31. Chapter 31
“Where are you? Where are you? Damn it!”
It wasn’t happening. She was just exhausted from the marathon hangover. The book was probably in front of her face, she just couldn’t see it.
She’d already scoured the back seat of the station wagon and come up empty. Lindsey breathed through a lingering wave of nausea and ducked though the front passenger door. It wouldn’t be there, she knew. She only sat in the front once, on the first day.
With her nose underneath the steering wheel, she thought she smelled weed. Lindsey lifted the latch on the floor console and found a tightly rolled joint.
“Clever man.” She smiled. Lindsey had discovered the first of Graham’s Easter eggs in a toilet paper roll under her bathroom sink last summer. Predictable Graham with his happy little joints hidden in unexpected places. She would miss finding them when this was over.
When this was over. The trip or their relationship? In Austin’s shadow, the end of both—at least for her—seemed almost inevitable.
It didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. Unlike the sudden pinch in her butt cheek that sent her head into the plaid ceiling.
“Oh baby,” a man behind her crooned.
Lindsey screamed and fell out the door and into a pair of muscly arms.
“Oh, shit.” The man with the muscles who was actually Jase—because of course he was—helped her stand. “I’m sorry.”
Lindsey rubbed her head, which hurt slightly less than her butt, which hurt slightly less than her pride.
“You’re lucky it’s just me,” he said. “Your ass hanging out the door. You’re begging for creeps to swoop in.”
“And yet the only creep I keep running into is you,” she pointed out, stuffing the joint into the pocket of her shorts.
“Not that I mind the view, but what are you doing? You’re not still puking?”
“No, but thanks for reminding me,” she said. “I’m looking for your dad’s book.”
“Lovers Who Wander? The porn?”
“Yeah,” Lindsey said, too tired and upset to be surprised he remembered it, or to dwell on how Jase literally grabbed her butt through her very tiny, very thin shorts.
She went around to the rear door and rummaged through the bags they’d left in the car, knowing it wouldn’t be there either. “I had it yesterday at lunch in Alabama. After that, I don’t remember.”
The book deserved a better ending than the lost-and-found bin at a greasy truck stop. She dropped into the open tailgate and let her head fall into her hands.
“Hey, it’s going to be okay.”
“No, it’s not,” she argued. Her temples throbbed on her fingertips and CALL ME flashed in front of her eyes. There was nothing okay about today. “It’s the only thing I have to remember him by.”
Jase sat beside her, setting a six-pack of beer between them and cracking one open. “You can come by the house and pick out a different ’80’s porn if you want.”
“It’s not the same. The book was special. There were pages missing from the middle. I can’t find anything online about the author. It’s kind of its own mystery, you know? It can’t be replaced.”
“You could call the truck stop in Alabama and see if somebody found it.”
“Sure. But I doubt I’ll make it back there any time soon.”
“You never know. The maps could make a U-turn.”
She scoffed. “After sending us to Austin.”
Jase cleared his throat and offered her a beer.
“I spent the day bent over a garbage can, remember?” Lindsey asked.
“Pretty sure I’ll never forget. You’ll feel better if you get back on the horse.”
She considered it. After she ate something, alcohol might smooth out the rest of this hangover. Remembering the takeout carton she found on the dresser after she got out of the shower, she asked, “Where’s Graham? I thought he was with you.”
Jase’s expression locked up. “No, not after we ate.”
“Hm. Why am I not surprised?”
“My brother’s an idiot,” he said, as if it explained everything.
I’m still here, I guess I am too.
Lindsey worked her fingers through the tangles in her damp hair. “Do you know anyone named Ellie?”
“Should I?”
“Distant cousin or aunt, or something?”
“No.” Jase shrugged. “Why?”
“Never mind,” Lindsey said.
“You know, I could swing by sometime,” Jase said.
“What?” She gathered by how close they danced last night he wasn’t overly concerned by boundaries with his brother’s girlfriend, but offering to swing by?
“The truck stop,” he said quickly. “I could swing by the truck stop. Sometime.”
“The truck stop?”
“If you find out the book is there, the next time I’m down that way I’ll pick it up. If you want.”
“You would do that?”
“Sure, why not?”
A better question was why? This helpful, caring version of Jase never made it into any of Graham’s many warnings about his brother.
“You know what?” she said, dwelling a little too long on his lips as he took a drink. “I will take a beer.”