One More For The Road

by Delilah Blake

  I know I shouldn’t be flirting. No one in my situation with a sound mind should be flirting. It’s just… I can’t seem to stop.

  And worse than that, I don’t really want to.

  Jesse follows me around the ladies’ department while I select a few items of bargain clothing, a spark of mischief twinkling behind his eyes as I head into the lingerie section.

  “Don’t you want to try that on?” he asks, smirking as I toss a matching bra and panty set into the buggy.

  I dangle a white, lace thong off the tip of my finger. “I will if you will.”

  “You drive a hard bargain, lady,” he laughs, taking the underwear from me and laying it back on the shelf. “You’d be in real trouble if I said yes now, wouldn’t you?”

  “I can handle it. Odds are I’ll look better in that than you anyway.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  We leave the temptations and teasing of the lingerie aisle behind and make our way to the front check-out. The cashier can’t be any older than seventeen, with sandy blonde hair and long, gangly limbs that look as if they grew that way over night.

  “Hey,” Jesse says, passing a bundle of our collected cash across the counter. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the nearest motel is, would you?”

  My ears instantly perk up. Motel?

  “Sure do,” the boy answers with a distinct crackle to his voice that makes me think he’s even younger than I first guessed. “It’s right around the corner from here, ‘bout two or three blocks, on the corner of Palm and Ashley Lane. Just make a left out of our parking lot and keep going straight ‘til you see it. Real nice rooms. No TV though.”

  “That sounds perfect,” Jesse stops him. “Thanks for your help. He hands me one of the plastic bags and hooks the remaining ten around the crook of his elbow. I can’t help but glance at the muscles in his arm as he lifts them.

  “You ready?” he asks me.

  I nod and follow him out the doors, into a summer night that bristles with thick, warm and an electric thrum of possibility.

  “Couldn’t we find a ride tonight?” I can’t help but ask, watching his rather impressive backside travel the length of the parking lot before making a sharp left, just as the cashier instructed. “It’s not too late. We should be able to get a ride no problem, right?”

  I would never admit this to him, but the idea of spending a night in a motel room with Jesse makes me nervous. And, if I’m being honest, much less likely to keep within my own personal boundaries. I mean, for fuck’s sake, the man is the poster child for tall, dark, and delicious.

  His voice floats back to me through the shadows. “I’m tired, Frances. I didn’t sleep much outside the rest stop. I tried, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw…” He stops himself, leaving me to imagine what Travis’s assault must have looked like from his point-of-view. I swallow hard and try ridding myself of the thought.

  “It’s not your fault,” he says, noting the expression of guilt and shame coloring my cheeks. “I promise. But I need to sleep. And I think it’s safe to say we could both use a long shower.”

  “Separately, of course,” I add with a small laugh, trying not to notice the faint purple circles of exhaustion shadowing each of his eyes.

  I watch the corners of his mouth twitch. “Of course,” he concedes. “But it couldn’t hurt to conserve water, you know. Save the planet, and all that.”

  The trek around the building is a short one, the vast majority of scenery consisting of run-down warehouses and shuttered houses. We walk in silence, our breaths mixing with an occasional bird’s twilight song, and the shrill hum of crickets in the high grass. The air is humid and heavy, and a trickle of sweat drips its way from the small of my back, into the waistline of my jeans.

  At the end of two more city blocks is a single-story building with a broken, half-lit sign that spells out CANCY. The walls, either painted or rusted to a sickly, putrid brown, seem to tilt in on themselves, as if in danger of collapsing at even the smallest of pushes. Over top of one of the doors are the words JAY’S MOTEL: OFFICE, hand-painted in a garish yellow.

  “You’ve got to be joking,” I say, unable to tear my eyes away. “We’re not staying here. It looks like something straight out of a Stephen King novel!”

  “Maybe it’s nicer on the inside.” And without glancing back, Jesse walks inside to what can only be the lobby. I let out a groan and follow him across the parking lot, a stretch of pot-hole riddled pavement that holds exactly two cars, one of which looks as though it parked and then simply died of despair.

