Chapter 26 #2
Brandon fishes out an earbud, glancing at me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Brandon’s gaze trails over me as I squirm in my seat. “You have to pee, don’t you?”
“Maybe you have to pee,” I say, defensive.
He chuckles. “Oh, love. We gotta work on your comebacks. That was just awful.”
A laugh rolls out before I can stop it. “You’re awful.”
“Please,” he chuckles again, “just stop. You’re only proving my point.”
“Well, maybe I can’t think straight when I’m so full of urine,” I say.
“Gross. Don’t say urine.”
“Urine.”
A single, deep laugh bounces around the car.
“You’re right, though,” he admits. “I do need to go. I was just waiting for you to break first.” He smirks. “Which you did.”
I shove his shoulder.
He laughs darkly. “Okay, fine, we’ll stop.”
“Stop where?” I magnify the map on Brandon’s phone and find nothing. I zoom out. Still nothing. Panic sloshes in my bladder. “Stop where?” I repeat.
Brandon glances toward his phone and sighs. “We must be pretty remote. We’ll either have to use creepy Tom’s bathroom or ‘side of the road-it.’”
“Side of the what-it?” My eyes bug out of my head.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never gone outside before.”
“I have.” I snap. Once. At sleepaway camp with Liza.
“Then let’s stop here.” He pulls beside a snow-covered outcrop as I stutter my protest.
“I–I don’t have any toilet paper.”
His arm slides across me as he clicks open the glove box.
“Tissues.” He plops the box into my lap.
Brandon strides into the snow before I can even move.
I unclick my seatbelt and scramble out of the car. “Brandon, wait for me—”
“This isn’t a group project, Kate,” he calls as he walks toward a thicket of trees. “And keep your eyes on the road.”
My small laugh is swallowed by the silent gray sky. But then a horrified thought occurs to me that if it’s this quiet, I might hear Brandon’s pee.
I whip around to the car, plug my ears, and begin humming a nonsense tune. A few seconds in, I realize the song I’m making up is kind of a bop. My bladder pulses in time to it, and I shift in my wiggly way to distract myself from the looming task ahead.
The skeletal treeline across the road seems to stretch for miles. Finger-like branches scrape like nails against the sky as a shallow mist swirls across the roots. The undulating cloud is opaque enough that it could maybe conceal small animals.
Or axe murderers.
A few minutes pass before a tap on my shoulder sends me scream-spinning around and sending a right hook flying. My fist connects with Brandon’s jaw, and it snaps to the side.
“Ow!” He cradles his jaw as his wild eyes find mine. “What the hell, Kate?”
I clutch my aching fist as a panicked dribble of pee threatens my leggings. I pinch my thighs together in a weird squat and massage my hand.
“Ohmygosh, I’m so sorry,” I say, breathing hard. “You scared me.”
“So you punched me?” His voice is incredulous.
“Yeah. Maybe the boxing lessons are working?”
The threatening dribble of pee turns into a torrential current, straining against the crumbling dam that is my inner thighs. I whip around, snatch the box of tissues, and barrel toward the thicket of trees.
“There’s no time to explain!” I cry.
Panic speeds my awkward run through the snow. Cold licks at my crew socks as drifts sink into my gym shoes. I’m not sure I’m going to make it.
Spoiler alert—I don’t make it.
Well, I partially make it.
But I still find myself stomping toward the backseat of Brandon’s car, retrieving my gym bag, and wordlessly passing him on my way back to the treeline.
“Did you just pee your pants?” he calls, still rubbing his jaw.
I ignore him and disappear behind the trees.
Tom’s gaze skirts over my spandex gym shorts and bare legs for the millionth time as we sit across from him in a dusty living room.
Of all the days to have worn teeny-tiny shorts to the gym, I had to have picked today.
However, they were still fairly clean and definitely didn’t have dribbles of pee in them, so it was the best I could do given the circumstances.
Brandon, to his credit, hasn’t looked at my legs once. In fact, he appears to grow more agitated with every glance the creepy old man sends my way.
“The pizza mural you own the copyright for is iconic,” I say. “Tourists and Chicagoans alike come to see it all the time. I promise to do the mural justice if you allow us to reproduce a photo of it in our exhibition.”
