Chapter 6
Chapter Six
A re we there yet?
Cantor Joel’s sense of humor was not only great but perverse. Why else would the man who had taught Avi to sing with his whole heart and soul send this…this guarded, sharp-edged enigma to help him pass the time?
This Leah was not the youngest Gellman girl he remembered. Gone was the riot of unpredictable curls. She smelled like something sweet from the recesses of his childhood, a scent that tugged at the edges of his memory – cinnamon, maybe? With something tangy and rich. And yet, any illusion of sweetness vanished the second she opened her mouth.
The second she looked at him.
This Leah had been nothing but salty since the moment they locked eyes at the rest stop.
What was her damage, anyway? It wasn’t the way women usually reacted to him.
Hell, there were probably hundreds of women in the state of Ohio who would kill for ten minutes alone in a car with the big bad Wolf, as Vic liked to call him – let alone two and a half hours. Women who’d hang on his every word, bat their eyelashes, and ask him if they could suck his dick – and if he would sing an a cappella version of “True Love For Now” while they were doing it.
Your dick has nothing to do with this.
True, but he was trapped with this woman who rolled her eyes every time he tried to make a joke, who had practically snapped his fingers off when he reached to adjust the car’s heat settings, and who looked at him like he was some kind of arrogant, misplaced rock star nuisance rather than… well, him .
And had Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” really just come up on her random shuffle?
Another mile marker ticked by before she spoke.
“So what’s in Erie for you, anyway?”
“Nothing except a bus station. I have to get to Buffalo for a show tonight.”
“Was band practice at the rest stop?” She didn’t hold back a snicker. “I’d think you’d have reached…I don’t know. Private jet status by now? Helicopter?”
He sent her a dark look from the passenger seat. “Is that really how you think it works for me?”
“I haven’t thought of you at all,” she shot back, her voice cool but her eyes betraying a flicker of something else. “And what works for you.”
Despite her sharp words and chilly demeanor – and the diss track – there was still that familiarity. That was the thing that got under his skin. A little echo of the past, something warm and real, wrapped up in the sweet scent that filled the car. It was infuriating—and oddly fascinating.
First, it was the spicy hint of cinnamon drifting off her hair, like it had been baked right into her. And now, as she pivoted her body to check the side mirror and look over her shoulder before moving into the fast lane?
“Vanilla,” he declared. He was sure of it. “Like real vanilla. The kind you get from extract, not that fake stuff.”
“You’re imagining things.”
Was he imagining her voice had gone up an octave?
“Maybe my air freshener is just… weirdly fancy.” She shrugged, casting a glance up.
Hanging from the rearview mirror was a pair of fuzzy dice, shrunken to dollhouse size. Paired with a dangling gold Hebrew chai symbol and a two-sided tile the size of a domino. It spun idly to show off both a red side and a green side, with what looked like a Chinese character on each. He ran a finger over the markings.
“We call them dragons in Mahjong,” Leah explained, “Western players, that is.”
He recalled his Aunt Miri and her friends doing just that.
“My best friend is Chinese, she said the two combined symbolize luck and prosperity. Actually, Jaz says it’s a bit more confusing than that, and dragons are also a source of unpredictability. But it’s a bestseller from our Luck it’s the only warm thing I have that will fit you.” Without hesitating, Avi jumped out and slipped into Mrs. Horowitz-of-blessed-memory’s fur coat.
“Whose is this? She was a big girl.”
The sight of him in the black fluffy Persian lambswool coat set giggles off. “You look like a reject from a Macklemore video.”
He crossed his furry arms. “That’s stone cold, girl.”
Back in the car, his sightline snagged somewhere north of her neck, but not before dragging up the length of her body. “Yeah, well…Amy Winehouse’s estate called – they want their wig back.”
Oh, he did not just throw shade at her patron saint of hair and one of her favorite singers, Our Lady of the Backcomb!
Maybe she had coiled a large section of her heavy, straightened hair to keep it off her face while driving. Hardly a beehive. And maybe she had winged her eyeliner just a little extra today. Until she could figure out if his comment was a compliment, backhanded or not, she kept her retorts to herself.
“Can I at least borrow your phone to call mine?” he asked once they were back on the road. “Maybe it has a prayer of being answered.”
She thumbed her passcode in and passed it over without a word. From the corner of her eye, she watched him cross a furry arm as he listened, swearing silently to himself at the audible beep.
“Hi future Avi, this is present Avi, the dumb fuck who got oil-spotted. Call me back – or not.”
“Do I even want to know what that all means?” Leah asked, noting that Erie had started to appear on the mileage marker signs. Only 180 more miles of Avi Wolfson’s drama.
He heaved a gusty sigh. “It means when the tour bus pulls away without you, and all you’re left staring at is an oil spot on the pavement. Except in my case, the pavement was snow-covered. And slushy.”
“Wow. Is that a regular occurrence, or like a rock star rite of passage?”
“It was a stupid mistake I won’t ever make again,” he muttered, and briefly launched into a story about his friend Tobin and some Pepto. Sounded way too much like not her circus and not her monkeys to care.
“Can I text one person?”
“This isn’t jail. You’re allowed more than one call.”
“Thanks.” The car fell silent as he thumbed manically at her old model iPhone in its sparkly green case. “I’ll erase all trace after.”
It felt strange to have another person texting from her phone, hearing the swoop of back-and-forth conversations. Then again, she couldn’t imagine what it felt like for Avi to be with no phone, period. Even for a few hours. Especially on the road with –
“What’s Dragon’s Deepest Desire ?”
“Get out of my reading app! It’s an audiobook.” Had this man no boundaries? He certainly had no right to judge the Romantasy reading material that she had been hoping to enjoy in peace.
Suddenly, punchy rock guitar and drums filled the speakers of her car stereo, and Avi was tapping his hands (and her phone) on his thighs to the beat.
“Come on, Letty. Shotgun rider always plays DJ.”
She swiped her phone from his hand and jabbed the volume button on the car stereo. “My car, my rules!”
“Hey, watch the road!” He grabbed the Jesus strap above the door theatrically. “Are you always this controlling?”
“Are you always this…this oblivious ? And selfish?” She gripped the wheel tighter. “God, some things just never change.”
Been there, done that, got stuck in your traffic jam.
“What the hell is that even supposed to mean?”
“It means you and your shitty playlist ruined my bat mitzvah celebration and you still have no clue!”