Along for the Ride

by Mimi Grace

  However, Jolene would have confidently and boldly driven them off the road if Jason had opened his mouth to say something rude about her skills. Perhaps he knew that, because he didn’t say a word for a long time.

  He finally broke the silence when they hit the freeway. “Are you close to yours?”

  “What?”

  “Close to your mother, your parents.”

  “I wasn’t an easy child to rear. I was a super sassy teenager, if you can believe it.”

  He snorted.

  “But they’re no longer the people who refused to let me get a tattoo at sixteen, so I genuinely love hanging out with them now.”

  “What tattoo did you want?”

  She pressed her lips together and looked at him. “A dolphin. On my ankle.”

  He smirked as if he predicted her answer.

  “Do you have any now?” he asked, and she felt him study her.

  She squirmed in her seat and willed herself to keep the vehicle moving in a straight line. “No, I never thought of anything worthwhile after that. You?”

  “Just my traditional Tongan tattoo on my shoulder and arm.”

  “I would love to see it.”

  “And here I thought it would be you removing your clothes in this van,” he said.

  This time she couldn’t stop from swerving. Jason’s arm shot out to steady the wheel, and she could sense the maddening smirk on his lips. She fell right into that one. Jolene studied him in her periphery and decided she actually didn’t mind talking to him when he held back on the self-righteous act.

  In and out of sleep, Jason heard Jolene singing off-key. After watching the way she’d nearly swiped a car’s bumper as they left the parking lot, his adrenaline levels had dropped enough for him to take a nap once they’d hit straight road. It couldn’t have been more than an hour when Jolene’s frantic slaps to his arm lurched him back into consciousness.

  “Jason, I think something’s wrong.”

  Still disoriented, he straightened in his seat and looked toward Jolene. The first thing he comprehended was how pretty her profile looked, her lips full and pouty and her curls framing her face delicately. It wasn’t until Jolene turned panicked eyes on to him that he registered how slowly they moved and the distinct smell of smoke.

  “Stop the van and get out now!”

  The sun remained unrelenting, and when they exited the air-conditioned truck, the heat enveloped him in its uncomfortable embrace.

  “What did you do?” he asked as they both stood in front of the box truck, looking at the large white clouds of smoke rising from the front panel.

  She turned to him with her hands on her hips. “What did I do? Nothing.”

  “Before drifting off to sleep everything was fine, but I wake up an hour later to the truck pretty much on fire,” he argued.

  She gave him a murderous look. “You actually slept for almost three hours. I felt the truck rumbling, but I thought it was a furniture piece that got dislodged in the back. Then the smoke came. But I didn’t do anything to bring it on.”

  “Except not wake me up when you first heard the rumbling.”

  Through clenched teeth, Jolene said, “I told you. I thought it was furniture moving inside the back.” She took a deep breath in. “Instead of blaming me for this, we should probably call for help.”

  Jason took his phone from his jean pocket and dialed the road side assistance number he’d programmed in his phone. The call dropped after the third ring. “Of course, cell service is spotty.”

  They’d exited a busy highway onto a long winding road with one lane going each direction. Dense trees stood on one side of the road. The other side had a steep embankment that dropped off into God knew what horror-filled forest.

  “All right, let’s not panic,” she said, studying her own phone.

  “I’m not panicking. I’m frustrated that we’re going to be behind schedule.” He raked his hair with his hands.

  “Your precious schedule is the least of our problems. I don’t have a strong signal either, but I think we should continue calling for help and flag down any vehicles that pass by.”

  A car hadn’t passed them on the road since they’d stopped, but Jolene made a reasonable suggestion. They didn’t have many options.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as he strode closer to the fuming truck.

  “I grew up around mechanics. It can’t hurt to tinker around and see if we can fix it.”

  “Okay, while you try to MacGyver the truck, I’ll walk along the road and see if I can get a better signal.”

  “Don’t get eaten by a bear.”

  “Don’t worry about me, you should make sure you don’t get electrocuted. I won’t try to resuscitate. I’ll just roll you down the mountain,” she said as she walked off.

  “Hey,” he called after her, “if I do get electrocuted, you won’t have to pretend to be cordial.”

  “Why wait for death?” she asked as she threw up her middle finger at him without turning around.

  He caught himself smiling.

  After her calls dropped for fifteen minutes, Jolene finally got through. The AAA representative on the line assured her that a real mechanic and a transport vehicle would be on its way. The news made the fact that she hadn’t seen a single car less worrisome.

  It also allowed her to indulge in the fantasy of air conditioning. Under the sun’s angry rays, that damn natural process of sweating kicked in, and Jolene could feel sweat accumulating on her neck and on her back. She even suspected that an organ or two currently malfunctioned. But help was on its way, and if she could sit in the van as she waited, she could curb the frustration that burned to be expressed in some sort of tantrum.

  Hopefully, Jason would stay outside. It was baffling how one moment they could be having a genuine conversation about family and the next hurling insults at one another. It wasn’t Jolene’s character. She couldn’t let him get under her skin like that. As she drew closer to the van, Jason emerged from under the hood of the vehicle, with the front of his T-shirt marred with black oil.

