Wanderlust

by Skye Warren

  I put my hand to my forehead, just staring in awe.

  My God, was this what I’d been missing? What else was out there, unimagined?

  I considered going back for my camera but for once I didn’t want to capture this on film. Part of my dependence on photography had been because I never knew when I’d get to see something again, didn’t know when I’d get to go outside again. I was a miser with each image, carefully secreting them into my digital pockets. But now I had forever in the outside world. I could breathe in the colors, practically smell the vibrancy in the air.

  A sort of exuberant laugh escaped me, relief and excitement at once. Feeling joyful, I glanced toward the neat row of semi-trucks to the side. Their engines were silent, the night air still. The only disturbance: a man leaned against the side of one, the wispy white smoke from his cigarette curling upward. His face was shrouded in darkness.

  My smile faded. I couldn’t see his expression, but some warning bell inside me set off. I sensed his alertness despite the casual stance of his body. His gaze felt hot on my skin. While I’d been watching the sunset, he’d been watching me.

  When he suddenly straightened, I tensed. Where a second ago I’d felt free, now my mother’s warnings came rushing back, overwhelming me. Would he come for me? Hurt me, attack me? It would only take a few minutes to run back to my room—could I beat him there? But all he did was raise his hand, waving me around the side of the building. I circled hesitantly and found another entrance, this one to a diner.

  Hesitantly, I waved my thanks. After a moment, he nodded back.

  “Paranoid,” I chastised myself.

  The diner was wrapped with metal, a retro look that was probably original. Uneven metal shutters shaded the green windows, where an OPEN sign flickered.

  Inside, turquoise booths and brown tables lined the walls. A waitress behind the counter looked up from her magazine. Her hair was a dirty blonde, darker than mine, pulled into a knot. A thick layer of caked powder and red lipstick were still in place, but her eyes were bloodshot, tired.

  “I heard we got a boarder,” she said, nodding to me. “First one of the year.”

  I blinked. It was a cool April night. If I was the first one of the year, then that was a long time to go without boarders.

  “What about all the trucks outside?”

  “Oh, they sleep in their cabs. Those fancy new leather seats are probably more comfortable than those old mattresses filled with God-knows-what.” She laughed at her own joke, revealing a straight line of grayish teeth.

  I managed a brittle smile then ducked into one of the booths.

  She sidled over with a notepad and pen.

  “We don’t usually see girls as pretty as you around here. Especially alone. You don’t got nobody to look after you?”

  The words were spoken in accusation, turning a compliment into a warning.

  “Just passing through,” I said.

  She snorted. “Aren’t we all? Okay, darlin’, what’ll it be?”

  Under her flat gaze, I turned the sticky pages of the menu, ignoring the stale smells that wafted up from it. Somehow the breakfast food seemed safest. I hoped it would be easier to avoid food poisoning with pancakes than a steak.

  After the waitress took my order, I waited, tapping my fingers on the vinyl tabletop to an erratic beat. I was a little nervous—jittery, although there was no reason to be. Everyone had been nice. Not exactly welcoming, but then I was a stranger. Had I expected to make friends with the first people I met?

  Yes, I admitted to myself, somewhat sheepishly. I had rejected my mother’s view that everyone was out to get me, but neither was everyone out to help me. I would do well to retain some of the wariness she’d instilled in me. A remote truck stop wasn’t the place to meet people, to make lasting relationships. That would be later, once I had started my job. No, even later than that, when I’d saved up enough to reach Niagara Falls. Then I could relax.

  When my food came, I savored the sickly sweet syrup that saturated my pancakes. It would rot my teeth, my mother would have said. Well, she wasn’t here. A small rebellion, but satisfying and delicious.

  The bell over the door rang, and I glanced up to see a man come in. His tan T-shirt hung loose while jeans hugged his long legs. He was large, strong—and otherwise unremarkable. He might have come from any one of those eighteen-wheelers out there, but somehow I knew he’d been the one watching me.

