My seatbelt barely had a chance to save me.”
“Your scars,” he comments.
“The scars healed,” I tell him. “The issue was the concussion.”
Cameron
“Oh, no. Marisa.” I picture her motionless beside a truck, then in a hospital bed. Her smart brain trying to heal. I know little about concussions other than they can be career-ending for athletes and have lifelong repercussions.
“I’m recovered,” she says confidently. “It wasn’t a terrible concussion. But, after talking to the doctors, my family and I decided that I shouldn’t risk another one. The university was willing to work something out, but I decided to go with Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“I should appreciate that I have—that I had—a backup plan,” she says hesitantly, as if I’m going to tell her to check her privilege or something. “I ended up with an academic scholarship to Valley University. They really want women in STEM. Which is great, but—”
“But what?”
Marisa sighs heavily. “I’m good at those disciplines. Superior, actually.”
I see what she’s getting at. “But you don’t enjoy them?”
“Exactly.” I hear relief in her voice, as if she isn’t used to being understood.
“You’re not obligated to commit to a career just because you’re good at something.” I feel ancient as I’m telling her this. Me, who cowered as my father yelled at me when I bombed the LSAT and gave up on getting into the law school I didn’t want to attend. That’s when he cut me off financially, which was fine by me because I had my undergraduate degree and my buddy and I were well on our way to starting GeoCam Data.
“But I do feel obligated.” Marisa’s shoulders slump even as she stays focused on the road. “My parents were crushed when I couldn’t do soccer anymore. When we found out that I could still get nearly a free ride based on merit, I could see the relief all over their faces. Plus, there are so many opportunities in STEM. I’d be a fool to pass them up.”
“What’s the point if you’re not happy?” I ask, as if I’m some kind of expert on happiness.
“Theater.” Her voice rises, as if she’s trying to justify what she’s just said. “Not performing so much, but stagecraft, direction—all of it. I was in a couple of plays in high school, and then last year I took an Intro to Directing class on a whim, worked on a show, and just fell in love with the energy and the community of it all.”
Her beautiful face lights up. I want this for her. I want her to have whatever makes her look this happy. “So why not do that?”
“I could say that the arts are frivolous, or a reach, or low-paying. But I’m not sure I believe any of that,” she says. “The bottom line is a logic problem. If I change majors, I lose my scholarship. I got in based on declaring for mathematics.”
“So, it’s a money issue,” I say flatly. The easiest problem to solve, yet also the hardest.
“Essentially, yes,” she confirms. “To a lesser degree, it’s that I don’t want to disappoint my parents. I’ve already been there, done that, got the wreck and the compression garment for the scarring.”
Again, I’m overcome with the desire to hold Marisa and tell her everything will be okay. And to pay her tuition. But none of that is what she needs right now. Not from me. This girl—this woman—is strong as hell. She will figure it out.
“You’ll figure it out.” I say the words aloud.
“I’m lucky.” Her tone sounds like she’s trying to convince herself. “I’ve been good at two things.”
“But you don’t like math.”
“By the end, I didn’t much like soccer either.” Her pretty hands grip the steering wheel tightly. She steals a glance at me, gauging my reaction. “Nobody else knows that about me, except Lucia.”
My heart swells because she’s trusted me with this knowledge. “Why?”
“Why did I stop enjoying soccer, or why don’t I tell people?”
“Both.”
She sighs, waiting a few beats before answering.
“I just tired of it. I’d been playing since I was, shit, four years old, Cam.”
“I had no idea it was that… intense,” I offer.
“It’s basically a full-time job for a kid, if you’re in traveling ball. A lot of them really love it. I did, too, until I didn’t. And people feel sorry for me because I couldn’t play after my concussion, but really I didn’t want to play anymore.” She says the words in a rush, her confession. “My parents, the friends I had left after the accident, my coaches, were devastated for me. My team had a damn goodbye party. People cried. And inside I felt like an asshole, because I was relieved.”
“That had to have been hard, Marisa. You’d invested so much. But you deserve to do something you love.”
“Maybe.” She shrugs as if she doesn’t believe it, and again I want to tell her to pull over so I can take her into my arms. “I didn’t have the strength of character to tell my parents I didn’t want to play anymore. After all the time and money they’d invested. It would have broken their hearts.”
“If they’re anything like the parents you’ve described to me, they would have understood.” I couldn’t relate to the idea of supportive parents, but I believed in it for Marisa.
“They would,” she agrees. She puts on her signal and changes lanes. “Gotta get gas before the big stretch of desert.”
A few minutes later, I’m standing beside her watching her pump gas. I can tell that she’s debating what to say next. She’s so fucking brave, and I’m proud that I’m the one she’s chosen to unburden herself to. It’s not as if I have any meaningful advice, but I can listen. And I might even realize that there’s some value in talking through my own shit with someone besides my therapist, who usually just says things like, “So what do you think you should do?”
“It took a car wreck and a concussion to get me out of something I didn’t want to do anymore,” Marisa says, finally, as she replaces the nozzle and tightens the gas cap.
I can’t tell if she’s arguing with me, or with herself. “But now you’re taking the lead with theater,” I remind her. “That’s decisive. That’s action. You should be proud of yourself for knowing what you really want to do with your life.”
“That’s just it. I worry…”
She trails off. “Worry about what, Marisa?” I prompt.
“I worry that maybe it’s never been about soccer or math. Maybe I’m just… I don’t know. Flighty or something. Fickle.” She opens the car door and we get in. She turns toward me before turning on the ignition. “I feel like I want too many things.”
“What things?” She stares at the dashboard, and in that moment I want to give her everything.
Marisa
What do I want? I feel so old and so young in this moment. I know what I don’t want—math and soccer. Which leaves roughly a bill
ion other things that I could want, if all the options were open to me.
I mean, I also want Cam back in my bed and in my body. But that’s impossible.
Lucia knows exactly what she wants and has for as long as I can remember. She was psychoanalyzing our friends on the playground in grade school.
I pull away from the pump and into a parking space. Cam looks at me quizzically. “You’re not afraid to drive.”
“No.” I’m confused and then realize what he’s getting at. “You mean, because I was in a terrible car wreck? My parents made sure that I got right back on that horse. And I’m glad they did. I’d only had my license for a short time, but as soon as I healed physically, I was out driving the family sedan again. That thing is a freaking tank, which probably helped me feel safer.”
Cam places his hand over mine. “Don’t make light of it, Marisa,” he says quietly. “That’s big, and that’s brave. Many people have a bad experience and then never want to be in that situation again.”
I shrug off his comment, but I don’t move my hand. Him touching me now, so casually, reminds me of how his hands were all over me last night. Thinking about how badly I want that to happen again makes me hot and wet.
“It’s hard to get away with not driving,” I supply.
“There are buses. Trains.” I know he’s right. I could have engineered a life where I don’t drive. Thousands of people don’t, or can’t. I guess I should feel proud of myself.
I offer a smile. “Yeah, I’m kind of a badass.”
He squeezes my hand and finally lets go. I pull out of the gas station and then merge back onto the highway. We’ve traveled well into the desert before Cam speaks again.
“Do you think we could… pull off somewhere?” he asks, almost shyly.
“You gotta pee?” I tease him, only because of how he was confused the first time I needed to stop to take care of business.
His Driver: An Instalove Road Trip Romance Page 6