Nineteen, page 11
“I haven’t. I won’t.”
Her eyes are in mine; searching. Trying to plant seeds in my brain that won’t just stick – they have to thrive. “I know what infatuation feels like. It’s addicting and it’s okay, you’re allowed to feel it, but you gotta be careful, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“I mean it.”
I cross the distance between us, pulling her into a tight embrace. She hesitates before wrapping her arms around my waist because she knows this is goodbye. I’m listening, I’m hearing her, but I’m not heeding the warnings and there’s nothing she can do about that. That’s the agony of being a parent, I think. You can give your kids everything you’ve got, backed by years of experience, but in the end they’re going to do what they’re going to do. No matter how fuckin’ stupid you might think it is.
“I hear you, Mama,” I tell her gently.
She squeezes me once, hard. She presses her heart inside my chest to send it with me when I go. She leaves a piece of herself inside me; tender and anxious.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Seven hours and thirty-two minutes later, I pull up in front of Brooklyn’s house in Ohio. It’s a 1970’s two-story with red and brown brick on the bottom and cream paint on top. It’s full of windows facing the street over a well-manicured lawn while a two-car garage sits squat on the left at the end a driveway crowded by three garbage cans and two large recycling.
Big family, big needs.
I expected to find the driveway full of cars, but the place looks deserted.
When I knock, Brooklyn opens the door, her face full of surprise. “Holy shit, you’re actually here.”
“You didn’t think I’d come,” I chuckle.
“Are we being serious?”
“Why not?”
“No. I wasn’t sure.”
“I thought you knew everything. You didn’t see this coming?”
She smirks, shoving the door open wide to let me in. “I said I knew a lot of things. I never said everything.”
It feels good to surprise her. She’s so all-knowing, it starts to feel like you’re following a script she wrote in her head instead of your own desires. You wonder if you’re as interesting as you actually think you are, because how can you be if someone can predict your every move the way she does?
“I like your house,” I comment.
“Thanks. It’s empty. No one is home.”
It feels like a weird thing to say. Like she’s giving me the all-clear to commit some crime I came here to be part of, only I have no clue what that crime is.
“Where is everyone?” I ask.
She leads me toward the kitchen. She’s still wearing pajamas, her feet bare on the worn wood floors. “The pool. Work. A friend’s house.”
“Do they know you’re leaving?”
“I said goodbye this morning.”
“That sucks. I was hoping I’d meet some part of our family.”
“You will. Someday.”
“Do they know you’re leaving with me?”
Brooklyn laughs, grabbing two waters out of the fridge. She hands me one, our fingers brushing briefly. “Yeah, of course they know. I’m not going to take off with some guy to drive across the country and not tell them.”
“It just feels weird. Like I’m kidnapping you.”
She snorts. “I’ll be sure to put up a fight and leave plenty of DNA evidence.”
“Great. Cover the bases.”
“Seriously, though, I’m supposed to take a picture of your license plate and text it to my dad before we go.”
“Smart.”
“And your driver’s license.”
“Damn,” I laugh. “He’s thorough.”
“He’s a cop.”
My heart slams in my chest. “Wait, what? Seriously?”
“I never told you that?”
“You know you didn’t tell me that.”
“Oh. Well, sorry. He’s a cop. Be careful and all that shit,” she mutters, wandering toward the hall.
I’m not sure if I’m supposed to follow her or not. It feels like following her is a step toward committing that crime I can taste in the air, and now that I know her dad is a cop, I’m not so much as littering within a hundred yards of his house.
“Let me get my bag and we’ll go,” she shouts from the end of the hall.
“Sounds good.”
“Have you had dinner?”
I wander toward the wall by the door. The one covered in family photos. “No. Have you?”
“No, and I’m starving. There’s this place in town, it’s a food truck kind of thing, only there’s like thirty trucks parked there. The food is amazing and you can get just about anything.”
“Let’s go there.”
“I wasn’t sure if you were in a rush and wanted to get Burger King or something.”
A photo of Brooklyn when she was younger, probably fifteen, catches my eye. She’s at Disneyworld with her whole family, a pair of mouse ears on her head. A huge smile on her lips. She looks happy. Like really happy, not just passingly amused.
