CHAPTER 16 #2
I looked at him from the corner of my eye. “You have Taylor Swift on your playlist?”
“‘The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived’ is everyone’s cry in the car song, isn’t it?”
I snorted out a laugh, and I caught Beck’s lips twitching up in response.
He didn’t drive back toward Biscayne Park, but in the opposite direction.
I didn’t really care where we were going, just that I wasn’t alone on the bench anymore.
And that I didn’t have to go home just yet.
And that Beck hadn’t left me alone, even though he definitely should’ve, and I definitely should’ve let him.
Beck pulled a bottled water up from the cupholder between us, offering it to me. “I haven’t opened it yet,” he said, as if that was where my thoughts would go.
“I didn’t see you go into the gas station to get this.”
“I didn’t. I brought it from Aunt Ally’s.” Beck pulled it back, lifting his knee up and holding the steering wheel in place. In one smooth, quick move, he cracked the seal, removed the cap, and offered it back to me. “Have a drink.”
“Where were you going?” Clearing my throat, I grabbed the water bottle from him; it nearly slipped out of my grasp. “When you left your aunt’s house.”
“I don’t know. Nowhere.” He didn’t look at me. “I was just going for a drive.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
“It’s not a lie.”
“It’s not the whole truth. What happened to you saying you wouldn’t lie to me?”
Beck didn’t reply this time. Instead, he twisted the dial up on the radio, letting the music settle into the cracks of silence between us. The water soothed my aching throat as I took sip after greedy sip, until the bottle was half gone and crunching between my fingers.
When Beck slid to a stop at a traffic light, he passed the bottle cap back, and then pressed a button near the rearview mirror.
With a mechanical whir, the convertible’s top began lifting away, the panels peeling back. The warm air rushed in, chasing away the air conditioning that had kept the interior chilly. Sunlight slid across the dash, warming my bare arms and the hollow at my throat.
“I hated this last time,” I grumbled, anticipation still licking through me.
“Trust me,” he began, and the light above us flicked green. With his knuckle, Beck slid his sunglasses higher up on his nose. “A convertible is much more fun from the front seat.”
And the car launched forward.
Wind rushed in, up and over the windshield, nothing like it had been in the backseat.
In the passenger seat, the windshield cut the breeze cleanly, offering a steady stream of air that lifted my hair instead of assaulting it.
It was cool against my temples and the back of my neck.
I rested my elbow against the door, fingers curling around the edge, and let myself exist in the moment without trying to tame my hair down.
Up here, I could hear the music clearer even as Beck revved the engine louder. I didn’t smile, but something inside me eased anyway, loosening its grip. I tilted my face upward, letting the setting sun melt away some of the weight that’d been pressing into my shoulders.
C-A-L-M.
Fine. I could kind of see why Daisy loved it so much.
Beck spent a little while aimlessly driving, blowing past Alderton-Du Ponte, then circling back to go down Main Street in Addison.
After we cycled through songs and probably burnt through a quarter tank of gas, Beck pulled into a Biscayne Community Park and Trail’s parking lot, turning down the loud music as he did so.
He parked beside the entrance to a hiking trail, where the sun was falling lower in the sky.
“Can you text Jamie?” I asked, leaning my head back against the seat rest. “And just… let him know I’m with you.”
“Princess ran away from the castle, did she?”
It was strange how his condescension felt different than Destelle’s. With Beck, it was easy to brush off the little digs or backhanded comments. I could hear they were more curious than haughty, anyway. “Yeah.”
Beck slid his phone out from his back pocket and shot off a quick text. “Done.”
I looked at him closer. “You still have Jamie’s number?”
Beck hesitated before throwing his phone into the cupholder.
“Did you still have my number?”
“We’ve established I have your number. I texted you pretending to be Pebble Brain.”
“But did you have it then?” I clarified, still not looking away. “Or… did you get it from Lydia?”
That would have been more likely, and now I was embarrassed for even considering that he’d kept my number. But then he said, “I never got around to deleting it.”
I stared at him, strangely breathless. Did you keep it for the same reason I kept yours? I wanted to ask him. So if I ever texted you, you’d know it was me?
“Where is your phone, anyway?” Beck glanced over at me. “And your bag, and a jacket, and shoes that actually fit you? You’re the least-prepared runaway I’ve ever seen.”
“I wasn’t planning on leaving,” I muttered. “My dad and I just… had an argument.”
“Ah.” Beck’s fingers traced the steering wheel. “At least you didn’t destroy a garden this time.”
I looked over at him, finding the corner of his lips tipped up. A joke.
