Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
KIRA
“I’m so excited we’re doing this!” I all but squeal when we’re finally on the I-287 North out of Dallas. It’s eight at night, so we’re at the tail end of evening traffic. A quad cappuccino Anna brewed for me right before we left has me bright, perky, and ready for a night of driving.
“Still think we should’ve taken my truck,” Isaak grumbles from beside me.
“Please. That thing has a hundred and eighty thousand miles on it. We would’ve died on the side of the road somewhere outside of Amarillo. Then we’d really be in a horror movie.”
“Betty’s got at least another fifty thousand left in her. Don’t besmirch her good name.”
I roll my eyes, still grinning. “And we don’t have access to all my playlists in Betty.” I punch the music app on my dashboard screen and hit my party mix. Dua Lipa’s sultry voice comes on telling Houdini to catch her before she goes.
“You got any country on there?”
“Actually, just in your honor, I did throw together a country mix. Look, here’s one you should like, old man.”
I click on my new country mix playlist. First song up is “Old Town Road.” As soon as Billy Ray Cyrus’s voice comes on singing the chorus, Isaak’s hand starts massaging my thigh.
Oh . Well, that’s quite nice. God, I’ve missed his touch. I can’t believe I just leapt like that and invited him on the roadtrip and decided about not marrying Drew after all my waffling back and forth. It was just like, after the scare with seeing my stalker face to face, it all seemed so simple and straightforward. I could finally see .
What the hell was I waiting for?
It’s my goddamned life .
So what if I run into a panic attack here or there?
I can’t stay a porcelain princess protected in my little box on the shelf forever. I mean, I could. But that sounds more miserable than a million terrifying moments all strung together. And I would have chosen it. I just finally saw it so clearly. I would’ve been choosing the loveless, stifling box.
I also saw I could choose freedom.
So I leapt, and trusted Isaak would catch me.
And now here we are.
“Now you’re just playin’ with fire, Red.” Isaak shoots me a lopsided grin.
I feel that one straight to the core. “What’s that mean?”
I’m not breathless. Who’s breathless?
“It means if you keep goin’ and puttin’ on my favorite songs, I’m gonna make you pull over, throw you in the back seat and eat you out ’til you lose your voice from screaming so much.”
I gulp. “Is that a threat or a promise?”
“Both.”
I try to keep my breathing even, but it’s a losing battle. I’ve had a few inspired ideas in my life, but I’m starting to think this road trip was one of the better ones.
I also wish I’d worked a little harder on the country playlist because the rest of it is mostly a mix of the Chicks, Reyna Reynolds, with the best of Kacey Musgraves and Brandi Carlile thrown in for added flavor.
But when the track switches over to “Goodbye Earl,” Isaak doesn’t take his hand away. Just keeps massaging up my thigh with his strong thumb and fingers.
After weeks of not touching and the vibration of the Texas road underneath me, I’m halfway to shouting Amen! by the time Reyna Reynolds sings about swearing on the “Bad Girl Bible.”
“So,” Isaak’s rumbling voice comes through the darkness. “You said earlier that you’d tell me the story of you and the dickwad?”
“What?” I breathe out, still lost somewhere between my lusty haze and focusing on keeping the wheel straight.
“You said you weren’t high school sweethearts. What were you then?”
Annnnnnnd there goes my buzz. I blink hard and take a hand off the wheel to grab his hand and tug it off my thigh.
“If we’re talking about this, you can’t be touching me like that.”
He snatches his hand back, staying quiet for a moment.
“’Cause it feels disloyal?”
“What?” I take a quick glance over at his shut down face, shaking my head before looking back at the road. “I swear, you get the most mixed-up ideas in your head sometimes.” I breathe out hard.
“Straighten out my ideas then. I’m listening.”
I reach over and turn the music down, if only to get my own thoughts together before talking.
