Missing Pieces - Chapter 10
Tyler
Sunday
The sound of a shower running made me slowly open my eyes.
Fuck. I was hard. I had dreamt of Hailey again.
More vivid than the night before. Maybe it was because I had seen her in barely anything last night before bed.
I was tempted to whack one off real quick, but I didn't want her to walk out of the bathroom and see me doing that.
Shit. I ran my hands down my face as I tried to think of something else.
Anything else. But when I closed my eyes I just saw her long legs stretching out beneath her baggy t-shirt.
All I could think about was them straddling me.
When I opened my eyes she was standing in front of me in nothing but a towel. I blinked, thinking it was just my imagination. But no, she was really there. Beads of water rolled down her chest and disappeared beneath the knot in her towel. This was not helping my boner situation.
A smile spread across her face. "Take a picture, it'll last longer."
I laughed. "How did you sleep?"
Her cheeks looked flushed. Probably from the shower. "Really well, actually. How about you?" She leaned over to grab something from her duffel and nearly exposed her ass to me.
I forced myself to look away. "Good."
"Thanks again for letting me stay in the room with you. And for letting me share the bed."
"Yeah, of course."
She nodded. "Okay. I'm going to go change." She disappeared back into the bathroom.
I quickly got out of bed and pulled on a pair of shorts to hide the evidence of how badly I wanted her. I was just pulling on a shirt when she walked back into the room.
"So, I mapped out the best route to Pasadena," she said.
"Pasadena?"
"Yeah. Well, I know I said California, which was rather vague since it's such a huge state. And really you can just drop me off anywhere. Pasadena is where I eventually need to end up though. But if you..."
"I can take you to Pasadena." It was only a few hours away from the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. Thinking about it gave me a pit in my stomach. I knew I was doing the right thing. But it didn't mean I wasn't terrified.
She looked relieved. "Great. I got this map from downstairs.
" She opened it up and spread it across the bed.
"I really wouldn't mind seeing the Grand Canyon.
I know I was just joking around about hitchhiking when we first met.
But here I am. I'm officially a hitchhiker.
I might as well see the Grand Canyon while I'm at it.
It's kind of on the way." She pointed at a dot on the map.
"Yeah, sure."
"And if we start going south now, kind of cut through Missouri and then head west, I think that's probably the fastest route. We basically just follow Route 66, so we don't even need a GPS, because I know you hate those."
I picked up the map. "Ever been to Vegas?"
She laughed. "No. I've actually never even left Indiana before."
"Seriously?"
She shrugged.
"You do realize that we're in Illinois right now? You've officially left your home state."
"I know." She smiled. "It's pretty exhilarating. Is Vegas on the way too?"
"Kind of. Just like the Grand Canyon is kind of on the way."
"I guess we'll see if we're sick of each other by then."
I knew she was in a rush to get to Pasadena for some reason. I looked back down at the map. I had more than half a country to figure out why. "Mhm."
"Are you hungry?" she asked. "It's your turn to buy breakfast."
"Yeah, just let me go brush my teeth." I quickly freshened up.
When I walked back out, the TV was on. Hails was watching a news reporter outside of a hospital.
An image flashed across the screen with the caption "Mr. and Mrs. Hunter moments before the shooting.
" She was in a wedding dress and he was in a tux.
They looked so happy. I swallowed down the lump in my throat.
Hails turned around to look at me. "They just had an exclusive with one of the doctors from the hospital where James Hunter is.
They said that each day that goes by he gets less and less likely to wake up.
It's not looking good. I can't even imagine what his family is going through. And his new wife? It's heartbreaking."
"It really is." Heartbreaking. I couldn't think of any other way to describe it. I looked away from the image and grabbed my bags and her duffel. "You ready to go?"
"Yeah." She turned off the TV. "I can carry that, you know."
"I got it."
"Do you want me to take a turn driving today?"
"Nope."
"Oh, come on," she protested as she followed me out of the room.
***
"I thought Kansas would be more...magical," Hailey said.
I laughed. "Why did you think that?"
"Well, because of Wizard of Oz and everything. But really it's almost exactly the same as Indiana."
"The Wizard of Oz isn't magical until Dorothy leaves Kansas."
"Still." She shrugged her shoulders.
The more time I spent with her, the more I liked her.
She had these cute little freckles underneath her eyes and across the bridge of her nose.
And her eyes lit up whenever she spotted something half interesting on our drive.
Earlier today she had freaked out because she swore she saw a buffalo.
I'm pretty sure she hadn't. She had even made me pull over and stop so that she could stare at nothing.
Half the time it seemed like she smiled as a defense mechanism.
But when she laughed, her smile really showed.
I liked seeing her real smile. We had stopped asking each other tough questions, and somehow that made it easier.
It didn't mean I didn't want to know more though.
I had been thinking about it a lot. Why would she just suddenly come home from college and leave immediately? What drove her away?
"I need to make a quick phone call," she said. "If the waiter comes, can you just order me a cheeseburger with fries?"
"Gladly." Yup, the more time I spent with her, the more I liked her. Any girl who ordered real food instead of a salad won my heart a little. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and clicked on one of my many new voicemails.
"Tyler Stevens, this is Officer Daugherty with the NYPD. We talked on the phone the other day..." I pulled the phone away from my ear and pressed the delete button.
Penny told me she'd take care of it. And despite everything, I trusted her with my life. She'd fix this. She'd fix this and probably forget I ever existed. I was easier to cast aside than she was to me.
I clicked on the next voicemail. "Tyler Stevens, this is Officer Daugherty with the NYPD.
We need you to come in for questioning..
." I deleted the message before I heard the whole thing again and clicked on the final voicemail.
"Mr. Stevens, this is Officer Daugherty with the NYPD.
We've already arrested your accomplice and we're going to be issuing a warrant for your arrest if you do not come in for your.
.." I pulled the phone away from my ear and pressed the delete button.
Accomplice? Penny told me to ignore their calls. She told me she'd fix it. So why the fuck were they still hounding me? I blocked the number from my phone. It didn't matter if they arrested me. I didn't have enough energy left to care.