The Mother Road

by Meghan Quinn

  “That would be breaking tradition,” my dad states, pulling a new blue Polaroid from his side. “Here, Buttons. Do you think you can document our trip this go around?”

  Taking pictures was always my mom’s job; she was obsessed with capturing her family from behind the lens and then cherishing the moments later in her scrapbook. The sentiment cuts me in the heart once again. If I didn’t know any better, I would think my dad and my brother were trying to turn me into a bawling mess.

  “I would be honored,” I smile, loving the brand new Polaroid. It’s cute!

  We huddle together, as closely as possible, and plaster giant smiles on our faces. My dad holds the picture of my mom up to his chest, making sure she’s included.

  “Say cheese,” my dad says, just like old times.

  The flash goes off, and just like that, our first memory is in the books.

  ****

  The rumble of Tacy is beneath us as we finally make it out of the Santa Monica area, but not before taking a picture in front of the Route 66 sign. Back when the road was a popular travel destination, it was set up so you started in Chicago and drove to California. So the sign we took a picture in front of—yes, in our neon yellow shirts—was actually the end. But, thanks to Paul’s craftiness and height, he temporarily taped over the word “End” and put a sign that said “Start” over it. Our mom would have done the same thing.

  “Hey, Marley, check it out, all of our old cassette tapes,” Paul pulls out a shoe box from under his seat. “I didn’t play them on the way here so we could listen to them together.”

  I’m sitting at the dining table, updating a blog post about my new adventure when I scan the box Paul has in his hands.

  Moving to the bucket seat next to the cab of the RV, I sit down next to Paul. “No way, we kept these?”

  I thumb through our travel cassettes.

  You see, back in the day, before MP3 players and even CDs, there was a little contraption called the cassette tape. It could fit in the palm of your hand and be wound up by a pencil eraser if ever the tape was pulled out. If you were lucky, your family owned a double cassette player, meaning you could make your own mixed cassette tapes by playing and recording a second one at the same time. There was a certain magic to making a mixed tape; it made you feel unstoppable, like you were the titan of the music world. Paul and I used to spend hours coming up with the perfect playlists, and thanks to my parents’ wide collection of tapes, we were able to deliver some epic mixes DJ Jazzy Jeff would be jealous of.

  A laugh escapes me as I read one of the marked tapes. “Rad Rock for Rad Rockers. Please, can we play this one?”

  Paul nods in approval. “It’s just the one I was looking for.” He directs a conspiratorial glance at my father, who winks at him. I’m far too excited about the mixed tape to even think about their exchange.

  I sit cross legged on the chair and wait for the first song to come through the speakers. Within a few seconds, Paul’s middle school voice booms through Tacy, rumbling off the wood paneling. “This is for all of you Rad Rockers out there. May your life be filled with guitar riffs and bad boy drumming. Rock on.”

  Oh, and when you’re making a mixed tape, you can record yourself too, as if you’re running your own radio station. We took advantage of that feature…often.

  I bend over at the waist, gripping my stomach as I laugh hysterically at Paul’s little boy voice.

  “Squeak much?” I ask, still laughing. “Sounded like you were doing a horrible impression of Victor Victoria.”

  “That was pretty bad,” my dad chimes in, a giant smile on his face.

  Paul shrugs his shoulders and turns up the volume.

  The quality is scratchy, probably from both the old speakers and the cassette tape, but once the first lyrics of “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen blare through the speakers, we don’t even care. In unison, we all try to match the soprano voice of Freddie Mercury, but it just comes out as ear piercing garble.

  My dad and Paul rock out, Wayne’s World style, while I sit in the back, laughing and dancing like I’m in a club. It might be rock, but it still has a beat, plus I’m not much into the head slamming unless it’s against a head board.

  I sigh as I try to recollect the last time my head slammed against a headboard. There was the one guy with the gross goatee that kept tickling my chin, but we never went past a little fondling because I kept laughing from envisioning his goatee as a feather he kept trying to stroke me with. He was out of my door pretty quickly.

