Finn finished off the last slice, still unsure.
“I can clean this up if you want to jump in the shower.” Iris started throwing discarded napkins into the empty box.
“Okay, thanks.” Finn grabbed a T-shirt and boxers and headed for the bathroom.
Chapter Twenty
After standing in hot water for a few minutes, Finn turned the knob to cool. She was completely off balance and needed something to jolt her back to normal. The cold water was a welcomed shock. She took two, three deep breaths and then switched the warm water back on.
Wasn’t she the player in this scenario? How had she let Iris turn the tables on her so quickly? She hadn’t even seen it coming. She was going to have to up her game or be on her guard or some other sports metaphor she couldn’t think of at the moment. She was tired and practically in a pizza coma. Yeah, that’s it. She blamed the extra cheese for slowing down her brain.
She pulled on a T-shirt and boxers and was still towel drying her hair when she leaned around the doorframe to see what Iris was doing. Only one lamp in the room was on and it was low-wattage, which made the glow from the TV seem bright. It cast a blue highlight along the curve of Iris’s shapely legs as she casually lounged on the bed. Iris was completely engrossed in a rerun of Friends and twirling her hair around her finger.
Was the laugh track mocking Finn? Go ahead, laugh. The joke’s on me.
Finn covered her face with the towel and took a deep breath. This was either going to end up being the greatest week of her life or the worst. It was too soon to tell.
She hung the towel on the back of the door, giving herself a pep talk.
You’ve got this. There’s a totally hot woman sleeping in the same room with you. And she just told you she’s into women. So what? You’ve been with beautiful women before. You know what women like. Be cool. Ice cool.
Finn shuffled out of the bathroom, raking her fingers through her damp hair. She concentrated on looking at the TV rather than Iris. She wants you to notice her legs. Don’t.
Finn didn’t want to be such an easy mark. If something did happen between them and it was all on Iris’s terms, then Finn would be in serious trouble. She needed to adjust the balance of power back in her favor.
Iris laughed and Finn glanced over, but not fast enough for Iris not to make eye contact. Busted.
They watched back-to-back episodes of Friends and then the beginning of some other nineties movie that Finn had seen part of before. She was bored and despite concerted effort not to be, was completely distracted by the curvaceous body lounging on the neighboring bed. Finn calculated that there was probably three feet of open air between them, maybe four, and still, the proximity of Iris made her skin warm.
At some point, they agreed to turn the TV off and go to sleep. But Finn wasn’t really sleepy, her entire system was idling fast. She lay on her back staring up at the ceiling. Every rustling sound from the other side of the room caught her attention. She had this fantasy that Iris would simply slip into her bed. That Iris would decide she could no longer fight the attraction and she’d let Finn know by crawling under the covers during the night.
Oh, who was she kidding?
As quietly as she could, Finn tugged her laptop from her bag and tiptoed into the bathroom. Now was as good a time as any to search for that Doritos commercial on YouTube that everyone but her had seen.
* * *
Iris heard the soft squeak of bedsprings. She opened her eyes just in time to catch a glimpse of Finn slipping into the bathroom. She rolled onto her back and exhaled. Why was she so restless?
Maybe because she’d eaten half a pizza. That was more gluten and dairy than she’d allowed herself in months. Oh, and it was delicious, by the way.
Or possibly their dinner conversation was keeping her up.
What had she been thinking? She’d blurted out what she’d suspected was unsaid, hanging in the air between them. But talking about it hadn’t solved anything. She still had no idea if Finn was truly attracted to her.
Iris had a habit of being too honest. And in Hollywood, that was a flaw. She knew this from her friends. Sometimes people wanted to ignore the truth. They didn’t want to have it served up to them during dinner. They wanted to enjoy their pizza in peace and denial. She knew all about denial, firsthand.
She sighed and turned onto her side, facing the window. The streetlight was doing its best imitation of the full moon. A strand of light cut across the blanket. Iris got up to close the drapes. She heard a familiar sound and tiptoed to the bathroom door to investigate.
