“Of course, I don’t mind!” he bellows, cheeks splitting with twin rows of chiclets. “Go find your friend and meet me out front. I’ll be waiting by my truck. Can’t miss it.”
“Sure,” I nod, picking my bag off the floor. “If we’re not there in fifteen minutes, you can leave without us.”
“You can trust me, little lady,” he says, finally stepping aside so I can slink by. I take passengers all the time. None quite as pretty as you, of course.” I blush despite my better judgment. “It would be my pleasure to take you as far as Reno It gives me company on the road and it gets you a little closer to your destination. Just trying to kill two birds with one stone. I do this sort of thing all the time.”
“Okay,” I tell him with a decisive nod. “I’ll meet you outside.”
Travis part ways and I head back into the station’s main thoroughfare, finding Jesse waiting for me at our table, his head resting in his hands, an expression of despondency etched across his features that tells me he had little to no luck in his search for help.
“Looks like you’ve had your share of bad news,” I say, nudging his chair with my shoe. “How about I give you some good news, then?”
He glances up at me, eyes torn between despair and disbelief. “You managed to get a seat on the bus?” he asks, wiping his hand along his jaw. “How? I couldn’t find anyone willing to part with their ticket for any amount of money.”
I shrug my shoulders. “I didn’t find a seat on the bus. But I’d bet my solution is just as good.”
Jesse stands, shouldering his pack in one swift movement. “What are you talking about?” His brow furrows around his question. “Did you find a seat on any bus?”
“Nope.”
“A rental car?”
“Not quite.”
“A horse and buggy?”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” I smile up at him. “Just come see. It’s waiting for us outside.”
I leave him to follow me, turning on my heel and heading out the front door like Travis instructed. He’s right. It would be impossible to miss his truck, an enormous 18-wheeler stretching across an entire row of parking spaces, the ruby red cabin shining like a crown jewel. Travis leans against the driver’s side door, one leg crossed against the other, his boot tip digging into the pavement. I can see the look of confusion clouding his expression at the sight of Jesse following me out the door. No doubt he expected another pretty and desperate twenty-something like the one he found in the hallway.
I probably should have explained who my “friend” was at some point during our conversation, but something told me he wouldn’t be quite as eager to offer me a ride if he knew I was toting along a handsome and single man. What can I say? You can’t always get what you want.
“Ta-da!” I exclaim, stopping mid-stride and throwing my arm out in front of me like a magician proudly showing off the big reveal.
Jesse pulls up short. One more step and he probably would have barreled right through me. “What do you mean ta-da?” he asks, his gaze flickering from my face to the truck to Travis and around again before he can manage to find the words. “Surely you don’t mean… You can’t mean…” He pauses to catch up with his thoughts. “Please tell me our actual ride is parked behind that semi-truck.”
I pull the band loose from my hair, letting my still damp waves flutter around my shoulders. “Nope,” I tell him, taking another step toward Travis, hoping blindly that Jesse will follow without too much complaint.
He does, but only to catch my arm. A single twist of his wrist and I’m staring up into his face, his milk-chocolate eyes boring almost angrily into mine. “You can’t be serious, Frannie,” he hisses, keeping the gravel in his voice pitched low.
“I am serious,” I reiterate. “I mean, I know it’s not the best option—”
He tosses back his head with a cold laugh.
“But it’s better than spending another night on a bus station floor!”
“Is it?” Jesse sneers. “You really think hitching a ride with a complete stranger is a good idea?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I bite back, feeling my gut clench in anger. “Why don’t you ask someone you’ve known for longer than 48 hours and get back to me?”
“It’s not the fucking same, and you know it!” He keeps his hand latched around my arm, not tight enough to hurt me, but with a possessiveness that tells me he has no intention of letting go. “You don’t even know this guy!”
“He seems nice!” I counter. “I bet he’s even got a wife and kid at home.”
