And as her luck would have it, the manager wasn’t alone in the office. Three men were in the process of checking in. Once they got a good look at her, they probably thought she came with one of the pricier rooms.
Cordelia folded her arms across her chest and tried to speak with dignity, but it was hopeless. She was utterly humiliated. She couldn’t help but think that Molly would have never let herself get into this situation. And even if she had, she would have been unshaken by it. That’s the kind of confidence her sister had possessed since she was a toddler. That’s the reason boys like Jake—hell, all boys—were really drawn to Molly. Well, that and her perky, grapefruit-sized breasts.
Cordelia swallowed hard before speaking and looked down at her feet. “Uh, sir? I locked myself out of my room. Can I have another key?”
“Just a moment,” the manager said. “Mary? Would you help this guest?”
Mary turned out to be a middle-aged, gray-haired lady who was sporting a huge pair of knockoff Gucci sunglasses. She thought that was rather weird considering the sun had gone down hours ago, and the woman was working at a Holiday Inn Express, not a fashion show runway. Mary came out from some inner office, took one look at Cordelia, pursed her lips, and raised her eyebrows.
“I locked myself out of my room,” Cordelia repeated shyly.
One of the men snickered. Then the registration office door opened. A tired-looking man and woman came in with suitcases and a small child.
“Look, Mommy! That girl is in her undies!” the kid piped up.
At least that comment got Mary moving. She snatched up a key. “Come along,” she barked at Cordelia.
With her arms still folded across her chest, Cordelia ducked her head down and followed her outside. They had almost reached the room without further incident when she heard a faint but familiar sound.
She looked up and saw Jake doubled over in laughter so hard that the Charger was rocking back and forth. He tried to roll the window down again, probably in the hopes of shouting out some snide remark that would make her feel far worse than she already did.
Forget about being friends! This guy will never be anything but a gigantic pain in my ass.
Fortunately, Mary opened the door just as Jake’s window came down. Cordelia thanked her quickly, then ducked inside the room and closed the door. She dashed across the room and dove back into bed. Burying her face in the pillow, she pulled the sheets and blanket over her head.
But even like that, Cordelia swore she could still hear Jake laughing.
Chapter Five
Cordelia didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. She tossed and turned until the sun came up, which was the most awful feeling in the world. When she went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, she could barely recognize the gnarly creature staring back at her. The whites of her eyes were now a gross pink color. Her skin was peeling and she hadn’t even spent one glorious day on the beach in a week. Her hair seemed stringy and frayed at the ends, but she’d just gotten a hot oil treatment and a trim a few days ago. Her haggard appearance could only be attributed to one thing and one thing only: She was having a nervous breakdown brought on by too much Jacob Stein exposure.
She had considered calling her parents and asking them to rescue her, but that would only create a big stir and then Molly might get upset at her. She would just have to bite the bullet, so to speak, and pray that she would make it to Eureka before she really cracked.
Cordelia got into Jake’s car without saying a word. Apparently he was right about the Charger. Once he started her up, she purred like she had just gotten back from vacation. A few minutes later, Cordelia could feel Jake’s eyes on her as the car sputtered along the highway, but she refused to look at him. She had a feeling that the moment she did, he’d break into another laughing fit and then she’d be forced to throw him from the moving vehicle.
“Jazzy Belle” rang out and Jake picked up his phone.
“Yeah?”
Cordelia was about to mention to Jake that it was illegal and dangerous to talk on a cell phone while driving, but that would mean speaking to him. At this point in time, she’d rather risk a grisly accident. Maybe that would put her out of her misery.
“Okay, yeah, right. Bye.”
He tossed it back on the seat, but within seconds OutKast was playing once again. Cordelia couldn’t believe that even Jake’s cell phone had the ability to get on her nerves. She was certain that she was losing it. She needed to find that center of hers and quick.
“Yeah. Nah, later. Huh? Okay,” he said in monotone.