With her ear to the door, she heard the faint jingle from the Doritos commercial. Finn was checking out her work online. This discovery made Iris smile. She hurried back to bed before she was discovered. Iris tugged the covers up over her shoulder and rolled onto her side with her back to the bathroom door.
* * *
Finn easily found the commercial. All the Super Bowl ads were online. The Doritos commercial was funny and sexy. It was no mystery now why everyone seemed to remember Iris from her starring role as a buxom barmaid. Damn, she looked sizzling hot.
She decided to poke around and see what else she could find. She checked IMDB for Iris’s film credits and then started doing other searches on YouTube for excerpts of various shows. Cross-references came up for Kent Kenny. For another fifteen minutes, she got totally lost watching videos of some of Kent’s stunt driving moves. There were links to his Instagram account and she couldn’t help herself, she clicked over and started to scroll through pics.
Kent was too good-looking, and Finn wasn’t even into guys. If Captain America took up surfing and became a stunt driver, he’d look exactly like Kent. Finn closed her laptop and exhaled.
How could she ever compete with that?
Iris’s ex was a superhero hottie. The worst sort of ex. She’d never measure up.
Now she was feeling more tired, and deflated. Sluggishly, she got to her feet and switched off the light.
* * *
Iris heard Finn sink onto her bed; the noisy springs gave her away. She pretended to be asleep. Finn was interested. Or at least curious enough to spend a good half hour with her laptop to investigate Iris online.
As much as it annoyed her to have a life captured on video and now easily accessible online, sometimes it worked in her favor. They had a few days of quality time together to figure things out, and maybe they’d have some fun along the way. Not that things had to evolve into something sexual between them, but if they were both attracted to each other and didn’t eventually act on it then this was going to be a very tense drive.
Finn was fun and easy. Getting out from under Kent’s ego, she could finally breathe, and she could also see how wrong they’d been for each other. His ego was so out of bounds that there was almost no space for her. She should have ended it long before she caught him in bed with someone else. Catching him cheating simply forced her to deal with the problem she already knew existed. First, Kent only really cared about himself. Second, she didn’t love him. She liked him, they’d had a good time together in the beginning, but she could never fully trust him. Without trust there was no way she could fall in love with him.
Yeah, she should have ended it sooner.
Happy thoughts floated through her sleepy brain—the canoe outing on the lake, the picnic with Finn, their drive into the mountains to the overlook. Sleep seeped in from the edges and she gave in to it. She was smiling as she drifted off.
Chapter Twenty-one
Iris squinted into the glare. A slip of bright light cut across the room from the edge of the drapes. Iris had forgotten to set an alarm. She wondered if Finn was awake. Not that she was hung up on specific roles or anything, but at this moment she hoped Finn was one of those chivalrous butches who would bring a woman coffee in the morning. Finn had delivered coffee to her cabin that one day, but it was possible that was just a happy accident. Or a peace offering to make up for the bear encounter.
She went
to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. Her hair was a bit of a mess from taking a shower the night before and going to bed while it was still damp. About a hundred strokes with a wide-toothed comb later, Iris tamed it into a loose braid. That seemed like the most sensible solution to all the wind from the car’s open cockpit. That’s assuming they drove with the top down for part of the day. And even if they didn’t, the windows would be open.
Iris was dressed and gathering up her things from the bathroom when she heard the door open. She walked out with her makeup bag and various skin care items to see Finn holding a paper plate piled with food and a cardboard tray with drinks.
“You’re my hero.” Iris dropped her toiletries into her suitcase.
“It’s a lot easier to be this sort of hero.” Finn grinned. She balanced the tray with one hand and slid her sunglasses to the top of her head.
“Oh, wait, I forgot you’re not so good with trays. Should I take that?” She couldn’t help teasing Finn about the strawberry jam disaster.
