DREAMS of 18 Page 10

  I take a long pull of whiskey when I hear my son’s words from ten months ago. When for the first time in my life, he looked at me with disgust, with horror, with fury.

  I take another swallow of Jack Daniels and it goes down my throat burning, scorching me as my guilt does.

  And now, she’s here.

  I came here for you…

  Goddamn it. Her soft voice makes me crazy.

  She needs to leave. She needs to fucking leave. I’m going to make her leave.

  No matter what.

  I’m back to where I started.

  At my car.

  I walked for miles and miles and for hours and hours and I’m almost dead now. Almost but not quite.

  I’ll die as soon as I open the door to my car and hit the seat though. I’ll die of exhaustion and hunger and cold.

  Jesus Christ, it’s cold.

  A second later, I practically fall on the seat, my legs giving out. I get rid of my disguise, my hobo, my headphones. I empty my pockets of the lollipop wrappers, littering them all on the floor.

  I promise to clean it tomorrow.

  But I can’t figure out if it’s tomorrow already and I should get on with the cleaning.

  I’m in a daze and it’s still dark outside. So maybe not.

  Maybe I can just rest my head on the wheel for a while. Just for a little while and then, I’ll go and find a motel, and figure out how to book a room without freaking out about talking to the receptionist.

  “Okay… just… five seconds. Just five and then I’ll go…” I whisper and hug the wheel before closing my eyes.

  The next thing I remember is a tap and it wakes me up with a jolt. Shrieking, I jump and bang my head against the headrest.

  That’s when I realize it couldn’t have been a tap. It had to have been a bang because the face staring at me through the window belongs to a very angry, impatient man.

  It belongs to the man who left me on the side of the road.

  “Get out,” he clips when he knows he has my attention.

  I frown at him, unable to understand how he got here and what he’s even saying.

  Then I hear a bang on the roof. It’s not a huge bang but it’s enough to clear off my sleepy cobwebs, making me think that he just kinda smashed his fist on the roof of my car.

  Yikes.

  How can he make my car feel – a piece of heavy machinery – all puny and little, I’ll never know.

  “Get out now.”

  I don’t even wait to obey him. I get out.

  “W-what are you doing here?”

  He stares at me blank-faced. “You got luggage?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the trunk?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Open it.”

  “Huh?”

  He shoots me a look. “Just do it.”

  He doesn’t wait to see if I’ve obeyed. He simply turns around and makes it to the back of my car in two steps. When I still haven’t popped the trunk, he throws me another impatient glance and I dive into my car to do his bidding.

  It’s the sleep, I tell myself.

  I’m sleepy and that’s why I’m acting like his slave girl. That’s the only reason.

  Yeah, right.

  Mr. Edwards grabs my luggage – a red suitcase – from my trunk and strides back to me. “Let’s go.”

  “What?”

  Again, he doesn’t explain, nor does he wait for me to see if I’m following him. He keeps walking, carrying my suitcase in his hand. He doesn’t even wheel it and I know it’s kinda heavy. Needless to say, it makes my entire body tingle that he’s carrying my heavy luggage like it contains air.

  He’s at the end of the block when I wake up and lunging back into my car, I grab my disguise and my fat hobo – can’t forget my hobo – before following after him.

  My entire body is stiff and my legs are going to abandon me any second but I keep walking. I have a feeling that he’s going to throw my luggage in the trash or something just to make it clear how much he doesn’t want me here. So I need to be there to fish it out of the dumpster.

  But shockingly, he doesn’t.

  He keeps walking and walking, and then enters the same bar I found him at. The sign says closed, but still he pushes the door open and gets inside.

  What the hell is he doing?

  I reach the threshold of the bar and my feet come to a stop. I literally can’t move them and make them take the last step.

  God, sometimes I think I’m a vampire or something. Or one of my ancestors was a vampire. I love the night. I’m pale as fuck. I can’t enter through front doors.

  The only thing left is sucking blood.

  So maybe I’m like, seventy percent vampire.

  And Mr. Edwards doesn’t like that.

  Of course.

  By the time I make it to the bar, he is already in conversation with a guy behind the counter. A heavy-set, bearded rocker guy that I caught a brief glimpse of before darting my gaze away. Now, Mr. Edwards looks at me and glares when he realizes I’m not moving.

  “What’s the problem?” he asks impatiently.

  I wince. “I… What are we… What’s happening?”

  “Get in here.”

  I lick my lips and look at the doorjamb. Thank God, I had enough presence of mind to put on my disguise because the guy behind the counter is staring at me with amusement.

  “I don’t think that I can.”

  At this, Mr. Edwards really glares. Like, really. This is the glare to end all glares. Then he addresses the man and excuses himself and marches over to me.

  I take a step back as soon as he reaches me. He studies me for a second and I’m already cringing at the lie I’m gonna have to tell him when he asks about my fear of the front doors.

  But then, he grabs my arm – over the t-shirt, mind you – and drags me inside.

  Reaching the man at the counter, he clips, “Key.”

