17. Which Way Now?
17
WHICH WAY NOW?
O’CONNOR
“Get back, Char. Sit, girl. Relax. We’ve got a lot of driving ahead of us.”
The dog breathed her doggy breath on me, licked Archer’s face (nearly forcing him into the next lane), and then lay down behind us.
He drove us in silence for a while. The GPS was leading us on, but the destination was unclear to me.
Archer was relaxed and easy. He had one wrist over the top of the steering wheel. The other lay on his thigh, tapping lightly as Chris Stapleton filled the speakers with his rough honey. Archer’s pose was in contrast to mine. I was tight.
My shoulders were up. My hands were clasped in my lap. I stared straight ahead and worried my lip. What the hell was I doing here?
“Hey,” he said. “I’m sorry. Do you want to stop and set up your cameras?”
Right. That was what I was doing here. I was supposed to lecture this man about how to date women, and then I’d make a mocking video (and an even more mocking book) to expose his faults.
What if someone did that to me? What if someone decided to base their career on exposing the fact that even my father didn’t call me anymore, that I was mean to my staff, and that other than my trusty vibrator, I hadn’t had sex in over four years? Would I like that aired to the public?
“O’Connor? You awake?”
“Huh? Sorry, I was thinking. Can we do the cameras later?”
“Sure. You just want to drive? No dating school?”
“If that’s okay with you.”
He shrugged. “I’m going to be driving anyway. I’m good with it. You can sleep if you want. That seat goes back pretty far.”
“I’m awake.” And I was. But now I was relaxing into the seat. My shoulders came down. We’d reached the open highway to Who Knows Where. We weren’t the only voyagers; there were headlights coming toward us, and a few taillights up ahead. But rolling along in that luxurious cabin, lit only by the glow of the instruments and the occasional illuminated road sign, felt more like being tucked into a private jet. Maybe a yacht.
Dark. Quiet.
Intimate.
Charlotte took the occasion to emit a truly impressive fart, which filled the vehicle with poison gas. I burst out laughing.
“Shit, O’Connor,” Archer said. “You couldn’t hold it?” Laughing and outraged, I turned to clear up any confusion and found him laughing too. “I know she’s enormous, but she’s still just a puppy. Her digestive system isn’t quite developed yet. This happens, and when it does, we all take the chance to blame each other. Hold your hair. I’m going to replace all this air.”
All four windows rolled down under his fingers on the controls. Damp, cold night air slammed into the cabin. Charlotte lifted her head and sniffed but then dropped back to the floor with a loud thump. “I thought it was warm in the South,” I commented, still laughing.
“BFT says it’s thirty-nine degrees. Not bad for November. Let’s label this refreshing. How’s the air smell to you now? Are we good?”
“We’re good. Lock us back up again.”
The hurricane bled away, along with the last of my tensions.
“You cold? You’ve got a seat heater. See it there? And here are your temperature controls. Make yourself comfortable.”
“This truck is awesome.”
“Yeah,” he said, satisfaction turning his voice into a throaty growl.
Oof , said my ovaries. Sexy man. “Can I put a foot up on the dashboard?”
“You can. Mal cannot. He has Frankenstein feet. Your little sneakers? Pop ’em up there.”
I settled back to enjoy the peace and solitude and mild sexual tension. We drove in companionable silence past exits to towns whose names I’d never heard before.
“It’s nice having you here,” he said quietly. “You don’t burp nearly as much as Ian or Mal.”
“Well. You haven’t seen me after an order of onion rings.”
He laughed. I got a glow inside from causing that masterwork of a profile to tip back in appreciation.
“Like I said, I like having you here. But should I be plotting a route to an airport for you?” He looked over momentarily to see my reaction.
“I don’t know,” I said thoughtfully. “What’s on the route?”
He messed with the GPS until it zoomed out far enough to show a glowing path from Atlanta to Chicago. “Mal put the stops in. It’s only about eleven hours to the next gig, but we’ve taken to breaking the drive into small sections over many days. Helps us stay fresh for the gigs. Like today, I’m going four hours to campgrounds outside Nashville.”
“You’re going to camp tonight? Like, outside?”
He laughed. “Is there another way?”
“It’s thirty-nine degrees out there. What about a hotel?”
