Chapter Ten
Hollie
It’s still dark outside when I hear the tap-tap-tap at my door.
It’s five-thirty and AJ has arrived to take me to breakfast, as promised.
I open it to find AJ standing there, under the flickering ceiling light from the motel balcony.
He’s holding his leather jacket in his fist and wearing a gray T-shirt fitting snugly across his chest.
‘You’re awake,’ he says, and I love the sound of the rasp in his voice, like he’s just got out of bed.
I don’t tell him I barely slept. Mostly because seeing him approach me last night in the darkness of the parking lot, while still wearing his helmet with the visor pulled down, had me picturing all kinds of sexual fantasies in my head. ‘Yeah, I, um, grabbed a shower first thing. Are we eating?’
‘Noah’s still asleep. We can pick him up some takeout.’
He waits for me while I pull on my shoes.
I follow him down the stairs toward Missy’s.
I won’t mention to AJ that the walls in this motel are paper thin.
That even without pressing my ear against the (locked) interconnecting door between our two rooms, I could hear AJ and Noah’s entire conversation last night, and that actually pressing my ear against said door only further amplified what I was listening to.
I also won’t mention that I overheard AJ say he had no plans to sleep with me, because I had actual confirmation that he’d have no reason to, that I wasn’t his type.
This morning, his words still sting, despite every rational voice telling me that this is all stuff I knew already, and that my high school crush should be left firmly where I left it: in the past. Of course a man like AJ Callahan would have no cause to ask me out.
I am a means to an end. I’m only here to help get Noah to Santa Fe.
That is all. My frivolous, reading-too-many-romantic-novels-to-Mrs-Huxley addled brain needs to get the message and stop drooling over a boy, just because he wears shredded Levi’s and rides a motorcycle.
Because even the idea of anything coming of this little road trip – ugh, Hollie, stop it.
Just. Stop. It – is the most ridiculous notion.
The inside of the diner smells of sugary pastries and coffee. I’m surprised that, at this early hour, a few of the tables are taken. We take a booth beside the window.
‘I’m buying,’ AJ says, swiping up the menu. ‘We should aim to get outta here before the sun’s fully up,’ he says. ‘It’s a ten-hour drive ahead.’
Ten hours. It’s more than driving from London to Edinburgh. I open my own menu but his presence distracts me enough that I can’t even decide what to eat.
Eventually, a waitress comes over and takes our order. AJ orders eggs benedict with a black coffee, and I opt for two slices of buttered toast with a freshly-squeezed orange juice.
If I’m going to rid myself of these feelings, I’m better off making the least amount of conversation possible. Though this morning, AJ appears to have other ideas.
‘So, Noah told me last night that he wishes he could stay with you instead of Aunt Rita.’
I don’t tell him that I knew that already, after listening to the entirety of last night’s conversation in the room next door. ‘He’s sweet.’
‘Thanks for being so nice to him. I mean, I guess I always knew that you were a nice person. I just hadn’t figured how nice, exactly.’
I thin my lips. ‘I was nice in high school.’
Watching him, it’s like his entire body tenses up. ‘Yeah. I knew that.’
‘Did you though? Because you, Balthazar, Nicole and Mo Mariano pretty much stood by and let Chase Brennan do whatever he wanted to me. Didn’t seem to matter that I was nice back then.’
Maybe it’s my tone of voice. Maybe he’s realized I’m a little pissed off by my past treatment, but suddenly he’s paled. He looks away and it takes me a moment to realize he’s reeling at something.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask, when it becomes apparent that something is wrong.
He shakes his head. ‘I’m fine, I… I’m sorry about high school.’
I narrow my eyes at him. ‘What is it?’ I ask, because I know there’s something he’s not telling me.
‘Nothing, you said…’ He flinches. ‘You said Mo’s name just now and it… it threw me.’
‘Mo Mariano?’
He sobers and lets out a shaky breath. ‘You don’t know. Why would you?’
‘Know what?’
He rubs his forehead. ‘Mo died last year.’
I blink. Something hits me square in the chest. A memory of them both on their motorcycles, riding side by side. ‘What?’
AJ twirls the saltshaker in his fingers, unable to look me in the eye.
‘Car accident. Mo had a collision with a high school kid. It was dark out; rain was coming down hard. The other driver ended up in a wheelchair. Cops didn’t apportion blame…
said he was just unlucky. Mo died at the scene, and I never got to say goodbye. ’
It takes me a moment to digest what I’ve just been told. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He looks away. ‘Don’t be. Nothing anybody could do.’