  The man throws it to him and he catches it with his usual, familiar athleticism before getting on with the dragging.

  We go through the back of the bar, take the hallway and climb up the stairs until we come upon a room, the door to which he opens with a jerk.

  Dumping my suitcase, he faces me. “Since there are no drunks passed out up here, Billy will let you stay here for the night. But only one night. Tomorrow, you leave.”

  And just like that, he spins around and begins to climb down the stairs.

  Did he just… kinda book me a room?

  I look back at the room and yes, there’s a bed, a dresser, a small chair even and an ajar door that opens into the bathroom.

  He did find me a room. The very thing I was dreading.

  Not to mention, he forced me to enter through the front door and he did it so fast that all I felt was this great jolt and nothing else.

  Nothing. Else.

  I mean, he did leave me on the side of the road. But then, he didn’t have to do any of this. The man hates me. He could’ve left me there and I would’ve slept in the car. Because let’s face it, I was not going to do something that involves talking to a stranger to book a room for the night.

  But because of him and his twisted ways, I get to sleep in a bed.

  I take a step forward, toward him to thank him maybe, but he’s disappeared from view. And I have absolutely no idea what to feel in this moment except a big surge of relief.

  ***

  I hear his voice.

  It’s coming from downstairs. A little dull and diluted and mixed in with another voice. This one belongs to Billy, the amused man I saw last night in passing, I think.

  So, he’s downstairs.

  Mr. Edwards.

  What is he doing here?

  He’s probably here to see if I’ve left or not. Because he said that he wanted me to leave today.

  He did say that, right?

  So much of what happened last night feels surreal. It fee
ls like the dreams that I don’t see anymore.

  But no, it happened.

  He did find me a room and I did sleep in a bed like the dead. Then I woke up, took a shower, and as soon as I got out, I heard his voice.

  And now, I’m out the door before I’ve thought my game plan through.

  I’m not sure what I’m going to say to him or how I’m going to break the bad news that I’m not leaving yet, but I have to see him.

  I climb down the stairs, walk down the hallway and reach its mouth to find that Mr. Edwards is alone, leaning against the bar, and that Billy has left.

  Maybe he’s heard my clumsy, rapid footsteps because he turns around and faces me.

  He has a plaid shirt on today as well, the sleeves folded up to his elbows, one of which is propped on the wooden bar. His fingers are clutched around a bottle. A bottle of Jack Daniels, and I’m reminded of the boozy smell of his truck.

  Is he drinking first thing in the morning?

  As if to answer my unspoken question, he picks up the bottle and takes a huge gulp of it, without breaking our stare.

  “What’s with the cap and sunglasses?” he asks, as if we’re just chatting, as if he’s not intent on kicking me out of his town and as if I don’t plan on foiling his attempts, at least for a little while.

  I put my disguise on when I heard Billy’s voice but as it turns out, I don’t need it. Even so, I don’t take it off as I approach him and the bar. Reaching it, I prop my own elbow on it and lean a few feet away from him.

  “It’s my new look,” I answer.

  At least that much is the truth.

  “Yeah? Being a gigantic pain in the ass stopped working for you?”

  I swallow, looking away from his searching eyes and at the bottle he’s currently strangling with his fingers.

  “Yes. As a matter-of-fact, it did. I needed a change.”

  “So what are you supposed to be now? A hungover teenage princess?”

  No. It’s my crutch against the world.

  But it’s okay if he thinks something else entirely.

  It’s okay.

  I lift my chin, even though I’m dying a little inside because I’m hiding things from him, lying to him. “I prefer diva, but princess works too.”

  His eyes narrow for a second before he takes another gulp of his whiskey, studying me.

  “Uh, thanks for… booking the room for me. I would’ve thanked you last night but you just left,” I begin. “Although, I’m not very sure how you even knew where I was going to be.”

  Which is only occurring to me right now.

  It’s a mystery, right?

  How did he know where I was going to be? How did he know that I’d fall asleep in my car?

  Thoughts flick through my brain one by one for about five more seconds, when abruptly, he moves and they run away.

  He takes another sip of his Jack Daniels, this one the biggest, and I hear the glug of the liquid going down and his Adam’s apple sliding down with it. Then he thumps the bottle on the counter, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and takes a step toward me.

  “So you found your way back,” he murmurs, completely ignoring my question.

  Although even I don’t remember what I was wondering about in the face of this giant, bearded man advancing on me.

  Automatically, I start moving back. “It wasn’t hard. I had my phone. GPS is a wonderful thing.”

  All the while, I’m feeling this reluctant thrill go through my body. A stupid thrill.

  A thick thrill that we’re alone. The bar is closed. The windows are barred and draped. I don’t hear anything other than our moving steps and our breaths.

  “Next time I’ll take away your phone,” he whispers.

  “Next time I won’t get in your truck.”

  All the while, I’m wondering why I’m not afraid of being alone with him. I never was actually; not that night either when he himself warned me about little girls getting kidnapped. This little girl was hardly afraid or even shy.