Jesse drives his fingers through his hair. “First of all, did he tell you that? And secondly, it doesn’t matter! Having a family doesn’t exempt someone from being a serial killer!”
“He’s just trying to help!”
“I don’t care!” he shouts, throwing his arms out to either side. “This isn’t safe, Frannie! I mean, look at him! Not even you could be crazy enough to think this is a good idea.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means no one in their right mind would think jumping into the cabin of a truck driver they just met would be a good idea.”
“Yeah, well, I’d rather be a little crazy than drive everyone else to the brink!”
“Oh, I think you’re managing both just fine.”
I knew he’d be surprised by the sudden solution to our problem, perhaps even a little pissed, but I had no idea he’d react like this. And truth be told, I’m not sure I care for it.
He clamps his teeth together, the muscles in his jaw working overtime to hold in whatever razor-edged retort wants to let fly. Jesse has given me no reason to fear him, no reason to believe he’d ever hurt me. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel anger as real and deeply as any other man I’ve known.
He surprises me by reaching for my other hand, taking it in his and pressing it firmly against his chest. “I know it might not count for much,” he says in a calm voice, lowering his face until his nose brushes mine, “but I promise we’ll figure out a way to get you to California. I promise.” I watch the lump bob its way down his throat as he swallows hard. “But this isn’t the way, Frannie. Trust me, please.”
I gaze up into his eyes, finding not anger waiting for m, not even frustration, but a sort of gentle desperation I never expected. The warmth of his breath rustles across my cheeks until I find myself leaning into his touch, one short puff of air away from my lips brushing his. A single step and I’d be lost in another of his kisses, the sort of kiss that has me forgetting where I came from, how I got here, who I was before all of this. The sort of sugared heat that leaves me hungry, panting, aching for more. The sort of fire I’d never known before this, before him, before…
Before…
Travis bangs his fist against the cabin’s door, startling me out of the whirlwind forming inside my head. “You guys coming, or what?” he shouts across the near-deserted parking lot. He spits a mouthful of something thick and dark at the ground.
I step back, letting my fingers slip from Jesse’s grasp. Whatever spell he’d cast is broken, whatever blissed out nonsense I might have been foolish enough to consider is tucked away, back in the recesses of my mind, safely secured under lock and key.
“Frannie,” he murmurs, his now empty hand still reaching for mine. “Don’t do this. Please.”
I swallow back the surprisingly bitter realization that I’m going to miss him. “It’ll be okay, Jesse,” I assure him, even though I’m not quite sure I believe it. I take another step back, letting the afternoon breeze part us like the flow of a river. “You’ve got your ticket and I’ve got my ride. Maybe this is just the point of the story where we go our separate ways, you know?”
“You think I give a fuck about my seat on that bus?” he growls, the simmering frustration bubbling once more to the surface. “I could go anywhere I want! I could cash in my ticket and book a ride to Alaska, for fuck’s sake! I don’t care about California, I care about—”
“
Piss or get off the pot!” Travis calls out again, reaching for his door handle.
Jesse’s fists clench down at his sides, the look on his face telling me Travis might want to think twice about interrupting him again.
I shrug and tear my eyes from his, finding it easier to rip the band-aid off than try and ease away the pain. “You don’t have to come,” I whisper, turning and taking a single determined step toward Travis’s truck. One step, one more, one more, heartbroken steps that carry me forward, farther from over the silence echoing behind me, Jesse’s feet staying firmly in place.
“Thank you for everything,” I call to him from over my shoulder, refusing to tear my eyes from my new reality. “I mean it.”
Travis welcomes me with a hearty pat on my back. “Your friend not coming?” he asks, taking my bag from me and tossing it into the cabin. He swings around the front of his truck to open the passenger door for me.
“No,” I say with a shake of my head, climbing the colossal steps as best I can and sliding into the seat with the shaky confidence of someone who found herself squeezed between a rock and a hard place.
