Chapter 10
ASH
I should enjoy the ensuing silence in the car.
The lack of questions or pointed interest or meaningless conversation.
Thinking it would give me the chance to relax, instead of having to put on whatever tireless front I’d been putting on for Sam for the last two days, the one where I seem like a relatively normal person with relatively normal problems.
It’s not a companionable or comfortable silence. It just feels bad.
I’m flipping through the events of the day like snapshots: Sam’s hand gripping mine as we scaled the stupid sombrero tower, making sure I didn’t fall; the way his arms went around me as he’d corrected my form at mini golf, adjusting my grip on the putter; his warm laughter against my neck as I swung wildly and knocked the ball any old which way but in a hole.
Rewind back even further to the morning, with him nestled against my back, rock-hard dick against my ass and acting like it’s nothing.
I’m not like that. Attracted to men.
I’m frustrated because I don’t know what any of it means, what he wants from me, why he’s been this way if he doesn’t like me like that.
Why he would tell me he’s not attracted to me and then proceed to show, in every way but verbally, how he is attracted to me.
Mixed fucking signals. Am I the broken one?
Am I misinterpreting everything? Do I just not know how to have a regular relationship with someone with no stakes whatsoever? Is it supposed to be like this?
It isn’t with my friends back home. Never so fraught. Never have I had sex with either Mike or Jules. Never have I wanted to, either, and I know they feel the same way about me.
But now he’s upset with me. Because—why? What for? What the hell did I even do, embarrass him in a stupid gift shop? Was he planning on chatting up the fucking cashier, too? Did I ruin that for him like I did the bartender?
Just like that—I’m jealous. It’s so stupid, but I am, I’m jealous.
I’m jealous he’d rather fuck random girls than me.
And, okay, I’m also random, but slightly less random.
We have camaraderie, chemistry, something—at least I think we do.
Certainly more than I’ve had with any john who’s picked me up.
I feel like I’m not good enough. I know how dumb that is when he said he wasn’t into men, and I should just accept that at face value. He’s not into men. He’s not into me. He likes women. He prefers to sleep with them. He just broke up with his girlfriend.
Here we are, anyway.
The worst part is that I just want to fawn, want to please, want to make this right. I always do. I hate any kind of discord, even with strangers—I am not confrontational nor assertive; this is all new to me—and I especially hate it with Sam.
So I try to defuse it. De-escalate. “How much further to Savannah?” I ask him.
“Get there around dinnertime. Is that good enough for you?” He scoffs. “Or you planning ahead to ruin that, too?”
I’m stung all over again. “For fuck’s sake. What have I done now?”
He cranks down the radio. “You’ve been in a snit all fucking day, that’s what. And then you tried to run off—”
“What the fuck are you talking about? You told me to fuck off.”
“Ever since the stupid question game.” He refuses to look at me. Or even glance at me. “You’ve been, like, pouting.”
“The fuck I have!” My voice is strident. “We did everything you wanted to do, Sam. How can you say that I’ve been in a snit? We went on the tower and we played golf and we ate the shitty empanadas—”
“Yeah, it was so horrible for you,” he shoots back. “You were a fucking shit about it the whole time.”
“I wasn’t—” I was.
“And then you blew up at me in the gift shop—”
I throw myself back in the seat and clap my hands to my face. It stings. Because I am a little sunburnt. “Oh my god.”
“There you go again. We can’t talk about anything unless you say we can.
Every single fucking thing.” He smacks the steering wheel for emphasis.
“It’s all off-limits unless it’s not. I’m Ash, and I’m so fucking mysterious, I’m an enigma wrapped in bullshit.
Unless I get my way because I’m a fucking baby. ”
“What?” Now I’m yelling. “Sam, I have gone along with every asinine thing you’ve wanted to do! All I wanna do is get to Miami tonight, but you wanted to make it a fucking sightseeing thing! And what did I do? Say yes.”
“At gunpoint, apparently.”
“Bite me.”
“Okay then! We’ll just go to Miami. We’ll go right now. Fuck Savannah. Fuck everything. We’ll drive straight fucking through to—”
I don’t catch everything he says because everything goes dark.
When I come back maybe twenty seconds later I’m slumped against the window, drooling a little, and the road is a bleary smear in the window before me.
Sam’s got his hand clamped around my wrist and he’s saying words that don’t quite link together correctly; it’s all gibberish.