She kept her eyes focused straight ahead and prepared to grab the wheel from his hands if he swerved while talking. Jake didn’t strike her as the kind of person who could multitask well. There were countless pieces of evidence, like the time he had tried to drink a can of soda while showing Molly how to slam dance and proceeded to spill the entire contents onto her mother’s precious white living room carpet. Or the time when he had dinged her father’s BMW convertible because he was reading Mad magazine as he drove into the driveway. The funny thing was, the only person who ever got upset about these incidents was Cordelia.
Oh my God, she thought. I am the poster child for the High Maintenance Federation.
But did that make Jake any less infuriating?
Cordelia went against her better judgment and turned to look at him.
“Didn’t sleep too well, huh?” he asked with a wicked grin.
The answer to the previous question was a resounding N-O.
Lack of sleep, Jake’s wisecrack, and yet another ring of his cell phone had resulted in a nasty headache that Cordelia couldn’t shake. She leaned back, closed her eyes, and tried to focus her mind on the positive, which of course meant thinking about Paul. They had talked again that morning and made plans to meet up later in the afternoon. Cordelia hadn’t reminded Jake about it just yet, because he’d most likely give her attitude and she didn’t want to deal with that right now. So she decided that once he stopped to fuel up, she’d try and charm him over. Hey, she was sisters with the Molly Packer. Some of that magical charisma had to be hiding in Cordelia’s genetic makeup. Paul had fallen for the littlest Packer, after all.
Cordelia wrapped her arms around her stomach, which was churning as much as her head was pounding. She missed Paul even more than she thought she would. Maybe this was because she’d been stuck here with Jake the Human Ass-Bite, so Paul seemed that much more incredible. Nah. Paul was amazing in his own right. Even though he’d thrown her a bit in their chat last evening, he was usually so sweet and grounded and…normal.
Eventually, the rhythmic sound of the Charger driving over the seams in the highway helped Cordelia to nod off to sleep. She even dreamed that she was at Yosemite and Paul was at the top of a giant sequoia. He kept asking her to join him up there so they could drink mango juice and talk to a monkey named Earl. Cordelia grabbed a branch and tried to hoist herself up, but her legs were so heavy, she could barely raise them. When she looked down, she noticed that she was submerged in a quicksand made of cheese puffs and she was sinking. Then she glanced up and Jake was standing on the branch she was holding. He kept jumping on it and suddenly it catapulted her up into the part of the tree where Paul was talking with Earl the monkey. Earl, who spoke with a British accent, insisted she board a plane that was made out of coconuts. Once she was seated and it took off, she noticed how high up she was and that there was no pilot. Then she began to scream.
In fact, Cordelia screamed herself wide awake, much to Jake’s horror.
“Jesus Christ!” he shouted.
She was panting heavily and sweating like the time when Molly had forgotten that Cordelia was using the sauna and locked her in there for twenty minutes.
“God, Cordy. Are you okay?” Jake asked in concern.
“Yeah, I just had a nightmare.”
Cordelia checked her Swatch and saw that she’d slept for two hours. They ought to be right around Bakersfield by now, but then again
, she had fallen asleep before reminding Jake that they were supposed to stop in Yosemite this afternoon, so who knows where he had taken them.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“We’re on I-15,” he replied.
Cordelia scrambled for her bag, reached in, and found her Treo. She pulled up her map on the screen and studied it furiously.
“Wait, Jake, we’re supposed to be on I-5.”
She had a bad feeling about this.
“Well I-5 isn’t going to get us to Las Vegas.”
Cordelia felt another nuclear explosion-like scream building within her. “I’m sorry. I must still be asleep and having that nightmare. I thought you said we were going to Las Vegas.”
“Yeah, I forgot to tell you. I need to stop there because I left some important stuff at my ex-roommate’s place and I gotta pick it up.”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “But Las Vegas is in Nevada, Jake!”
