Chapter Eleven
Gavino
She shopped for a road trip like a kid given fifty bucks and told to grab whatever they wanted.
“Can you hold this?” she asked, shoving an extra-large coffee at me. If you could even call it coffee. The coffee itself was caramel. Then she’d added sugar, cream, and syrup before topping it with whipped cream.
I took it in the hand that wasn’t holding my same-sized coffee, black, watching as she readjusted her hold of her two cooler drinks—a diet soda and one of those bottled coffee drinks—so she could grab two candy bars to go along with her chips, snack cakes, and licorice.
“Don’t judge,” she demanded, even though I was reasonably sure my face was blank. “I used to love all this stuff on the road with my dad. It’s been years since I’ve had it. Well, aside from the soda and coffees, obviously. You’re not getting anything?”
“I’m getting food,” I said, gesturing toward the case with the sandwiches and wraps.
“Well, duh. But no snacks?”
“I’m not really a snacker. What?” I asked when her face screwed up at that.
“That’s like saying you don’t like dessert. Or snow. Or… puppies.”
“I can give or take dessert. Snow is pretty for about an hour before it turns into a slushy, muddy mess. And puppies bite.”
Her eyes did a big roll at that. “You’re such a grump,” she told me, shaking her head as she grabbed those fake-cheese-stuffed pretzel things I hadn’t seen a human being eat since I was a kid. “Luckily, you’ve been kind of nice to me, so I’m choosing to find it charming.”
“Kind of?” I asked, grabbing a turkey wrap from the display case. “I wasn’t even mad when you punched me in the face.”
The man on the other side of the display looked over, brows raised, as he looked at both of us.
“Only because I broke my wrist doing it,” she said. “Those aren’t going to keep,” she warned when I reached for another clamshell.
“This one is for you,” I told her. “You can’t survive on sugar and salt.”
“You clearly have no idea how I ate in college,” she said, coming up next to me, her whole body brushing mine, and I tried to ignore the way my stomach flipped at the sensation. “Can you grab the club instead? I don’t love how wraps get when they’ve been sitting.”
With that, we made our way to the counter, where I had to pluck the items out of her arms because she had them piled too high to put them down without dropping them.
“No,” I said when her hands were free and she started to separate the items, then reach for her purse. “This is together,” I told the clerk as I pushed it all back into a pile.
“You got three things,” she objected. “I got, like, twelve.”
“Mmhmm,” I agreed, nudging her toward the end of the counter.
“Is this one of those ‘Because I’m the man’ things?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“But we’re not dating.”
Yeah, my stomach did that flip thing again.
And I tried to tell myself I was hungry.
Since any other explanation made no sense.
“Doesn’t matter.”
I pulled out the cash, handing it over to the clerk, then reaching for the bags.
“Your change,” Caitlin said as I started to walk away.
“Give it to the guy outside,” I said as she took the money from the cashier then followed me out, pausing to talk to the unhoused man sitting on the ground with the Army vet tattoo.
When I loaded the bags in the car, I turned to find her still with him, squatting down to talk to him at eye level.
I guess she was right about her old man’s trucker buddies being more her speed than people her own age.
She talked to the man for a solid fifteen minutes before making her way back over to where I was standing beside her open door.
“You must pass twenty unhoused people a day in the city. Do you stop and have conversations with all of them?”
“I mean, anyone who is on one of my usual routes knows me. I bring them leftovers when I make too much. They’re people with stories and feelings and needs.
I hate that we treat them like they’re not.
Besides, they keep their ears to the ground.
They are always the first to tell me if something sketchy is going on in the neighborhood and who to look out for. ”
“The family utilizes them sometimes too,” I admitted, not knowing why I would give her that kind of information. “They are always around. Makes sense to use them as scouts instead of kids like a lot of crews do. Lord knows they can use the money.”
With that, she climbed in and I closed the door.
We sat in the parking lot, drinking our coffee as she showed me the route from where we were to the yard where her father’s truck was parked. Which we planned to take on the rest of the road trip: first, for a place to stay; second, to go over it again with a fine-tooth comb.
“But this is where we have to stop,” she said, pointing as she took a bite off a stick of licorice. While I didn’t imagine how her lips would taste like the strawberry she smelled like from it.
“For the hitch.”
“For the butterfly lift.”
“Why do we need to drag your car? Wouldn’t that Ira guy let you park it there while we’re gone with your dad’s tractor? Seems like a waste of time to go all the way out there to get someone to attach the lift just to drag a car we won’t really need.”
“I can ask. But I like being prepared.”
“If you’re as close with this guy as you say, I doubt he’d turn down the request. He’s got a whole yard full of tractors and trailers just parked there. What’s one more vehicle?”
“Yeah. We’ll see. Want me to take over for a while?”
“No.”
“Is this another ‘I’m the man’ thing?”
“No, it’s more of a ‘I don’t get anxious driving’ thing.”
“Fair,” she agreed. “But I’m usually okay on these kinds of roads if your eyes need a break. It’s hard to drive at night.”
I wouldn’t admit this shit out loud, but I was enjoying myself. For a self-proclaimed city person, I was having a good time being out of it for a while. Though I suspected the majority of that had to do with the company.
Why? I had no idea. It made no sense that being with her was any different than being with my family. But it was.
Maybe that was because Caitlin was, well, a bit of a fucking mess.
It was unexpectedly charming. But it also seemed to simultaneously remove the need for me to perform—because she was too busy worrying about her own shit to think about mine—while also making me want to step up and be the calmer, steadier, better version of myself.
I always felt like my family was expecting something from me. And that I was always falling short.
There was none of that here.
