Chapter 8 Ash #2
“We should buy you your own. And some clothes, too.” He looks pointedly at my ensemble. The same jeans, the same shoes, but I have replaced my T-shirt and flannel with a grungy green sweater instead. “Is that really what you’re wearing? You’re going to boil.”
“My shirt’s still damp,” I say, a little defensively. “It was too humid to dry properly. And all your stuff is massive on me.”
By contrast, he’s wearing a tank top cut low at the sides. It looks cool. It also exposes his gorgeous obliques, which are absolutely shredded. He must be some kind of gym rat when he’s home. Or maybe he surfs; he’s got that look about him.
“I’m saying we should stop somewhere and get you some.”
“It can wait til Miami.” I’m dismissive. “The toothbrush, too. We’ll get there tonight, won’t we?”
“Yeah, about that…I was thinking.” He shuts the atlas. “Are you in a big hurry to get there tonight? I mean, is your friend expecting you at a certain time or something?”
The mention of the “friend” startles me because I just keep on forgetting the stupid cover story I gave him back at the bar in New Haven. And on the heels of that, a pang of grief, as always, whenever I think of Ben: sharp and sudden, and then abating just as quickly.
Funny how it works. The time spent mourning someone is like a black hole you emerge from without any sense of what had happened. Meanwhile, life goes on as normal—until you remember again. And then it’s just a little agony, a paper cut you didn’t realize you had.
“Ash?”
“No,” I say. “Not really. Why?”
Again with the easy smile, offered up like it costs him nothing—and maybe it doesn’t. Maybe they mean nothing, either. It’s just his way. “If you’re not in a rush or anything, why don’t we do some sightseeing? Make a real road trip out of this thing.”
The suggestion takes me off guard. I scratch my elbow through a hole in my sweater as I weigh it.
I don’t know if I have to worry about being tracked down anymore, what with Mr. Bigshot having up and killed himself—and I try to keep that thought very casual in my head, not spiral over it—unless someone suspects foul play because of the missing money.
And if that’s true, do I really have a chance of outrunning a determined party with the resources to find me?
I really need to grab another newspaper. Keep up with that story.
Finding somewhere far enough away to hunker down for a while is the key. A cheap apartment, a steady min-wage job. Deposit the cash bit by bit in varying amounts over time into a bank account, along with a regular paycheck. I think I’ll be set then.
Continuing to wander with the money—now that’s dangerous, I think. I could be mugged by any old asshole looking for a quick buck, and wouldn’t they be pleased when they found the veritable goldmine in my bag? Rendering all of this effort a complete waste, just to wind up with absolutely fuck all.
“Why?” I hear myself ask.
Sam laughs. “I just told you, didn’t I?”
“I mean—with me. I’m basically a stranger to you, Sam. Wouldn’t it be more fun on your own? Or with your friends, or…something?”
He blinks his long-lashed eyes at me. I am just now realizing how long his lashes are, somehow. Ridiculously so. “Why not, Ash? It would be fun. I’m already having fun.”
“You are?” I ask incredulously. “We almost got murdered last night.”
“Nah. We had that shit handled.” His mouth pulls into another smile, this one crooked and boyish and utterly endearing. “Ash, c’mon. Are you really not enjoying yourself? Besides, we could be friends. You know, if you let us. I like you a lot.”
I fold my arms over my chest as a flush ignites my cheeks, and, well, what am I supposed to say to that? Maybe I’d been a little standoffish, yeah, but really it’s for his own good.
I should tell him no, absolutely. The smart thing to do is to go straight to Miami.
But it must be something especially pathetic in me, something stupid and sentimental and yearning that makes me say, “Okay.”
“Tight.” Sam springs off the bed. “Just like a day or so, nothing crazy. I wanted to check out Savannah—I’ve heard it’s beautiful there. Well, my mom said as much. Always wanted to visit, you know?”
I don’t say anything because I’m already berating myself for agreeing.
We cruise the McDonald’s drive-thru once more for a quick and shitty breakfast to eat on the road.
Neither of us want to spend any more time than necessary in the good old town of Millstone Gap, not in the least because maybe we’re both wanted men here.
We eat sausage biscuits on greasy paper in our laps, then ball it all up and toss it into the backseat.
Sam’s right about one thing: it’s fucking hot.