He had the audacity to look amused. “You make it sound like it’s at the other end of the world. It’s just over the state line.”
Cordelia spoke through clenched teeth. “But we’re supposed to be going to Yosemite. Remember? It was on the schedule.”
“Oh, I remember the schedule, I just don’t let it run my life.” A smug look crept across his face. “Listen, we’ll go to Yosemite tomorrow. You know, it’s not even on the way to Eureka, and I didn’t throw a fit about making a side trip there. Don’t you think I deserve the same courtesy?”
Courtesy? Jake, the rudest boy in the Golden State, was asking her for some courtesy? She was trying hard not to freak out, but then heard another annoying rendition of “Jazzy Belle.”
“Would you turn that damn thing off? I can’t stand it anymore. It’s making me crazy!” Her voice was so high and shrill that she might have punctured her own eardrums. Immediately afterward, Jake stifled a laugh, and Cordelia regretted showing him that he’d gotten under her skin.
He clicked something on the phone to silence it. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I’ll shut it off if you’ll stop complaining all the rest of the way to Eureka.”
There was a moment of silence.
“I’m not complaining,” Cordelia said. “I’m just very vocal about my opinions.”
“Fine, then no more phone, no more opinions. Cool?” Jake took his right hand off the steering wheel and extended it to Cordelia. She reached out slowly and then quickly shook it.
“How far is it to Las Vegas?” she asked.
His eyes narrowed.
“That’s not a complaint, or even an opinion. It’s a question,” she pointed out.
“We’ll be there in an hour,” he said. “By the way, I bought you some lunch. It’s in the bag in between the seats.”
“Thanks.” She tried not to sound too grateful, considering it would probably consist of two packets of beef jerky and an orange-flavor Gatorade. But when she opened the paper bag, what was inside was soooooo much better than that. She didn’t even need to see the contents. She just smelled the familiar spicy goodness of Taco Bell beef burritos and practically melted into hot sauce.
She reached in and felt her hand wrap around the greasy paper-covered delights. The grease was seeping through a little and coating her hand, which felt so good, she almost cried. She had missed the Bell as much as she had missed the beach this week. In fact, now that she was thinking about it, she might have missed both of those things even more than she missed…
“Dig in, Cordy. I know you love to scarf down those double-decker tacos,” Jake said.
“Uh…what are you talking about?”
“One night I dropped Molly off at your house, but I had to take a leak,” he began.
Cordelia was anything but riveted.
“It was really late and you were in the kitchen hovering over this huge plate of tacos, and you were just going to town on them.”
All of a sudden, this moment became crystal clear in her mind. Alexis had accidentally blurted out to Sam Cosmello that Cordelia had a crush on him and he’d written about it on his blog, which the entire school had read. She had been binge-eating out of depression and Jake had seen the whole thing! And now he was rubbing it in her face? How demented was that?
“Jake, let me ask you something.”
“Go ahead,” he replied.
“Why do you feel the need to embarrass me with a comment like that? Do you like putting me down? Does that make you feel better about yourself or something?”
When Jake turned to look at her briefly, Cordelia was very surprised by the upset expression that was on his face.
“Uh, no. I just thought you really liked Taco Bell so I picked some up for you. The End.”
Weird. No witty retort? No mean-spirited comeback?
“I doubt that. What you said just made me feel really self-conscious, like I’m a fat pig or something.”
Jake bristled. “Cordy, you’re the one who jumped to that conclusion. All I said is that you must love tacos because you ate a whole plate of them one night.”
Cordelia started to respond and then realized she had no idea what to say next. It was quite possible that Jacob Stein had just stumped her with one of his seemingly pointless observations. Only this time, what he’d said kind of made sense.
“Want to know what I think?”
She just glared at him.
“I think you have a hearing problem,” he added.
“You only hear what you want to hear, regardless of what someone is actually saying to you.”