  His face had been in the shadows then, but now I could see he had a square jaw darkened with stubble and lips quirked up at the side. Even those strong features paled against the bright intensity of his eyes, both tragic and terrifying. So brown and deep that I could fall into them. The scary part was the way he stared—insolently. Possessively, as if he had a right to look at me, straight in my eyes and down my neckline to peruse my body.

  I suddenly felt uncomfortable in this dress, as if it exposed too much. I wished I hadn’t changed clothes. More disturbing, I wished I had listened to my mother. I looked back down at my pancakes, but my stomach felt stretched full, clenched tight around the sticky mass I’d already eaten.

  I wanted to get up and leave, but the waitress wasn’t here and I had to pay the bill. More than that, it would be silly to run away just because a man looked at me. That was exactly what my mom would do.

  Back when we still left the house, someone would just glance at her sideways in the grocery store. Then we’d flee to the car where she’d do breathing exercises before she could drive us home. I was trying to escape that. I had escaped that. I wouldn’t go back now just because a man with pretty eyes checked me out.

  Still, it was unnerving. When I peeked at him from beneath my lashes, I met his steady gaze. He’d seated himself so he had a direct line of vision to me. Shouldn’t he be more circumspect? But then, I wouldn’t know what was normal. I was clueless when it came to public interaction. So I bowed my head and poked at the soggy pancakes.

  Once the waitress gave me the bill, I’d leave. Simple enough. Easy, for someone who wasn’t paranoid or crazy. And I wasn’t—that was my mother, not me. I could do this.

  When the waitress came out, she went straight to his table. I drew little circles in the brown syrup just to keep my eyes off them. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but I assumed he was ordering his meal.

  Finally, the waitress approached my table, wearing a more reserved expression than she had before. Almost cautious. I didn’t fully understand it, but I felt a flutter of nerves in my full stomach.

  She paused as if thinking of the right words. Or maybe wishing she didn’t have to say them. “The man over there has paid for your meal. He’d like to join you.”

  I blinked, not really understanding. The gentleness of her voice unnerved me. More than guilt—pity.

  “I’m sorry.” I fumbled with the words. “I’ve already eaten. I’m done.”

  “You have food left on your plate. Doesn’t matter how much you want to eat anyway.” She paused and then carefully strung each word along the sentence. “He requests the pleasure of your company.”

  My heart sped up, the first stirrings of fear.

  I supposed I should feel flattered, and I did in a way. He was a handsome man, and he’d noticed me. Of course, I was the only woman around besides the waitress, so it wasn’t a huge accomplishment. But I wasn’t prepared for fielding this kind of request. Was this a common thing, to pay for another woman’s meal?

  It was a given that I should say no. Whatever he wanted from me, I couldn’t give him, so it was only a question of letting him down nicely.

  “Please tell him thank you for the offer. I appreciate it, I do. But you see, I really am finished with my meal and pretty tired, so I’m afraid it won’t be possible for him to join me. Or to pay for my meal. In fact, I’d like the check, please.”

  Her lips firmed. Little lines appeared between her brows, and with a sinking feeling I recognized something else: fear.

  “Look, I know you aren’t from around
here, but that there is Hunter Bryant.” When I didn’t react to the name, her frown deepened. “Here’s a little advice from one woman to another. There are some men you just don’t say no to. Didn’t your mama ever warn you about men like that?”

  Anxiety swelled in my chest. My mother had warned me, so many times, but I hadn’t wanted to believe.

  No, I refused to believe.

  The world wasn’t a scary place where a woman had to be afraid. Instead I embraced my annoyance. This was awkward, and I didn’t know how to get out of it without insulting him—or her, for not understanding a basic request or doing her job. She had conveyed the question and been given an answer.

  I enunciated each word as if she had a hard time understanding, and for all I knew, maybe she did. She certainly wasn’t listening to me. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be dining with him. I’m finished. Please give me the check, and I’ll pay for my own food.”

