by K. B. Nelson
14
It’s not too hot that we need air conditioning. It’s not too cold that we need heat. It’s the perfect day to race down the highway at sixty miles per hour with the windows down.
My hair flaps to the tune of the wind as I sit in the passenger seat with my feet kicked along the dashboard. “Where are we going?” I question without taking my eyes off the painted white lines separating the highway from a never-ending guardrail.
“Haven’t decided yet.”
“Are you kidding me?” I cock my head to face him. “What happened to, oh, where we’re going, nobody will know us there?”
“That’s still in play.” He nods his head, without taking his eyes off the road. He’s a safe driver, I’ll give him that. “I figure the further we drive East, the less chance there’ll be of us running into any of your desperate housewife friends.”
“I can’t be gone for too long.”
“I have school Monday.” He switches his steering hand from right to left and turns to me. “You also have school Monday. And I have football practice after school.”
“Shut up—“
“Yeah.” He laughs. “I joined the football team.”
I am so not getting involved with another Football Player. That’s one more strike against whatever the fuck this is between Kemper and I. It’s bad enough that I’m married. It’s even worse that he’s a student. Football player, too? This is my absolute worst nightmare.
“You know Coach is my husband, right?” I watch him aptly, because his eyes will tell the truth even if his lips are lying. And he’s a man, so there’s a ninety-four percent change those lips will be spitting lies.
“Do you want the truth, or do you want me to lie?”
“I want you to lie, don’t I?”
“Do you?”
“If you answer my question with another question, I’m going to fail you.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” he says with a playful grin, breaking the spell of twenty questions we’ve been enduring. “Would you?”
I land a playful punch against his arm, but when he flinches away with a verbal ow, I recoil with a grimace. “Sorry about that.”
“Jesus Christ, She-hulk,” he yelps and shakes the pain away from his arm.
“I’ve been throwing footballs for years.”
“Coach teach you?”
“You do know.” I point an accusing finger at him.
“It’d be hard not to.” He shrugs and turns the wheel slightly as we barrel around a long corner. “He’s like the idol of this town.” I glare at him, and even though he’s not watching me, I know he knows I want to strangle him. His eyes roll toward me. “Complete douchebag, that guy.” Still, no verbal response from me. “I mean, I would have figured out who he was if I didn’t already know, when I snuck into your house this morning.”
“Don’t do that again.” I turn back to the open window and rest my head against the seat. “It’s a violation.”
I wake up alone in the car alone, and my captor is nowhere to be seen. I shift in my seat and look out each window, but the scenery is all the same. We’re parked in a tiny gravel lot, and surrounded by the forest on all sides.
I reach my head out the window. “Kemper?”
“Don’t look.”
What do I do? I look. He stands in front of the back tire, urinating on the rubber. “I don’t know what I was expecting.” I drop my head against the window and wait for the stream of piss to come to an end. “Where are we?”
“I drove until I got lost.” In the passenger mirror, I see him approach, zipping up his jeans as he paces toward me. “And then I drove a few hundred miles more.”
“You don’t know where we’re at?” I throw the door open. It creaks as Kemper jumps out of the way.
“You’re going to kill me eventually.”
“I’ll settle for inflicting pain,” I scowl. “Where are we?”
“I seriously don’t know. I haven’t seen a gas station for an hour and I had to piss, so I pulled over here.”
I reach through the window and grab my phone. Another handful of missed alerts that go ignored as I scroll through my phone to find the GPS app. I type in my home address and wait for a route to pop up.
When it does, my eyes shift to Kemper. “Two hundred and twenty miles?”
“Really?” His brow arches and he shakes an accomplished pout away.
“How long was I sleeping?”
“Somewhere between one hundred and eighty and two hundred and twenty miles.”
“I thought you had a plan.” I throw my phone onto the seat and massage my forehead with my palm. “You don’t have a plan.”
“Life is so much better without plans.” He leans against the trunk. “Look on the bright side, nobody will know us here.”
“This is becoming more and more kidnappy by the minute.” I look to him to see his reaction, a half-assed shrug. Then, I get an idea. I run around to the driver’s side and jump in the front seat.
“Woah!” He rips open the passenger door. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going to drive.”
His brow furrows. “Can you drive a stick?”
“It’s been a while.”
He huffs and climbs into the passenger seat. “You wreck it, you buy it.”
“On a Teachers salary?” I roll my eyes. “Besides, isn’t that what insurance is for?”
“On a students salary?”
“You don’t have insurance, do you?”
“It’s on the to-do list.” He pulls the seatbelt over his shoulder and clicks it into place. He drums his hands against the dashboard. “Lets get on the road.”
“Where are we going?” I twist the key in the ignition, but the engine doesn’t turn over. I feel Kemper’s gaze on me, judging me with unblinking eyes.
“Nowhere if you don’t know how to drive.”
“Right,” I say, remembering there’s such a thing as a clutch. I push the leftmost pedal to the floor and turn the key again. The car roars to life, and I let out an embarrassing howl of excitement, but there’s fear in Kemper’s eyes. “What’s wrong, buddy? Never seen a girl drive?” I throw the car into first and we jerk in place. The engine dies. My cheeks flush red. I place my hand to his face. “Don’t say a word.”
