Stuck With You, page 12
She grins. ‘You are a total Ferris. I can’t believe I’m just seeing it. You’re smooth but funny, charming, and I bet you could spin a story anyone would believe.’
‘Sssshhhhhut. Up,’ Laney orders in a loud whisper.
I laugh, holding a finger to my lips. ‘Quiet, the movie police have spoken.’
Jade giggles, turning back towards the screen.
Ferris, huh? Mercy calls me Spicoli, which I was alright with, but Ferris is way cooler. I guess it just took the right girl to see it.
As the movie ends, Jade sighs heavily. A satisfied sigh that says she just swooned at Lloyd’s gesture for Diane precisely like the rest of the theater did. Me included.
‘This is what I thought love was like when I was younger. Over the top, romantic, and so corny you’d remember every detail for the rest of your life.’
‘Dude, I’d let John Cusack serenade me, so I get it.’ I wink at her, enjoying my ability to make her smile easily. ‘Back then, people had to make more of an effort than they do now. The interwebs and social media have ruined us. Now we text break-ups and post every detail of our lives. Nothing is innocent, and hardly anyone goes out of their way to bring someone joy. If you find someone who does, never let them go.’
‘That’s an excellent suggestion,’ she says. ‘Aren’t you just full of wisdom?’
‘Hang on.’ I grab my phone from my pocket. ‘Let me just call all my friends and family so you can say that again.’
‘Say what?’ she asks innocently.
‘That I’m wise, they’ll never believe you,’ I kid.
She laughs to herself.
‘Where are we eating?’ Laney asks as we exit the theater, sort of killing the moment between Jade and me, which might be for the best considering the situation.
14
JADE
‘Why can’t love be like the final scene of an eighties rom-com? Someone tell me why?’ I ask as River drives the three of us to a burger truck he ‘just knows we’ll love’. His words, and considering he’s impressed me with his food taste recently, I trust him. But the movie is sticking with me, along with the flirting River and I did pretty much since I walked into the place. I can’t think about it too deeply, or I’ll wonder if he was suggesting something I shouldn’t be considering right now.
‘Maybe because the innocence of the eighties is gone?’ Laney snaps. ‘Back then, people were friends with their neighbors and slept with open windows. Kids came home when the streetlights came on, and no one knew where they were because there were no cell phones. Now we live in a world full of sex offenders, serial killers, the dark web, and all kinds of toxic bullshit. Kids can’t even play outside anymore unless constantly supervised, and even then, let’s hope their guardian isn’t a super creep.’ She groans with frustration. ‘Can you please watch one of the true-crime episodes I constantly send you? You and your walking around downtown at night will one day get you killed if you don’t.’
‘Yeah, Jade.’ River continues the lecture jokingly. ‘Don’t get murdered; it’ll greatly inconvenience your sister. Alright?’
Finally, Laney laughs. ‘That’s right. I mean, what would you even wear?’
My jaw drops. ‘To my murder?’ I balk. ‘You think I’ve got an outfit planned for that?’ I ask. ‘This is a weird conversation. How did we even start talking about this? Let’s change the subject. River, tell us about this food truck,’ I say. Earlier, he bragged that he knew all the best food trucks and visits them so often that they know him (and his order) by name.
‘Bun Jovi,’ he says with a goofy grin. ‘Get it?’
‘Like Bon Jovi?’
‘Yep. The owner’s name is Jovi, it’s a hamburger joint, hamburgers have buns…’
Of course I get it, but watching him explain it is funny. He’s excited to get to this food truck.
‘Seriously,’ he continues. ‘Jovi is the coolest guy you’ll ever meet. Big guy with an accent I can’t place. It could be backwoods southern, who knows? What I do know is that Jovi is a burger genius.’
Ten minutes later, we pull up to a food truck, in an iffy part of the city lit by a super old streetlight flashing intermittently. Creepy, but the truck has LEDs around the top, so it’s less horror film and more amusing with a giant photo of who I assume is Jovi, the owner, drawn cartoon Bon Jovi style with a burger in his hand.
‘River!’ The man matching the cartoon on his truck greets him by name, just like River said he would. ‘Two dates tonight? You’re living the life, my man.’ He reaches out the window, and he and River fist bump one another.
