CHAPTER ELEVEN
NOTES FROM THE DARK:
The soul knows what the eyes cannot see.
Reality is deeper than appearances.
Tristan beat his hands against the steering wheel, singing every lyric at the top of his lungs. Every time the chorus came around, he pretended there was a microphone in front of my mouth. I sang, but not as confidently as he did.
“What was that?” he criticized. “Louder, Daze!”
So I sang louder, until my lungs sort of hurt, and he loved it because he grinned at me in that heart-stopping way of his.
I couldn’t sing half as well as he could. The man had a set of lungs on him that left me breathless.
“Why don’t you sing professionally?” I asked once the song ended.
“I don’t want to be a singer,” he answered. “Fuck that.”
“What’s wrong with being a singer?”
“The second you make something you’re passionate about your job, it turns on you.”
I considered that for a moment. “But if it’s your passion, why would it turn on you?”
“Because it becomes work. Something you need to do to survive. Then you start worrying and obsessing and living to please other people, and you forget why you ever loved it in the first place.”
I looked at him curiously. “Spoken like you were a professional singer.”
“Nah. Not me.”
He smiled at me, and there was something about Tristan’s smile I’d hardly seen before in a grown man. It was a carefree sort of smile. The sort of boyish smile that reached his eyes and made me feel special, especially when he looked at me as he did it. Like I was the centre of his world.
I looked away from that smile, determined not to get swept up by it. “I understand what you mean.”
“You can relate?”
I paused, close to saying yes, but that would have been a lie, and I didn’t want to lie to Tristan. At the same time, I didn’t want to tell him the truth, either.
“So when you busk, that doesn’t destroy it for you?”
His smile waned a little, catching on to the fact that I was dodging his question. “Busking is fun. I’ve got enough saved that I don’t depend on it.”
“You don’t?”
“I’ve got the clothes on my back, the van’s in good shape, and all I really pay for is fuel and food. This is enough for me right now.”
I mulled that over as he turned the music back up.
The road stretched before us, bright and endless, while the mountains loomed on either side.
I watched the scenery pass for a while, trying to imagine a life in which nothing held me down.
No mortgage. No schedule. No rooms that belonged to someone else.
No one waiting at the end of the day to question where I had been or what I had done wrong.
It sounded like freedom.
It also sounded lonely.
About an hour later, Tristan pulled into a roadside stop with a gas station and a small diner attached. The parking lot was crowded with motorcycles, pickup trucks, and dusty cars carrying families farther into the interior.
“I need fuel,” he said. “And coffee.”
“You always need coffee.”
He glanced at me, one corner of his mouth lifting. “Someone’s been keeping me up.”
My cheeks burned. “You didn’t seem to mind.”
His eyes dropped briefly to my mouth. “I certainly don’t mind.”
He pulled beside one of the pumps and shut off the engine, but the heat in his stare lingered.
“Go stretch your legs, Daze,” he said, voice low. “Before I forget why we stopped.”
“I’m comfortable.”
“You’ll say that until you stand up and your knees stop working.”
I gave him a look, but when I climbed out, a sharp stiffness ran through both legs.
His mouth twitched.
“Don’t say it.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
I hid my smile and rolled my eyes, then wandered toward the diner while Tristan circled around to the pump. A row of outdoor tables sat beneath faded red umbrellas along the front of the building, facing the small forecourt and fuel pumps. I chose one near the end.
Two women occupied the next table over.
From where I sat, I had a clear view of Tristan beside the van.
It was difficult not to watch.
His shirt pulled across his shoulders whenever he moved, and the sun caught in his messy blond hair. Despite his grief, he looked completely at ease. He kept his wounds hidden, and I envied him for that.
I wasn’t the only one watching.
One of the women noticed him almost immediately. She nudged her friend, and both of them turned in his direction.
Something tightened inside me.
I looked away, annoyed with myself for even noticing.
He wasn’t mine.
The thought came quickly, almost defensively. He had brought me onto the road because he wanted company. Because we had stumbled into one another at the right—or wrong—time. Whatever existed between us had no name, and I had no right to expect one.
Still, I looked back.
Tristan was at the pump, one hand resting against the side of the van while he filled the tank. One of the women stood and wandered in his direction, taking a path that brought her unnecessarily close to him.
She said something.
He looked over and smiled.
My stomach dropped.
It wasn’t an intimate smile. Tristan smiled easily. I had seen him do it with waitresses, strangers, everyone who stopped to say hello. But watching that smile directed at someone else felt different.
The woman lingered beside him. Her hand moved through her hair. She laughed at something he said and leaned slightly closer.
I stared down at the tabletop, pretending it meant nothing while irritation crawled beneath my skin.
The feeling was ugly.
Embarrassing.
