20. Enough Stalling. Let’s Get to It
20
ENOUGH STALLING. LET’S GET TO IT
ARCHER
She liked it. I knew she liked it. By the third time through, she was humming the chorus with me.
But she wanted to give me her analysis.
Shit.
The woman who millions followed because of her assessment of things. I had the sudden urge to pull to the shoulder, leap out, and go running into the night.
“This is not a song about your truck.”
“What?” She’d derailed me. The one thing I was sure of, and she said it wasn’t true. “Yes it is. The initials are right in the chorus. Built—Fueled—Tail . BFT.”
“No.” She was maddening in her assurance. “This is a song about you, Archer.”
“About my truck, yes.”
“Oh, please. It’s all about you. Take the last verse—which is absolutely gorgeous, by the way. ‘Silence descends once I’m gone.’ That’s the narcissist’s view of the world. Once you leave, everything comes to a halt without you.”
“Fuck that. It’s about these leaves I saw on a country road last month. Every time a car passed, they got swept up in the current, and then they’d settle and wait for the next car. That’s all.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said dismissively, not at all convinced. “ ‘Built to soar over bumps in the road . ’ Who does that sound like?”
I sputtered. “Everyone!”
“Archer, not even being called out as a tooth kisser in front of twenty-four million people has dimmed your confidence.”
“Sure it did! We played the suckiest concert right after that!”
“You seem to have gotten over it.” Her voice was dry. She was mocking me?
“Well,” I protested, “you can’t be down forever.”
“Exactly. And ‘fueled by dreams and the need to just go.’ ”
“Hey! I like to drive. Why’s that so bad?”
“It’s not. But unlike most people, you’re not going to take a break. Are you?” I opened my mouth to oppose her opinion, but I couldn’t find anything to say. “Anyway,” she went on, “I want you to let me record you singing it.”
“Now, wait.”
She held up a hand. “Not for use. I won’t share it. But you’re going to get Ian and Mal to work on it with you, and they’re going to add to it. And it will probably get more commercial. But I think you need to have some record of yourself in its purest form, so you can look back on it later.”
“They will make it better,” I said, hating the confused whine in my voice.
“They will. And it will be a great hit. It’s going to be amazing. But you need the raw version to hold on to. Because like this? Now, in the darkness? It’s very, very Archer.” She fished in her backpack and pulled out her phone .
My fizz was a combination of confusion and a long-forgotten performance anxiety. “You want to record it now?”
“Not even with the good tech in my trunk. Just a voice memo. Ready?”
“I don’t think I should.”
“I’ll send it to you so you can have it, and then you can watch me delete it. Don’t think. Just sing.”
All I could think was that she’d bullied me into it. But this time, the pace was slower as I tasted the words, wondering if I’d misunderstood my own verse. I broke off in the second chorus. “This is about my truck,” I said.
“I’m recording,” she replied coolly. “Keep going.”
I frowned but kept singing.
Damn. She might have been right.
When I finished, she messed with her phone and I heard the whoosh of an outgoing message. “There,” she said. “I’m deleting my version. Want to watch me do it?”
I shook my head, focused on the lyrics. What the hell?
“Where are we going?” O’Connor asked.
“Huh? Oh. Crothersville, Indiana. Won’t take us long to get there. Four, five hours.”
“So we’ll get there around midnight?”
“Yeah, thereabouts. That okay with you?”
“I’ve just got a lot of work to do for tomorrow’s podcast. I was hoping for a stable internet connection so I could do some editing.”
“You’re not going to?—”
“Archer, chill. I won’t use your song. I’ve got all I can handle with that podcast takeover you did yesterday.”
“Yeah.” That made me feel better. “That was good. What’s the matter with the internet here in the BFT?”
She fussed around with her phone and announced that the signal was strong enough . . . for now. Little did she know, it was going to be excellent. I paid more than I could afford in satellite services. Take that, Opinionated O’Connor.
She made me pull over so she could get her equipment out of the back, and then she shoved Charlotte over so she could sit on the floor behind my seat, surrounded by her laptop, headphones, tablet, cameras, and a large, interested dog.
And she never made a peep for three hundred and twelve miles.
I found a Walmart once we arrived, where there were enough cars in the parking lot that the BFT wouldn’t stand out. “Mind if I take my dog for a run?”
She peered at me, startled from her focus. “It’s almost midnight.”
