Chapter Ten
I keep driving.
Past the dirt back roads, the deserted fields and empty farmland, eerie at the witching hour, haunting as a spirit.
I keep driving in silence with only the moon to guide us.
I keep driving when I hit the highway, picking up speed along with the other late-night roadies, each traveling toward or escaping from something.
All the while, Nico watches me, his forehead scrunched and his eyes narrowed.
Contemplative.
In awe.
After the fifth exit sign, I take a sharp right, pulling into a Denny’s parking lot.
“What are we doing here?” Nico asks. The first words he’s spoken since the great garage escape.
“Get your bags,” I tell him, turning off the car. “We’re leaving the car here.”
I rummage through my purse for a packet of tissues and a small bottle of hand sanitizer.
Dabbing a little bit on a Kleenex, I start wiping down any surface we may have touched, from the back seat to the steering wheel.
Nico stares at me for a second before grabbing the sanitizer and getting to work.
Once we’re done disinfecting the leather, I let out a tiny sigh of relief.
“I think we’ve put enough distance between ourselves and that garage.
Once Thomas and Clarisse—or whatever their real names are—wake up from their drunken stupor and realize we’re missing, it’ll take them a hot second to find us,” I explain.
“But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re in a stolen vehicle.
Which means the police will be looking for us as well. ”
Nico rubs at his beard in distress. “Wouldn’t the police finding us be a good thing? I mean, shouldn’t we call them anyway? We need to report what happened to us. Unless…do you think the Mob has the police in their pocket? No, what am I saying. This isn’t The Godfather.”
I let out a strangled laugh, shaking my head.
“Nico, as a self-described cynic, you should know better than to trust the cops with something like this. I hot-wired the car. You really think they’re going to believe that some guy in a tracksuit picked us up on the side of the road and tried to kidnap us and that’s how we ended up lifting a Jaguar? Come on. That sounds totally made-up.”
“But we can point them to Tey’s truck,” Nico says, exasperated. “We can tell them about the garage!”
I roll my eyes.
White men.
“Nico. We have zero idea where the truck is. We don’t have our phones, so we can’t check maps.
Even if we were to return to the garage, there’s zero chance those two are still hanging around.
It’ll just look like we broke into some stranger’s garage, stole their gardening tools, and commandeered a sports car. We’ll look totally guilty.”
“So, what? We’re just going to pretend this never happened? That we were never kidnapped?”
“Who is there to tell?”
“Um, I don’t know. Your brother?”
“Tey? He’ll just worry. Maybe Ollie can give us some legal advice. But why bother?”
His eyes widen as he processes everything I’m saying, his face growing red.
“Are you okay?” I ask, my voice soft, as I realize I haven’t checked in on him yet. “That was…traumatic, to say the least. I don’t blame you if you need a beat to process.”
He stares vacantly at me, as if the word traumatic is floating around in the space between us. After a minute or two, he nods, more to himself than to me.
“I’ll be okay, boss. I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline or what, but I want to keep going. What’s our next move?”
I smile at my new nickname.
Boss.
So much better than kid.
“For what it’s worth,” he adds, “I’m really, really, really sorry. Like, really sorry. I’m in total denial that any of it even happened. I don’t know how you’re not furious at me right now.”
“Nico,” I say. “You know you’re not responsible for the actions of others, right?”
He smiles, just a little. “Even if my moronic actions led to their actions?”
I look at him for a moment. “You did something monumentally stupid and out of character,” I finally say. “But your heart was in the right place.”
“Out of character, huh? Would you say I went a little bit off script, Joon?”
I roll my eyes. “We’ll figure out what to do about the money you owe and Kabobs ’n’ Bits later. First we need to dump the car here. Tomorrow, we’ll get some burner phones from a gas station, and then we’ll take a taxi to the train. Wait, do you still have your wallet?”
He checks his Jansport. “They took all my cash but left the cards.”
“Same. Probably because they knew they’d be easier to track.” I scrunch my nose, slightly impressed. I thought they were too dumb to realize something like that.
“So, that’s tomorrow,” says Nico. “What do we do tonight?”
I point into the distance. If I squint, I can make out a flashing red sign covered in a shroud of mist. “We walk to that motel over there and get some rest.”
He snorts. “I doubt I’ll be able to sleep after a night like this.”