I had known him for days. I had climbed into his bed, followed him onto the road, and allowed myself to feel things I shouldn’t. None of that made him mine.
I didn’t even know whether I wanted him to be. This wouldn’t work. I couldn’t form attachments. It was too risky.
That was what I told myself.
Tristan finished fueling and disappeared inside the station. The woman returned to her friend, and together they whispered. A few minutes later, he emerged carrying two coffees and a paper bag. He crossed the forecourt toward the outdoor tables, heading directly for me.
The women followed him with their eyes.
Tristan didn’t seem to notice.
Or maybe he was simply used to it.
He reached my table and placed one of the coffees in front of me.
“I said I was fine.”
“You also said you liked it black.”
I picked it up. “You don’t listen very well.”
“I listen. I just don’t always obey.”
The woman nearest us was still watching him. Tristan pulled out the chair beside mine and sat close enough that his knee pressed lightly against my leg.
I stared into my coffee and tried to bury the irritation before it showed on my face.
He handed me the paper bag. Inside was a warm cinnamon bun wrapped in wax paper.
I looked at him. “What’s this?”
“Food.”
“I know that.”
“You were looking at them through the diner window.”
I stared down at the bun, oddly touched that he had noticed. “You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.”
His eyes moved over my face, searching. “You all right?”
“Fine.”
“That one sounded less believable than the first.”
“I’m tired.”
“You slept twelve hours.”
“You don’t know that. Time doesn’t exist out here. Besides, I thought we didn’t sleep.”
His mouth twitched, but he kept watching me. I knew he was waiting for something more, though I had no idea how to explain the humiliation of feeling jealous over a man I had no claim to.
So, I tore off a piece of the cinnamon bun and put it in my mouth.
Tristan’s gaze dropped to my lips. He watched me take a few bites and said, “I’m starting to resent that thing.”
I smiled as I chewed. “Why? It’s very satisfying.”
“Is it?”
“Warm. Sweet.” I tore off another piece, taking my time with it now. “And I could keep my mouth busy with it for a while.”
His tongue dragged slowly across his bottom lip. “Fuck, Daze.”
“What?”
“You know exactly what.”
I licked a trace of cinnamon from my thumb. “Maybe.”
His stare sharpened, all heat and hunger now. “You’re fucking dirty.”
Whatever interest those women had shown him no longer mattered. They might as well have disappeared. Tristan’s attention had narrowed completely to my mouth, and the jealousy tightening my chest finally began to loosen.
Eventually, Tristan stood, collected our coffees, and nodded toward the van. I followed him back across the parking lot, aware of the women still watching.
He opened the passenger door for me. His hand settled briefly at my waist as I climbed inside, steadying me even though I didn’t need it.
That small touch should not have meant anything.
It did anyway.
For a while after we returned to the road, music filled the silence between us. Tristan tapped his fingers against the wheel, occasionally glancing my way, while I ate and watched the trees blur past the window.
The sweetness helped.
The confusion didn’t.
I kept thinking about the woman at the gas station.
About how natural it had looked for her to approach him.
How easily another woman could fit into this life.
Someone younger. Freer. Someone who had packed a suitcase and left home by choice instead of running with nothing but the dress on her back.
I wasn’t used to this. I had skipped all those messy years when younger women learned how to recognize jealousy, survive it, and eventually stop letting it fester in them. By thirty-two, I should have known what to do with the feeling.
Instead, it sat inside me raw and unfamiliar.
The question came out before I could stop it.
“What if you meet someone you want to marry one day?”
Tristan glanced at me, the question coming at him with surprise. “What?”
I tried to sound casual. “Does she need to agree to this lifestyle?”
He chuckled. “That’s not going to happen anytime soon.”
“But are you prepared for it to happen at all?”
He tapped his fingers to the beat of the next song, taking a few moments to answer. “No. I’d never get anything done if I had to be prepared for every little thing that might happen. If that sort of thing scared me, I never would have done this.”
“So, you’re going to drive forever?” I asked, unable to keep the dryness from my tone.
I didn’t understand him. I envied his carefree life, but at the same time, how could he live so happily without a clear direction? I needed to understand because I was currently directionless, and I didn’t know how to cope with that.
He smiled at me, seeing the panic in my eyes. “I don’t have to think that far ahead, Daze. I’m looking after myself right now. That’s the perk of being alone.”
The perk of being alone.
His words reminded me that at some point, I would need to move along. He was living this way for himself, and eventually I would wear out my welcome.
Whatever adoration he felt for me would dwindle.
Like all things, this would end.
But his way of life didn’t have to.
“Well, I understand the allure,” I settled on saying.
Then I looked out the window at the open road.
With no destination in mind, I felt panicked and free at the same time. The road kept opening in front of me, offering no promises and asking for none in return.
For once, I didn’t know where I was going.
And I kept moving anyway.