“Yeah. We’ve got five hours until the campground opens up, and Char could use some exercise. Me too. Want to come?”
“You’re going for a run? Now?”
“Well, a sniff-and-poop and then a run, but yeah. Coming?”
“Uh, no thanks. I’m halfway done here.”
“You always do your own editing?”
“Can’t find anyone who does it as well as I do it myself. It’s a little harder in the back of a truck, but yeah. I like to have control.”
“No kidding.” She looked up sharply. Apparently, I hadn’t masked my irony as well as I’d hoped. “Anyway, you’ve got power. It’ll be silent if you want to record voiceovers or something. You’ve got my phone number if you want to check in. And we’ll be back. You know. Later.”
“Later. Really? That’s all you’re going to give me?”
“What, afraid Char and I are going to scare off the bears and mountain lions?”
“Pah. Get out of here.”
We were only a few miles to the campsite. Char and I had a nice jog to find it (locked up tight, as expected) and then walked back to the truck while I debated adding or stripping out a few verses from “Freedom.”
Didn’t mean O’Connor was right, of course.
She was in the front passenger seat when we got back. She’d reclined it all the way and was lying with her coat over her. Asleep with those brilliant green eyes closed, she looked angelic. Not at all like someone who could fillet your soul with a few well-chosen words.
I loaded Charlotte into the back as quietly as I could, but O’Connor opened her eyes and watched us sleepily. “Hey. Good run?”
“Get all your work done?” I started the BFT, and we were off.
“All loaded and ready for tomorrow.”
“Go back to sleep. We’re going to wait at the campsite for the guy.”
“Mm.”
I tried to get drowsy once we were sitting in the small parking area outside the campsite’s gate, but it wasn’t time to sleep yet. Instead, I watched O’Connor sleep and thought about “Freedom.”
She was still asleep when the guy arrived at his work half an hour early (thanks, guy), and I began to suspect she was faking it when I was forced to set up the tent in the BFT’s headlights and inflate the mattresses without her help.
Grumbling a little, I hooked up the heater and a lantern too. She’d looked chilly at the dog park, and the warmth of dawn was still an hour or more away.
All right. That was enough white-glove treatment. Come on out of that passenger seat, Red.
I sent Charlotte in to lick O’Connor awake. She came out of her dreams laughing, which was a point in her favor, considering a large dog was bathing her and filling the truck’s cab with cold November air fanned by a long, wagging tail .
“Oof, you big monster, you! Get off my bladder. I need to pee!”
I sent O’Connor to the bathrooms and got Charlotte set up for bedtime. This time, when O’Connor returned, I was wide awake.
“Okay,” I said once she’d ducked into the tent. “That’s enough stalling. Let’s get to it.”
She blinked, on alert. “Get to what?”
“It’s time for kissing lessons.”
She backed up instinctively until she came up against the nylon shell. “We are not up to that lesson yet.”
“Yes, but a friend would give me some extra tutoring before I had to go on camera. Come on. Haven’t we waited long enough?”
O’Connor looked at the tent’s layout warily. I’d claimed one mattress and gotten Charlotte to lie down on the other, leaving the middle mattress open.
“O’Connor,” I said, “you and I have had a good day. We’ve worked out together. Shared intimate stories—well, I have. We crossed state lines together. We’ve bagged poop together. It’s time to admit that we kind of like each other. You do like me, right?”
She nodded, not at all relaxed.
“Calm down. I’m not going to rape you. I’m not going to force you. Nothing happens that you don’t want, I promise. I’m talking about kissing only. You wouldn’t be afraid to kiss me, would you? After I showed you how I kissed my fiancée?”
That made her giggle. Her shoulders eased down marginally. “The kissing lesson wasn’t supposed to be a practical demonstration.”
“You say that because you think all kissing has to lead to other things.” I gestured to the mattress in front of me and she knelt, sitting back on her heels in the least comfortable position possible. “And when people don’t understand the goal, then wrong ideas can happen. But you and I know that all we’re doing is having a kissing lesson. Nothing more. Right?”
She watched me and didn’t speak. Still deciding, then.
“I already know that I’m guilty of kissing with too much teeth. I thought that indicated passion, but apparently not.”
“You can’t show passion to someone you’ve known for two hours, though. That’s just silly.”
“Well, you can. If you’re doing it right. But I get that you weren’t ready for the big clinch. I mean, I get that now. But just tell me. What is a first kiss supposed to be like?”