  Then there was the model. Damn, he was hot. Blond and buff with an itty bitty pee pee. We had the fornications, but I can’t ever remember him actually getting me off, thanks to the lack of penetration. I really didn’t think it was possible to have that small of a penis, but blondie really brought a new meaning to macaroni dick for me. That night, I just enjoyed his muscles, memorizing them vividly so I could use them as memories to diddle-off to later.

  Has it really been that long? Yup, it’s been that long. If my vagina could cough, it would cough up a cobweb and a note that read: “Just pick a dick and get on with it. A girl needs her salami every once in a while.”

  “You’re up, Marley,” Paul calls out over the song.

  “What?” I ask, shaking the thoughts of my lonesome vagina out of my mind. As I come to, I realize what song is playing.

  “Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones.

  “No.” I shake my head and cross my arms.

  “It’s tradition,” Paul presses.

  I look out the window and say, “There aren’t even any cars near us.”

  “It’s tradition,” my dad chimes in.

  “Mom never thought it was. She’s rolling in her grave right now with this request.” I pull the Mom card; I don’t care.

  “Mom never liked it, but she never stopped it either, so you can’t use that excuse.” My dad has a smirk on his face.

  And I’m supposed to be his little girl! He always takes my side.

  “I’m not mooning anyone!” I throw my hands up in the air.

  Yes, you heard that right. My family takes turns mooning people. Whenever a certain band would play during our treks, we would have to moon someone in another vehicle or a very unlucky hitchhiker, whichever we saw first. I can’t even pinpoint the moment where this became a rule in my family trips, but once it did, it stuck. Unfortunately for me, The Rolling Stones was my band.

  “Marley, you better drop trou soon or I’m going to pull the biggest groom-zilla moment you’ve ever seen,” Paul threatens.

  “You know that is more tempting to me, right? I would pay to see a groom-zilla moment.”

  “Not if it involves throwing your precious make-up out the window.”

  “You wouldn’t,” I glare.

  “Test me,” Paul glares back with a smarmy look on his face.

  “Fine!” I succumb. “Next car that passes, I will moon them. You happy?”

  “Very,” Paul relaxes back in his seat, humming the words to “Satisfaction.” At that moment, I want to stab the top of his head with one of my pointy heeled stilettos, but I resist.

  “Hitchhiker on the right,” my dad calls out.

  Just my luck.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I look out the window just to find a hitchhiker up ahead with his thumb up in the air.

  “Come on, Marley, drop it,” Paul states.

  “There is something seriously perverted about you insisting I take my pants off. You realize that, right?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Paul counters.

  From my view out the front window, the hitchhiker is quickly approaching, so I turn to the window next to the door, take a deep breath and pull my pants down, pressing my cheeks against the cold glass of the window just as my dad slows down Tacy.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, my ass hanging in the air.

  “He needs a ride.” My dad squints at the hitchhiker, stopping in front of him.

  My ass is plastered against
the window as Tacy comes to a halt. Pure mortification runs through me as I lift my pants from my ankles, cover up, and scramble toward the table, where I grab my pen and click it so the pointy end is out.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I practically scream. “We don’t pick up hitchhikers.”

  “Might be fun,” my dad says. “Let the guy in, Paul.”

  “No, don’t!” I yell, ready to fight, with my pen positioned in a stabbing threat.

  My dad has lost it. I know he’s getting old and Paul’s wedding has been stressful on him, but picking up a hitchhiker? Has he lost his ever-loving mind?

  I’m not a pessimist. I’m one of those girls who looks at a glass as half full, but I’m not naïve either. I’ve seen those psycho killer movies; I’ve read the newspaper. There are some screwed up people out there in the world just waiting to find their next victim.

  A family in a rickety old RV wearing matching shirts and hats seems like the perfect prey to me.

  The door handle jiggles and I pray to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to save me in this moment, to either spare me and throw Paul into the killer’s hands or to deliver us a hitchhiker with no intentions of harvesting the skin off our skulls to eat as a treat later.

