Even Leo seems relaxed. This isn’t a side of him even I see much these days, not since he got back from the war. He’d only been gone a little over a year, but in that time he aged at least ten. I know him well enough to know that he hasn’t told me even half of the things he experienced and saw, and judging by the things he has told me, I don’t want to know. I’ve seen him having nightmares and that was all I needed to know. Right now, I’ve got back my best friend, the guy who’s been there for me since we were in diapers, no matter where we were transferred. He’s the only person who’s ever bothered to keep in contact with me for more than a few months. It was a no-brainer that when I started my company, Leo was the first person I hired. With his military experience, he has a different view than everyone else, even me who grew up surrounded by military influence. I suppose there’s a difference between actually serving and merely being a family member of one who serves.
“I don’t know about you,” Leo announces as we pass the first car we’ve seen in hours. Automatically, we both glance over at the beat up, ancient pickup truck and find a man wearing overalls and a weathered face glaring at us in disapproval. Apparently people don’t speed around here, nor do they pass slower cars when the lines on the road are double-solid. “But I’m ready for a fucking cheeseburger.”
I chuckle, nodding my agreement. “I could go for one about now.” Reaching over, I grab the Iowa map and it only takes a few moments to pinpoint approximately where our car is currently driving, followed by searching for the nearest small town that might possibly have a place to get some edible food. “Afton, Iowa,” I announce after a moment. “Few miles down the road...” I grab the brochure of tourist attractions we grabbed when we stopped at the Iowa state line welcome center. “Chet’s Diner. World-famous roast beef dinner, winner of best in the state eight years running... Not a fucking cheeseburger, but could be good.”
Leo nods thoughtfully. “Chet’s it is,” he says. We’ve come to discover that small towns tend to have better food than most metropolitan cities, despite the fancy preparation, famous chefs, and elaborate décor. Not to mention you actually get your money’s worth when your food is delivered rather than paying over $100 for a tiny cut of chicken and three pieces of asparagus.
We cross the town line and immediately spot Chet’s, a tiny building set in a dirt parking lot full of pickup trucks. I’ve grown surprisingly fond of pickup trucks on this trip and when I get home, I might even buy one. They’re simple, dependable, and far less flashy than the other cars in my garage. The moment we park we see that we’ve already attracted attention. Several people are craning their necks to get a glimpse of our car as though they’ve never seen anything like it. Which they probably haven’t if they’ve never ventured out of their little bubbles. Inside the diner it’s just like the others we’ve visited: it doesn’t look like they’ve updated the furnishings since the early eighties, all the waitresses wear the same polyester skirts and shirts, and the locals are dressed like truck drivers. I smirk at the sight and we head to the only open table and sit.
While Leo checks his phone messages, I look around until my eyes lock on a girl. Not unusual for me, since I seem to have a girl wherever I go and am always looking for more. What is unusual is that this girl has caught my attention. Unlike a lot of the girls I’ve dated, this one probably wouldn’t normally register on my radar. Long brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail, a few strands hanging down around her face that she blows away when they stray in front of her light brown eyes. She’s thin and her clothes hang off her as though she’s lost some weight after acquiring them. There’s something odd about her smile and it takes me a moment to realize it doesn’t meet her eyes. I wonder why she’s so sad, then I wonder why care.
She glances our way and I don’t bother to hide the fact that I’m watching her. I smirk at the blush that creeps up her neck as she averts her gaze from mine. To my surprise, she’s heading to our table with a look on her face that suggests she’d rather do anything else in the world than tend to us. Her fake smile is plastered to her face as she approaches and I cock my head at her, smiling as well.
“Welcome to Chet’s,” she says briskly, handing each of us a menu. Leo immediately peruses it, searching for whatever it is that he wants for lunch, while I’m unable to look away from her, not missing a detail. She’s got a gravy stain on her skirt, a tear in her right sleeve, and her sadness is much more apparent in close range. I wonder vaguely whether she sleeps. Shifting around on her feet, I know she’s uncomfortable with my ogling; unfortunately for her, I can’t look away, especially when her entire body blushes—or at least the parts of her body that I can see.
