Chapter 5 Sam
SAM
It is, possibly, the most boring interstate, though I don’t have many to compare it to.
And it spans, almost unbroken, the entirety of the east coast. There’s really no other way to go, no routes more scenic, unless I drive well out of the way.
It makes the drive relatively easy, with very little navigation required on my part, but boy it is fuckin’ dull.
And the worst part is that I am trapped in my suddenly too-small car with a guy I am strongly attracted to.
Okay, that’s a bit hyperbolic of me. It’s mildly uncomfortable at best. And I guess it’s confronting because I am very aware of him.
As a person. As a fellow male. As someone I literally dreamt about fucking last night and I don’t even know if I remember how that all works, fucking a guy, but it’s not the way it is with a girl.
You can’t just…do it. Like that. There’s some prep involved, I know.
Holy shit. I actually don’t need to be thinking about the mechanics of fucking the guy in the passenger seat right now.
I’m not gay. Am I? What constitutes as gay? Is passing attraction to the occasional man gay? Is circle jerking with a buddy gay? What about all the girls I’ve been perfectly happy with?
What about Gabriel?
Don’t think about Gabriel. Thinking about Gabriel is sad and I don’t want to be sad.
I’ve got enough to be sad about, like my ex-girlfriend.
Who I’m more pissed off than sad about, I think.
I don’t even know if I actually loved her, or if I just loved the idea of being with someone smart and stable.
But it’d been a nice couple of years. Okay enough. A distraction.
I decide not to think about that, either.
For the first hour of the drive, Ash is not a particularly sprightly driving companion.
In fact, he’s been weird since the gas station—although he’s a bit of a weirdo in general, so it’s hard to really judge.
His silence is pensive and he keeps shoving his fingers into his eyes and sighing in a way that I know he hopes I don’t hear, but I do, and it’s all but begging me to ask what the hell is wrong.
Probably I should just leave him to it, though.
Plausible deniability and all that. There’s no real reason for me to get to know him, either, when he’s gonna be gone by tomorrow—that’s the plan, get into Miami by tomorrow night, because I am craving home and family like nothing else—and I’ll never have to see him or worry about him again.
Whatever problems he’s heaped onto himself will certainly not be mine.
But I’m bored.
And I’m interested in Ash. I mean, it’s sort of hard not to be.
Here’s this strangely attractive vagrant boy with lots of cash who just paid for my hotel and filled my tank and paid for breakfast, and oh, he’s been shot with a fucking gun.
There’s the seizures too, allegedly, though I’ve yet to see them, and I bet that’s gonna be a whole dog and pony show, if and when they do manifest. The events of the last twenty-four hours have made me feel like a side character in a TV show.
Or maybe it’s more that I just want to take my mind of Adriana, whose final send off still kinda stings and I’m still pissed off about the whole thing.
I wouldn’t even be in this situation if it wasn’t for her.
I’d be at home. Not a thousand miles from home—wait, I said I wasn’t going to think about her.
I steal a glance at Ash and he’s huddled against the car door like he can meld with it or wants to phase through it, maybe. I try to smile at him, but he’s not even looking. “So…” I say, and he turns his face away.
Oooookay then.
I turn up the radio. No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” is playing and I can’t help but sing along under my breath, drumming my fingers to the beat along the steering wheel. If it pisses off Ash, he can blow me or find another goddamn ride. Figuratively, of course.
But the singing seems to draw him out of whatever rigid shell he has retreated into.
From the corner of my eye I watch as he turns towards me, tucking his long hair behind his ears as he glances from the radio to me.
His freshly laundered flannel is sliding off his shoulder and I marvel at, well, how sort of effeminate he is, but at the same time not at all.
He reminds me of that guy from The Basketball Diaries, or the other one from Running on Empty. Leonardo DiCaprio and River Phoenix? The latter is dead, I think. I probably should not make that comparison out loud.
“You have a good voice,” Ash says to me.
“Do I?” I smile. “My ex always gave me shit for singing.”
“Your ex is a weirdo, then.”
I reach over and turn the volume down a little. “She got so annoyed. Said if she wanted to hear me sing instead of the actual singer, she’d ask.”
“Wow,” he says. “What a bitch.”
“Hey, that was just one thing we disagreed on. She wasn’t all that bad or anything.
