Chapter 4 #2
“Got it,” he says, pulling onto the road with Mom’s car trailing pathetically behind. “Speckled Pig it is.”
The silence between us stretches so thick, I’d swear I could reach out and touch it.
When the ping of my phone echoes off the hard lines of the cab, it might as well be on surround sound.
His eyes follow the noise down to the phone in my lap.
I flip it over, as if he might be able to read Zola’s message through the lock screen.
X-ray vision doesn’t feel like an entirely implausible feature of eyes as dark as his.
When another message pings, he says, “Feel free to do what you need to do. Make a call or whatever.”
Since I can’t call my nonexistent boyfriend to let him know I’m running late, I opt for the next best plan: sitting in total silence until, with any luck, I cease to exist.
But another shrill ping from my phone sends me over the edge. A little yelp slipping through my lips. Now I have no choice but to make literally any other sound to cover up whatever that was.
Unfortunately, the first sound that comes to mind is words. And not just any words.
“No wonder you know so much about parking lots.”
I would’ve fared better with the axe murderer.
“I actually consider myself a sort of plainclothes parking attendant,” he says, mocking my words from earlier.
When he turns to smile at me, I’m hit by the direct force of it for the first time, and goddamn. A little warning would’ve been nice.
He’s got one of those smiles you don’t just see, you feel.
Deep and dimpled, with so much genuine emotion behind it that it’s impossible not to smile back.
This is also the first time I’m actually seeing his face without my vision being clouded by rage and shame.
It’s a good face, if you’re into that yacht on the South of France cologne ad sort of thing.
“So, what’s at Speckled Pig?” he asks, letting me off the hook from further talk of our earlier run-in. “Besides your boyfriend.”
I try to avoid his accompanying smile and the clear confirmation he knows I’m full of shit, but my very specific brand of awkwardness won’t allow it.
“Okay, maybe boyfriend wasn’t the right word. They’re a friend. Well, she. She’s a friend.”
He nods in assumed understanding, and for some reason unbeknownst to me, I’m suddenly desperate to clarify the exceedingly hetero nature of my sexuality to this complete stranger.
“No! Not like that,” I yell, with more urgency than necessary.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
” Nice. “But she’s really a friend. My best friend.
And she’s heading out soon, which is why I need to get there.
I was just trying to throw you off earlier with the boyfriend thing in case you were planning to… ”
He raises an eyebrow for me to continue.
“…kill me?” That horrified look on his face might actually be even better than his smile. “It’s been suggested that I watch too much true crime.”
His laugh comes on slow and easy. “Man, what is it with women and those shows? My ex used to watch all that stuff on repeat. She’d be all excited like ‘Ohhh, I bet he cheats,’ as if that’s a good enough reason to put rat poison in the guy’s burger and bury him under a rosebush.
I never knew if she had me watch it as entertainment or a warning. ”
“Maybe a little bit of both,” I say with a shrug.
“Damn. That’s exactly what she used to say.”
“Well, she sounds lovely. You were a fool to let her go.”
There’s another lull in the conversation, but this time, silence doesn’t accompany it. I hadn’t even noticed he’d turned the radio on in the background until he starts humming along. Effortlessly alternating between the harmony and melody of the music floating through the speakers.
“You sing?” I ask, before I can stop myself.
His eyes go wide, like a deer in the headlights of a freight train. It’s a welcome change to see him squirm for once.
“Only in the truck,” he admits, finally.
I want to tell him he’s actually pretty good, but the flimsy subject change he rushes for is for his own benefit this time.
“I think I went to a watch party at this place when I was like eighteen.”
A strategically placed sports reference to combat his falsetto, no doubt. Still, I let him have it.
“Yay, sports,” I say, with an accompanying rah-rah fist pump.
He laughs again, but now that I’m better prepared, I manage to keep my own face flat, even as his sparkles.
“Back then, it was more like, yay bartenders who don’t check IDs,” he says, turning onto the main drag. “I’ve never been that into sports.”
My frantic texts to Liv are stuck on read, and I swear, if she leaves for her train before I even get there, I’m never leaving the house again. The house, where Zola and Mom are waiting for me. Ready to continue judging my life and my failings, while also expecting me to help them sort out theirs.
I mutter an absent-minded response to him about how everyone has their thing but I’m too distracted by the traffic to say anything more. Maybe I should’ve had him drop me at a charge station after all. At least then, if I miss Liv, I could’ve just gone home.
“What’s your thing?” he asks. “Are you in school?”
“Just graduated,” is all I offer, as another minute slips away.
His smile deepens. “Oh, that’s dope. What’s your degree in?”
I shift in my seat at the turn the conversation’s taking and say only: “Education.”
I’m so not in the mood for get to know yous.
“That’s what’s up. Out there shaping the future.”
His genuine excitement about a career I have no interest in pursuing brings on a familiar stomach drop. Like being on a roller coaster, bottoming out. Because, no, I’m not going to be shaping “the future.” I don’t even know how I’m going to shape my own.
I know this is where I should be all, where’d you go to school, what’d you study, did you like it? But I can’t force any of it out past the tightness forming in my chest. I sink my teeth into my dread and my cheek. Wishing both the traffic and the conversation away.
When his words break though my thoughts once more, I very seriously consider how badly hurt I’d be if I tucked and rolled my way out of this.
“I did a few years at UConn, before…”
And I’m still biting my cheek to keep quiet, but I must not be biting down hard enough.
“Mm-hmm.” The sound comes out more deliberate and harsher than I’d meant for it to. Stalling the conversation cold.
“Sorry,” I say, hating myself a little more with each passing moment I’m in this truck. “My head’s just somewhere else.”
This time, there’s no question he gets the message, because all he says as he flips on his blinker to turn into the Speckled Pig lot is: “Understood.”
He doesn’t put the truck in park when he pulls up to the restaurant, but at this point, I’m just grateful he comes to a complete stop.
“Well, thanks for the ride,” I say, because I’m not a complete asshole. “And the tow.”
“No problem, Kaia. Have a good night.”
Those parting words play on repeat as I watch him drive out of sight. My name, a challenge he doesn’t explain.
No problem, Kaia.
But then I understand, and once I do, no walk has ever felt more shameful than the one I make to the bar’s entrance. Because, it never even occurred to me to ask his name.
Turns out, I am a complete asshole after all.