“Ha ha, very funny. She’s a comedian and an actor.” Finn set the tray on the table. She had piled one paper plate with a bunch of things from the free continental breakfast. There were two empty plates under the top plate. She set one in front of Iris. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want so I just got a little of everything.”
There was a cheese Danish, a boiled egg, a biscuit, pats of butter, a few slices of cantaloupe, and one giant strawberry.
“Oh, and this…I forgot I put these in my pocket.” Finn produced two tiny containers of blueberry yogurt from her jacket pockets.
“Wow. Thank you.” Iris impulsively kissed Finn on the cheek.
They both froze for an instant.
“Sorry, I…thank you.” She’d kissed Finn without thinking. The gesture seemed so…normal.
“No worries.” Finn blushed.
Iris touched Finn’s shoulder lightly as she sat down. What she needed most was coffee. She took a sip and smiled. Finn had remembered that she liked only cream. Damn, she was good.
Finn sat down. She’d left while Iris was asleep, and in the half hour she’d been gone had forgotten how gorgeous she was. Her appetite waned, butterflies swarmed. She waited for Iris to choose what she liked, but it seemed Iris was enjoying her coffee too much to care about food at the moment.
“Please, take what you like. I’m not a big breakfast person anyway.” Iris sipped her coffee. “Plus, I had way too much pizza last night.”
Finn was pretty sure she’d eaten most of that pizza. Iris had teasingly nibbled on one piece forever and then only eaten half of a second slice.
“So, what’s our plan for today?” Iris opened one of the yogurts and sampled it.
Finn had gone over the route with Iris before they left Georgia, but it seemed like roads and maps weren’t really Iris’s thing. Finn loved maps. Even as a kid, before she could drive, she’d thought maps were beautiful. They were like treasure maps for discovery. Her parents were amused by how she could sit for an hour and study the road atlas. She’d kept a journal for many years of all the places she’d go when she got her first car. But she hadn’t visited most of them, or hardly any of them. Once she was old enough to drive she’d realized you also need funds to travel. Gas wasn’t cheap. Part-time jobs took up any free time, and then she started rebuilding cars and doing races with Ward at different regional tracks on the weekend.
Man, while you’re doing other things, life just kept speeding by. She was way overdue for this trip to LA. It was time to figure out the next phase of her professional life. Hell, her life in general.
“I was thinking we’d drive all the way to Dallas today.” Finn had already eaten the cheese Danish. She sat back and sipped her coffee. “It’ll take us two days to get across Texas.”
“I guess I didn’t realize Texas was that big.”
“It’s huge.” Finn checked the time. “We should probably get going soon so we can stop and take a break midday. I think it might get hot today. We’ll need a rest and so will the car.”
“I’m ready. I just need to use the restroom once more and zip up my bag.” Iris shoved the plate of remaining food toward Finn. “You’ll be driving. You’ll need your strength.”
* * *
There wasn’t much to see as they cut across Mississippi from Meridian. Miles and miles of flatland and trees, lots of trees. Iris didn’t say much; she was reading news alerts on her phone. Finn was happy to have the quiet, the only noise was from the engine and the wind from the windows. Iris casually propped her bare foot on the dashboard. Finn tensed and shot Iris a look, which she didn’t see because she was staring at her phone.
“Hey, not to be a jerk, but do you mind?” She motioned toward Iris’s foot.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” Iris removed her foot and dusted the dash with her fingers. “I think I’m much more casual about cars than you are.”
“Yeah, I know I’m a pain. Just think of it like expensive furniture, which you probably wouldn’t put your feet on.” Finn cringed a little. She knew she was pickier than most about how her car was treated. It made her nervous every time they drank coffee in the car, but it would be silly not to allow any drinks given the extreme length of each day’s drive.
“You’re not being a pain.” Iris smiled at her. She didn’t seem bothered in the least. “Asking for what you want is a good thing.”
Finn nodded. She had a feeling Iris wasn’t just talking about car etiquette.
“Thanks for understanding.”