“I’ll let you have a look at the menu,” she tells us hurriedly as she backs away from the table in a way she probably believes to be subtle, “and bring you back some water.”
But I’m not yet ready for her to walk away. “Actually, I know what I want,” I tell her, leaning back in my chair and grinning in a way that makes most girls melt into puddles. I know she’s affected, but she doesn’t react like I expect her to, which only increases my curiosity about her.
She’s flustered. I know if I look to my right I’ll find Leo rolling his eyes and shaking his head at me. “Okay,” she says quietly, her voice wavering. “What can I get you?”
Well, isn’t that a loaded question... My smile widens; I hear Leo snort a laugh. He knows the game. He fucking invented the game. “We heard this place was famous for its roast beef,” I say to her quietly, seriously, looking her directly in her big brown eyes. I don’t remember the last time I saw eyes like those... Despite the noise in the diner, I know she hears me. “Is that true? Is it the best in the state?”
I’m not sure if I’m disappointed to hear the breathiness in her voice that tells me despite appearances, she’s like a lot of girls I come across—easily affected by a pretty face. Another thing that tends to get tiresome. “That’s what they say. Is that what you want?”
“No, but it’ll do for now.” I smile at her until she makes her hasty retreat back towards the kitchen. She disappears behind the door and I turn to look at Leo, finding him raising an eyebrow at me. “What?” I ask, spreading my hands in question. “Is there something wrong with a little harmless flirting?”
“You don’t flirt harmlessly,” Leo responds bluntly. “You lure innocent girls into your web, use them for your dastardly purposes, and leave them in pieces.”
I snort a laugh. “Dastardly, Leo? Really? Bit of an exaggeration.”
Shaking his head, Leo pulls out his phone again. “Got an email from the congressman’s assistant about the meeting tomorrow. It’s looking pretty damn good right now. They’re all interested in the proposal...”
He goes on in this vein until our food arrives, but I’ve tuned him out completely, choosing instead to watch our waitress move around the diner refilling drinks, talking with the patrons, stealing glances at me. I can’t even begin to explain what it is about her that has me so fascinated. She’s pretty, but it’s obvious she doesn’t put much effort into her appearance. Whenever her eyes meet mine, I see something hidden deep: it’s the look of someone who had bigger plans for themselves, but due to circumstances beyond their control, never got the chance to reach their full potential. I know this because it was the look I had in my own eyes all throughout high school and college, and it wasn’t until I decided to start my company that I realized what it was that made me feel so lost and empty in my life. I’d found my calling, my passion, and I went for it and never looked back. Her, though... She wanted something more for herself than waitressing in a small town hole-in-the-wall diner and I would very much like to know what that something was.
Leo gets up to pay the bill and I linger beside the table. The girl—Samantha, I saw on her nametag—has taken refuge in the kitchen and I think she’s just waiting for me to walk out the door. Sighing, I reach into my wallet, grab a $100 bill, and tuck it beneath my plate. If Leo saw how much I’m leaving as a tip,
he’d never let me live it down, but I really don’t care. Maybe she’ll use it to pamper herself a bit, get a new work uniform or something. She looks like she could do with some self-spoiling.
Reluctantly, I get into the passenger side of the car without another glance at Samantha, and spend the rest of the afternoon trying to get her out of my head.
-------------o-------------
That evening, we’re walking into a tiny small town motel room a couple hours south of Afton and the diner. Leo and I agreed before we set off on this trip that we weren’t going to go searching for four-star hotels, preferring instead to do what normal people do on road trips, which is sleep on lumpy mattresses beneath scratchy, cheap sheets, and thin blankets. We’ve stayed away from the places that look as though they’re infested with any number of vermin; we still have some standards.