  She frowned. “You’re a mouthy little thing.”

  I scooted back a little. I didn’t want to be mouthy. I hadn’t really meant to offend. But it seemed inevitable. Each small misstep was a blow to my thin confidence. I’d been prepared for the big problems. Finding housing, dealing with money. Driving across the country. Eventually having a boyfriend and figuring out if I could have sex like a normal woman after what had happened. I hadn’t counted on my complete lack of social graces. Like a thousand tiny cuts, they were tearing me apart before I’d even gotten to my destination.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said, and I meant it. Whatever was the right thing to do or say in this moment, I didn’t know it.

  But I couldn’t agree to eating dinner with him, to letting him pay for my meal, and then owing him…what? What was the proper etiquette when a man bought dinner? A goodnight kiss, more? I didn’t know that either. But I did know he made me uncomfortable. If I could put my foot in my mouth around this waitress, it would be so much worse around him. Even several booths over, his dark gaze tied my tongue in knots.

  “I can’t,” I whispered, trying to convey to her the urgency of my situation. The impossibility of it.

  “Have it your way.” A strange light entered her eyes, like one of remembrance. “Maybe you have the right idea anyway. It always ends the same way. Might as well hold onto control as long as you can.”

  Her words sent a chill down my spine.

  I fumbled with my coin purse. “I don’t need the bill. Here, this should cover it.”

  The twenty dollar bill I left was more than the total should have been, even with a tip, and I couldn’t really spare any money but neither could I stay there another minute, pinned by his gaze and terrified by the ancient pain in hers.

  Pointedly avoiding looking at him, I slipped out the door and scurried along the broken concrete until I reached my room. I shut the door, twisting the heavy deadbolt to lock it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The first person to see and describe Niagara Falls in depth was a French priest who accompanied an expedition in 1678.

  My skin still prickled as I huddled in my motel room—something about him had been off. The way the man had looked at me, unflinching, unnerving, had tripped off all sorts of animal instincts inside me that I couldn't precisely interpret except to know to avoid him.

  I latched the little hook on the door for good measure. Glancing sideways at the heavy drapes, I sent silent thanks for the metal burglar bars on the window.

  In the diner, where even the waitress had seemed intimidated, I'd felt vulnerable. But now I was well and truly encased in the motel room, where I would stay until morning. It felt a little like failure, falling back on my old ways, but I considered it only a temporary retreat. Things would be different in Little Rock and even that was only until I’d saved enough money to continue north.

  A shower was the next order of business, so I headed across the shadowed room and bumped directly into the round dinette table.

  “Ouch,” I muttered.

  Had that been directly aligned with the door before? I wasn't even sure where the light switches were. It had been daylight when I'd first been in the room, with the sunlight streaming through the window...through the open drapes. Now they were closed. I had seen that clear enough even in the darkness, the vertical lines where the barred window had once been visible.

  A shiver ran through me. Who had closed the curtains? Had someone been in my room while I’d eaten?

  Housekeeping. It must have been the maid service. Please, God, let it have been them.

  I stood frozen in fear and indecision for a moment before forcing myself forward. The cool vinyl wall met my outstretched palms, and I fumbled until I found the switch. It flicked up with a click, flooding the bathroom with a blinding yellow light.

  My heart thumped wildly for one moment as all the things my terrified imagination had conjured didn't happen. Nothing but an empty, dingy, slightly dirty motel bathroom. A shower with a questionably yellowed shower curtain, a sink, a toilet. No beasts or monsters in sight. No scary men with ill intent.

  I spared a glance for the room, now lit faintly by the spill of light from the bathroom. The bed was made, my bag still sitting on top, gaping open from where I had pulled the dress out earlier. The table and chair sat in the empty space between the bed and the wall, obtrusive for the blind and clumsy like me.

  I was freaking myself out with this. No, he had done that. The man at the diner with his too-knowing gaze. Well, he was pushy and inappropriate, and I was done being scared of strangers.