And maybe if we’re gonna be extending this trip a day or two, I should get more clothes because I don’t know how I’m going to survive this sticky, cloistering heat otherwise.
Providence could be hot, sure, but this is next level.
It’s like warm wet cotton stuffed in my lungs.
I adjust the vents so the air conditioning blasts me straight in the face, then spy an elastic hair tie on the floor of the car. I lean forward to pick it up. “This your girlfriend’s?” I ask, before amending with, “I mean, ex-girlfriend.”
“Hm?” Sam glances at me. “Dunno. Probably.”
I tie my hair back, half up and half down, and that’s a little better. A compromise of sorts. I need some of it down to cover the back of my neck and all the mess back there. Yeah, Sam’s already seen some of it—which is unfortunate—but I don’t want to invite any more speculation or discussion.
Sam eyes me. “Cute,” he remarks.
“Cute?” I repeat.
“Yeah. Cute.”
“Sam,” I say, “that’s pretty fuckin’ gay.”
“Is it?” He’s totally at ease, fingers drumming the steering wheel to the beat of “Bound for the Floor” as he merges back onto the interstate. A tractor trailer whips by us at a million miles an hour, but he’s unfazed. “Can a man not compliment the appearance of another man?”
“Not unless he wants to fuck,” I say dryly. “In my experience.”
“Alright.” He doesn’t seem to care.
I don’t know what this is supposed to mean. I don’t know what he’s doing. Is he trying to tell me he wants to fuck? Is this a roundabout way of telling me he wants to fuck? Or is he just fucking with me?
Fucking with me, surely. Has to be. I sigh, head tipping back against the headrest and closing my eyes.
It’d be nice if he were straightforward with it either way, but it’s not like I can ask.
Damn him for putting me in this dumb fucking situation and damn me for even telling him I was gay in the first place. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I’m not sure what I would even do if he did come onto me like that. If he actually wanted to fuck. Sometimes I feel like I’m catching a vibe from him—the thing with the cigarette last night, or even just the way he was petting my hair—but he’s so touchy and personable anyway.
But would I fuck him, if he wanted to? When was the last time I actually had a choice in who I wanted to have sex with?
“So, hey.” Sam’s voice breaks through my thoughts. “There’s this little tourist trap off the interstate I wanna stop at for lunch.”
“Okay.”
“And I wanna explore a little bit, too. I used to see signs for the place as a kid when my family went on road trips and stuff. ‘Course, they’d never stop…”
“Okay,” I say again, eyelids remaining stubbornly sealed. I’m not going to look at him or his dumb, handsome face. “That’s fine. Whatever you wanna do.”
“In the meantime—” He turns down the radio, to my dismay. “Why don’t we play a game?”
“Like what kind of game?” I ask, all suspicion as I sit back up. “Punch buggy?”
“What? No. We aren’t five.” He laughs. “You ask me a question, then I ask you a question, and we go back and forth until we get bored.”
Oh, god. “That doesn’t seem like much of a game,” I object.
“C’mon, Ash. It’ll be interesting. Don’t you wanna know anything about me? Or am I that boring?” He alleviates the sting of this accusation with another adorable smile aimed my way.
And, well, sure. Of course I want to know more about him.
It’s more the exchange of information—that I have to tell him things about me.
Easily he could ask things like, why did you leave Providence?
Who is your friend in Miami? How exactly did you get that gunshot wound?
What did you do? Things I absolutely don’t want to answer and would have to scramble to lie about, and then remember those lies, be consistent about them until we finally part ways, whenever the hell that’s going to be.
Sam’s waiting, though, expectant as a puppy; I catch sight of the brightness in his gaze as he sneaks glances between me and the road before us. There again is the desire not to disappoint him, twinned with my own genuine curiosity about him.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll play. Can I go first?”
“Sure, if you want.”
“Okay...” I prop my feet up on the dash, and he doesn’t rebuke me. “Were you in love with your ex-girlfriend?”
The question doesn’t upset him like I expect it to, nor does it make him cry foul and throw the game out the window like I sort of hope it does.
He screws up his face thoughtfully as he swiftly navigates away from a decrepit-looking RV rumbling along in the right-most lane, its dull blinkers flashing. “Hmm. I dunno.”
“Is that your answer?”