Tonight, our room of choice is furnished with two full-size beds, an ancient television by non-small town standards, and an air conditioner that that rattles and squeaks every five minutes. Leo chooses the bed furthest from the door, a behavior I started noticing when he came back from overseas, and tosses his duffel bag onto it before announcing he’s hitting the head, then grabbing a shower. While he’s occupied, I grab my laptop and boot it up, not bothering to even check whether the motel offers free wifi—I realized quickly most of them don’t. I check emails, respond to a few, do a bit of research on the congressman I’ll be meeting with in tomorrow afternoon, and prepare my presentation. It’s not until I hear the shower shut off that I realize I haven’t gotten nearly as much work done as I thought I would. My mind is distracted, focused on the girl from the diner.
I don’t understand this fixation. There was nothing particularly special about her. I can open my phone contact list have a dozen girls who are more beautiful than she is, girls who are poised and polished and made for the high society in which I live. Those girls are only a distraction for me at best. Most of them are complete bitches who stick their noses up at anyone who doesn’t own an $800 purse or who dares to have a strand of hair out of place. There’s no substance to them, no real value to their personalities. In fact, I much prefer it when they don’t speak, since everything they say is as full of air as their heads. I’ve had my share of one night stands and pointless relationships. They’ve served my purposes for the most part, but there’s something in me that actually longs for someone with whom I can have an intelligent conversation, someone with whom I can laugh at the most ridiculous, inane subjects. Someone who isn’t interested in my money or my notoriety.
Someone like the girl from the diner.
“Fuck.” I shove my laptop onto my bed and stand up, looking around for my shoes and the car keys.
“Where are you going?”
I stop at the door and turn around to find Leo exiting the bathroom wearing a pair of boxers. I debate on my answer. “For a drive,” I tell him honestly. “Need to clear my head.”
His eyes narrow on me and I know he suspects what’s really going on. I also know he won’t call me on it. At least not tonight. “Drive safe,” is all he says.
With a tight smile, I head out the door towards the car, and drive north, hoping I’m not too late.
-------------o-------------
Only two cars are left in the parking lot at Chet’s—an old blue truck and a station wagon. I turn off the headlights, trying to see inside the diner windows, brief panic replaced with relief when I see her moving around inside. Glancing at the cars, I wonder which is hers; I don’t really see her as the station wagon type...
An hour passes and in that time, I nearly left half a dozen times. This is stalker-behavior and I am anything but a stalker. I don’t pursue girls. I don’t need to; they crowd around me themselves and I take my pick. It’s a pretty shit thing to say, but it’s true. I want to know this girl, to talk to her, to know what her life is like. I want to explore what this pull is she has on me and understand it. It’s nearly midnight before she begins to leave and I wait for her to approach her car—the blue truck—before getting out of mine. Our conversation is interesting to say the least and when I watch her speed out of the dirt lot, I realize it’s not going to be as simple as I believed to get her out of my head. If anything, I’m more interested than before. Not only did she turn down my offer for lunch, she tried to return the tip I left her. Despite her words and actions, I know she’s interested, she just doesn’t know how to handle it. This knowledge perplexes me as I drive back to the motel. I know she has to have a boyfriend here, so surely she knows how to deal with male attention.
Sleep evades me even though I’m utterly exhausted from my four-hour roundtrip drive for a five minute conversation, which I know will affect the meeting tomorrow. Part of my lack of sleep is due to Samantha and trying to figure her out; part is due to the return of Leo’s nightmares. They don’t happen as much as they did when he first came home, but the level of intensity hasn’t lessened in the slightest. I’ve mostly gotten used to dealing with the nightmares in a way that doesn’t result in injury, though I have to admit, it’s not easy seeing your best friend so terrified that he doesn’t even recognize you. As an unspoken rule, we never speak about the nightmares. The few times we have, he’s gotten hostile and I finally took the hint that it wasn’t up for discussion.