“Yes,” a voice says, drowning out my answer. “He is.”
Jesse’s face appears outside my window, pulling open the door and slipping inside without a glance in my direction. I slide across the seat just as Travis settles himself behind the wheel, finding my nestled snuggly between both me, my rock, and my hard place now more literal than ever. Jesse stows his bag beneath his seat without a glance in my direction.
He locks his gaze on the window, refusing to look at me. I slide my hand across the seat to his, finding his knuckles pressed against the vinyl seating, the tendons beneath his skin taut and unforgiving. With a gentle squeeze, I offer him silent thanks, watching as he rakes his teeth across his bottom lip. He keeps his eyes fixed on the glass, even when he flips his hand over and laces his fingers with mine.
I press my palm to his and let his anger settle in silence.
“Alright,” Travis says with a throaty chuckle. “Let’s get this show the road.”
We drive on through the night, a fixture on the road heading west, miles and darkness accumulating in our dust. Travis offers a few short stories of his life on the road, the most interesting places he’s visited, his favorite radio stations, his buddies he meets up with every so often, and a waitress up in Des Moines named Lolita who always remembers his favorite kind of pie. When I ask if Lolita is her real name Travis only laughs and says he never considered it wasn’t.
Jesse remains silent for most of our trip, chiming in with short grunts of either disapproval or indifference until, at long last, he falls asleep against the window, his legs curled into the door handle, arms crossed over his chest like a blanket.
I look over at him as Travis continues to regale me with the story of how he once met Bruce Springsteen’s tour manager at a Stuckey’s in Illinois, and without realizing it, I begin counting the faint freckles stretching across the bridge of his nose. His chest rises and falls in a slow, steady rhythm, his face wiped clear of any anger and resentment he might have been harboring toward my decision, replaced by the calm of a deep sleep. My fingers itch to brush the fine, chocolate strands of silken hair off his smooth brow, and it’s all I can do to curl my fingertips into my palms to stop from reaching over.
“You know,” Travis says with a short, brusque laugh, “when you said you had to go talk to your friend about catching a ride in my rig, I wasn’t expecting that friend to be so…”
“Male?” I fill in the rest.
“That’s one way of putting it,” he chuckles. “Never met someone so eager to bite the hand feeding ‘em.”
“He means well,” I say, before adding, “Probably. He’s just worried.”
“About you?”
“About you.”
“Why?” Travis says, tapping his fingers along the curve of the steering wheel. “He your boyfriend? If he is, you could’ve just said so at the station.”
I shake my head, trying to forget the taste of cinnamon-sugar on Jesse’s lips. “No,” I assure him for no reason whatsoever. Why I feel the need to justify the messed-up relationship status Jesse and I share, I have no idea.
“No,” I tell him again. “He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just a friend. Someone I met on the way to California.”
“California,” Travis muses with a quirk of his brow. “Why on earth do you want to go there? Plenty of places out west to visit without driving straight for a state full of earthquakes and wildfires and… vegans.”
I laugh in spite of myself, clamping a quick hand over my mouth to stifle the sudden noise. But Jesse’s eyes remain firmly closed as he nestles deeper into the seat, his cheek suctioned against the cool glass.
I offer Travis a quiet shrug and think of the piece of paper folded neatly into my bag, the one my sister had passed off to me before I left home. I hadn’t opened it since the morning of the wedding, a day that now somehow feels a lifetime ago. There’d been no need to, not when I already knew each word by heart.
“Seems as good a place as any,” I say finally.
“For what?” he asks.
“For starting over.”
He nods as though he understands, his second chin bobbing against the collar of his shirt with each dip of his head. “I get it,” he says. He lifts a hand off the wheel and, to my immediate surprise, drops it on to my knee. He pats my leg, once, twice, before letting his warm palm rest against the inside curve of my thigh. Every muscle in my body tenses until I’m little more than a human knot.