“Tough shit. You’ll need the energy. You’re no good to me grumpy.”
“I’m always grumpy,” he mutters, the corners of his lips tugging upward.
My heart does that twisting thing again.
We grab our bags and begin the trek over to the motel, walking on the side of the highway like two nomadic travelers in a coming-of-age film.
Every once in a while, I’m startled by the sound of brakes behind me, convinced that Clarisse and Thomas have found us.
That we’ll be forced into the trunk of a brand-new car and shuttled somewhere no one will ever find our bodies.
But it’s always just a passing delivery truck or late-night road-tripper.
“Here, switch places with me.”
Nico moves past me so that he’s walking on my left side instead of my right, closer to the road. Keeping a lookout.
Ensuring that, if push comes to shove, he’ll take the brunt of a hit.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says.
I didn’t realize Nico fancied himself a gentleman.
All at once, every hair on my body stands up straight.
Because this?
This is something Ryke would do.
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” I tell him. “I can take care of myself.”
“I know,” he says quietly. “But just because you can doesn’t mean you should have to.”
The Lonely Hearts Motel stands proudly near exit 17 on I-95, its bubblegum-pink paint chipped all over.
The motel is two stories tall, stretching along the highway.
Its railings are slanted, nails hanging loose, a single storm away from falling over.
There’s a latched gate leading to a pool out back, which is littered with cigarette butts and crumbling leaves.
The neon sign features an ace of hearts playing card and two flamingos kissing, leaning on one another for support.
We step inside and ring the bell.
A woman in her late thirties comes rushing out of the back, her eyes red from working the night shift and crusted with melted mascara. There’s a plastic fork stuck in her messy bun and a crease on her left cheek. She’s speaking loudly on the phone in Mandarin.
“Hello, ma’am,” Nico says.
Her eyes flit over to his before she returns to her call, flat-out ignoring him.
Nico sighs, exasperated.
“Can you please hang up the phone and help us?” I ask in near-perfect Mandarin.
Behind me, I hear the sound of Nico choking on his own spit.
I smirk. I knew all those lessons would come in handy one day.
The woman’s pierced brow flies up, but she clicks a button and places her cell on the counter. Then she takes in our disheveled appearance and the matching red marks on our wrists and grins, unfazed.
“Long night?” She tucks a curl behind her ear.
“Something like that,” I grumble. “We need two rooms, please.”
“Two? That a kink of yours or something?”
Nico starts coughing.
The lady’s knowing expression makes me giggle. I smile and shake my head. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“Unfortunately, no can do,” she says. “There’s some kind of fidget-spinner convention up the road this week. We’re booked solid. Only got one room left. The paradise suite.”
“We’ll take it,” I say before Nico can object.
“Fabulous.”
She hands us the keys, leaning over the desk. “And a little pro tip: If you’re planning on securing yourself to the headboard, I suggest you use handcuffs. Those motherfuckers are too slippery for ropes.”
She winks, and I get the distinct pleasure of watching Nico’s face turn the same color as the dying grass.
He follows me up to our room, dumbfounded. I throw open the door to find a heart-shaped waterbed, complete with a leopard-print duvet, floral wallpaper, and a full-size jacuzzi with some questionable brown marks at the bottom.
Honestly? I have to laugh. This room looks like the backdrop of a really corny porno.
“I’ll take the floor,” Nico says immediately.
“Don’t be stupid,” I say, dropping my duffel on the floor. “There are literally red stains all over the carpet. And something tells me they aren’t ketchup.”
Nico gags. “I thought that was just an artistic pattern or something.”
“Sure,” I say sweetly. “Splatter paint. Bloody red splatter paint.”
I sit down on the waterbed, and it dips beneath me, almost causing me to slide off onto my ass on the Furnace-forsaken crime scene floor.
“Come on. I need your weight to balance out the oil in this thing anyway.”
Nico begrudgingly approaches the waterbed and takes a seat before stretching out beside me.
I try to ignore the way his arms flex as he stretches them above his head, his abdomen taut and clenched as he yawns.
We both lie there staring up at the speckled ceiling.
I replay the day’s events over and over in our heads.
Literally occupying two sides of the same heart.
“Do you think that’s black mold?” I whisper.
Nico grunts, which turns into a fit of giggles.