  “Did you get through?” he asked, wiping his stained palms on his already dirty T-shirt.

  “They said they’d be here in one to two hours.”

  “I guess we just hang out in the truck and try not to die in this heat.” He used the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his brow but left a mark across his forehead.

  “You’ve got some—” Jolene gestured toward her own face.

  Jason moved to the outside mirror on the passenger side of the truck to assess the damage. He mumbled a few words to himself, and then without warning, he took his shirt off. Jolene’s lips parted involuntarily.

  Her breath came out in tiny silent bursts. It wasn’t like she’d never seen a bare-chested man before. She had probably seen thousands. Hello, spring break 2007, anyone? But the memory of gross twenty-something dudes who used their student loan money to hang loose in Puerto Vallarta and whose diets consisted of steroids and beer somehow didn’t compare to the experience of seeing Jason’s chiseled, bronze torso.

  She got her view of his ornate and detailed tattoo on his massive left shoulder and upper arm. The hard lines his muscular body created had her slipping into musings of what it would feel like to rub her breasts against the solid surface of his chest. Those great ridges of his abs would harden her nipples and would be the source of her damnation.

  Like discovering water in a desert was a mirage, a clean T-shirt appeared and interrupted Jolene’s view of him. She raised her gaze and caught Jason’s smug expression. Her face warmed.

  “I guess you get to see my tattoo after all.”

  And Jolene could swear he flexed his biceps. She would not let him think it impressed her, but she didn’t trust herself to say anything at the moment lest her voice betray her.

  Damn him.

  Chapter 4

  They’d been sitting in the confines of the truck’s cab for close to an hour. A few vehicles had passed them by
, but they’d let them go without hailing for them because they still expected help to arrive. Jolene, perhaps because of some need to be productive, removed her work from her suitcase. But she soon abandoned it to lie against the seat like a carcass. Jason read a medical trade magazine, but he flipped through the issue without absorbing any of the content. Even if they’d wanted to talk, the heat left them needing to conserve energy.

  Only after another two hours had passed and the sun, a constant antagonist, abated did Jason accept that they needed to think of Plan B. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume the mechanic and transport vehicle wouldn’t make it before the sun set in an hour. He wished they’d taken the route that Nicole and Ty chose. But at the time, it seemed acceptable to take the shorter more rural route because they’d be driving through it during the day, whereas Ty and Nicole needed the better lit urban highways as they drove several hours behind them at night.

  “We should call a cab,” she said.

  But it turned out that being beyond city limits meant Ubers were unavailable, and cab drivers didn’t jump at the opportunity to pick them up. Once it got dark, the few drivers that did pass them refused to stop. Jason couldn’t blame them. They looked extremely sketchy. But Jolene, on a mission to get someone to stop, practically stood in the middle of the road with her hip cocked and peered down the empty road.

  Jason had to clench his jaw and stuff his hands in his pockets to quell his reaction. The woman wanted to get run over, but Jason knew mentioning the danger of standing in the middle of the road would make Jolene stay in that position just to spite him. So, he simply prepared himself to tackle her out of the way if a car appeared from nowhere and decided brakes didn’t need employment.

  “Oh. Oh! Someone’s coming,” Jolene said, frantically waving her arms in the air at the approaching vehicle.

  A minivan driven by a middle-aged woman stopped. She only cracked her window open a little bit, but she sounded sympathetic to the plight that Jolene described, and she said, “That really sucks.”

  Soccer equipment for her daughter’s tournament filled the interior of the car. She apologized about her inability to give them a ride but offered to pray for them.

  “We’re really living the beginning of a true crime TV movie,” Jolene said.

  She abandoned her post in the middle of the road and joined him against the side of the van. The pleasant, daytime sounds slowly gave way to noises that consisted of crickets and distant howling of some type of canine.

  “Listen, I was being a dick earlier. The truck could’ve broken down even if I were the one driving.”

  She turned her entire body toward him. “I’m glad you realize that you’re a judgmental person.”

  He spun to face her. “I’m not judgmental.”

  She scrunched her face and held up her thumb and pointer finger a distance apart. “Just a bit.”

  He frowned. “I make assessments and usually have solid opinions.” His frown deepened as a smile grew on her face.

  “I can admit when I’m wrong,” he insisted.

  “I know. I just complimented you on it.”

  He let out an extended breath. “It’s been a long day. I don’t have the energy to fight with you.”

  “Who said we were fighting? This is simply an analysis of your character flaws.”

  “Character—” He looked at her. “No, we’re not doing this.” He turned away from her to emphasize his resolve.

  Jason could feel her readying to say something else, but before that could happen, a small powder-blue truck with rusting sides made its way down the road, stopping and honking once it was near. They both clambered toward the vehicle, desperate for some sort of lifeline.

  “You folks need some help?” A man with a baseball cap and an entirely denim outfit asked from the driver’s seat.

  “Yes, our moving van broke down, and the towing company has been a no-show,” Jason said.

  The man in the truck gave both him and Jolene an assessing look up and down after listening to their story. Jason assumed the moving van lent them some credibility.

