SABRINA
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Everything sitting dormant in me is bubbling up, uncontrollable.
I’m trying to keep my cool, but I’ve never felt so excited in my life.
I want to roll down the window and hang my head out like a dog, the music all the way up, acting like I’m drunk.
But I don’t want to act too strange in front of him. At least, not this soon.
We stop for lunch at a remote gas station.
It’s a billion and one degrees out here.
I have my shirt tied under my bra as I stroll through the aisles.
The air conditioning is clearly broken, all the doors open and a huge fan whirring from the back.
Everything smells faintly of cedar shavings and lemon cleaner.
The door creaks. Coen walks in, pushing his wallet in his back pocket.
At some point, he got a beat up cowboy hat from his bag and fit it on his head.
He was filling up the truck, probably checking his phone.
Even on break, that man’s phone goes off constantly.
It’s hooked up to the screen on the truck, and the morning has been a constant stream of Jamie, someone called Amanda-publicist, and so on and so forth.
Not a single personal call or text came through, and I think that’s a little bit sad.
“You got what you need?” he drawls, coming up beside me.
Do I? I glance over the slope of his broad shoulders. He’s being a little standoffish today, which is a bit confusing, considering he asked me to drive across the country with him. Maybe he’s trying to be careful.
“Yeah,” I say, lifting a bottle of green tea and a handful of energy bars and jerky. “You hungry?”
“Not starving. That should work.”
“What do you want to drink?” I move toward the foggy fridges on the back wall.
“I’ll grab a water.”
I take it out, turning to find him pouring another black coffee at the bar. I go to pay, but he appears at the last second and swipes his card.
“It was my idea,” he says quietly. “Everything is on me.”
“I can pay for myself.”
He looks like he wants to say something else, but instead, he puts a toothpick from a little jar on the register in his mouth, gathers up his things, and leaves.
I go after him, stepping out into the dusty parking lot.
He’s on the curb with a cigarette hanging from his lips.
Normally, I’d be a little grossed out. The wranglers smoke, and I hate the smell.
But he makes it look sexy, which is probably a bad thing, because, sexy or not, it’s terrible for his health.
Still, not my business right now.
“I’m getting in the truck,” I call, moving past him.
His eyes are on me as I do, burning into my back.
I climb in, and, behind the privacy of tinted windows, I study him thoroughly.
He puts the toothpick behind his ear, staring across the lot to the line of the mountains, eyes concealed behind a plain pair of sunglasses. The cigarette burns in his mouth.
There’s a lot going on in that head.
He hasn’t spoken about the remnants of the house, or his mother, since that day.
The notebook sits in his back pocket all the time, even when working on the ranch.
It’s creased, compressed with sweat and dirt, yet I’ve never seen him take it out.
Is this a bad case of writer’s block? I’m not well versed in that, but I’ve seen enough movies to know all about tortured artists.
He steps off the curb. I turn to my green tea and pop the tab.
“You want to camp tonight?” he asks, getting into the driver’s side. “There’s a site about two hours from here, a little off our way. I drove through here on tour once, and it’s worth it.”
“We don’t have a tent, but yeah.”
“We’ll stop at the next Walmart and get some shit.”
I nod, biting some jerky just as my phone goes off. I swipe the screen and—oh fuck, it’s Dad.
“Uh, here we go,” I mumble.
Coen glances over but stays quiet as I put the phone to my ear. Right away, I can hear things slamming.
“Brina, you get your ass back here now,” Dad barks.
“Dad, Serena has everything handled. Aunt—”
Crash! My stomach sinks. It’s rare my father gets this angry.
“You’re just a kid, Brina, and you don’t know about men like that. He’s two of the worst fucking combinations you can get: a cowboy and a celebrity. He’ll chew you up and spit you out on the side of the road.”
“Dad—”
“Brina, so help me God, I will call the cops.”
That pisses me off. I take a beat and then clear my throat, making sure my voice is low and controlled.
“You will not,” I say. “I’m twenty-four. The cops will not do a single thing. I left on purpose. Nobody made me. I’ll be back in a little while. Don’t worry about me.”
“Brina, you don’t get it.”
Something deep in my chest snaps, followed by a flood of warmth, like my heart is bleeding.
“He’s not you, Dad,” I whisper.