I have questions, but I don’t get the impression he wants to talk about it. ‘Was there a funeral, or…?’
‘Yeah,’ he says stoically. ‘Yeah, there was.’
I get the distinct sense he would rather change the topic of conversation. A long moment passes before I tell him, ‘I had no idea.’
‘We talked about goin’ into business together one day. Like having our own auto shop. I think even Chase got kinda jealous of our friendship.’
My face falls, mixed emotions in my chest. I have no fond memories of my high school bully. ‘Chase? Does he still have that weird haircut?’
AJ breaks out into a grin that makes my heart flutter. It’s like somebody’s flipped a switch and I’m back to worshipping him again.
‘Yeah,’ AJ says. ‘Yeah, he does.’
When our food arrives, we eat quickly and in silence.
‘You said that night in Canyon that you had a brother called Noah,’ AJ says.
I listen to the hiss of the coffee machine over by the counter and think about what to tell him.
It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my brother to anyone.
‘Just after I moved to America, the first time,’ I say, ‘He came out to me. He’d met a guy at college and fallen hard for him.
But the whole ‘being gay’ thing didn’t sit well with Evelyn.
Didn’t fit in with her mayoral election campaign, or her so-called traditional values.
Noah came to visit over that summer. He’d broken up with the boyfriend, and he started seeing a local guy from Canyon.
Evelyn went ballistic. Didn’t want the press finding out about it.
It culminated in a bunch of family arguments, so Noah left and said he wouldn’t be coming back.
My dad did nothing to stop him from leaving because he’s under Evelyn’s thumb and doesn’t know how to stand up to her. ’
‘Where is your Noah now?’
‘California. Blissfully happy, I’d imagine. I worry that he hates me.’
AJ finishes his mouthful. ‘I doubt that.’
He wipes his mouth and hands on a paper napkin, then goes over to the counter to collect a breakfast sandwich for Noah. I watch him pay the bill.
The next thing I know, his hand is hovering underneath my nose. ‘You got your car keys?’ he asks me.
I cease chewing the last of my toast and raise my brow.
‘I wanna check your tires before we head back out on the road. Check your oil and water too. And your pressures. And I’ll fill her up with gas.’
I dig around in my pocket, then drop my key fob in his palm.
‘I don’t trust that heap of junk you call a vehicle. Wouldn’t want you to break down on the way to Santa Fe.’
‘Oh. Right. Thank you.’ I yawn.
‘You’re not gonna fall asleep at the wheel, are you?’ AJ asks me, and I wonder if it’s out of genuine concern for my welfare. That’s unlikely.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I clip. ‘Do I follow you?’
‘We’ll stay on the Interstate, get on the eighty-seven at Eden. Head north, cross the state line. Stay close to me. We can stop a couple times.’
He pulls on his leather jacket, the one I saw him win at Scotch & Smoke. I hate that the sight of him ties my insides in knots.
Not long after, once we’ve herded Noah back into my car, from my rearview mirror, I watch AJ pull on his helmet in the dim half-light of dawn.
The sound of him starting his bike, and the low rumble and engine revving that follows, reminds me that we really are smuggling a human fugitive across the state line.
I swallow tightly, because I realize that I am complicit in breaking the law.
In the back seat, Noah’s already back to snoring under the blanket.
I reverse the car. There’s a moment before we turn, where I see the sun, about to peek, the horizon glowing the color of blood red orange, the sky above laced with thin clouds.
And in the near distance, is the silhouette of a male figure on his motorcycle.
I know in my heart, even if he is paying me, that I wouldn’t have agreed to do this for just any man.
Around ten a.m, in the back seat, Noah bolts upright, his hair sticking up at all angles. I’d opened the window because I was overheating, and my car’s AC appears to be packing up.
He squints, then looks up ahead, to where AJ is riding in front of us.
My legs ache.
‘Would you like some water?’ I ask, holding up my bottle behind my right shoulder.
Noah grabs it and guzzles most of the contents, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Where are we?’ he asks.
‘No idea,’ I say.
He sniffs. ‘I need to pee.’
‘Me too. AJ said we would stop every four hours.’
‘How long away is that?’
‘Well, you’ve been asleep for about four and a half.’
I roll down my window a little further, sticking my arm out of the moving car in the hopes of getting AJ’s attention. Up ahead, he gives me a thumbs up.
‘So, how come you hated American high school?’ Noah asks. ‘What was so bad about it?’
I let out a half-laugh and check his reflection in my rearview mirror. ‘Well,’ I begin, ‘Coming from an all-girls school in England didn’t help… It was kind of a culture shock.’
‘What’s a culture shock?’