Beck’s phone vibrated in the cupholder, and even though the urge to snatch it was strong, I held still until Beck slowly plucked it up. His eyes scanned his screen. “Jamie says ‘okay.’”
“That’s it?”
“And ‘tell her she’s dead meat when she gets home.’”
That didn’t sound like Jamie—that sounded like Daisy. I wondered if he’d called her when I didn’t come home. Knowing Jamie, most likely.
Beck sent another message to Jamie, and this time, he slid his phone into his back pocket. We were both quiet in the parked car, with only the music playing between us. Quietly enough that we could’ve talked, but we didn’t. We just sat there, waiting for the other to speak first.
Exactly how it’d used to be.
Even if we hadn’t talked much at the Alderton-Du Ponte events, I’d be content to stay in the silence with him. I’d always wondered if Beck had been content with it, too, or if he’d silently wished the annoying little kid would stay away.
Beck cleared his throat now, startling me. “Want to walk the trail?”
I didn’t, not in Jamie’s giant shoes, but I felt too weird saying no with the way he’d asked it. It sounded strangely… soft. I couldn’t imagine his thoughts had traveled the same path mine had, but it was a nice sort of fantasy. “Sure.”
So Beck put the top up, and we unbuckled our seatbelts, climbing out of the convertible that was no longer a convertible. The car beeped when he locked it, and we started off down the pressed path, side by side.
The nature path wasn’t anything special.
It had rained recently, so it was muddy in the middle, and I walked close to the tall switchgrass.
There were no pretty views except the sun as it began to set, but even that was lackluster.
There were no clouds for the rays to reflect off of, so it was just the color bleeding from the sky.
We still had a while until it was completely dark.
“You didn’t have any plans with Pebble Brain today?” Beck asked.
I let out a sigh. “Why can’t you call him Carter?”
“Don’t wanna.”
“And it only ever matters what you want?”
Beck looked down at me. “Duh.”
“Lose the sunglasses,” I ordered suddenly. “It makes me feel weird.”
“Weird?”
“Uneasy.”
Only Beck’s lips echoed the word, uneasy, as he reached up and slipped off his glasses. He hooked them on the collar of his shirt. “Spell it.”
“U-N-E-A-S-Y.” I pursed my lips. “Give me a tougher one.”
“Pusillanimous.”
I craned my neck to stare at him. “You just made that up.”
“Did not. Look it up. After you spell it.”
I blinked, still not quick to lose my frown. What was it? Pusi—“Say it again.”
“Pusillanimous.”
I broke the word down into smaller parts in my mind, mouthing out the syllables silently.
Pus-i-lan-i-mus. I tried spelling it out in my mind, replacing the mus with the rule of words ending with -ous, hesitating on whether or not there was a double L.
In the end, I went with it. “P-U-S-I-L-L-A-N-I-M-O-U-S. Pusillanimous.” Beck didn’t respond. “Am I right?”
“No clue. I’ve never seen it spelled before.”
I smacked him on the shoulder. “Look it up, then.”
Grumbling, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and typed in the word.
“Pusillanimous. P-U-S-I-L-L-A-N-I-M-O-U-S.” His eyes fell to mine, and if I hadn’t known any better, I would’ve sworn there was a sparkle in them. “We should call you Neltionary.”
I tried not to smile at the praise, but the light feeling filled me all the same. “What does it mean?”
He scanned the page. “Showing a lack of courage or determination.”
Pusillanimous. I liked that. “Where’d you hear it?”
“My dad used to say it all the time. Thought it made him sound smart when he was insulting me, I guess.”
The atmosphere with Beck was strange, like the trail we were walking was not a mud-filled track, but the line to no-man’s-land, where a truce could be called. The quiet, uncertain tone that hung in our silence just felt so… loud. “How is your dad? And your mom?”
He kicked a stick out of the path. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“I haven’t seen your mom since she left Addison.”
“And I haven’t seen her since I left Addison.”
I stopped in the path. “You haven’t seen your mom in four years?”
Beck made a tired face, as if the conversation was suddenly boring. “My parents are no fun to talk about. Let’s talk about yours. What’d you fight with your dad about?”
I didn’t want to take him up on the subject change, but there was no pushing Beck on something he didn’t want to talk about. That much I remembered. “College.” It was partly true. Less embarrassing than saying we were fighting about my sister. “My… ego.”
“Your ego.” This seemed to amuse him. “Your dad had thoughts about that, did he?”
The blissful warmth that’d cradled me in the convertible began fading into something colder. “He found out I was the one who destroyed the garden.”