Before I know it, we’re both on our sides, our bodies shaking as tears stream down our faces, our cackles all-consuming. After a while, I can’t tell if we’re laughing or crying.
Most likely both.
“I can’t believe we got kidnapped today,” Nico says. “That shit just doesn’t happen to people like me. I don’t get kidnapped. I go to work. I go to the gym. I go home. But I never get kidnapped.”
I snort in agreement. “For someone who loves playing out worst-case scenarios in your head, you were oddly unprepared for the worst-case scenario.”
He turns to face me. “But you weren’t. You’re being surprisingly calm about the entire thing. Like, you’re not traumatized at all.”
“Maybe I’m dissociating.” I shrug, uncomfortable with being complimented by Nico.
“You were incredible.”
Blood rushes to my head. “I just read a lot is all.”
His eyes are fixed on me, unwavering and sincere. “I think you were right. Maybe I do need to start believing in the power of love. Maybe then the universe will stop kicking my ass.”
A beat goes by before I fully process what he’s saying. “Wait. I’m sorry. You don’t believe in love?”
He shakes his head. “My parents made sure of that.”
I rack my brain for more information. Nico’s parents got divorced when I was in middle school.
Before that, they always seemed enamored with each other.
I remember them holding hands at Chowder Fest at Olde Mystick Village and making out like teenagers at Clyde’s Cider Mill.
But I don’t remember too many details of their breakup.
Nico was a quiet kid. Reserved. He and Tey always hung out at our house or at Kabobs ’n’ Bits. It never occurred to me that there was a reason he didn’t want to go home.
“They were high school sweethearts, right?”
Nico nods, but his eyes are somewhere far away.
“Next-door neighbors. Childhood friends, too. There are pictures of them together as toddlers. Celebrating birthdays. Trick-or-treating. Playing in the tub. Their mothers were best friends and decided that they were destined to be together. They never had a chance to love anyone else. Falling in love with each other was just this accepted thing, as easy to them as breathing or eating or sleeping. It sounds corny, but their families really believed that fate had placed their houses next to one another. My dad always said it was love at first sight, that once he set eyes on her, he knew he’d never want anyone else. ”
A frog catches in my throat. “That’s beautiful,” I croak.
“Sure.” His laughter is clipped. “Right up until he cheated on her. He’d been cheating on her, in fact, ever since they were teenagers.
With her girlfriends. With his classmates.
With her own sister, my aunt. My mom never saw it coming.
Christmas was pretty awkward that year. The family kind of fell apart after that. ”
My heart drops as he sucks in his cheeks, trying to mask his emotion.
I have the strangest urge to reach out and touch him.
To comfort him with the warmth of my body, the strength of my arms.
My hands clench and unclench.
“Fuck,” is all I can think of to say. “I can’t believe I never knew.”
“Not your fault, since I never talk about it.” He shrugs. “It’s kind of hard to believe in happily ever afters when the best love story you’ve ever heard turns into a tragedy.”
I think back to all the comments Nico has ever made about my love of romance. The quips about living in a fantasy, refusing to face the harsh realities of the world. His cold demeanor when I told him about my breakup with Kyle. His obsession with preparing for a crisis. His pessimistic worldview.
In order to avoid getting hurt, Nico has been steering clear of vulnerability.
He’d rather feel nothing at all.
“Thank you for telling me,” I say. My hand hovers over his like a drone. “For what it’s worth, I get it. I don’t agree. But I do understand.”
Nico doesn’t respond.
He just reaches out without looking at me and takes my hand in his.
Electricity immediately shoots up my arm, setting my whole body aflame.
We lie there in silence. And this time, when my mind settles on that night all those years ago—what I witnessed, what Nico said—it stings a little less.
I’m sure my outlook on life, my blind optimism about love, has always triggered him to a certain degree.
I’ve always believed he looked down on me.
But maybe he was just protecting himself.
Maybe there’s more to that story from all those years ago.
I must drift off, because hours later, I come to. The room is dark, the bedside lamps turned off. I’m still lying on top of the waterbed in my clothes. But Nico is awake, propping something up against his knees, a glowing orb of light glistening from the heart’s other atrium.
I hear the thumbing of paper, the rustle of a page as it turns.
I open one eye, curious.
And my pulse stumbles.
Nico is huddled over a reading light.
And in his hands?
My copy of A Tale of Salt Water & Secrets.