Chapter 27
LIFE WOULD BE EASIER IF I COULD GET RID OF MY CONSCIENCE
Oliver
There’s never an option of making everyone happy.
There’s often no meeting in the middle.
There’s just the knowledge, day after day, that you probably fucked something up while trying to fix something else, and you’re going to hear about it, and then you’re going to lose sleep over it, and there’s only so much stress that can be alleviated by working out your frustrations in the gym.
I fucked up with Daphne last night.
I fucked up hard, and I’m pissed at myself for it, but I’m also rightfully pissed at her.
There’s no good answer, and I don’t have a set of weights and I can’t go for a run or a swim or a bike ride to push it away because I have a schedule to keep if I’m going to see everything I want to see and do everything I want to do and find where I want to live before these two weeks are up.
This road trip is possibly the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, no matter how good it feels to put miles and miles between me and Manhattan, and no matter how good it felt to spread some of my wealth to random people the day before yesterday.
That was always the plan.
To give away as much as possible on my escape to a life of being a normal person.
Though it might never be possible.
Daphne and I are both in bad spots.
I don’t know what Daphne does for a job, but I know when people don’t show up without calling, they get fired, and I’m sure that would suck for her.
Her.
The woman who’s asking for some figure under a million to be sent someplace she refuses to say in exchange for her services in helping me get a wardrobe and learning how much you can toss in a donation jar without drawing too much attention to yourself.
And meanwhile, she’s had access to a secret phone where she could be feeding her sister or god only knows who else information about where we are.
She doesn’t tell me good morning or make me coffee when we both get up in the tiny house.
I don’t tell her good morning or share any thoughts on breakfast plans, nor do I ask for her help when I can’t figure out the damn coffee machine.
She uses all of the hot water in the shower and walks out in one of those Miles2Go T-shirts she bought at the gas station Sunday.
The shirt with Cupholder the crab on it.
I refuse to let her see me twitch about it, and I take a cold shower without bitching to her about that too.
Fuck if I’ll let her see she’s annoyed me.
Or that I’m sorry I grabbed her chest.
Even if that’s eating me alive.
I don’t do that.
I don’t manhandle women.
I’m also not an ungrateful asshole, regardless of what she or my parents think.
Yeah, that last jab of hers last night—ungrateful asshole—that landed.
You’ve been given the position of a lifetime, Oliver, and all you do is glare at me as if your father and I have put you in prison instead of him being there. Could you be grateful for something for once?
My mother said it over and over.
My father repeated his own version of it on the rare instances when I’d visit him in prison.
Maybe I am ungrateful.
Maybe I have been an asshole.
Maybe I am selfish.
Maybe I don’t deserve to be able to use my money to disappear from my old life.
Maybe I won’t be happy with anything, and running away won’t solve what I think it will.
Daphne doesn’t tell me she’s going to wait in the car for me.
I don’t ask her if she’s strapped in before I fire up the engine and point my car toward tonight’s destination while taking vicious bites out of a protein bar. We’re staying on backcountry roads the whole day again today.
She turns the satellite radio on to some god-awful country music station.
I switch it to the symphonic pop station.
She changes it to a polka station.
I switch it to a talk news station.
“Trevor, it’s interesting to see how Miles2Go’s stock is performing.
They haven’t turned a profit since William Cumberland was sent to prison, but in the past two years, they’ve grown three times as fast as their nearest competitor, gaining more and more franchises across the whole of the North American continent, and even without profits, we’re seeing the stock price steadily rise. ”
“Well, Emma, I think that speaks to how positively the public has responded to Oliver Cumberland’s emphasis on investing what would’ve been profits into environmental and diversity charities.
They’ve been in a growth phase as a direct result of public relations initiatives that benefit communities, and—”
I switch the radio back to the polka station.
Daphne switches it to the news again.
I switch it back to symphonic pop.
She huffs and slouches back in her seat.
When we stop for gas, I follow her into the store to make sure she doesn’t buy another burner phone before pumping gas.
She grabs six taquitos, four donuts, three energy drinks, an egg burrito, a Quickie-Lickie T-shirt, and four bags of Flaming Finger Lickies, which I deduce are Quickie-Lickie’s version of the Lava Cheese Puffs that Miles2Go sells.
She balances all of that in her arms until she dumps it on the counter as I’m paying for gas. “He’s got this too,” she tells the clerk.
I don’t twitch a single facial muscle while I pay for it all.
Or while she adds a canvas bag with Quickie-Lickie’s tongue logo and the phrase Get Licked on it.
When we get back to the car, I direct her to fill it with gas while I clean the stupid bug-splattered windshield, which will be bug-splattered again before we get another five miles down the road.
And that’s how it goes the rest of the day.
When I want her to drive, I order her to drive. When I want her to pump gas, I order her to pump gas. When I want her to clean the windshield, I order her to clean the windshield.