‘Actually, neither is my date. I’m just entertaining two beautiful women.’ He waves a hand Jovi’s way. ‘This is Jovi, the proud owner of Bun Jovi, also known as the best burger truck in the world.’
‘Ha-ha! Yes! River is my best customer!’ Jovi says; the accent River previously mentioned is very prominent. ‘You know what… uh-oh,’ he says, checking his phone then nodding at River. ‘Tonight’s the night you become a man.’
‘Oh, really?’ River asks, raising his eyebrows.
‘The coronary express,’ Jovi says. ‘You promised next time, and this is the time, brother!’ He extends his fist to River, who, a little less enthusiastically, responds with another fist bump.
‘Shit,’ he says under his breath, not an ounce of the excitement Jovi has in his tone. ‘Was that this time?’
‘Wait!’ I say, stopping whatever weird deal is about to be made. ‘What is the coronary express? Drugs?’
River and Jovi both laugh, then Jovi leans out the food truck window, pointing at an item on the menu. ‘The coronary express, the one burger that promises heaven with how good it is, and hell if you finish it. It includes two pounds of beef, multiple kinds of cheese, smoked bacon, lettuce, tomato, ghost peppers, habaneros, and a sauce that’s recipe will be buried alongside me.’
I glance at River. ‘According to the menu, your upcoming death costs twenty-two bucks. Do you have a coupon?’
He chuckles, shaking his head. ‘Nope, but I made a promise,’ he says with a shrug. ‘I’m not a man who breaks his word. I gotta do it. I understand if you’d rather not see this side of me.’
‘We’re staying,’ Laney says gleefully, glancing at her sister with a smirk. ‘Dinner and a show, plus he’s paying. Why wouldn’t we stay?’
He confirms his order of the coronary express, and we girls get regular-sized burgers. Then we head to the patio furniture on a deck attached to the back of the truck. Laney and I sit beside one another, and River sits across from me.
‘This won’t even be the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done in front of people,’ River says.
‘Oh yeah?’ I ask, afraid to know what other promises he’s kept for people he has casual relationships with.
‘I entered a hotdog eating contest at the state fair when I was eighteen.’
‘How many wieners did ya swallow?’ Laney asks the question in the most perverted way possible, but River laughs.
‘Twenty-eight. In ten minutes.’
‘Wow!’ I say. ‘You are full of fun information tonight. With every moment we spend together, I wonder a little more why you’re single.’
‘He-he,’ he smirks. ‘It’s by choice,’ he says. ‘Mostly.’ His tone is less than thrilled with this fact. But I can’t imagine a woman turning him down for anything. He’s incredible to be around.
It takes two people to bring out our burgers, mainly because River’s requires an entire man to carry. They set the food in front of us, the staff back off, and Jovi chants for River. They’re going to cheer on his death. That’s cute.
‘Eat it. Eat it. Eat it.’
‘That’s what she said,’ I say under my breath, making him laugh.
‘Eat it!’ Laney hollers.
River looks at me nervously. ‘I can’t possibly not do it now. I’ve got fans.’
With his new fan club’s encouragement, River attempts his first bite but can’t even get his mouth around the thing. He does his best, and the crew and Laney cheer. He raises a fist into the air.
‘I got this!’ he says to his cheerleaders.
But after ten minutes, I can tell he doesn’t got this.
‘Someone distract me,’ he says, the meat sweats kicking in causing him to lift the bottom of his shirt and wipe the sweat from his brow. Laney and I glance to one another, both our eyes on his very chiseled abs.
‘Ai-yi-yi,’ Laney says, fanning herself while River isn’t looking. Thank God. How embarrassing would that be. Though she’s not wrong. River is beautiful in a very underwear model kind of way.
‘Let’s play a game,’ he suggests, his mind on his challenge rather than Laney and my ogling him while he sweats out an upcoming coronary.
‘Truth or dare!’ Laney exclaims. Of course. Her go-to game. No birthday party we went to as kids was complete without it. It’s how I had my first kiss.
‘Dare!’ River answers immediately, even though we haven’t established any rules. ‘You should know I’ve never turned down a dare, and considering I’m attempting to die via cheeseburger right now, please go easy on me.’