“I admit, I had a crush on Drew in high school. A big one. There are things about his father I swore to him I’d never tell anybody in the whole world, and I kept that promise, maybe even when I shouldn’t have. But it’s too late for all that now.” I suck in another deep breath. “Still. If I tell you some secrets that aren’t mine, I’m trusting you not to repeat them. Can I trust you?” I glance over at him.
He’s already looking at me, nodding. “I won’t betray your trust. I swear it.”
I let out the breath I was holding in my chest. “Drew’s daddy used to beat him.” I tell him about how Drew and I would stay in his truck after school, hiding from both our parents. How being with me was his alibi while he slept around with other girls.
“It was a really mixed-up time for me,” I confess. “I was a pretty lonely kid. I had bad acne and everything with my mo—with Carol— I was just really shy and had a hard time making friends. I went through an ultra-religious phase for a while, too, thinking maybe that would make my mom and dad finally proud of me.” I wince. “But that didn’t exactly help me make friends. I was just the deacon’s weird daughter, ya know?”
I feel flush with embarrassment and hurry on. “I know none of this is actually that big a deal. Nothing like what you went through.”
“It’s not a competition of who had the shittier childhood.”
“I guess not.” I bite my bottom lip. “But I guess… You know, I felt like Drew had it so bad, worse than me, ’cause his dad actually hit him instead of just saying mean shit like my mom, and it felt like he deserved more of a listening ear than I did. If he behaved badly, sometimes, well, I just loved him all the more because I understood why he was the way he was.”
“That’s such bullshit,” Isaak bursts out. “He was just using you. He’s a guy who likes to talk and you were always there, listening, assuring him he wasn’t a giant asshole.”
“He was just a kid,” I still can’t help defending.
“So were you.”
I swallow down sudden ridiculous tears that are suddenly welling in my eyes. I haven’t even talked about Drew—about the way me and Drew used to be—to my therapist. I don’t know why. It was just this place I always considered… special. Sacred almost.
But putting it out in the light now and hearing Isaak’s point of view… I feel almost ridiculous for never seeing it any other way than how my teenage self saw it.
“Shit. I’m sorry I broke in like that. I really am just trying to listen.”
Nothing else he could’ve said could prove how different he and Drew are. Or helped prove his point. Ouch .
How did I never notice that while I always peppered Drew with questions about how his day was or how his relationships were going—even though it always killed me to hear when I was nursing such a big crush on him—he so rarely, if ever, asked me any questions back?
It’s still like that. He never asks me how my day’s going. Or if I like what I’m studying. Or how it’s going with my dissertation. Or anything .
He doesn’t ask questions. He just talks, and if there’s ever a lull in conversation, I’m the one who asks him something, which gets him monologuing again.
What in the actual fuck? How did I never realize that till now?
I swallow.
“Are you okay?” Isaak asks.
The tears I’ve been swallowing back threaten to overflow at his question because Isaak does ask. He checks in with me all the time. It’s even irritated me at times because there’s actually not a lot of people in my life who do that. I’m still bad at making and keeping friends. At least close ones.
I nod instead of answering.
“So that was it?” he asks. “It was just like that all through high school?”
I shake my head and suck in another deep breath. Fuck. I can get through this without crying. I can. I can.
I focus on the lines on the road in front of me. After some deep breaths, I manage to mostly get hold of myself, and if my voice is a little thicker when I speak, I hope Isaak doesn’t notice.
“Mostly. Until graduation. I’d given up on anything ever happening between us by then. I’d waited for him all through high school, even managing to graduate a year early so we could go off to college together. I hoped he’d finally recognize all that, and how I was always the one he came home to, and make some sort of grand gesture, like they do in the movies.”
“But he didn’t.” Isaak says it like it’s the obvious, foregone conclusion. Which I guess now in retrospect, it was.
I’m glad I’m driving and have to focus on the road instead of him.
“No. He didn’t.” I give a short, humorless laugh. “So, I tried to put on my big girl panties and be like, fine, he doesn’t feel that way about you. Let’s just focus on getting to college. I stopped hanging out with him as much. I didn’t want to be that pathetic girl loving someone who would never love her back. I knew there would be parties after graduation, but I planned to just go home straight after and continue planning for the big, bright life I had ahead of me.”
