Chapter Thirteen #2
“Emmett,” he said. Only he didn’t say exactly that.
There was no double T on the end. There was an I and an E, so softly spoken it didn’t even just seem like a switch of letters, to form a sort of nickname.
It seemed like a term of endearment. Something warmly chosen, in a moment of sudden realization.
Even though the realization had only been hers.
He hadn’t suddenly grasped the difference between being handsome and being attractive.
He couldn’t have, he wouldn’t have. This was just the way things had built to a head for him, most likely.
All this touching and pretend affection, rising and rising until he couldn’t stop a slightly sweeter name from dropping out of him.
Nothing really.
Not like what she almost did in that terrible crescendo.
She heard that soft version of her name, and her hand just lifted of its own accord. Away from his shoulder and toward that face, that suddenly fascinating face. The one that actually seemed to tilt up to hers, for a second, and so convincingly she found herself leaning down.
Like she was going to kiss him.
Kiss Caleb Miller, right on the lips.
Her college self would have killed her if she had seen such a thing about to happen. Though truth be told, it felt like a kind of dying. And she couldn’t even say she saved herself from it. It was someone else, shouting at them from across the parking lot. “Hey,” they said. “Get a fucking room.”
And suddenly the spell was broken.
She snapped away, fast and violent enough that he made a sound of surprise.
As if nothing had been happening to him—all of that had been perfectly ordinary in his eyes.
It made no sense that she would jam herself into her seat and try to slam the door shut on him.
Or that she would snap “Just get us to the hotel fast” once they were ready to set off.
In fact, that probably explained why he seemed even stranger than he already had been for the last two days suddenly.
He couldn’t seem to focus. They went to check out and it took the woman at the desk three attempts to get him to answer the question “Was your stay nice?” And not even in a surly way.
More like in a forgotten-what-words-were way.
She actually heard him say “Huh?” Even though he had once told her that saying huh made her sound like a goose.
By the time they exited the building she desperately wanted to ask him if he was okay.
But god in heaven, did she fear the answer.
What if he wasn’t? What if this was already fucking him up?
Try to get him to focus on the road, she told herself.
On the sights and scenery on the way to Paramus, New Jersey.
In fact, that seemed like a good idea for her, too.
But the problem was: there were none. The best she could do on the route they were on was some sort of eighteenth-century recreation village thing, a museum full of hats, and, according to Google, the world’s largest statue of a raccoon.
And it wasn’t a comfort when that last one got an okay out of him.
Because once they were pulling into a makeshift parking lot in front of this incredible monument to man’s ability to sculpt large rodents, she realized. He wasn’t supposed to agree with this. This wasn’t normal for him. He’d even stressed at the start of the trip: no sightseeing.
She wasn’t even sure why she’d thought it was a good idea.
It’s like something is melting my brain, she thought as she staggered out of the car and toward her new raccoon god.
Twenty feet tall, painted thickly in black and white, with tiny paws reaching for the sky.
She almost sank to her knees. Please, oh great raccoon one, help me figure out what is going on here, she imagined herself saying.
But the only answer she got was the giggling of two women at a picnic table nearby, sharing sandwiches and kisses.
Adorable, to her heart.
A bad influence, to her brain.
Now she was thinking about romance instead of road trip nonsense.
And even more so when she glanced back at the truck and saw him through the already slowly dying light.
Most of her expecting him to be tapping his watch, because it was six now and it took two hours to get to Paramus, New Jersey.
But he wasn’t. His head was bowed, as if he were praying to some strange god, too.
It made her breath catch to see it.
Then again when she grasped what he was actually doing.
He was writing. And not on his laptop, but in the same empty notebook he’d used to print the rules. Those neatly, carefully lined-up rules, in handwriting she’d only ever seen once before that: when he’d been ahead of her in the line at student accommodations, and she’d watched him fill out a form.
That was his limit for longhand.
Like longhand was too sloppy and free for him to let his imagination anywhere near it. And yet somehow, she knew that was what he was doing. There was something about it, something familiar. The way she used to feel, before she realized writing was just a hobby and helping people was her calling.
My love is like a fever, she thought, as she watched his hand fly over the page.
Saw him lean so close to his own words he could have kissed them, squinting without his glasses, uncaring that they weren’t there.
An entire page filled up in the blink of an eye, so furiously scrawled she could see whole sentences had slanted right out of the lines.
Caleb Miller, she thought. Line crosser.
Then started toward the truck. And stopped. Started again. And stopped.
Even when she got there, her hand held in the air just above the door handle. Half of her fearing the clunk would make him stop, half of her fearing it wouldn’t. A vow already in her head to not actually look at whatever was bursting out of him so abruptly, so fiercely.
She needn’t have worried however.
He looked up and saw her, and practically scrambled it away. Like she’d caught him red-handed, doing something terrible to something utterly obscene. The only thing she got a glimpse of was the title, as he finished shoving it back into the glove compartment.
Maybe It Could Be, she thought it said.
Then refused to look again to check.
She fixed her eyes on the road he started back onto, that deep dusk of an endlessly empty highway, lit only by the occasional sign. And told herself that this would have to be enough of a distraction. This would lull him back to normality. But even after five miles, she could tell it hadn’t.
She could feel him shifting beside her. The air stirred every time he did it.
As if he was actually uncomfortable, or even flustered.
Which was probably why he took the shortcut he did, through the sprawling forest they were supposed to drive around. “I’ve taken this trail before,” he said. But she was pretty sure he hadn’t. And then after thirty minutes of driving and dwindling dirt paths, she was definitely sure he hadn’t.
It’ll be fine, she told herself as the truck bounced and rumbled and screeched over loose stones and tree roots.
He always knows what he’s doing. He always knows where he is.
Just as he eased the car to a stop and carefully shut off the engine, and both of them watched the headlights dim down to nothing until they were sat there in the pitch black.
“I have no idea where I am,” he said.
At which point, it felt okay to scream.