She couldn’t listen to any more of this, and believe it or not, she had completely lost her appetite. Jake didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. She heard him just fine, and what he always seemed to be saying was, “I’m better than you are.” Plain and simple.
“Well, maybe if you watched your superior, high-and-mighty tone and how you phrase certain things, people wouldn’t think that you’re making fun of them.”
At that, Jake muttered something and turned up Pedro the Lion so loud, a huge biker on a Harley yelled, “Turn that girlie crap down!”
The peaceful sensation that Cordelia felt yesterday came over her the second that Jake turned down the radio and the knob broke off in his hand. But this time, she didn’t feel so great about finding her center again. Cordelia had a vision of Paul hearing what she’d just said and shaking his head in disappointment. Actually, she was not feeling so thrilled about herself either. Here she was, berating Jake for acting like he was better than everyone else, and the only way she could seem to find some serenity was to rejoice in Jake’s misery. It was pretty apparent that the guy her older sister thought was a total “sweetie” just brought out the worst in her.
Cordelia felt the dry Nevada air seeping in through the crack in the window. She put her head in her hands and hoped that once she got to Yosemite and hugged Paul, everything would suddenly be fine.
Chapter Six
Cordelia felt rejuvenated as Jake drove the Charger through the Mojave Desert. Although it was very industrial along the highway, there were also some really scenic spots that were filled with sprawling shrubs and Joshua trees. Patches of unusually shaped cacti were scattered around the area, and there were exit signs directing travelers to various canyons, dunes, and mountain regions. Just the thought of these natural wonders reminded Cordelia how close she was to seeing Paul again. In a matter of hours (less than twenty-four, to be exact), they’d be laughing, talking, kissing, hugging, and almost, but not quite, having sex.
Ugh, back to that memory again, she thought.
Cordelia was still reeling a bit from the camping trip and how she’d freaked the moment Paul wanted to take their hip-grinding festivities to a place where she had never gone before. She couldn’t believe that she’d chickened out on him. She had to be certifiably insane.
She looked over to Jake, who was intermittently biting his fingernails and sipping on a Yoo-hoo. This had never really occurred to her before now, but had
Jake and Molly had sex? And this would have been before he turned mega-hot. Whoa. That really shook Cordelia up. Jake had most likely kissed her sister all over her limber, ex-gymnast body, and Molly could have…
Oh God, Cordelia thought as a wave of nausea overcame her. She hunched over and put her head between her knees.
“Motion sickness?” Jake asked.
“That’s one way to describe it,” she replied.
“Want me to pull over?”
Cordelia felt a gnawing sensation grapple with either her large or small intestine (she couldn’t tell which).
“Yeah, thanks.”
Jake veered off the nearest exit ramp, then pointed at a sign in excitement. “Hey, we’re in Baker. The world’s tallest outdoor thermometer is here!”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s…impressive.”
“You’re right. I’m sure it’s not close to anything you might see in, let’s say, Yosemite,” he teased.
“It’s a big thermometer, Jake. How great can it be?”
“Why don’t we check it out and see? You never know, it could rock your world.”
“Doubtful,” Cordelia mumbled as she massaged her stomach.
“Was that a complaint?”
She shot up. “No, definitely not.”
“I think it was.”
“Actually, it was more like—”
“An opinion? I thought we’d outlawed those, too,” he interrupted. “You know what that means.”
She sighed heavily as Jake turned his cell phone back on. Seconds afterward, “Jazzy Belle” began to sound once again.
“What can I say? I’m in demand,” he said arrogantly before picking up the phone.
Cordelia groaned as they pulled in front of the Bun Boy complex, where the giant thermometer sat. As soon as they came to a stop, she opened the car door and leaned over, expecting to hurl. But then she realized that she had nothing to throw up. Jake had eaten everything in the Taco Bell bag, and when he’d stopped for gas a while ago, all she’d had was a few sticks of Trident.
Getting Lost with Boys Page 6