” Badmouthing Adriana just feels shitty, even if it doesn’t really matter anymore.
It’s not her fault we weren’t that compatible.
Or that she sensed as well as me that we weren’t ever gonna go anywhere.
“She wasn’t a music person in general,” I add. “So.”
“Oh, we’d never get along.”
“You big into music?”
“Uh, yeah,” Ash says, quite emphatically. And then he turns the volume way up as the first notes of 311’s “Down” begin to play, a smile tugging his mouth crooked. “Especially this song.”
I hum along, my fingers drumming the steering wheel. “A 311 fan, I take it.”
“Do dogs pee on brick walls? Love all the songs off this album, but this one and ‘Don’t Stay Home’ are my favorites.”
“And ‘All Mixed Up,’” I concur. “I’ve got their album at home.
Heavy rotation, I’m telling you. But I left it in my Discman, so we’re stuck with the crumbs the radio feeds us.
” I half-hum, half-sing the next few bars, a little self-conscious now that I know just how much he loves it, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
He doesn’t sing, but he bops his head along, his hair rippling with every movement, fingertips tapping the door.
His bracelet jingles along like an accompaniment.
As the song begins to fade out and the radio DJ starts to yammer over the final notes, Ash turns to me, brushing a few strands of his dark gold hair out of his eyes.
I try not to notice this too much, keep my focus instead on the boring highway before me.
“So,” he says. “That girl in the lobby…was she—”
“My ex-girlfriend, Adriana,” I confirm. “Yeah. That was her.”
From the corner of my eye I see him raise one eyebrow. “Is there a reason you’re visiting your ex-girlfriend a million miles away?”
“Uh, yeah. Of course there is.” And I know I sound defensive but I can’t help it. He’s prodding a rather fresh wound in my ego. “We weren’t broken up before I got here.”
“Wow.” He’s trying to sound neutral, I can tell. “Guess she didn’t miss you at all, huh?”
I want to say I didn’t miss her either but that’ll make me sound like a callous asshole, so I don’t.
“Like okay, listen.” I huff out a sigh. “It’s the principle of the thing.
Your girlfriend moves away to go to a super fancy Ivy League school, you go visit her.
Right? What kind of scrub just waits around for their girlfriend to come home to them? ”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a long distance girlfriend.”
“It was supposed to be a spontaneous romantic surprise. It backfired spectacularly.” Ash is looking at me like I’m an idiot. Which I guess is justified, but it makes me bristle a little, anyway. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s a done deal.”
“Alright,” he says mildly. “I was just wondering.”
“Fucking—” Now I’m cranky all over again.
And there’s a little old lady in front of me going five under in the fast lane, and I can’t pass her because there’s a semi to my right not doing much more.
“It’s just annoying. Like a waste of my time.
And gas. And money. And miles on the odometer.
And getting my dad to give me this time off—you know what that was like?
Pulling friggin’ teeth. I mean, the guy’s never taken a sick day in his life, or vacations, unless my mom practically held him at gun point.
So it’s just, I dunno.” I know I sound like a whiny little bitch.
Just making excuses to mask the true source of my disquiet.
“Have you ever been broken up with before, Sam?”
“I’ve never been serious with anyone before her. You know, I’ve been with a bunch of girls, but it was just fun stuff. Not like, taking them home to meet the parents.” Leaving out the part where I didn’t want to be serious with her in the first place but felt like I had to.
“Okay…so that’s a no.” I think he’s trying not to laugh. Or smile. He’s pursing his lips like his life depends on it, but the corner of his eyes are crinkled.
“Alright, jackass.” I cut a sideways glare at him. “How many girlfriends have you had?”
He gets a funny and startled look on his face then, jerking his head back a little. His hair sort of slides across his face as he sits back. “I don’t know,” he says evasively.
“Oh.” I laugh. “Is that a big fat zero, then?”
I catch the motion of a shrug from my periphery. “We’re not talking about me.”
“Hah. Okay, man. Whatever you say.”
We lapse into a temporary silence except for the radio—Soundgarden’s on, and that’s a good enough reason to be quiet—and I find my opportunity at last to escape the limbo behind the old woman and her derelict LeBaron.
I think, maybe, I hurt Ash’s feelings, and for a moment I wonder if he’s a virgin.
It seems unlikely, but who knows. He is kind of weird.