She’s joyful.
“No,” I call back, distracted by the light in her eyes. “I’d rather eat something good than something fast.”
The sound of wheels on the hardwood pulls me away from her picture. She’s rolling a small black suitcase down the hall, a big purse on her shoulder. An easy grin on her lips.
I’ve never wanted to kiss her more than I do right then. It hits me hard out of nowhere. I can see myself grabbing her around the waist, pulling her close, and pressing my lips against hers. I can almost taste her. I can hear her gasp. Then giggle. She’d sigh against me, pulling me to her with all her strength. We’d stumble back down the hall, toward her bedroom.
The house is empty, she said. No one is home.
I clear my throat roughly. “You ready to get out of here?”
“Ready when you are,” she replies brightly.
I open the door for her, following closely behind. She doesn’t bother locking it. It’s that kind of neighborhood. The good kind.
Brooklyn freezes on the porch when she spots my canary yellow H2 Hummer in her driveway.
“That’s your car?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“What?” I laugh. “Are you serious? You don’t like it?”
“Do you?”
“I love that car. I fought my parents to buy that car.”
“I know you feel like you won because you got it, but you lost, Butler. You lost so, so hard.”
I grab her bag, carrying it instead of using the wheels. “Whatever. You’ll love her by the end of the trip.”
“Is it a diesel?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re bringing a diesel to Eugene, Oregon? The green, granola, recycling capital of the United States. That feels like a good idea to you?”
“I’ll have a car to visit you in. That feels like a great idea.”
She laughs, shaking her head as he walks around the H2 slowly. “No. No, no, no. Don’t put this evil on me. This is— Butler! It looks like a deranged school bus from the back!”
“Quit hating and get in.”
It takes Brooklyn a second to climb up into the Hummer. She makes a show of it, so I don’t offer to help her. It makes the car look horrible if it’s hard to get into and that makes her happy.
“It’s fancy” she comments once she’s in. She lays her upper body over the large center console to see into my space. “How many miles per gallon does it get? Three? Four?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tracked it.”
“I’m looking it up.”
“Don’t.”
“Too late.” Her phone is in her hands, her fingers darting across the keyboard. “What year is it?”
“2005.”
“Two-thousand-and-five,” she mutters to herself. She laughs in amazement. “Are you kidding me?!”
I start the engine. It roars to gas guzzling life like a wild, angry, very hungry animal. “How bad?”
“Ten miles per gallon!”
“That sounds about right,” I admit, pulling us slowly out of her driveway.
She pulls the seatbelt across her chest slowly. “How did you afford this? It’s not a good car but it isn’t cheap either.”
“I didn’t pay full price.”
“No shit.”
“We were hit by a really bad storm when I was sixteen. There was a lot of flooding. This thing was in the low lands, totally submerged in water.”
“Are they meant to do that?”
“An H1 maybe, but not this model. Not as deep as it went. Or for as long. When the water went down the interior was all messed up. The engine was okay but the electrical was almost wrecked. The title was listed as totaled. I got it at a salvage yard selling it for parts.”
“And you had it all fixed?”
I wobble my hand back and forth. “Yes and no.”
“What does that mean?”
“We fixed the interior. We tried with the electrical but it’s spotty sometimes.”
“How spotty?”
“I’ve had dash fires.”
Brooklyn scoffs. “Are you serious?”
“Small ones. They go out on their own if you turn the engine off. The door locks act up too. You can’t always get them to lock. Or unlock. And the windows don’t always open. Sometimes the speedometer goes crazy. The mileage is completely wrong. The heat doesn’t always work.”
“Can it make it to Oregon?”
“Oh, yeah. The engine is sound. We’re safe.”
“I don’t consider a car that sometimes catches on fire, safe.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“Oh my God,” she whispers in amazement.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I’ve always been aware that Brooklyn is smart. You know it within the first five minutes of meeting her. She talks about complex scientific theory like it’s Fraggle Rock and she does math in her head faster than I can type it into a calculator. I don’t always understand what she’s telling me, but I love to listen.
My favorite, though, is when she’s dismantling a kid’s movie.
My girl’s got opinions on everything.