  The tile was cool against my bare feet. I undressed quickly, finding relief in the warm water that rained on my skin. I even used the bitter-smelling soap wrapped up in paper, comforted by the intensity, feeling cleansed of the man's presence and safe again. More importantly, I was free. Independent. Exactly what I had always longed to be—though I had little experience with it. Maybe that was what made me so jumpy. Maybe he was a normal man, a nice one, and I had jumped to conclusions.

  I had always considered myself self-reliant. I'd had to be with my mother. I cooked for myself when my mom was on a binge. I got dressed for school and took the bus, otherwise a child-protective-services woman would come around and we’d all get in trouble. As soon as I was able, I took the part-time job at the photography studio.

  All that self-sufficiency, but it wasn't the same as being truly alone. My mom had always been around the house. Even when I’d desperately wished for privacy, for a brief respite from her clinging, cloying fear, I’d never gotten it. Now I was on my own and I’d have to get used to that, somehow. That was what I wanted…wasn’t it?

  The thin motel towel turned soggy after a couple swipes at my skin. I examined myself in the mirror. Pale blonde hair that looked golden when wet. Light brown eyes that looked hazel in a certain light. I thought those were my best feature but my one boyfriend from high school had thought it was my lips. Kissable, he'd said.

  Then the other man, later, had been less diplomatic, more succinct. Fuckable. I had flinched, instinctively knowing what he meant even though I shouldn’t have. My mother’s lists of abducted girls had never been specific about what had happened to them. Sex was a vague concept for someone who had only ever been kissed after homeroom. But then she had dated Allen, and he had said my lips were made for kissing a place other than his lips, lower down, and he'd taught me how to do it, again and again.

  At first I had gone along with it, too afraid of setting my mother off with a confession. But then he’d gotten rougher, more forceful and scary and also tingly hot in ways I didn't fully understand. One evening when he wasn’t there, I had tried to tell my mother what was happening.

  I’d expected her to help me. After all, she’d always told me something like that could happen at any time. But she hadn’t believed me. She’d said I was making up stories, that I wanted the attention those girls on the news had gotten. That I was jealous of the time she spent with Allen and that must be why I had made up such lies.

  I cried into my pillow
and let Allen do his business that night. But the light had turned on, a flood of painful light, and my mother had seen. After that, she’d apologized for not believing me.

  She’d been kind, understanding. Too understanding, and that had been the final straw. She’d quit her job, claiming she needed to stay home and watch me, that the world was too dangerous for either of us. Especially me.

  She said I attracted them, the very worst kind of men. And maybe she was right to a point. There was something there, something large and scary lurking under the water. Every once in a while it would surface with a flip of my stomach, like when a man would speak to me with a certain authority, give me an order—or a certain look, like the one in the diner.

  I didn't like it, or maybe I liked it too much, but I couldn't stand being like my mother. I wouldn't end up like her, broken and lonely and so desperate for any man that I’d put up with someone like Allen. That was why I'd had to leave home, why I insisted on getting a college education. This was my ticket away from a life of subservience and fear.

  Well then, why did I feel so afraid? But the wide-eyed girl in the mirror didn't have an answer.

  With the towel still wrapped around my body, I stepped out of the bathroom onto the coarse carpet of the motel room. Immediately I knew something was horribly wrong. The air felt... shared.

  "Nice to meet you, Evie," said a deep voice.

  My whole body strung up tight. He was sitting in the chair, the one that had been empty when I'd gone into the bathroom. It was him, the man from the diner. Though I hadn't heard his voice before and I couldn’t quite make out his features now, I was sure of it. He had the same blithe arrogance, the same element of command—sure his word would be followed. Besides, how many psycho assholes could there be in a remote truck stop?

  His silhouette was long and reclined, as if he were having a relaxing chat instead of breaking and entering. My gaze flicked to the door, but the deadbolt was sideways, unlocked, when I was sure I’d locked it.