He’s quiet, and then he coughs. “Baby, please don’t do this.”
“It’s just a road trip. We’ll be fine.”
He hangs up, which makes my jaw drop. Serena will talk to him and calm him down.
He was like this once before, when Serena was eighteen and he found out she’d lost her v-card to one of the wranglers.
I told her not to tell anyone, but then she missed her period, and Dad caught her going to the store for a test. Nobody hates cowboys more than Dad.
He went out in the yard and beat the shit out of the guy, despite being thirty-some years older. The test was negative, thank God.
I put my phone away, throat tight.
“You okay?” Coen asks softly.
Nodding, I wipe my face. “He’s handling it better than I thought.”
There’s a long silence. Coen puts the truck in cruise and stretches his legs out, one hand hanging on the wheel.
“Your dad is pretty protective of you girls,” he remarks. “Something happen?”
I shrug miserably, not willing to get into it.
Coen doesn’t pursue it. Instead, he reaches over and turns on the radio, strains of Tracy Chapman coming through the speakers.
These songs are so familiar to me, it’s a balm to the turmoil in my chest. I close my eyes, and I’m not sure if I sleep, but I get close, because, suddenly, we’re pulling into the Walmart parking lot.
“You want to stay in the truck?”
I shake my head. “I need to grab some clothes. I didn’t pack enough.”
He gets out, circling the truck to open my door.
I let him, unsure why he’s so insistent on it.
The further east we go, the hotter it’s getting.
Heat waves rise from the lot as we cross it, and it’s a relief to be hit with a wall of icy air as we get inside.
He veers to the right, and I veer to the left without a word said. He’s easy to travel with. I like that.
He meets me at the register and insists on paying for my things again. This time, I agree, because what the hell?
I know he’s loaded anyway.
We get back into the truck. My back aches, and I stretch as he piles the tent, a couple chairs, and what appears to be a bucket full of random camping supplies into the bed of the truck.
Then, he swings into the passenger side and hands me something.
I uncurl my hand to find two Mary Janes in their signature brilliant yellow wrappers.
“What’s this?” I ask.
He shrugs. “You were crying earlier.”
“And this is supposed to fix it?” I can’t bite back my smile.
He pulls the truck back on the road. “My mom used to give me Mary Janes when I’d cry as a little kid.”
My stomach jerks, the way it does when he lets me in a little bit.
Inside, I’m grinning ear to ear and kicking my feet, but I have to stay calm.
The wax paper peels back, and I bite off the end.
The faint molasses, sticky with sugar, spreads over my tongue.
It tastes like distant memories of summertime.
I’ve never wanted to stop the truck and climb in his lap more.
My brain is so horny right now. There’s something about his quiet firmness, how thoughtful he is, that really gets me going. Putting the candy on my tongue, I glance sideways at him at the same time he looks at me. Only, he’s looking at my mouth, watching me bite it in half.
“Give me some,” he says.
I reach for the wrapped one in my lap, but he takes the bitten one from my hand and puts it in his mouth.
“I’m not scared of germs,” he says. “Especially considering I’ve swapped pussy and spit with you twice now.”
My stomach jolts. He turns the truck off the highway onto a state route.
“I didn’t know we were doing that,” I say lightly.
“What?”
His jaw flexes. I like that a lot.
“You’ve been kind of distant,” I say.
He inhales, like he’s thinking hard. Finally, he says, “I don’t want you to feel pressured into anything. I know the whole thing with my work is a weird situation.”
“So you were gonna take me on a road trip but not fuck me?”
“If that’s what you wanted.”
“It’s not,” I say firmly.
My face is flushed, fingers wrapped around the Mary Janes in my lap.
He smiles, gazing ahead. I get the impression he’s been thinking about this the entire day.
The thought makes my stomach flutter; I want to be wanted badly, and he seems like he does.
Without saying a word, he reaches across and puts his rough hand on my bare thigh.
My heart does a backflip.
Is there any way, in any universe, this doesn’t end with my heart being broken?
I want to hope so. The way he’s driving with his hand on my thigh makes me brave enough to consider it.
Maybe he’s not Coen Taylor, the world famous musician.
Maybe he’s Coen Taylor, the cowboy from somewhere in Wyoming. Just a man, the same as any other.
We drive, the truck tires eating up the blacktop, without saying a word.