Jackson came and went in the middle of the state. They stopped in Vicksburg for more coffee. Vicksburg was kind of a cool old river town. It might have been fun to walk around a little, but not much was open except the coffee shop. Things seemed to open late down by the river. They crossed the Mississippi River three times. Iris didn’t take her seriously when she’d first suggested they cross the bridge again. Finn just grinned and turned the car around. This was a milestone, one of the big landmarks along the way. Finn intended to savor it. They were now west of the Mississippi. For Finn, that was a big deal. She’d only been west of the Mississippi once before. Her church youth group had gone to the Grand Canyon when she was a senior, but they’d flown to Arizona. Crossing the big river in the roadster was an entirely different experience. She felt like an explorer and an adventurer.
Iris didn’t quite share her same level of enthusiasm for crossing a wide muddy waterway three times, but she also didn’t give Finn a hard time about it.
They drove for an hour across bayous after leaving Vicksburg before reaching Monroe, which felt strangely abandoned. There were some photo-worthy old buildings and a slew of faded roadside signs, but otherwise, not much to see.
The low country transitioned to forested, rolling hills. This part of Louisiana was a far cry from the Cajun fun of the southern half of the state. This was Baptist country, part of the Bible Belt heartland. Having been raised Southern Baptist, Finn was well acquainted with these sorts of communities. Louisiana ended up being the transition between the agricultural Deep South and the oil industry of Texas.
They stopped in Shreveport, near the state line, but only for gas. Finn wanted to take a longer break in Jefferson, Texas. It was a small side trip, only about four miles north of Marshall.
Jefferson was an almost perfectly preserved bayou town that looked as if it were stuck in time somewhere in the late 1800s. According to the historical marker near where they parked, Jefferson during the 1870s had been one of the busiest inland ports west of the Mississippi. They left Scarlett to cool off under a moss-filled shade tree and began to explore. It looked as if there were plenty of antiques shops and cafés to choose from.
They meandered through the Jefferson General Store. It was full of the usual stuff—old school candies, replicas of tin signs, and about a million other kitschy items that no one really needed but probably remembered fondly from their childhood. Finn purchased a small bag of assorted candy. Sugary treats
might come in handy for the drive. She picked hard candies that wouldn’t melt if they forgot and left them in the car. Finn was very particular about not eating food in the roadster. Drinks with lids were nerve-racking, but tolerable. They’d eaten what her mom had packed for them the first morning, and Finn had been finding crumbs in the carpet ever since. She’d been known to let laundry pile up in her cabin, along with dishes in the sink. Tidiness in other areas of her life weren’t as high a priority as the pristine condition of her car.
“I think we should try that place for lunch.” A little way from the store, Finn stopped on the corner and pointed. Across the street was Kitt’s Kornbread Sandwich and Pie Bar.
“That sounds…scary.” Iris quirked an eyebrow.
“Come on. I’m a sucker for cornbread.” She started across the street toward the red brick building. “And if the cornbread sucks, at least we know they have pie.”
The place was packed and it wasn’t even a Saturday. A waitress was bussing a booth about halfway up the wall, and Finn tugged Iris toward it. Kitt’s was a country style diner, with booths all along one wall, a long counter with stool seating, and tables in the middle. Overhead was peppered with slow moving ceiling fans.
“Thank you.” Finn accepted a menu from the woman who’d cleaned their table.
“I’ll give you a few minutes to look it over. Would you like a drink?” The waitress lingered, looking back and forth between Iris and Finn.
“I’ll take a sweet tea.” Finn spoke first.
“Just water for me, thanks.”
Iris was continually surprised by how much she didn’t know about the South. In a restaurant where they spelled cornbread with a K she’d expected to be called “hon” by a full-figured, big-haired matronly waitress. Instead, the young woman who brought their drinks was probably in her twenties with a sleeve of tattoos up one arm. In LA, she would have blended right in, until she spoke. Her accent would have given her away.
Chasing Sunset Page 14