I was finally about to escape Mom’s house, after all. Or so I thought. So, graduation night, I planned to worm away and read the fanfiction I’d saved for just the occasion. Maybe I’d take a long, hot bath, too.
“What happened?”
“Drew asked me to come to a party with him.”
“And you went.”
“And I went.”
Isaak swears under his breath. “I’m here for whatever you want to tell me, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’m just—I’m here.”
I look over at him and frown, not understanding at first. Then I get it and look back at the road as I say, “Oh god, it was nothing like that. I wasn’t roofied or assaulted or anything like that. It’s just Drew and I had sex or,” I wince, “tried to have sex. We kinda did, and it did not go well.”
“Okay,” Isaak breathes out. “Okay. Keep going. I’m sorry I interrupted again.”
“It’s okay. I’m sure some of that did happen at that party. It was at one of Drew’s friend’s houses, and everybody was plastered. I just sipped something because I’d never drank before and thought it tasted awful. I was so nervous about being around so many people and finally on Drew’s arm. I was excited, too, thinking maybe my dreams were finally coming true, but that just made me more nervous. Drew took me upstairs to one of the bedrooms and?—”
I glance over at Isaak. He probably doesn’t want to hear this part. “And we did it. Well, we tried anyway.”
“What’s that mean?” Then he holds up a hand. “Again, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
I blink. It might be nice to talk to someone about it if he really doesn’t mind. That night’s always been a little fuzzy. I don’t think it was the alcohol. I was just so… Maybe if I can finally say it out loud, it will help.
“Well, he told me to get undressed, so I did, then laid down on the bed.” I don’t know how much detail Isaak means, so I skip ahead. God, the whole thing was so awkward. And silent. Drew didn’t say a thing as he shoved his pants down and climbed on top of me. Why didn’t he say anything?
“I asked him to put a condom on because I knew how many girls he’d been with.” He got mad at me, which was when I realized that while I’d just been sipping from my red cup, he hadn’t. He was totally drunk. He tried to shove it in anyway, but I scooted up the bed, yelling at him that I wouldn’t sleep with him without a condom.
“So did he?”
“Um. Yeah. He put a condom on.” He wasn’t happy about it, but he yanked open his buddy’s side table, found a condom, and put it on, cussing the whole time. Then he asked if I was happy and pulled me back down the bed before pushing my legs open. I was crying by then. And then he got mad at me for crying.
Why the fuck are you crying? I’m finally fucking you like you always wanted .
But I couldn’t stop crying and started sobbing, actually, because the whole thing was nothing like how I’d envisioned losing my virginity those few times I’d furtively touched myself in the dark. Why the fuck are you crying? It was the last time I cried, too, for five years, till at the club with Isaak.
Then, when Drew went to shove forward again, he didn’t feel hard between my thighs anymore.
He got really mad then and started yelling at me about how I’d killed his hard-on.
“But I guess he wasn’t used to using condoms, so between that and the beer or whatever, he couldn’t keep it up.”
“So the fucker was drinking?” Isaak asks heatedly before swearing. “Shit. Don’t answer that. Did you catch a ride home after that?”
Suddenly, the tears I’ve been managing to choke back aren’t staying put anymore, and I let out a loud sob.
Seeing a highway exit, I take it, even though it means recklessly pulling in front of another car.
“Jesus fuck!” Isaak shouts, grabbing onto the car door.
But I don’t care about anything. I can barely see the windshield because of the tears suddenly flooding my eyes. As soon as I leave the exit ramp, my foot hits the brakes. It’s a nowhere exit. No lights or gas stations. I pull off to the side as soon as I see that there’s a wide-enough space for my Mini, bringing the car to a stop as I finally let the sobs free.
“Kira. Kira!”
I hear Isaak calling my name, but I’ve got my head buried in my arms across the steering wheel.
Because, oh god. Oh god .
No.
No, I didn’t get an Uber home after that.