  The front door lets out a high-pitched screech as we enter, and the scent of what I can only assume is a mixture of sweat, garlic, and hopelessness immediately floods my nostrils. Jesse saunters up to the counter and rings a tarnished but working brass bell.

  Ding!

  A tall, leggy woman with wild red hair steps out from the back room. She’s in her forties, wearing a mini fur coat over a black, low-cut tank top that leaves little to the imagination. She stands almost equal to Jesse’s height due to the sheer volume of her hair and the strappy stilettos latched around her ankles.

  “Hi,” Jesse says. “We need a room for the night.” He’s trying to keep a positive outlook, I know. But the borderline grimace on his face tells me this place bothers him as well. Or at least the smell does.

  “Just the one, handsome?” she asks, fluffing her hair with her fingers.

  “Yes, please,” I answer for him. “The nicest one you have.”

  There’s a sudden, near-deafening crash from the back room.

  “I SWEAR TO CHRIST, IF YOU KIDS DON’T SHUT THE HELL UP, I WILL COME BACK THERE AND BEAT THE TROUBLE OUT OF YOU!” she shouts over her shoulder.

  The noise ends as quickly as it began, and she busies herself with sucking in a breath through a small gap in her front teeth. “Let me see if I got something… nice for you,” she says before disappearing into the back room again and leaving us to stare after her in disbelief.

  “I can’t believe we’re staying here,” I say once she’s gone, dropping my voice to a whisper.

  “Maybe the rooms are nice,” Jesse hisses back.

  “That’s what you said about the lobby!”

  “Come on, Frannie. Maybe we haven’t seen the total package.”

  “I’ve seen enough of the package to know it’s probably wrapped in hepatitis.”

  The woman returns, appearing out of thin air and holding a miniature silver key. “Room 11 is available. One queen bed. Smoking is allowed, but please be courteous and keep away from the curtains if you do. We had a fire in room 6 just last week.”

  “Was anyone hurt?” Jesse asks.

  She answers with a shrug, twirling, her gum around a long, chipped fingernail. “That’ll be $75.00, gorgeous.”

  They exchange cash for key, and, satisfied, she folds the bills in half before stuffing them into her bra. “There are complimentary rubbers in the top drawer of the nightstand,” she smirks before shuffling to the back room.

  Jesse tries his best to hold in a wicked grin as my face flushes with embarrassment. His footsteps echo behind me as I hurry out the door and across the forsaken parking lot. We find our room, and with a soft click of the lock, Jesse pushes the door open.

  The interior walls are the same moss-brown as the exterior, while the bedspread and curtains are all a soft shade of orange, like a jack-o-lantern two weeks after Halloween. What looks like a large reddish-brown stain puckers the center of one of the pillows, and the room’s single chair, a wooden relic with a only three working legs, is tipped over on its side, as if crying into the mottled gray carpet.

  I almost pity it.

  Jesse turns to stare at me, eyes wide and unblinking.

  “I call the chair.”

  11.

  “You’ll be pleased to know I survived the shower.”

  Jesse steps out of the bathroom, a soft glow of steam billowing out after him. Already there’s a large grin plastered on his fac
e, stretching to wrinkle the corners of his eyes.

  Good lord.

  My heart leaps into my throat as a familiar rush of heat roars to life between my legs. For the length of a single heartbeat, I am completely consumed with looking at him. He wears the jeans we’d purchased that afternoon, the crisp denim running the length of toned legs, the waistline falling just below the well-defined cut of his hips. I also notice — with a fluttering of mixed emotions, I might add — that he’s failed to put on a shirt. If Jesse is good-looking in a t-shirt or ratted up flannel, Jesse shirtless deserves its own billboard, the broad slope of his shoulders, chiseled planes of his chest and cut abdomen on full display for the good of all womankind.

  Then again… why share?

  Stop it, Frances.

  “You okay?” he asks, looking up at me through a wall of wet hair.