Sam hums. “It’s weird. I thought I did, because I was supposed to.
She’s the longest and most serious relationship I’ve ever had, right?
But at the end of the day, I think it was just physical stuff.
She thought I was hot and vice versa. And when she dumped me—I mean, I was sad, but for a different reason.
She…represented something. Something else that I was losing. ”
“Which was…”
He pauses. “I dunno. I’m talking out of my ass.”
“So that’s a no. You didn’t love her.”
“Maybe? I guess it is.”
“So was it a waste of time?”
“Not really? I had fun. Like, I enjoyed our relationship. I guess I probably wasted her time, though.” He eyes me again. “That was two questions. It’s my turn.”
Oh, no. “Fire away.”
“Did you lose your virginity to a guy or a girl?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Coming out swinging.” Though I guess I asked him a loaded question first. “It was with a girl.”
“Huh. Even though you always knew you were gay?”
“I didn’t want to be gay, though,” I point out. “Knowing and accepting are different things. I thought if I could bullshit it with a girl, it would make my life easier.”
“Makes sense. Might as well give it a shot. But last night, you said you got the job done when it came to girls.”
I shrug one shoulder. “But it sucked. I wasn’t enjoying it. It was just, like, going out of my head somewhere. And it’s not like they can’t tell when you’re not into it, so after a while I gave up. Stopped tormenting the female population.”
The corner of his mouth quirks. “Couldn’t have been that bad.”
“Look, that stuff…hiding, pretending you’re something else.” I look at him sideways. “It just eats you alive after a while. It stops being worth it. And, I guess…life’s too short.”
I catch sight of him blinking rapidly before he turns back to the road. He bites his lip. “Yeah,” he says after a moment. “I guess it would.”
“My turn.” And I get an idea, then. A bad one. “Are you attracted to men?”
Sam nearly rams the back of the rusty minivan he’s tailing too closely, slamming the brakes just in time and throwing his hand out to keep me from colliding with the dashboard. Unnecessary, because I’m actually wearing my seatbelt today, but it’s the thought that counts. “What?” he sputters.
“Are you attracted to men?”
“That’s your fucking question?”
“Yeah.”
He stares straight ahead. He’s blushing, I think, his lower lip clamped between his teeth. “Pass.”
“Pass? Really? You could just say yes or no.”
“I don’t know.” He’s flustered. “Yes. I mean, no.”
“Which one, Sam?”
“My turn,” he says quickly. “Bottom or top?”
I stare at him, mouth agape. “Are you fucking serious? You’re passing on my question to ask me if I’m a top or bottom?”
“You’re asking me if I’m gay!”
“Being attracted to men doesn’t necessarily make you gay.”
“I’m going to steer into the guardrail,” he mutters between gritted teeth, though not like he means it. “I’m gonna kill us both.”
“Okay, what if I pass?”
“You can’t pass,” he complains. “We can’t both sit here passing on every single question.”
“But you can?”
“It’s my game!”
“It’s a bullshit game.”
“You’re a bullshit game.”
I clap my hands together. “Good one, Sam. You sure told me.”
He goes quiet. Long enough that I think I’ve gotten us out of this absolutely inane excuse for a “game,” long enough that I reach for the volume knob on the radio to turn it back up.
“I’m not,” he says finally. “I’m not—like that. Attracted to men.”
Crestfallen is the only word that could be used to describe my immediate feeling. It’s like someone just dumped a load of cinderblocks on top of me. My whole body just sags.
It’s less about believing whether he’s even being honest or not and more about what it means for him to say that to me. If he’s telling me he’s not into men then it means he’s not into me, at least, very specifically. He hasn’t thought about hooking up the way I’ve been.
Well, it was dumb of me anyway, asking. Play stupid games and all that jazz. What did I expect him to really do? Why am I trying to out him, anyway? I’ve turned into a complete fool around him, and now I feel awful and guilty on top of rejected.
I drop my hand in my lap. “Okay,” I say. “Should I answer your question now?”
“Forget it,” he says. He’s staring straight ahead. “You’re right. The game is a stupid idea.”
I turn in my seat, putting my back to him as I stare out the passenger side window. A large, gaudy billboard flashes past on the side of the interstate, bright yellow with a sausage protruding forth: You Never Sausage A Place! South of the Border 20 MI.