Chapter 15
chapter fifteen
Audrey
Today's vocabulary word: appearances
It surprised me not at all that this midnight road trip went off the rails almost immediately.
The car Jude had reserved before we departed from Boston was no longer available and it was obvious he wasn't a fan of the alternative provided. Engine guys. A very particular lot. It was always something with them.
Road construction brought all traffic around the airport to a standstill. When we were finally free of that, we realized the entire city was closed for the night.
After getting my tea fix and foraging for a hodgepodge of goods at a truck stop an hour outside of Salt Lake, we were on the road again. I pressed my palms to the paper cup and inhaled the minty steam. Sometimes that was enough—or all I could manage. It was exactly what I needed tonight.
The tea settled my stomach and I was feeling better now that I had the air conditioner blowing and the seat warmers switched on.
They did not, in fact, cancel each other out.
It helped that Jude stayed quiet, sipping his iced coffee and occasionally glaring at the navigation screen while we ate up miles of dark highway.
I'd always imagined that spending time with Jude again would mean immediately falling into deep, earnest conversations where we'd unearth every sad and broken truth we'd carried around all these years.
We'd confess everything—but the more I thought about it, I wasn't sure I knew what everything was anymore.
And I didn't know why my daydreams kept missing the mark.
All I knew was that this stilted new reality of ours would crack before the end of the week. If nothing else, I'd crack. Cracking under pressure was one of my specialties. And I guessed that would make it easier to call off this fake wedding.
Another hour or two into the drive, I sensed Jude looking at me.
I was half asleep—the best I could manage in a car—with a truck stop hoodie draped over my legs like a blanket and my arms tucked inside my shirt.
I blinked when he cleared his throat. My eyes felt sunburned and the taste of perfume stuck to the back of my throat.
"Do you have any more of those scones?"
I blinked a few more times before I realized he was wearing glasses.
Simple, wire-rimmed frames that glinted in the passing light.
I dug through my memories, pressing into the moments when I'd been too much of a whiny toddler to notice anything but my exhaustion and trying to find those glasses hiding in there all this time.
I didn't come up with anything. It was just like Jude to spice up his standard uniform of denim and black with something so casually academic.
He'd always been a closeted nerd, after all.
My voice sounded like crushed ice when I said, "Yeah. I'll grab the scones."
But in my new fixation on those glasses, I forgot I'd swaddled myself. After a minute of wrestling my way out of this homemade straitjacket and remembering how to work my limbs, I dug the container from the bottom of my bag.
"Shit," he muttered.
I glanced up to find road crews and flashing lights ahead. Signs announced construction and detours to come. "Is that the way we're supposed to go?" I asked. Jude nodded, an impatient noise rattling in the back of his throat. "Is it going to take much longer?"
He tapped the navigation system and groaned when the map rerouted. "That's just wrong," he grumbled. Our arrival time flipped from nine in the morning to shortly before noon. "For fuck's sake. This has us going all the way down the 15 and cutting around Vegas."
"That seems like a big detour," I said as I popped open each side of the container. "Like, into a whole other state. And the states are big out here. We're not talking about cutting through Rhode Island to get to Connecticut."
"Yeah. We're not going that way. We'll take the old country highways and pick up Highway 89 past the construction."
I glanced at the narrow road ahead of us. "You're telling me this isn't the old country highway?" When his only response was a sharp side-eye, I decided to revisit the obvious. "You're sure you don't want to find somewhere to stop? Even for a few hours?"
He rubbed the bridge of his nose, pushing the glasses up to his forehead.
There were greater matters at hand, but I had so many questions about these glasses.
I couldn't wait for the moment when he glared at me over the rims. Because he would, and it'd scratch some kind of nostalgic itch I didn't know I had.
I really needed Jamie to explain to me what was happening here.
She'd say something about uncovering my kinks and that it was about damn time I got around to it.
"My mother has planned this week down to the hour. We've already missed one dinner party and now we're going to miss the red rock Jeep tour she booked for tomorrow. Today. Whenever the fuck."