She opened her mouth to speak and leaned forward fractionally. Then she sat up again, still warring with herself. My best hope was to get her talking.
“Like, no teeth. I hear you. So, you can only kiss, um, from a distance?”
O’Connor shook her head. “Obviously not.” Ah, engagement. Houston, we have contact. “You can be close. But you don’t have to mash your teeth against the other person.”
“Your teeth and mine did not clink,” I threw out.
“Yes, but you definitely caught my lip between the wall of my teeth and the wall of yours. It was like you pinched me.” I sat back, startled out of my plan. “And not in a good way,” she added.
“I . . . pinched you? Are you serious?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, if you mash your face up against someone else’s, the soft stuff is going to get crushed.”
I felt a flicker of annoyance. “I did not mash my face against yours.”
“I’m sorry, Archer, but you did. You put your hands on my shoulders, pulled me forward, and held me in place so you could mash your face against mine.”
“That is not the way I remember it!”
“I’m sure it’s not. But it’s the way I remember it. And if you want to be good at kissing, then you have to care what the other person thinks. It can’t just be about you.”
God, she was irritating. I leaned back on my hands, increasing the distance between us.
She slid sideways off her heels and adjusted her legs until she was cross-legged as I was. “I’m sorry, Archer. I know you don’t want to hear it. And we have had a good day. I regret having to ruin it.”
I looked away from her and ran my hands through my hair. I was not a bad kisser, damn it.
Except apparently, I was.
Oh, fuck me. I hated this.
I inhaled and sighed deeply, forcing my anger down. I turned back. “All right. No mashing. Is that all there is to it?”
She shrugged, and her eyes darted away. There was something she was avoiding, and that became of paramount importance to me.
“There is something more! Spit it out. Come on, O’Connor. Why on earth would you pull your punches now? Don’t leave me hanging.”
Her nose wrinkled in an adorable pout. She did her own internal gathering, and then she leveled me with a killer blow.
“You have to protect your partner with those lips, Archer. You have to take care of her. Defend her from anything harsh and unpleasant. You have to use the strength in that gorgeous mouth to ensure she doesn’t come up against those blinding teeth. You can’t abandon her to fend for herself.”
“It’s a fucking kiss, O’Connor, not a knight in shining armor rescuing the damsel in the tower.”
She sighed and nodded, tipping away from me. “Okay. Sure.”
I leaned forward and grabbed her hand. “No, don’t pull away. Are you serious? You think every kiss is about protection? Strength and protection? ”
She let me draw her back. “Well, yeah. Kind of. I mean, a good kiss would be.”
A good kiss. This was the heart of it.
“I seem to have misunderstood something fundamental,” I realized. “Does everyone know about this but me?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just what I think.”
“Huh. Even a first kiss? A sweet little peck good night?”
She thought about it. “Even a little peck good night requires kindness in the lips, you know?”
“Kindness.”
“Yeah, you know. Like, kindness?”
I shook my head, frustrated. “I don’t usually kiss women for kindness.”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
“What? Damn it, O’Connor! Don’t you ever just want to get laid?”
My anger got the better of me, but she wasn’t frightened. She even laughed. “I see. You think kindness and sexiness are opposites.”
“Well, fuck, O’Connor! Yes, I do!”
She tilted her head, considering. “Okay, then. We’ve found our most significant difference. Everyone likes something different, and I guess I shouldn’t have judged you so harshly. I’m sure there are women who like sex without kindness and women who enjoy teeth kisses.”
“I do not kiss with my teeth!” I raged.
She dropped my hand and spread her hands in a gesture that meant “if it will calm you down, I’ll agree with you.”
Fuck. This wasn’t going well.
“Don’t give up,” she said unexpectedly. “Keep trying. I feel like we’re getting someplace.”
I frowned at her. “You do?”
“We’ve uncovered a basic difference between us.”
“It’s not just a difference between us. It’s a difference between you and the rest of the world. Kindness is not sexy, and there are no two ways about it.”
That woman had the nerve to laugh at me. “Okay. Fine. If that’s the way you feel.”
I scrubbed my scalp, overwhelmed with frustration. “O’Connor, there is no such thing as a kind and sexy kiss. I’ve kissed plenty of women, and I know.”
“Well, I’ve kissed a handful of men, and I know you’re wrong.”
“Not kind and sexy.”
“Of course, kind and sexy.”
“Bullshit. Show me.”