Before my time as CEO at M2G, I would’ve added a please and a thank you after asking if she felt up to it.
Today, I just order.
She pulls over to gape at the world’s largest metal cricket—yes, the insect—and mutters, “Gosh, I wish I could take a picture to remember this amazing road trip,” before getting back in the car and driving us another thirty miles before stopping for a taco craving, despite the breakfast she bought herself at Quickie-Lickie still stinking up the car.
I don’t give a damn what road trip protocol is.
When we finally reach tonight’s vacation rental house, I’m cleaning out the car.
If she didn’t eat it, it goes in the trash.
But there’s one issue I forgot about.
Tonight’s vacation rental is even smaller than last night’s.
It’s a true one-room hunting lodge in northern Mississippi.
One bathroom.
One single bed.
A chair—not even a couch—and a kitchenette.
We arrive shortly before five, and once again, Daphne pushes me out of the way to run to the bathroom as soon as I’ve opened the door.
She doesn’t talk at me as she pees this time.
And I get even more pissed when I realize I’ve missed her talking today while I was awake.
She should be asking me if I have a thing for staying in places that axe murderers would like. Or if I know how to sleep in a bed that narrow. Or if I know how to cook for myself on a stove like this.
Instead, she takes the lone pillow from the bed, along with the quilt, and makes herself a nest on the floor, and goes immediately to sleep.
Or feigns it.
Either way, she’s clearly telegraphing that she’s not available for me this evening.
I clean the car out, twitching when I find the lottery ticket, which I shove into the glove compartment. I can’t throw it away, but I can’t cash it in here either.
Should’ve dropped it in that kid’s donation jar outside ValuKart on Sunday.
Dinner for me is a leftover glazed donut—it’s wrong how delicious this thing is—and two of the three leftover bags of Flaming Finger Lickies for dinner.
They’re also stupidly delicious.
Two weeks ago, I was having chicken marsala with a side salad and fresh-made dressing delivered to my office for dinner, and tonight I’m eating a donut and hot cheese puffs.
Fairly certain this is what’s meant by girl dinner. Which is a phrase I only know because three separate people demanded meetings with me over how much they didn’t like that the M2G social media accounts used it as part of a sales campaign for the snack foods available at our convenience stores.
My stomach rumbles in protest, but I’m suddenly unexpectedly happy.
Even with Daphne tagging along—I’m free.
I can eat a donut and two bags of chips for dinner. I can have girl dinner and screw those assholes who wasted my time whining about it being a thing.
I don’t have to listen to them anymore, and no one needs me to keep my arteries in good shape so I can continue saving the company that my great-grandfather founded.
I pause to stare toward the setting sun. I can’t fully see it through the canopy of leaves on the trees all around me, and I realize I spent all day being so mad at Daphne for somehow acquiring and using a phone that I didn’t pause to appreciate the very thing I’m supposed to be appreciating.
Freedom.
The world I’ve never seen before.
Everyday people doing everyday things the way I’ve longed to since well before I was willing to admit to myself that that’s what those internal cravings have been.
A desire to connect with the world instead of living in a gilded tower above it.
And now I’m a thousand miles from New York, and between sleeping all day yesterday and being pissed all day today, I haven’t experienced this trip the way I should at all.
I haven’t given away more than a few thousand dollars of the millions I intended to leave in my wake.
I’m failing.
I’m failing myself.
I stay outside, leaning against my car, watching the leaves shimmer with the waning sunlight as they rustle in the evening breeze, until everything’s dusky-dark.
When I reenter the cabin, Daphne’s curled up under the quilt, one hand tucked under her chin and clutching the fabric at the same time, as if she’s afraid I’ll try to take it from her.
I stifle a sigh and open up my suitcase, realizing I either need to do laundry soon or buy more clothes.
More clothes that fit as well as these that Daphne helped me pick.
Because she knew.
She knew the wardrobe I left behind consisted of tailor-made clothes and that I couldn’t tell you my own size.
I can run away from my life, but I can’t run away from myself, and I need some degree of organization.
Especially if we can make that large of a mess in the car in only three days.
Daphne doesn’t move as I get myself ready for bed.
She’s breathing so softly I almost can’t hear it, and I don’t know if she’s asleep or if she’s faking it, but I know I can’t go another day like today.
Today sucked.
And tomorrow’s supposed to be the day that we negotiate how she’s leaving while also keeping my secret.
I have to talk her into riding along with me for another week instead of putting her on a plane back to…wherever she lives now.
So tomorrow, I have to apologize to her.
But not only for my sake.
For hers too.
Quiet, injured Daphne isn’t right.
She might’ve annoyed me when I dated her sister, and she might be pushing and poking me on purpose now, but she is fun.
I took that from her today as well.
Tomorrow—tomorrow, I truly will be a new man.
Tomorrow, I’ll be the man that I want to be.