Chapter 10 #2
He goes quiet, averting his gaze, so I watch the sky through the rear windshield instead.
I have never seen the sky so dark on a summer afternoon.
The clouds are quite literally the color of coal, except for when lightning flickers and forks between them.
The thunder is so deep and loud it seems to vibrate in my chest cavity.
“And when you’re like that,” I go on, “it’s…confusing. You said you aren’t into guys, but when we wake up spooning it’s hard to believe. And when you compliment me, and touch me, and—”
“Look,” Sam interrupts. “This whole trip—the last couple days, I—” His voice is uncharacteristically halting and hesitant and I can’t make myself look back at him. I keep my gaze fixed firmly on the window. “There’s things I’m still figuring out. Okay? This is all happening really fast.”
I swallow again. This is reasonable. I should accept this. “Yeah. Okay.”
“But, Ash—do you even like me?” His voice is laced with injury. It startles me into glancing over at him. “I get the feeling you don’t at all.”
“What? Me?”
“Yeah. Y’know, I’m actually really enjoying myself.
Hanging with you. You’re a little fuckin’ weirdo but you’re fun.
I mean, I haven’t had fun like this in…a really long time.
But the way you act, it’s like I’m torturing you.
” From this vantage point I can see his throat work as he swallows.
“Like, I suggested extending this whole thing because I’m having fun. And you seem like…you’re not.”
I think about the stolen money in my bag and the bullet wound in my side.
I think about the fact that maybe I’m being looked for, that maybe I’m a suspect.
I think about the fact that I may never see my friends or family again, and they may never know what really happened to me—but they might suspect. They can read a newspaper.
I think about Ben. And how he’s gone. And how this might all be pointless. And how in spite of all that I’m really just doing this for him, anyway, or because of him. It took that much to make me rethink it all and even then, I managed to screw myself so badly.
And even now, dire as things have become, I have managed to get all caught up and hinge my survival on someone else like I’ve always done.
And the worst part is, of all my mostly dead emotions that I’ve gone out of my way to choke out, one by one, the only one I never needed to slay is the one rearing its head now and making all of this so much messier and uglier than it has to be: not love, but something.
Something like it. Affection? Infatuation?
For the first man to show me kindness, even though he didn’t have to. And he thinks I don’t like him?
“How can you say that?” I whisper.
“Anytime I try to get to know you,” he says, “you freak the fuck out, act like I’ve done something really awful.
So I can only figure that you’re not into me like that, yeah?
” I protest again, but he keeps going. “Like, I wanna know you, Ash. You keep saying that you’re some nobody but I don’t think that’s true at all.
I don’t even mean on like, some grand scale—” And here he sort of gestures, vague and wide, before dropping his hands back into his lap.
“I just think you’re this cool person. Smart.
Funny. And yeah, cute. But I can’t get in. I can’t…sink my teeth in.”
The worst part is that I want him so badly to like me, all of me, but if he knew even half of it, he would run. He would be so gone.
Sam’s looking out ahead. Not that there’s much of a view—the rain is driving and loud, and it’s difficult to see much past the hood.
It was smart of him not to go right back out to the interstate.
“Your friend—the one you said you’d meet in Miami…
” He trails off. “Never mind. Forget it. You don’t want to talk about this shit. ”
I sit up. I set my chin on the back of his seat, and our eyes meet in the rear view mirror again. “He’s dead,” I say quietly.
Sam’s head whips around. “What?”
“What I told you before, about meeting my friend in Miami. That’s not actually…” My throat closes up as I speak and my voice fractures on the words. “I mean, he did live there. But he died. His name is—it’s Ben. He died last year.”
His sable eyes are wide. “Dead,” he repeats. “Oh, Ash. I’m so sorry. I—fuck, I’m so stupid. Saying all that shit about meeting up and sending him postcards. I’m sorry.”
And, well, I didn’t expect him to say it like that, like he was actually sorry.
I’m reacting before I can get ahold of myself, the tears threatening to manifest and fall, but I manage to wrestle back control.
I gulp it all down again. I push my fingertips into the corners of my eyes and take a deep, quaking breath. “You didn’t know. Obviously.”
“How did he…” Sam starts and stops. “No. You don’t have to answer that. Forget it.”
“He had AIDS.”
Sam swears, I think, in Spanish. Just the force with which he utters it under his breath makes me think so, the way you’d say shit or fuck me. “I’m so sorry, Ash. Jesus, no wonder you got so upset. I wish you’d told me.” He turns sideways in the seat. “Why lie about him?”
I hide my face against the seat. “Because I really, really needed this ride,” I whisper. “I needed you to say yes.”
Silence again. The rain is starting to taper off now, the snarl of thunder more distant. Soon this conversation can end. Soon we can leave. To go wherever it is we’re going, I don’t know. Georgia, Florida, the bottom of the ocean, wherever it is the road ends. Straight to hell, maybe.
Or maybe this time I’ve fucked up terminally and he really is gonna kick me to the curb. I shift into fawn mode. “Listen,” I say. “I’m sorry for lying. I’m sorry this has been a shit show. And I’m a pain in the ass. And you’ve had to take care of me. But—”
“Hey,” Sam says, and I raise my face from the seat. “I know…I mean, I think I know you’re running from something. I’m not as dumb as you think I am.”
“I don’t…”
“You show up in that bar all but begging for a ride. You were literally shot. And okay, maybe it was pretty dumb of me to let you come along, but for some reason I couldn’t say no.” He smiles faintly at me.
I don’t know what to say. Or do. I just look at him. I don’t let myself weep. I won’t.
“Ash,” he says. “I like you. In spite of everything. Or, hell, maybe because of it. I like you a lot. I’m not leaving you here or anywhere else. We’ll stop tonight in Savannah, and then we’ll go to Miami. I will get you there. I promise.”
“Okay,” I say. I believe him.
Gently, ever so gently, he touches his forehead to mine.
“Sam?” My voice is so faint it’s nearly inaudible. “I really like you, too.”
“Good,” he says.
We sit there just like that for a minute. And a shaft of sun peeks out from the rainclouds, falling across our faces.