“You?” Tom raises a craggy brow. His gray hair is partly hidden beneath a stained ball cap with a sports logo I don’t recognize. “You promise? What does a pretty vixen like you know about reproducin’ murals?” He lewdly roves his stare over me, and I will myself not to shudder.
“I happen to be the photographer for the exhibition, so I will be the one reproducing your mural. I can show you some examples if you’d like.”
He nods and pats the dusty, patchwork couch beside him.
Brandon stands, unfurling to his massive height as he accompanies me across the small room. It’s unnecessary, but I’m thankful. Because creepy Tom is…well, creeping me out.
I remain standing as I flick photo after photo across my phone screen.
After a second, Tom grunts his approval.
Brandon produces a pen, and fifteen leers of my legs later, we say goodbye.
While walking to the car, I feel Brandon bump against my back, and I realize just how close he’s tailing me.
“You can back up, you know.”
“Just keep walking,” he mutters. We make it down the snow-covered driveway, and Brandon opens my door.
I hesitate, looking up at him.
“What?” he says.
“I think this is the first time you’ve ever opened a car door for me.”
His full lips tip sideways. “Hard to open a door for you on a motorcycle, love.”
And darn it if my heart doesn’t hum to life.
I sink down into the leather seat.
Brandon rounds the car, sends one more hard look at Tom lurking by the handrail in the dimming light, then gets in the car.
“What a piece of work…” Brandon mutters, flicking on the headlights. They land directly on Tom, who shields his eyes and retreats beneath the solar panels on his roof. “I hate guys like that.”
“You have experience with creepy men undressing you with their eyes?”
He scoffs. “No. Just been around a lot of them, I guess.” There’s a layered story there, but the twitch in Brandon’s jaw tells me now is not the time.
“Thanks anyways,” I say softly, resting my hand on the forearm of his black sweater. “For having my back. I’m kinda glad you came, now.”
I feel him relax, and he produces a small smile.
“Told you so.”
I throw my hands in the air with an exasperated laugh. “Here I go trying to be all nice, and you have to go and ruin it.”
He catches my fingers and pulls them back to his forearm, pressing his palm over the back of my hand to keep them there. The heat from his touch sends a direct jolt to my heart, and I grow still.
“There,” he whispers, hand still covering mine. “No harm done.”
I swallow under his gaze and the way he’s looking at me. Like he recognizes that I’m a strong, independent woman, but he still wants to protect me. An exquisite balance of respect and reprieve.
Brandon clears his throat and starts the engine.
I straighten my kelly green crewneck sweatshirt and slip Tom’s signed agreement into the purse by my feet.
Without warning, Brandon curses under his breath.
My head flies up, half expecting Tom to be approaching with a shotgun or a rusty shovel, but I don’t see anything.
“What?”
“Snow,” Brandon says.
I notice it then, beginning to fall thickly in the beams of light from Brandon’s Camaro.
“So?”
“Did you not check the forecast? We were supposed to be out of here by now.”
Nervousness twists in my stomach at the prospect of having to camp out at creepy Tom’s.
“Well, step on it, then!”
An hour later, we make it out of Shawnee National Forest, but the sign is barely visible. Snow coats the roads at an alarming rate. I breathe slowly through my nose to try to ease my anxiety.
“This is bad, isn’t it?” I ask.
Brandon clutches the wheel. “Do you want me to lie?”
“No.”
“It’s bad.” He glances at the phone screen on the dash. “But at least we have reception now if we have to call for help.”
The lights of a small town wink into view. We decide to wait out the storm at a burger joint for over an hour, but it still doesn’t blow over. With no other alternative, we head back on the road. I fiddle with the ends of my hair as Brandon tries to navigate the slick roads.
With a curse, Brandon suddenly flips his signal before pulling into the parking lot of a pint-sized motel.
I stare flatly at him. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not,” he says grimly, unbuckling his seat belt. “But I’d like to live to see tomorrow.”
I cringe before taking a calming breath.
Sure, this seedy motel isn’t the Four Seasons, but if I didn’t die at creepy Tom’s, I’m not going to die in a snowy ditch somewhere. And I do keep a spare toothbrush in my gym bag, which happens to be in the backseat.
“Fine.”
But as it turns out, it’s not fine.
Because thanks to a mold infestation and half the motel being condemned behind sheets of plastic, I find myself standing beside Brandon in the doorway of one room, staring at one laughably small bed.
Kill me now.