"I get that," I said carefully. "But it's really going to mess with the schedule if we veer off the road and die in a ditch."
He exhaled for an entire minute. "We're not dying in a ditch tonight. I've driven from the naval air station in northern Nevada to my mom's place. Twice. I know these roads, even in the dark, and the conditions are good."
"Okay, yes, I appreciate the optimism, but you should know I'm halfway through a couple of Netflix series that I hate. If I die before finding out how they end, I'm going to haunt you forever."
He laughed and rattled the ice in his coffee cup. "I wouldn't mind that. Might be nice to see you do the chasing for once."
I couldn't decide if that was a joke or a jab or something else altogether. I just knew it landed in a tender place that made my belly swoop. I held out the scones. "A few of them fell apart but those two on top are in good shape."
Jude took one that'd broken and ate it in two bites. He went for another piece, humming as he chewed. "These are incredible."
There was a note of admiration in his voice I hadn't expected. I hadn't let it bother me that he'd passed on the scones yesterday morning. Not everyone favored scones. Some didn't fully understand where they existed on the muffin-biscuit-bread spectrum.
But I'd wanted him to try them. A small, mostly pathetic part of me wanted him to be impressed. To take something I'd made from my own two hands and an alarmingly large collection of cookbooks, and appreciate it. I wanted him to see me do something right.
And when he did, nothing could force the smile off my face. My cheeks burned. My throat tightened. If I let myself, I'd cry. I had to look out the window to keep myself from flailing under his praise. Or throwing myself at him.
"How's Cassidy these days?" he asked.
I stifled a groan. That killed my silly grin.
Most of the time, I didn't think about my younger sister at all—and I knew the sentiment swung both ways.
She probably had her hands full with harassing baristas who weren't nice enough to her and blaming mental health disorders on sunscreen or something.
"Married. Two kids. Lives in Palm Beach. "
"Sounds like things are still going well between you two?" he asked with a chuckle.
Cassidy's claim to fame was being a two-faced agent of evil skilled enough to switch between backstabbing and playing the victim on a second's notice.
I never understood how anyone took her seriously but that didn't make her any less vicious.
She'd had a girls' volleyball coach more or less run out of the state by the time she was twelve.
All because the coach made her run an extra lap after cutting corners the first time around.
My parents adored her. They'd gotten it right with her, or so they liked to say. It helped that she was the blank slate they wanted, if we didn't count the faked fragility. Sometimes I wondered if that was the true basis of their value system.
Either way, Cassidy delivered a stunning performance of the loving little sister role throughout my high school years while secretly gathering enough information to end my life as I knew it.
She found out about my IUD, about the hours spent at Semantic when I'd claimed to be at the dance studio, and our plan to go to New York City together after graduation.
Then, in the spirit of her profound "concern" for me, she made sure my parents knew too.
I'd go to my grave with my jaw clamped around that grudge.
"She married a guy named Holter and named her kids Holt and Cassen."
"Originality was never her strength." Pointing to the scones, he asked, "It's maple, pecan, and what else?"
"Oatmeal," I said.
"Do you make them in any other flavors?" Jude took the container from me and nestled it on the center console. "Percy's obsessed with chocolate right now, which isn't good for anyone, but he'd go for this without the nuts. He has no use for nuts unless they're ground into a spreadable form."
"Um. Well." I fussed with the seat warmer settings. It was weird getting exactly what I wanted. It happened so rarely that I didn't know how to wrap my arms around it. "Seasonal flavors, usually, or whatever I have around the house."
He grabbed another broken bit, nodding to himself as he ate. "These are the best scones I've ever had, Saunders."
"And you've had many scones?"
He glanced over, a grin I'd never be able to forget stretched across his face. "Enough to know."
I smoothed out the hoodie and tucked my arms back inside my shirt, and I burrowed so deep that Jude wouldn't notice another smile I couldn't wipe off my face.