‘Never turned down a dare, huh?’ Laney asks. ‘What a man you are,’ she teases.
I raise my hand, and Laney and River look at me, confused. Slowly, I lower it realizing I’m not in the third grade with a question. ‘Sorry, that was nerdy. But I’ve got a dare. Sort of.’
‘Let’s hear it,’ he says between bites.
‘Tell us about the most out-there dare you’ve ever done?’
He wipes his hands on his napkin with a smile. ‘Let me think.’ He taps his forehead with each word, sipping his drink. ‘Got it. You ladies ready for this?’
Laney and I both nod. ‘Lay it on us, Evel Knievel.’
The smile creeping on the side of his face is cute.
‘I like that you were raised by parents who also kept the eighties alive. That Evel guy was straight nuts. This dare isn’t quite his level, but it has always stuck with me, and only three other people on this earth know.’
‘Oooh,’ I say, my soda cup in my hand. ‘Must be good if it’s a secret dare story.’
He nods, taking another bite of his burger. When he’s done chewing, he takes a deep breath and starts telling the tale of the man who does any dare.
‘About a month after Caitlin and I broke up, me and a buddy, Dax – you’ve met him – we decided to hike the Pacific Coast Trail. We’d been doing overnight weekend hikes for a few years to get into shape, so we weren’t novices or anything. We had good gear and experience. Hiking the full trail would’ve been too much, so we started in southern Oregon on the California border. The plan was to hike to the Washington border, then have my dad pick us up. It would take us a couple of weeks, but I’d hoped it would clear my head of all the shit I’d been through with my break-up. But all this trip did was add a new horror to my nightmares.’
‘I’m intrigued,’ I say, my chin resting in my hands. Laney seems into it, too, but she’s more focused on her food than I am.
‘As you should be,’ River teases, taking another bite of his burger. ‘About three days in, we were lying in our tent, side by side, trying to sleep, when we heard footsteps. We both lay there, wide awake, nudging one another with each new noise. It sounded like someone was circling our tent, crunching branches and leaves on the forest floor but never getting closer. It was unnerving. Eventually, Dax got up and attempted to sneak to the tent door. It took him a couple of seconds to psych himself up, but finally he did. He unzipped the door and blasted out with a spotlight in his hand.’ He pauses, working on his burger and keeping us in limbo for so long Laney can’t stand it.
‘And then?’ she says impatiently.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’ I ask.
‘Zilch.’ He holds his hand in an O. ‘There was nobody and nothing out there.’
‘But you heard something.’
‘We did,’ he confirms.
‘What do you think it was?’ I ask.
‘What the hell does this have to do with a dare?’ Laney talks over me.
‘I’m getting there,’ River says with a chuckle. Clearly, he wants to tell this story in a certain way. ‘It was for sure a dude because we found a trail of boot-prints over-stepping one another around our tent. He was circling us, just like we thought. As we hiked the next day, we concocted a plan in case it happened again. I would sneak out of the tent this time because I’m smaller, quicker, and probably quieter than giant Dax, so we agreed we’d try it.’
‘Did it happen again?’ I ask.
He nods. ‘Again, nothing.’
‘What?’ Laney’s voice is high-pitched. ‘You’re making this up.’
‘I’m not,’ River says. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die; it happened.’ He turns to the burger he’s only a quarter through, eating between sentences.
‘Continue talking,’ Laney orders.
‘Alright, bossy,’ River says as though she annoys him. ‘That next morning, Dax and I started fighting. Over nothing, really. We’d hardly slept two nights in a row, hiked all day, and were exhausted. We couldn’t understand what we had heard. No way could we be having the same dream. And how could there be actual footprints if nothing was there? We argued back and forth, like brothers, as we hiked. He blamed me for being heard exiting the tent, and I blamed him. He started mouthing off while walking in front of me, something about how maybe I could get out faster, but he’d have to protect me from whatever it was, so he might as well go first tonight. That pissed me off, so I reached down, grabbed a pebble, and chucked it at the back of his pack. Brotherly love style.’
Laney laughs. Yes, she’d for sure do this to me.