In the morning, we pack up silently, Leo moving around a little more tensely than normal, which is what happens on the nights he has his nightmares and is feeling self-conscious. Over breakfast, he gives me shit about going back to the diner last night that I mostly ignore. He doesn’t understand why this girl is such an interest for me. Well, that makes two of us.
Our meeting goes exactly how we expected. The congressman I hoped to get support from gave us just that, and I hope government funding isn’t far behind, since he didn’t hesitate telling us how great he believes our company to be, focusing on how young I am to be in the position I’m in. It’s nothing new; in my field, I’m the youngest CEO, the youngest person to have the reputation I have around the world. While most guys my age are still chasing girls and figuring out what to do with their lives, I’m living in a multi-million dollar home in Upstate New York. I have cars most people can only dream about. Private plane. Boats. Vacation houses. You name it, I’ve got it. And if I don’t have it, I don’t know about it. I take my work very seriously—I have to if I want to make a name for myself—and I think people like the good congressman with whom we’ve just finished having lunch is nothing short of shocked by accomplishments at such a young age.
Aside from being known in the business world, I’m a private person. I don’t do interviews. I don’t go to clubs and act like an idiot. And I don’t get into trouble. The little the public knows about me makes me seem incredibly boring, and that’s fine with me. I didn’t grow up with money, but that doesn’t mean that now that I’ve got it I have to show it off to anyone who’s looking. Besides, that’s how you attract gold diggers. As it is, I’ve had a few of those, regardless of my attempts to keep them away. There were a couple I let stick around for a while until it became blatantly obvious what they wanted from me.
I wonder what the girl at the diner would want from me. If she wants me at all. From our very brief conversation last night, I don’t see her being that type of girl. She seems like a good girl. Someone who should probably run very far from me if she wants to keep on being a good girl. I may not go out seeking trouble, but I’ve attracted my fair share. I never considered myself a ladies’ man or a playboy or any of that shit. I could get deep and soulful by saying I date all these girls because I’m searching for The One I want for the rest of my life. My love. My soul mate. But the truth is I’m just not interested in real relationships. If some girl comes along one day and I see some sort of future with her, then maybe I’ll do something about it. Until then, I’m twenty-six years old. I’m going to live my fucking life the way I want to live it.
But that doesn’t stop me thinking about the girl from the diner.
----
---------o-------------
It’s been three days since I first met Samantha. In that time, I’ve had four business meetings, a benefit dinner at which I was introduced to several eligible bachelorettes who attached themselves to my side for the entire evening, and a whole lot of waiting. The problem with working with the government is that there is always a waiting game involved. One congressman can’t approve the funding I’m requesting, so he has to go before different committees to argue my points for me. I’m just lucky I was able to convince him that my patent was worth funding or I’d have wasted a week of driving across fucking Iowa.
I’m irritable as I pace our hotel room. Leo is drinking his way through three six-packs and watching football. I never got the draw to football. Sports weren’t ever my thing. I suppose that’s a side effect of growing up with three sisters and a mom while your father was deployed for months on end—you go soft. Regardless, I preferred to spend my time building things, breaking things, then fixing them again. Inventing different gadgets. Dad bought me my first computer when I was fifteen and I’m pretty sure he regretted it two days later when I spent all my time locked in my bedroom teaching myself source codes and computer programming. Within a month, I figured out how to hack into my school’s grading system. A week after that, I was suspended for changing the grades of a girl I liked who didn’t so much break my heart when I asked her to a dance, as she demolished it piece by piece and went to aforementioned dance with my so-called best friend at the time. The school principal tried to hide how impressed he had been that I’d managed to hack his systems, but it was written all over his face. When I got back to school, he took me under his wing, got me interested in more involved computer classes, actually listened to my ramblings about my inventions and seemed genuinely interested. He pushed me to go to college rather than following my father’s footsteps in the military. Not that I ever told my dad that bit of information. He helped me get accepted to Stanford with a full scholarship.
Young Lies (Young Series) Page 21