  “All right, I can give you a lift.” He pulled off to the side of the road just in front of the van.

  The two of them gathered their personal belongings and secured the vehicle, and Jason found himself sitting in the man’s cramped truck next to Jolene. It wouldn’t be such a big deal if her thigh weren’t pressed against his. He tried to create distance, but there was only so much space he could make before he was in the other man’s lap. When his attempts failed, Jason resigned himself to the feel of Jolene’s soft thigh pressed up next to his. He was aware of her like he never previously was. It troubled him for many reasons. He wouldn’t deny the thrill that invaded him when he caught Jolene staring at his naked torso, but he chalked the feeling up to shock. Why should he care that she found him attractive?

  “My name’s Terry, by the way.”

  “Jolene.”

  “Jason.” He gave Terry a handshake. “Thank you for helping us out.”

  “Don’t mention it. I’m taking you to the closest town, Gregory Lake. It’s small, not much to it really, but you’ll find a place to sleep for the night.”

  “We really appreciate it,” Jolene said. “We were worried there for a moment that we might have to sleep in the van.”

  “No, that wouldn’t have been good. It can get pretty cold up here at night.”

  Before long, Jolene and Terry chatted like they were old buddies. Jason attempted to engage, but their conversation fell into the background once Jolene leaned over Jason to get a clear view of Terry as they spoke. Her mango-coconut scent still clung to her hair, and Jason wanted nothing more than to bury his face in her curls. It also didn’t help that when the truck hit a bump, Jolene stabilized herself with his upper thigh. He looked down, half expecting to see seared flesh and denim where her hand had been.

  They’d just concluded a thorough discussion of a cover artist Jason had never heard of when Terry asked, “How long have you folks been an item?”

  Jason’s response came out rushed and urgent. “Oh, we’re not a couple. Just—”

  “Friends,” Jolene offered.

  Terry gave them a nod and a look that Jason couldn’t interpret.

  In an attempt to regain something he’d lost a grip on, Jason said, “Trust me, Terry, we’re barely even that.”

  Jolene gave him a small jab in his side with her elbow and drew her mouth into a straight line.

  Perhaps sensing the tension, Terry pulled down his visor to reveal a photograph of a woman in her fifties with white-blond hair and a large smile. His voice took on a sappy quality when he said, “Me and my lady, Eileen, have been together twenty-three years.”

  “That’s amazing. Congrats,” Jason said. He supposed it would be nice to have that sort of relationship. Terry was obviously happy. His mom had been happy with his father too. But getting to that point required dating, and at this time, that seemed exhaustingly tedious.

  “Wow, I love that. You’ll have to tell me the secret. I was literally married for three months,” Jolene said.

  Jason’s head almost left his shoulders from the way he turned it to look at Jolene after her admission. She didn’t meet his eyes. He’d forgotten that she’d been married. He tried to rack his brain for details Ty had told him over the years about Jolene, but nothing came up. Why did she get a divorce? Did she still talk to her ex-husband? The questions rolled into one solid ball of curiosity, but he knew he had no right to any of the answers, so he clenched his jaw and tried to focus on the conversation that went on without him.

  “I can’t really say I have a secret. I just try to make her happy, and she does the same. And once you get on the same page about the big things like kids and money,” Terry continued, “then you can have fun learning the silly things about the other person like their favorite meal. Eileen’s is chicken parmesan.” Terry looked away from the road for a moment at Jolene. “Did he cheat on you or something?”
r />   Jolene laughed. Jason strained his ear to detect a hint of bitterness or sadness.

  “Nothing like that. Toby is a great guy. We just got married way too young, too fast, and our lives took us in different directions.”

  Terry made a sympathetic tsking sound.

  “I’m sorry,” Jason said. And he did mean it.

  Jolene shrugged, turning her face up to his. “It’s okay. I’m not torn up about it anymore. The last I heard, he and his girlfriend had a child on the way. He’s happy. I’m happy.”

  Though it was dark outside, and he could barely make out her features, he desperately wanted to confirm that she was indeed happy.

  An hour later and armed with enough information to write Terry’s biography, the trio arrived in the small town of Gregory Lake.

  “It’s more touristy than anything. There’re all sorts of retreats that happen here year round. And there’s a few cafes and a great pub too,” Terry said.

  The streetlights illuminated quiet sidewalks with charming flower baskets at every corner. They pulled into the motel’s parking lot, and Jason hoped that the car-filled lot didn’t mean there were no rooms available.

  “Don’t forget to look up Eileen’s Etsy store,” Terry shouted through his open window as both Jason and Jolene thanked and wished him well.

  * * *

  The checking-in process was easy enough, but as the full parking lot had indicated, the motel had a lot of guests and not many rooms remained.

  “This is it,” Jason said as they entered their room.

  Of course, there was only one bed. Why should anything go right today? The bed took up most of the space, and a smell emanated from the surfaces in the room. It was a mix of mildew and an off-brand pine-scented air freshener. Jason dumped his backpack and Jolene’s suitcase in front of two chairs near the door.