“Yeah, we do that sometimes. But it can be tricky with Princess Flatulence in the back seat. The camping works well. We have a three-man tent, air mattresses, a heater, and all the perks, all of which run through the generator here on the BFT. Electric lights and everything. It’s the bomb.”
“The bomb-diggity,” I said, reverting back to high school. I was nervous. This was a pivotal moment, and I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do.
I could fly back to my empty home. I could make my videos and posts. I could try to figure out the actual name of the Jane of the hour.
Or I could try something new.
Be someone new.
“I’ve never been camping,” I said. I should have been bold and strong about it, but my voice came out weak and nervous. I hated to be weak and nervous.
“Never? Oh, it’s awesome. That settles it. You’ll stay with Char and me tonight, and we’ll drop you in Indianapolis tomorrow. Sound good?”
I needed to play it cool—to remember that I was Opinionated O’Connor. “Sounds good.” Maybe he didn’t hear the smile in my voice.
My decision made, I expected to relax. Instead, I found I was tenser than before. We passed from Georgia into Tennessee. The sun was nothing but a faint pinkness over my shoulder when he spoke again. “Man, I can hear you thinking from all the way over here. What has got you into a twist?”
I laughed nervously. “It’s just that?—”
“Gin up your courage. Spit it out. ”
I took a breath. “I haven’t decided what I want to happen when we end up in your three-man tent, just the two of us.”
“Well, three. Don’t forget Her Majesty.”
“Oh, I see. She’s my chaperone?”
“If you want a chaperone, then she’s yours. Your guard dog. Nothing happens that you don’t want to have happen. Scout’s honor.” He made the little three-fingered gesture. It made me smile.
“Were you a Scout?”
“Ian and me both. We are physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. That last part has some mean-spirited connotations, but we didn’t know it at the time. My point is, I am Sir Galahad if that’s what you need.”
“Galahad was a virgin. A famous virgin.”
He shrugged. “It’s more a theoretical posting for me. My point is, I won’t pressure you. Does that help?”
“It does a little. Thanks.”
We were passing through growing traffic around Chattanooga, and he had to look over at me several times to check my expression. Apparently not seeing what he wanted, he quizzed me. “What now, then?”
I squirmed, nervous about my response. But what better time to be brave than in the darkness of a fast-moving truck, facing the same direction, not needing to be eye to eye? I summoned my courage again.
“I guess I’d like to know what you want to happen.”
Do you like me? Do you want me? You’re so beautiful. Please don’t hurt me. I’m risking so much.
He had the courtesy to think about it for a moment. He pulled out to pass a lumbering eighteen-wheeler and then spoke. “What I want—what I really want—is to skip ahead in our dating-school lessons.”
“Our dating-school lessons?” I was confused and still holding down the fizz of adolescent panic .
“I’d like to get to the part where you teach me to kiss without teeth. That’s what I’d like.”
Zing. My heartbeat picked up. My fingers tightened in the double fist I was making. “That wasn’t supposed to be a practical,” I stalled. “More of a classroom discussion. After all, it’s supposed to be on video.”
“Yeah, but it would really be a kindness if you’d do some tutoring before we got to the exam, you know?”
He was teasing me, but he wasn’t lying. He wanted to kiss me. But he wouldn’t push.
Did I trust him?
I checked my instincts. Did I?
I was sitting in his truck all alone and defenseless in the middle of Tennessee. Yeah, I trusted him.
And I could tease too. “What makes you think I know so much about kissing?”
He laughed. “I’m not touching that question! I have no idea about your level of skill, but I know for a fact that you know what you like. And if you’d teach me, then I’d know too. Because I know I can do better than I did before.”
“I believe you.”
He glanced over. “So . . . we’re on for private tutoring?”
“I didn’t say that.” I was thinking it, but I didn’t say it.
He laughed, and I found I was enjoying our back-and-forth. Our “witty banter.” Archer was fun.
He glanced at me again, and his hand folded into a fist on his lap. Sign of tension. Interesting.
“Before Ian and Nicky became Ian and Nicky,” he said, “I made a play for her. That’s not so unusual. I pretty much made a play for everyone.”
“I’m guessing you caught a lot of them too,” I said dryly.