‘Only it didn’t hit his pack,’ he laughs. ‘It hit him in the side of the neck as he turned around to “apologize”, which, for the record, he never did. “If you think you’re so damn tough, I dare you to sleep outside the tent tonight.” Those were his words. Not exactly an apology. And I swear on everything – that dare almost got me killed.’
Both mine and Laney’s eyes go wide. ‘You did it?’ we ask in unison.
‘Of course I did it. It was a dare, and I’m a guy who needs cool stories to tell my future kids so I can pass this nonsense down through the generations.’
‘Perfect reasoning,’ I joke.
‘So, you lived to tell the tale. Nothing’s even happened yet,’ Laney says, clearly not impressed. ‘When’s this story get good?’
River shoots her a glare. ‘I’m getting there, Miss Impatience.’ He returns to his burger for a while, looking increasingly tired of it with each bite, but he’s halfway through.
‘Dax had what looked like a hickey on his neck for the rest of the trip, which gave me ammunition for endless jokes that he did not think were amusing. With every single step of that day’s hike, I prayed to the universe that there was a god, then prayed that we’d hiked far enough away from the original two spots and nothing would happen that night. I was bargaining with God, scared out of my mind that this “thing” would be some forest cannibal, just waiting to get us to the right place and then turn us into a stew he’d feed to his village of forest people.’
Laney points his way, but her eyes are on me. ‘He watches true crime!’
‘I watch horror; there’s a difference, as no one really dies.’
‘Technicality,’ she says, clearly not agreeing.
‘Anyway, Dax was bitching all day that I insisted on hiking at full speed, with few breaks, so we were really under one another’s skin at this point. Finally, at dusk, I chose a spot for our tent, and we set up camp. The fire was maybe five feet from the tent, facing the door, so if we heard this “person” getting close to me, I could jump up and shove him, her, or it, into the fire.’
‘Willingness to commit a homicide; mark that down as a red flag,’ Laney informs me nonchalantly.
River shakes his head, confirming he wouldn’t really. I hope.
‘Dax slept inside the tent, leaving the door unzipped in case he needed to flee. I set my sleeping bag just outside the door. It went tent, a foot of dirt, me, couple more feet of dirt, the fire, then pitch-black scary as fuck forest.’
‘Descriptions like a painting, got it,’ I say, genuinely able to visualize this entire scenario. The way he smiles at my reactions says he’s enjoying those as much as he is telling it. I have to say, he’s hooked me, quite possibly in more ways than one.
‘Something woke me just after I’d nodded off, and I jolted up, grabbing the spotlight and shining it around the outside of the tent. Dax woke too because apparently, I’d “screamed like a girl” and scared the fuck out of him. I remember exactly none of that, probably because I was trying to restart my heart before I died of fear. Once we realized nobody was there but us, we started to settle and just sat by the fire. I say sat, but really we kneeled there, ready to run for our fucking lives. Then it happened,’ he says, just like you would if telling a scary story around a campfire. ‘The sound of footsteps started—’ He stomps his feet on the deck below us for dramatics. ‘And no matter how I shined that damn spotlight, I couldn’t find a person.’
‘Bigfoot?’ Laney asks.
‘No,’ River says without hesitation. ‘Sticks were snapping, and leaves were crunching, and still nothing. We stood back to back, each with a spotlight in one hand and our hiking hatchets in the other, looking for where these footsteps were coming from. How could we hear them and not see anything? My fight or flight senses were on high, and bravely I ventured away from Dax a bit, yelling for whoever was messing with us to “stop being cowards and show themselves!” We must have stood there for ten minutes, saying absolutely nothing, just listening for a response from something we couldn’t see but could hear.’
‘This is straight nuts,’ I tell him. ‘I would have died of fright.’
‘Right when we’d convinced ourselves we were losing our minds, at the same time, somehow, something hit me in the shoulder blade. I spun to face Dax. “Did you just throw shit at me?” I hollered. “Did you just toss another rock?” he roared back. “If this is your idea of a joke, I will kill you, Riv,” Dax threatened, but I knew he didn’t mean it. Remember, we’re exhausted and scared out of our minds in the middle of a dark forest where no one else should be,’ River explains.