  Although now I have all the reasons to be afraid and shy and cautious.

  The man hates me. Hates me.

  He left me on the side of the road last night and now he’s trying to run me over with his body.

  Yes, I’m moving back as he walks toward me but it’s not with fear.

  I’m dancing to his tune. I’m matching him step for step. I’m keeping the rhythm of his feet like his prowl is a dark music of some kind.

  “And next time too, you won’t have a choice. Like you didn’t last night.”

  I swallow.

  I lick my lips.

  I breathe heavily.

  It feels like I’ve been trudging through desert. The driest and hottest desert on the planet, so scorched by the sun that my skin is cracked and my tongue is parched.

  “Take ’em off,” he orders, referring to my disguise, like he did yesterday.

  And I realize I didn’t take it off because I wanted him to say it. I wanted him to command me first, make me feel all tiny and dominated. So like last night, I do it in a flash.

  God, I’m crazy.

  I do it so fast and I do it in a way that says I can’t wait to be fragile and vulnerable in front of him, that I feed him the bullshit line, “You can’t tell me what to do.”

  We both know it’s the lie of the century. His eyes even go to the disguise that’s dangling from my sweaty fingers.

  He humors me with a twitch of his lips. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You do that,” I say, keeping up the charade.

  Then my back hits the wall and settles into it and I forget how to make words.

  He comes to a stop a few feet away from me, his shoulders blocking the measly light trickling through the windows, completely throwing us into shadow, turning day into night.

  I notice his eyes are brown, dark brown, rapidly going darker. Will I ever get over how gorgeous his eyes are, and how chameleon-like and unpredictable?

  He roams them over my face, rattling me a little more before carelessly murmuring, “Tell me something. What do you do when someone leaves you on the side of the road?”

  “What?”

  When he leans toward me and puts his hand, splayed wide on the wall, up above my head, I know I’m not going to like what he has to say.

  But that doesn’t matter, not at all, because he’s just inched closer to me.

  I can smell his spicy scent mixed in with whiskey, and I can feel his heat on my skin.

  “It’s late at night. The road’s deserted and you know fuck-all about the town. What do you do, Violet?”

  My hands are fisting and un-fisting the same way my mouth is opening and closing, trying to come up with an answer.

  I mean, what is he even asking me? It’s not as if I get abandoned all the time.

  “Well, I’m not sure what the right answer is. Seeing as it had never happened to me before last night. But I opted to walk back to civilization.”

  That gets me flaring nostrils.

  “You walk back to civilization. But let’s say that you had your phone and you could’ve called for a cab. You could’ve called for an Uber. Do you do that? Or do you walk for miles? Not only that but you walk like you own the highway. Like you have no cares in the world. You’ve got your giant, ridiculous headphones on and you’re dancing to the music. Is that what you do?”

  He’s talking a lot.

  He never talks this much and he’s saying a lot of things that he should have no knowledge about.

  I mean, how does he know I was dancing? I was sad and I knew if I didn’t do anything to distract myself, I’d lie down on the road and cry until dawn.

  “How do you –”

  “And then, when you’ve walked for miles like an idiot, what do you do? Do you sleep in the car? Instead of finding a decent, secure place to spend the night in? Come on. Enlighten me, Violet.”

  I try again when he pauses, h
is chest swelling, pushing his plaid shirt to its limits. “How do you know what I did after you left me?”

  I swear I hear something.

  A growl, maybe, originating somewhere deep in him. Or the fabric finally being pushed to its limits and tearing with how large his breath is.

  “Answer me. Is that what you do when you’ve been left on the side of a motherfucking deserted road?”

  His tone is thick and coated with sand. Every word he’s uttered, every curse he’s spewed, is seething with heat.

  They hit me like darts, sharp and cutting. But I’m not cringing with the sting of them. I’m not wincing or hissing in pain.

  I like them.

  I like the burn of his razor-sharp words. I like how electric they are.

  Because I get what’s happening here.

  He’s mad at me for surviving his wrath, isn’t he? He’s mad that he did something horrible to me and yet, I came back. I didn’t run away, crying.

  I’m still here.

  He’s mad that he hasn’t been able to scare me.

  I unclench my hand and my disguise falls down to the floor. “You came back for me, didn’t you? That’s how you know what I was doing. That I walked for miles. That’s… That’s how you knew where to find me.”

  His frown is thundering but I don’t get deterred. That’s agreement enough.

  He did think I’d be scared of him. He thought I’d be like one of his players or something.

  Oh, Mr. Edwards.

  I’m not normal. Typical things like angry beasts don’t scare me. I’m scared of other tiny things like front doors or getting stopped on a street by a stranger.

  “What I don’t get is, why didn’t I see you?”

  “Because as I said, you were too busy to notice anything. Too busy and too fucking reckless.”

  “So you came back and then what? You followed me?”

  He’s silent and still frowning, and again I know I’m right.

  I also know I shouldn’t get too excited.

  But I can’t help it. He not only saved me the whole anxiety of talking to a stranger and finding a room for the night, he followed me home.