  “Yeah… I’m fine.” I stumble over my words. “I think I was just in awe of your rendition of Benny and the Jets. Elton would be proud.”

  “Thought you’d enjoy that,” he laughs, flipping his head over and shaking his hair dry with a towel. “I don’t serenade just anyone, you know.”

  “Good thing. There would be a shortage of earplugs.”

  He rifles through a bag and pulls out a pair of socks, the muscles in his back flexing beneath swaths of smooth, tan skin as he bends.

  I swallow hard and avert my eyes. “So, the shower was okay?”

  “Yeah. Hardly any spiders,” he adds with a grin.

  “You’d better be kidding,” I warn. I grab some clean clothes and shower necessities before heading into the bathroom.

  The mirror is fogged over from the previous shower, the countertop and sink still damp and slick with steam. I latch the door behind me and do a quick 360 just in case he wasn’t kidding after all.

  There are no insects to be found and I deem it safe to continue. I slip my filthy clothes off, leaving them in a heap on the cool tile floor. The plumbing gives a loud, dissenting hiss deep within the pipes before water eventually shoots out of the shower head. I step in and let the hot water rush over me; over my head, down my back, landing at my feet on the pale blue shower floor before it swirls in circles down the drain.

  The water does it’s best to wash away the aches and tension my muscles have accumulated over the past days. It also manages to wash away some of the unwarranted nerves I’ve had bubbling up in my stomach since Jesse first mentioned sharing a motel room. He may be a persistent flirt — it takes one to know one — but he would never pressure me into anything. It’s probably the farthest thing from his mind.

  “Still,” I think suddenly. “Would it be so bad if it was on his mind?”

  I shake the feeling away immediately and pick up the tiny bottle of shampoo.

  “Let’s not get crazy, Frances,” I think as I lather it into my hair. “Don’t get carried away.”

  “Carried away?” a small voice asks. “Carried away? Girl, you literally carried yourself away from your own wedding! There’s no going back from that!”

  “Who says I want to go back?” I ask myself, lilac-scented foam running rivers down the sides of my face. “That… life. It just wasn’t for me.”

  “You couldn’t have realized that sooner? You thought ten minutes before I do was an appropriate time for an existential crisis?”

  “No,” I argue… with myself. “But wouldn’t it have been worse to go through with it? To marry Andrew and always be wondering what if?”

  “Oh, I think you have plenty of what if waiting right outside that door.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I think we both know you’d spend the evening licking that entire bottle of gin off that boy’s abs if he let you.”

  “So, Jesse has a nice body? So what?”

  “You know who else had a nice body? Andrew. And look at how well that went.”

  “Andrew was completely different.”

  “Different or not, you cannot start having feelings for him, Frances.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Sure you don’t.”

  “I don’t.”

  “No, yeah, I totally believe you…”

  “I DON’T!”

  Only this time my words resonate loudly around the steamy bathroom.

  “Frannie?” I hear a soft knock on the other side of the door. “Is everything alright?”

  Shit.

  “Yeah! Everything’s fine!” I shout over the continuous sound of running water. I press my forehead to the tile wall and close my eyes.

  Maybe I really am crazy.

  It’s surprising how something as simple as a hot shower can change a mood. I almost feel like a new person, having spent most of the time in the bathroom thinking, something I admittedly don’t do nearly enough. And after considerable debate — not all of it coherent — I arrived at the conclusion that all the nonsense over Jesse is simply that. Nonsense.

  I open the door to the bathroom to find that Jesse has thrown the hole-riddled comforter off the bed and is lying on his stomach on top of the semi-white sheets. I notice, with a twinge of regret, that he’s finally managed to put on a shirt. “I covered your pillow with one of my new shirts,” he says. “I figured you wouldn’t want to put your head on it otherwise.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” I throw my dirty clothes and towel on the floor before grabbing my hairbrush and working at the long-standing knots that have accumulated in my hair. I reach around the back of my head, struggling to get at the rat nest underneath.

  Jesse lets out a sigh. “Here,” he says extending a hand.

  I look at him, eyebrows raised. “You’re serious?”