  The door flies open and light pours in from behind a man with a backpack strapped against his back. From what I can see, he’s tall, built like a firetruck, and sporting a beard just like my dad and Paul.

  Men and their beards.

  "Easy there, killer. What are you going to do? Draw on me until I’m dead?”

  I know that voice, I’ve dreamt of that voice, I’ve pictured hearing that voice over and over in my head. I’ve envisioned the deep rumble of that voice rolling over every mound of my body.

  The man closes the door and my eyes adjust to the light. A small gasp escapes my mouth as I realize who the hitchhiker is.

  Porter Smith.

  Paul’s best friend and the man who broke my heart four years ago.

  “Porter, good to see you, boy,” my dad laughs from his seat up front. “Glad you could give our girl a scare.”

  “Hey, Bernie,” Porter greets my dad with a handshake while I’m frozen in place, unable to move. “Paul, the beard is coming in nicely.”

  “Thank you. I do say so myself.” Paul rubs his beard, which, in my opinion, looks moronic on him, since he’s never been good at growing facial hair. Compared to my dad and Porter, he looks like a twelve year old boy who tried using Rogaine on his jaw, but failed miserably.

  While Porter talks to my dad and Paul, I can’t help but ogle him. He’s slightly older in age, but twenty-six years looks good on him. His chest is perfectly developed, making his shirt look like its being eaten by his pecs. And can I see his abs? I look closer, yup, there they are, stacked in a row. The reason I can see his abs so well is because he has his shirt tucked into the front of his jeans, showing off his light brown belt. His jeans ride dangerously low on his tapered waist, clinging to his hips and butt.

  He’s holding his pack at his side and I watch in fascination as his forearm ripples with sinew with each movement he makes. He’s definitely developed into a man; there’s no doubt about that.

  I glance up to his face, one that I committed to memory years ago, and note the slight changes from when I last saw him. His beard is much thicker, but disappears perfectly into his shaggy brown hair, which is covered by that stupid red hat he refuses to throw away. His brown eyes sparkle under the brim and I can still faintly see the scar on his left cheek from where he fell face first onto some barbed wire when we were kids. There are light laugh lines around his eyes, making him look dignified, and right above his beard is that unmistakable dimple. So annoying, yet so freaking sexy.

  Rather than focusing on how ruggedly handsome he is, I try to convince myself that he’s annoying…the most annoying male I’ve ever met, but the minute he laughs at something Paul says and that one dimple of his pokes past his beard, my ovaries combust and all the feelings I had for him rush back in full force.

  It’s true, I have an inappropriate crush on my brother’s best friend. I’ve pretty much loved him from the minute he walked up to our house and told us he moved in next door. Paul and Porter became insta-besties and I became the annoying little sister who would tag along, trying to keep up with the trouble makers. He captured me with his brown eyes that are so dark, you can’t see his pupils, and his deep, baritone voice that still plays in my dreams to this days. With his dark eyes and wild hair when he was younger, I always thought he was mysterious.

  I grew up watching Porter work on our farm, play every sport conceivable with Paul at the varsity level, and then I watched him graduate with Paul and move away temporarily to help my dad’s friend, Thomas. Occasionally, Paul and Porter both would come back for holidays, and with each visit, my heart would be given a little more over to him. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I was finally able to find out what it felt like to be held by him, and then what it felt like to get your heart crushed by the man you’ve idolized for years.

  He’s ruined all men for me, and I’ve never truly gotten to experience him to his fullest, only from a yearning distance.

  “Why couldn’t you have gotten fat?”

  My breath pauses as I wonder if I said that out loud or in my head. My fear is confirmed as Porter turns to face me. He drops his bag and stuffs his hands in his pockets, a grin on his face. His brown eyes sear me in half as my heart rapidly beats in my chest. Seeing your childhood crush turn into a man is hard enough as it is, but facing that man after he broke your heart four years ago is devastating.