“A few, a few. That’s not the point. So, I made a move on Nicky. Kissed her. A couple of times. You could say I’m the one who pushed her into Ian’s waiting arms. ”
“Those must have been powerful kisses.”
He huffed in distracted amusement. “Tonight Ian told me?—”
“What?”
His head was tucked back on his shoulders. A turtle pulling into its shell looked more relaxed.
“He said Nicky agreed with you. She said I kissed with my teeth.”
I burst out laughing and regretted it when I saw how much it hurt him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Archer. Really.”
“It’s not funny! All those women. Did they all think I was a bad kisser? I mean, all of them?” He looked at me, and I saw the hurt he was trying to hide. “Did they laugh about me when we were done? Am I a joke?”
We’d somehow uncovered a raw nerve in the man’s astonishing self-confidence.
“Archer, I’m sure that’s not what happened. They probably bragged to all their friends that they’d been with the most handsome man anyone had ever seen.”
For once, he didn’t agree with me. “The handsome man who kissed with his teeth.” He shook his head and held his hand up when I started to offer him some useless platitudes. “I’m very well aware that this sounds like a scam. ‘Please, O’Connor,’ ” he turned on the drama as he mocked himself. “ ‘Please teach me how to kiss! You’re the only one who can!’ ”
I chuckled even as I was swamped with pity for a guy who was in no way equipped to handle this assault on his self-image.
“But I’m telling you, O’Connor, since your cameras aren’t rolling. I’ll take any help you can give me. Lectures from the other side of the computer screen to makeout sessions in the tent, I don’t care. I just want to get better at this. And I know I can do it. ”
He was blazing with determination, and my pity turned to admiration.
“Yes, you can.” I very nearly told him I would help, but shyness held me back.
“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s change the subject. Is O’Connor your first name?”
You want to step away from a sensitive topic? That’s fine, but we’re not going where you think we are. “O’Connor is a family name, but don’t bother asking. I’m not going to tell you my first name.”
“Can I guess? Is it Rumpelstiltskin?”
“Damn it. You got it in one. Do I have to spin straw into gold now?”
“I can’t remember. What is it really?”
“Even if you guessed it, I wouldn’t confirm it.”
“Oh, come on. That’s not fair. Is it something really embarrassing? Is your name Syphilis?”
“No, but that’s an excellent guess. People could call me Phyllis.”
“I’ll call you Phyllis.”
“I’m sure you’ll find that riotously funny.”
“Oh, burn. Let’s see, what about something deeply biblical? How about . . . Methuselah?”
“He was a guy.”
“Ah hah, you’re confirming it’s a girl’s name. There go Clarence and Throckmorton, my next two guesses.”
Archer kept me giggling and relaxed. We pulled into a truck stop outside of Nashville, and he brought me a breakfast sandwich and fed Charlotte a bowl of kibble. We all used the facilities, and he invited me to burp at will in the BFT. “Your burps probably smell like flowers,” he said nobly, which made me giggle and get the hiccups. “Next stop, farting. I can see it coming. ”
I laughed so hard, I inhaled a hiccup and broke the cycle. Nice cure.
He checked online and found a dog park nearby. We stopped so Charlotte could stretch her mile-long legs. I sat in the warm cab of the BFT while Archer and Charlotte met the early-morning dog-park crowd, and Charlotte loped around the fenced enclosure until she was panting and happy.
And then we were pulling into a campground. Three cars and a mobile home were waiting in line to exit, and the guy from the office hustled over to us.
“You must be Becker,” he said with a disturbing lack of a Southern accent and a rapid-fire pattern of speech. “Man, right on time. Okay, you’re in number seven. It’s up there. Good windbreak with all the trees, and you’ll pretty much have the place to yourselves. Drive all night, sleep all day, huh? You guys vampires or what?”
Archer laughed and threw a thumb in my direction. “She drinks the tears of the innocent. Does that count?”
“Shit, y’all. That’s awesome. Okay, here’s the key to the bathrooms. Men’s for you, women’s for her. I gotta check these people out, you get on and I’ll be here if you need me tears of the innocent that’s a scream.”
Archer rolled forward, still chuckling. The campsite was a level plot of land covered in mulch or something. He pulled into the parking space and looked at me. “Honey, we’re home.”
My laughter dried up. The moment of truth was fast approaching.