  “Of course, I’m serious. I mean, I haven’t had proper training or anything, but that’s a risk you’ll just have to take.”

  I hand over the brush and sit cross-legged on the floor at his feet, my head between his knees as he twists his fingers through my dripping wet hair before starting in with the brush. The touch sends a shiver across my skin. I can only hope he doesn’t notice.

  “If I didn’t know any better,” I say as he runs the brush through my long waves without a single tug or pinch to my scalp, “I’d say you’ve done this before.”

  He gives a small laugh. “Didn’t you know? I travel all over the country with young, unsuspecting girls just so I can brush their hair in one-star motels. What can I say? It’s my fetish.”

  “I guess it’s lucky I caught that bus to Kansas City, or you might be staying in this room by yourself. And whose hair would you brush then I wonder?”

  “Yeah, lucky,” I hear him murmur from behind me.

  My ears perk up. “Well it was, wasn’t it? I almost completely overslept.”

  “Yeah… about that…”

  Wait. Is he trying to tell me something? Does he wish I had missed the bus? Does he not like having me around?

  It frightens me a little how quickly those thoughts send me into panic.

  “I know this is only going to make you mad.” He rests the brush on the side of the bed. “And every ounce of sense I have in me is screaming at me not to tell you, but I’m going to anyway. You weren’t going to miss the bus.”

  I twist my neck to look up at him. “I almost did. If that station attendant hadn’t told me to move, I’d probably still be asleep on the floor.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” he says.

  “And you know this because…

  “Because I kind of, sort of, maybe told him to wake you up.”

  “You what?”

  “Are you mad?” he asks quickly. “Don’t be. I just didn’t want you to miss your bus and I know things were awkward after we kissed. So, I paid a station employee twenty bucks to wake you up a before the bus left.” He rambles it all off in one breath.

  The strange this is, I’m not even the least bit annoyed, much less angry. “I guess I should have known.” I spin back around, flinging damp strands behind me like a cape. “Keep brushing, please.”

  He sighs in
relief and restarts the process of untangling. “The Frances I knew a few days ago would have verbally bitch-slapped me around this room. Why the sudden change of heart?”

  My face grows warm to the touch, and I’m suddenly thankful my back is to him. “No change,” I lie. “Just an improved outlook.”

  He must buy my lame excuse because he goes on. “So, I have a question for you then.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why California? I mean, if we’re going through all this trouble to get you there, I really think I have a right to know why.”

  It’s a straightforward question, one he’s asked before. And he’s right. He, possibly more than anyone, has a right to know what all the bother is for. I bite my lower lip and stare into the filthy carpet. “You promise you won’t laugh?”

  “Ever again?”

  “Jesse.”

  “Alright. I promise.”

  “Okay,” I start. “When I was ten, I made this list, a list of things I wanted to do before I died.”

  “You made a bucket list when you were ten?” he interrupts.

  “Just simple, normal ten-year old things. Learn a foreign language, run a marathon, go skinny dipping. It was supposed to be sort of like a time capsule I would put away in a drawer somewhere and forget about until I found it twenty years later.”

  I laugh without knowing why and pray he doesn’t think I’m a complete lunatic. “Anyway, I’d all but forgotten about it until a few days ago, when it landed in my lap by surprise. I started going down the list and realized I hadn’t done a single thing on it. Not even the easy ones, like hold the high score to an arcade game, or sing karaoke in public. So, I decided to do something about it. The first thing on the list was to see the Pacific Ocean, so, I picked up everything and left.”

  I know I’m leaving out several, vital details from my story: Andrew, the wedding, how I found the list in the first place. But why should I bother him with any of that?

  He’s silent for a few minutes, still brushing softly on my hair. “That’s really fucking cool,” he says finally. “Can I see it?”

  I nod and climb to my feet, finding the folded sheet of paper Katie had given to me that day in the bus station nestled neatly at the bottom of my satchel. I unfold it with tender fingers and pass it to him, reading over my ten-year old chicken-scratch running the length of the page.