Kemper exhales a sharp exhale as we approach a stop sign off the side of the main road. I tap on the brakes and aim to shift into neutral, but accidentally throw us into first. The gears grind and the car jerks, the engine dying once we come to a full stop ahead of the stop sign.
“If this car runs by the time we reach our next stop, it’ll be a damn miracle.” He chuckles to himself, but I can’t discern if he’s being funny or grumpy.
I don’t say a word to him. I check for incoming cars on the left and pull out onto the highway, shifting into second gear as we begin to accelerate ahead of approaching cars from behind. Kemper twists his head to watch the incoming cars, coming quick on our ass.
I attempt to shift into third. The gear grinds and we begin to redline.
“Hold the clutch down and shift into third,” he instruct me and places his hand over my hand. “Every time you shift, you must apply pressure to the clutch.” I do as commanded, hitting the middle pedal. Oops. “That’s the brakes.”
“I’m aware.” I press my left foot against the clutch, hold it down, and finally shift into gear just as the cars behind us maneuver into the passing lane to avoid ramming into us.
“Do you want your husband to find out you’re having an affair during a breaking news broadcast? Coach’s wife killed in horrific, but avoidable car accident, if only she’d learn there are three goddamn pedals. That would be the headline.”
“If you don’t shut up,” I turn to him with a death glare, “I’m going to crash into a guardrail on your side of the car.”
“This is why I failed eighth grade,” he mumbles to himself. “A smart person wouldn’t let a suicidal woman drive his car.”
; I pretend that I don’t hear him, but the words cut through me like razor sharp glass, the kind of glass that left the scars on my stomach. But he knows. He always knows. “I’m sorry,” he says softly and bows his head against the window. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay.” I shrug it off. “It was just a bad joke.”
“It’s not something to joke about.”
“Right.” We pass an arbitrary line where the open-access freeway bleeds into a highway. I throw the shifter into fourth gear as we pass the sixty miles per hour sign, and we’re off into the sunset with no set destination, and somehow Kemp’s clutch is still in tact.
Kemp. I kind of like that.
15
“Here?’ I question Kemper as we approach a gravel parking lot hosting a run-down motel and more importantly, a bar. It’s not that I’m wanting to drink, rather my stomach is flipping acrobats, screaming for food like a starving toddler.
“Looks trashy.” He lowers his head to peer out the windshield. “It’s perfect.”
I can’t agree with his assessment, but like I said, I’m fucking starving. I push the shifter into neutral and apply the brakes as we make the sharp right turn into the parking lot and come to a stop beside an RV in the gravel.
Kemper rips the parking brake upward as I turn off the ignition. He’s as ready to get out of this damn car as I am. After driving another hundred or so miles, without the assistance of a GPS, we’ve somehow ended up in the upper region of North Carolina, if my basic knowledge of geography is to be trusted. Kemper suggested we were close to the Florida state line, so I’m going to have a talk with Mr. Lawrence, the geography instructor, when we get back to Ridgefield.
“You want to wait out here?” He leans across the roof of the car. “I’ll go get us a room.”
I glance around at our setting. Pitch-black darkness illuminates trees in a silhouette painting of serenity. Above us, the night sky is clear where stars burn bright. It’s the best view of the stars I’ve seen on this side of my parent’s farmhouse.
“Yeah.” I nod. “I’m good.”
“Be right back, Vin Diesel,” he jokes and walks to the front office.
I lean back against the car and up into the night sky, taking in the breathtaking view of peace and tranquility. A cool breeze crashes against my body and tangles through my hair. It’s a chilly night, but I don’t feel the cold against my skin. I feel next to nothing, but I’ll take feeling numb over the pain I felt last night.
I choose a particular star in the sky, the one that shines the brightest, and force myself to believe it’s Nathan. Believing in something—anything—is the most powerful feeling in the world. I spot another star close by, burning hot and twinkling right at me. That’s my unborn child, that’s what I choose to believe, and it brings some kind of peace to my shattered heart.
Kemper comes jogging out of the front office, breaking my focus on the beautiful painting above me, and meets me beside the car. He passes me a keycard for the room.
“Keycard?” I force a smile. “Fancy.”
“Yeah.” He shrugs. “We’re moving on up.”
After a quick shower and shave, I threw on a fresh pair of clothes and we made our way to the bar across the way from the motel. Three hundred miles out from home, and the place still looks like it belongs in my own hometown.
Maybe it’s true what they say, you can take the girl away from home, but you can’t take the girl out of her home. Maybe that’s not the exact saying, but it’s close enough.
We’re parked in a small booth near the back of the bar. Old country tunes are spit out of an aging jukebox machine that doesn’t appear to have been updated since the mid-nineties.
An empty plate is pushed to the side of Kemper, and a plate with a half-eaten burger and a half-serving of fries rests in front of me. Between the two of us is an unopened bottle of beer.
“Are you going to finish eating?” He points to my food with his elbows planted on the table.
“I don’t know,” I groan. After waiting so long to eat, my stomach filled quickly. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
“Are you going to drink that?” He points to the bottle of beer. He’s always asking questions. “It’ll calm your nerves.”