  “Hey, Marbles,” he says in his rustically sexy voice.

  Marbles, the childhood nickname Paul and he came up with for me one day when I wouldn’t leave them alone. They called me Marbles so much that I ended up crying and running back to my mom, who told me boys who pick on me actually like me. A part of that was true, what she failed to mention was that they also break you in half, leaving you to pick up the pieces on your own.

  “Porter,” I say through clenched teeth. “Didn’t know you lowered yourself to hitchhiking. Finances rough right now? Selling your body?”

  “You would like that, wouldn’t you?” he replies with a teasing glint in his eye. To someone else it might be a teasing glint; to me, it’s an invitation to hump his face, but I refrain.

  “Surprise!” Paul says, disrupting the stare-down Porter and I are having. “Porter is going to be coming on the trip with us.”

  “What?” I ask, my head whipping over to glare at Paul. I can feel my nostrils flare, my hormones turn on, and at that moment, I’m unsure if my body is going to break out in a tidal wave of sweat or if fire will start shooting from my eyes. “Why is he coming on our family trip?”

  “He’s family,” Paul defends his best friend. “Plus, this is my last hurrah before I get married. I wanted all the important people in my life involved, and that includes my brother here.” Paul pats Porter on the shoulder.

  The bro-mance is disgustingly real as they gaze at each other.

  “It’ll be fun,” my dad calls out, once again, disappointing me in his side taking. I make a mental note to call my dad more often; his favoritism toward me is slipping.

  “Don’t look so upset, Marbles.” Porter sits down in the bucket chair after sharing an emotional love moment with Paul. My dad pulls out onto the road again, moving our trip right along. “We’re going to have one hell of a trip together. I promise.”

  Porter winks at me and kicks his feet up on the bench across from my seat. I want to kick the arrogance right off his face with a snaggle foot…right after I lick his entire body and pee around him so everyone knows he’s mine.

  Where’s my mom when I need her?

  CHAPTER THREE

  **PORTER**

  “There is no way you didn’t touch Amy Render’s boob that night. Dude, I saw your hand under her shirt.” Paul’s mouth, like normal, has gotten the best of him, and he’s spittin
g out old memories of our high school days, when touching a girl’s breast was the epitome of high school accomplishments, only second to going all the way.

  “I didn’t. She slapped it away before I got a grab,” I lie, knowing full well I fondled the Super Soaker Queen.

  “You’re such a liar. I had the perfect angle that night to see what you were doing. I know a boob grab when I see one. You totally touched her nipple.”

  I shrug my shoulders and glance over at Marley. She’s slouched on the table bench, her head resting against the back of the seat and her hands folded at her bare stomach.

  When Paul found out I was going to be in California the same time he wanted to do his farewell road trip, he insisted I join. I’m not much for crashing family vacations, but the McManns feel more like my family than mine ever did.

  After my mom left my dad and me, Dad lost himself in a bottle and I lost myself in the comfort of the McMann home. Paul quickly became my brother, Bernie stepped in as my father figure, and Marley, well, there is no way in hell I would ever call her a sister.

  It would be convenient for my life if I was able to call Marley a sister, but from the moment I met her, I knew that would never be an option. Her light blue eyes captivated me when I was young and since then they have infiltrated my mind. Like a professional, though, I kept my distance from her, physically, because I would never do anything to hurt my relationship with Paul or with the McManns. So, I harbored my feelings, grew up, graduated, and moved on.

  I did an exceptional job of erasing my memory of her until that one night, the night that has been branded to my soul, the night I broke Marley.

  Back then, she was only eighteen, still in high school with the world at her feet. Now, she’s not the Marley I used to know; she’s different…grown up.

  I’m not going to bullshit you; I was nervous as hell stepping into this trailer because it’s been years since I’ve seen her…I wasn’t sure what to expect. The minute I stepped into the RV, I knew it was a mistake. I should have just flown home, because seeing Marley for the first time in four years brought back all the feelings I tried to repress.