For fuck’s sake, we’d passed roadkill a little while back and she’d turned fully in her seat to face me while whimpering, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God,” and turning an impressive shade of green.
Then she’d gone all teary-eyed as she wondered aloud for a solid ten minutes if the animal had a family somewhere that was going to miss him or her.
She was too in her head to be wondering if I was being grumpy or unusually quiet. Hell, there was no quiet. Because if she wasn’t talking, she was singing along with her music.
This was the most relaxed I’d been in someone else’s company in years.
And I think I finally understood the concept others meant when they talked about being ‘alone together.’ Maybe they were onto something. I mean, not about love or relationships or shit like that. Just about, you know, people. Friends.
“I’m good,” I told her. “But if I need a break, I’ll let you know.”
I spent the next few hours driving on empty roads while listening to her crinkle snack wrappers and occasionally sing along with the radio.
“Gavino?”
“Gav.”
“What?”
“Gav. No one calls me Gavino.”
“Oh. Okay. Gav. What do you think about, you know, stopping?”
“Starting to realize chugging a giant coffee and two cold drinks maybe wasn’t the best idea?” I asked, shooting her a look.
“Shut up. Yes, I need to pee. But also, what do you think about stopping somewhere for the rest of the night? Because we still have, what, four hours of driving. And then we have an hour with Ira. By the time we actually get my dad’s tractor, we’re going to be exhausted.
And sleeping during the day is probably not the best idea if we’re doing a, you know, investigation. ”
“You have a point,” I agreed. “You wanna look for a hotel nearby?”
“Done,” she said, holding out her phone.
I glanced over, taking in the two-story motel with a sketchy pool and a half-broken sign.
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not? It’s a great price. And none of the reviews mention bed bugs.”
“Honey, not having bed bugs is the fucking floor. I want a bed that doesn’t smell like unwashed bodies and a room where I’m not worried every surface is covered in sex fluids.”
“Ew.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, there really isn’t anything else close-by. Well, except this place. But it’s insane.”
“Insane meaning it’s got theme rooms and heart-shaped beds, or insane as in expensive?”
“I stayed on a heart-shaped bed once. It had a quarter machine to make it vibrate. My father was horrified. But it was the only room we could find. And theme rooms could be fun. No, though. It’s just expensive. For just a couple hours.”
“Are there rooms with a double?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Book it.” I handed her my wallet. “Use whatever card.” When she hesitated taking it from my hand, I sighed. “Book the damn room.” When she still didn’t move to do it, I shook my head. “Give me the phone then.”
“You can’t be distracted while driving,” she objected, yanking it out of my reach. “I’ll book it!” she said when I reached again.
“Was that so hard?”
“This is six hardcover books and one paperback,” she told me.
“Book math?” I asked, laughing.
“Book math is how I talk myself out of buying silly seasonal decorations or too many takeaway coffees. Because I love my coffee, but just two of them a week is worth a whole book that I will enjoy for a lot more hours than the coffee.”
“You sound like my sister. Meanwhile, all she had to do was call up one of us and she’d get her coffee and her books for free.”
“That’s sweet. Had?”
“She’s married now. Her husband gets to spoil her now.”
“Are all your siblings married?”
“No. Leo, Zeno, and I are still single.”
“By choice?”
“Leo wants a family. Just hasn’t been lucky in that department yet. Zeno is usually too distracted to notice a woman who isn’t thrown right in his path.”
“And you?”
“Who the hell would want to shack up with my ass forever?” I asked, meaning it in an unserious way.
But Caitlin watched me with scrunched brows. “You know, you keep making comments like that. But you’re not that bad.”
“Gee, thanks, Cait.”
“I mean it! I mean, you might be a little grumpy sometimes. But you’re a nice guy.”
“Christ. Don’t go spreading that shit around.”
“The truth?”
“Honey, you barely know me.”
“I think I know enough to say you’re really being harder on yourself than you need to be. And trust me, I know all about being hard on yourself. So I’m kind of an expert here.”
I shrugged at that, not ready to accept it.
“No, seriously. I think sometimes we get told something once or twice, and because it’s a fear we hold, we kind of build our whole self-concept around it.
Meanwhile, it’s just not true. Like maybe you just think you’re an asshole because you were a moody teenager who liked his alone time and were called out on it a couple of times.
Then you just… ran with it. But you’re not an asshole. And you’re going to miss your exit.”
I turned off at the exit, her words swirling around in my mind.
I had been teased somewhat mercilessly by my more outgoing siblings and cousins about how I’d rather stay at home and read books or learn about ancient civilizations on TV.
And I had gotten moody about it at some point, tired of defending myself against it.
So I just… leaned into it. Let it be true.
Maybe none of it had been true.
Maybe teenage boys were just little fucks who knew which buttons to press to make you squirm.
But that was a lot of shit to try to think about as I turned off the highway and into the lot of the hotel.
“Big place for being out in the middle of nowhere,” I said as I parked.
“There’s a really big concert venue not far from here,” Caitlin told me as she gathered all her trash and shoved it into her purse. “And a wedding venue, too.”
She hemmed and hawed over her luggage for a moment, shoving some things from one bag into another until she finally let me take two of them and head into the hotel.
“Okay,” Caitlin said as the girl at the front desk got our keys. “I admit. This is a lot better than the Purple Heron.”
“Sometimes it’s worth it to spend a little more money.”
“Like on a book with sprayed edges.”
“Yeah, no. You lost me there.”
“You just don’t like pretty things,” she said, rolling her eyes as she tucked her hair behind her ear.
I tracked the motion, feeling my heart lurch.
Yeah.
No.
I don’t think that was the problem.