“Who says my nerves need calming?”
He furrows both brows and purses his lips, with a knowing face.
“I haven’t really drank since the accident.” I sigh and push the plate to the side and grapple the body of the bottle with my hand. “I don’t know why.”
“It’s because you associate the tragedy with it, but you shouldn’t.”
“I wish it were that simple.”
“It’s always as simple as making a choice.” He reaches for my free hand to comfort me. My eyes shift to his touch. “Choose to let go of it all. I understand why you feel the way you feel, but if you ever want to stop feeling that way and take back control of your life, then you have to learn to accept things for the way they are, and then choose to let go of the way you think things will be.”
“Cars. Alcohol. Highways. My husband.” I take a beat to myself, preparing myself to push the next word from my lips. “Students.” I pull my hand away from him and ball my fingers into a fist. “It all reminds me of the night I lost my soul.”
“You drive to work everyday,” he points out. “You drove my car down an unfamiliar highway. You only associate cars with tragedy when you’re lost in the past. When you’re living in the present, you’re not living with the constant reminder.” He pushes himself back against the padded seat. “That drink in your hand isn’t the drink that was in that boy’s hand. Maybe it’s the same brand. Maybe it’s not, but that bottle is fresh from the factory and you can’t push the weight of that night on that bottle.”
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I joke, trying to lighten the mood.
“It’s not about drinking.” He shakes his head and sighs, his mind bypassing my attempt at humor. “It’s about overcoming your fears so you can stop living one flashback at a time, so that you can start living the way you want to live.”
I nod at him like he’s right, which he most likely is. Moving on isn’t as easy as making the choice to move on, however. It’s a minefield, littered with bombs, and if I’m not careful with each step I choose to make, I’ll be blown to bits.
For the first time since I’ve known him, he appears irritated. His lips are drawn tight and his eyes chase his forehead while his head bobbles. He pushes his tongue against his cheek before reaching across the table, ripping the bottle out of my hand, and twisting the top off. He pushes the bottle into my hand. “Drink,” he commands.
I defy him and stand to my feet. “I don’t want to.” I storm away from the table.
He jumps from his seat and chases me with the bottle in hand. He rushes in front of me and sticks the bottle out to me. “Drink.”
“Why are you so hell bent on this?”
“Because I saw you put a gun to your head last night,” he explodes in a fit of passionate fury, but then quiets and leans into me. “You tried killing yourself because you can’t let go of the past.”
“Fine,” I huff and rip the bottle out of his hand. I’d do anything to bring this conversation to a screeching halt. I throw my head back and down the entire bottle in one chug. When the bottle is empty, I throw it in a nearby trashcan and wipe the wetness from my lips. “There, I did it. Are you happy?”
His mouth is dropped open, his eyes bulging in apparent shock that a woman could chug an entire bottle of beer in one go. “Did you have to drink it all?”
“Jesus Christ.” I throw my hands in the air. “I can’t win.”
“Don’t you get it?” He caresses my cheek soft and gentle. “You just did.”
I stand frozen, my eyes marching across his. A glow passes my face, and I find myself floating through the clouds. He’s right. I’m winning.
“Do you want to dance?” he questions me with an apprehensive twitch.
&n
bsp; “Only because I know I don’t have a choice.”
“That’s the attitude I like to hear.” He takes my hand in his and pulls me to the center of the bar, away from the booths that line the east wall. When we come to a stop, one country song fades into another, a song I’ve never heard before. It’s a soft and gentle song about eternal summer love, sung from the pipes of a fragile, broken-hearted man yearning for redemption.
Kemper grips me by the waist and we begin to dance in a slow circle, but it’s clear as soon as we begin that we’re both dancing with two left feet. It doesn’t matter though. Nobody here is judging. They’re too lost in their own lives, whether they’re working behind the bar or drinking away the traveling blues.
I lean my head on his chest and his palm traces up my back, caressing me. His heart thumps from beneath his chest, throbbing against my cheek. A genuine, warm smile passes over my lips as I lay against him, all the while spinning in a slow circle, but it’s my own heart that’s spinning. I feel full, and for the first time in what amounts to forever, I know it’s there, pumping blood through my veins like it’s supposed to. My heart’s not dead. It’s just been in hiding.
“I want you to think about something,” he whispers against my head.
“Do I have to?” I sigh, and dig my head deeper against his chest. “That’s all I do. Think.”
“Since we left the motel this morning, you’ve changed,” he says, not giving me the chance to turn it all off.
“People don’t change in the course of a few hours.”
“True. But you’re different when you’re away from it all. You’re happy.”
“I’m distracted.”
“Also true.” He retreats from me, but his hand remains attached to my back. “I just wanted to point something out to you that should be obvious, but you’re kind of dense.” A mischievous smile, full and wide, is scribbled across his face. It’s an irresistible smile that could undo the strongest of women.
“Do I need to punch you again?”
“If it helps.” He shrugs. “Anyway, the point isn’t that the pain is gone. It’s not. You’re hurt, and you’ll be hurting for a long time, but it gets better.”