“You’re preaching to the choir,” Travis says, brushing paths up and down the inner seam of my jeans with calloused fingertips. “I joined the Navy right out of high school and spent six years in active duty before my time was up. Then an old buddy of mine tells me about this new job he has driving for some company up north. It sounded easy enough, so I started driving for them, too.” He laughs. “If anyone understands the need to hit the road and leave the past behind, it’s this old gearjammer.”
“Does that old gearjammer enjoy having the use of both hands?” a voice to my right asks.
I turn my head toward Jesse, who, by all accounts, still appears fast asleep. Only now there is a faint crease of warning furrowed into his brow and a decidedly furious clench to his jaw.
“Because if he keeps putting them where they don’t fucking belong, I can promise he’ll be driving his truck with one.”
Jesse’s fingers clench into fists on either side of his ribs, eyes still squeeze closed.
Travis’s once cheerful face darkens. He locks his eyes on the road. “Not your boyfriend, huh?” His knuckles turn white around the steering wheel as he runs his tongue across his gums. “Wonder if he knows that.”
9.
We drive through the darkness of early morning, midnight changing to the watery gray of dawn before Travis starts complaining of needing a pit stop. My stomach growls in agreement. I grab my bag from under the seat as we vast parking lot of a state rest stop, leaving Jesse sound asleep in the passenger seat, his eyes scrunched closed, his mouth set in a pout as if in deep thought.
I stretch, feeling the tight pull of muscles aching with disuse. Travis heads in the direction of the men’s restroom, and I head down a long, winding sidewalk, around to the far side of the building where the vending machines wait, my steps echoing across the pavement as I drag my tired legs forward step by step. The machines are filled with the usual assortment of snacks: chips, candy, dried meat product, gum. I quickly decide on a simple Snickers, put in my dollar, and wait.
Nothing happens.
I press F16 again. Still nothing.
Piece of shit!
I pound on the side of the machine, expecting it to surrender the candy bar at any moment. I kick the bottom. Nothing.
“Fucking piece of trash!” I scream as though the machine can hear me.
“Here,” says a deep voice. “Let me help.” Travis is a step behind me. For a man his
size, he’s alarmingly stealthy.
I step aside and let him at the rogue vending machine. He heaves his shoulder into the side, nearly tipping it over. The machine roars to life, depositing one stubborn Snickers into the tray below.
“Snickers, huh?” he asks, bending down and handing me the bar.
“Yeah,” I answer. I’ve never been especially good at small talk.
“How do you eat those and still have such a great body?”
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “I guess it’s just an over-active metabolism.”
“Wish I had that.” He rubs his belly like Santa. “But I think it’s pretty plain I don’t.”
I offer a polite laugh and start to walk back to the front of the building.
“Well, wait a minute now,” he says, bracing his arm against the brick at chest level. I nearly clothesline myself against his boulder bicep. “What’s the rush?” He grins down at me. “Take a minute, stretch those lovely legs of yours.”
I duck under his arm only for him to swing in a speedy half-circle and block my way again. I move, he follows. I step, he pursues, almost like a dance.
The only difference is I’ve never been frightened of a dance.
I manage to slide between him and the wall, scraping my back against the bricks, skinning it against the rough, uneven blocks. I bite back a yelp.
“Just hold on now!” He laughs even as a firm hand latches around my elbow. “I’m just trying to be friendly. No need to rabbit run out of here.”
It suddenly feels like that’s exactly what I need to do.
Travis whirls me around and presses me back against the building until I’m caught between the curve of his belly and the concrete wall. “You’re a pretty little thing, you know that?” he says, leaning in until I’m hit with a strong whiff of cheap cologne and body odor. “Maybe the prettiest cargo I’ve carried in my time.
My heart rails against my ribcage as I try to control the tremors running through both of my hands. “You must be anxious to get back on the road,” I say, voice thin and shaking. “There’s still a lot of driving left to do.”
One More For The Road Page 9