“I’m fine,” I cut in. My voice sounds tinny to my ears. “I’m good.”
“Are you?” Sam’s voice is laced with worry. “Should I pull over?”
“No.” I don’t pick my head up from the window. I close my eyes and that feels better, correct. All the motion can’t make me as sick when I don’t see it. “It’s fine.”
His grip slackens and then releases me entirely. His fingertips brush my bare arm, linger overlong, like he doesn’t want to stop touching me. It reminds me of the argument we were just having and it makes me sad all over again.
“Sam,” I say, “what do you want from me?”
“Nothing.” His voice is quiet when he answers, devoid of any emotion at all. “Forget it, Ash. Sorry for yelling at you. I’m being a dick.”
We lapse back into silence. It’s still not comfortable. It feels worse than before, somehow, resigned almost. Dropping everything just because he feels bad for me. I sigh.
“I’m gonna pull over somewhere,” Sam says.
“No.”
“But—”
“Don’t.”
“I have to fill up, anyway.”
Of course he fucking does. I don’t say anything.
“We can just stop for a bit. Give you a breather. I know the car makes it worse.”
What a nice guy he is.
I don’t open my eyes again until we’ve stopped, and by then the sky’s gone dark with thunderheads.
An afternoon summer storm passing through, about to open wide and dump on us.
The thunder cuts audibly through even the noise of the Mustang’s engine.
I dig through my bag to give Sam a hundred, and I wonder when he’s gonna start asking why I carry such big bills around, why I don’t ever have any smaller change.
Not today, though, not this time. “Do you wanna lay in the back?” he asks.
“There’s trash in the back.”
“I’ll clean it up.”
I shrug. He takes it upon himself anyway, tugging the driver’s seat forward so he can start collecting fast food wrappers and things and dumping it all into the nearby trashcan while the car fills up.
I climb into the backseat when it’s done before he can debase himself to help me. I don’t want his help.
Sam’s gone for a few minutes to pay, and upon his return the rain’s started. His T-shirt is speckled with raindrops and they cling to his curls. “Gonna move the car away from the pump,” he tells me. “Might as well wait out the storm. People drive like idiots in this shit.”
“Okay,” I mumble.
The rain drums the roof of the car in earnest as he pulls around to an empty parking spot. Through the rear windshield I can see the sky, lightning splitting the dark clouds before earsplitting thunder explodes not even a second afterwards. I try not to flinch.
“Right on top of us,” Sam remarks. “Fuck, it better not start hailing.”
“Your dad will fix it for you,” I mutter. “I’m sure.”
He doesn’t take the bait. He’s better than me. “Doesn’t help much now if it shatters my whole fucking windshield. Here—” He turns, offering me my flannel. “Got it out of the back for you. In case you wanted it.”
Just like that, I’m the asshole again. I take it from him and throw it over myself. “Thanks,” I say softly.
And I don’t know why, but he even reaches through the seats to spread it over me properly and smooth all the wrinkles. My throat closes against an emotion I can’t precisely name. I want to tell him to stop. I don’t want him to play with me like this anymore. I can’t take it, it just hurts now.
But at the same time it feels good, too. Feeling like someone cares like that. It feels so good.
“Hey,” he says. Still leaning between seats, still fingering the edges of the flannel, still looking at me with his gorgeous dark eyes beneath their long lashes. “Are you okay?”
Oh, no. I bite down hard on my lower lip before my mouth starts crumpling and deforming because it’s just the worst—right?
—when someone’s being kind to you. When you feel like shit and you’re vulnerable and they say are you okay?
I feel like I’m about to blow apart in some spectacular way that I’ve never allowed myself to and never will.
So I swallow it back, quite literally, and it’s lost in the sound of the rain and thunder. I pull the flannel up and cover half my face. “Fine.” Except he doesn’t stop looking at me and he’s still touching me, so I squeeze my eyes shut and will him away.
“Let me know if you need anything,” Sam says, and I hear the seat creak as he retreats. “I got some water and stuff.”
I need to stop feeling like I’m going to burst into tears. I need to get over feeling the way I do. I need to stop needing.
“I wish you’d stop,” I say. I’m muffled beneath my makeshift flannel blanket.
“Stop?”
I open my eyes. I can see him looking at me in the rearview mirror. “Being this way with me.”
His answering laugh is sort of incredulous. “What are you talking about? Should I kick you to the curb next seizure?”
“Don’t be stupid. You know what I mean.”