“This guy, this priest,” Brooklyn emphasizes heavily, “is singing songs about how bad he wants to bone this gypsy chick, and he says, I shit you not, that if he can’t have her, then she’ll burn. Like he will have her burned at the stake because he’s so entranced by her, she has to be a witch.”
“I get it. I’ve been there.”
“Shut up. So, if this holy as hell man wants to throw his entire ideology aside just to dip his withered old wick into her fresh ink, it has to be either divine right—”
“Meanin’ God wants him to fuck her?”
“Yes, or she’s a witch sent to test him by the Devil, and he’ll only really know if that’s the case after he’s had his way with her.”
“That’s logical.”
“Is it though?”
“It is if you’re a guy, but this isn’t Disney. You’re full of shit.”
“I wish I was,” she laments. “Look it up. Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
“I think you mean dame,” I correct her, just to be a dick.
“Don’t do that. I mean it. I like you too much for you to be stupid.”
I laugh. “I like how angry it makes you.”
“So angry.”
“Burned at the stake for being a woman angry?”
“My God! What were they thinking, you know?”
“I don’t know. I’m still processin’ the original version of Sleeping Beauty.”
“To be fair,” she clarifies, “Disney made a PG version of the story. Charles Perrault is responsible for the rape and shit.”
“Well, fuck that guy.”
“Right?”
I rub my face roughly. I’m getting tired. My eyes are starting to burn. I’ll need to pull over soon to sleep but for now we’re in a groove and I want to ride it out for as long as I can. I like the empty highway and the dark and her voice in the car filling it with anger and laughter.
“Give me another one,” I demand.
She looks at me sideways, smiling in the low light of the dash. “You aren’t sick of me ruining your childhood for you yet?”
“Never. It was shit to start with, remember?”
“Right. I forgot.”
“Another,” I remind her greedily.
“Okay, okay,” she laughs. “Let me think.”
We’re quiet for a while. Too long. My mind starts to drift. My eyes start to droop.
“Oh!” she says excitedly.
I clear my throat, adjusting my grip on the steering wheel. “You got one?”
“Have you ever seen Pinocchio?”
“No.”
“Okay. Good. So, he’s a puppet and he comes to life as a wooden boy and his dad sends him to school and tells him to go straight there. That’s it. No detours. Of course, the little shit detours. He joins some carnival act and gets kidnapped and the Blue Fairy sets him free and tells him to stop lying and being an asshole. Go home. Be good. I’m not saving you again. On the way home to redemption, he’s tempted again and decides that he’s stressed after one day of life and he deserves a vacation on Pleasure Island, or something like that.”
“Isn’t that a TV dating show?”
“Yes. It’s gross but really good. Anyway, different island. This one is full of beer and cigars and gambling. Pinocchio does all of it, only to be turned halfway into a donkey about to be sold for slave labor.”
“What the fuck?” I chuckle. “This is Disney? How is he drinking and smoking?”
“It’s old school Disney. Like, biblical Disney.”
“Sodom and Gomora Disney.”
“Exactly! The moral of the story is, Pinocchio suuuuuucked. His dad goes looking for him while he’s out living that rock star lifestyle and gets swallowed by a whale. And then Pinocchio intentionally gets swallowed by the same whale—”
“How would he know which whale?”
“—and ends up making it sneeze, thereby saving everyone, including himself. And then the spineless Blue Fairy comes in and is all, ‘What a selfless little boy you’ve been. I grant you life with skin and organs and all that mess.’ So he breaks all the rules, endangers everyone who loved him, and gets rewarded for it. It’s dumb.”
“Jesus,” I mutter.
“I know. It’s the worst.”
“I don’t know. I think Sleeping Beauty was worse.”
“Probably. Yeah.”
I yawn loudly. “Alright. Tell me another one.”
Brooklyn looks doubtful. “I’m tired, Butler. You are too. We need to find a hotel.”
“You’re probably right.”
We pull over at the next exit. There’s a sign for a Motel 6 just off the highway. There’s an IHOP next door and that’s all it takes to sell me on staying here. I don’t care how much they charge. I want waffles in the morning.
I point it out to Brooklyn as we drive by.
She scowls. “International House of Indigestion,” she mumbles angrily.
“I bet they have a good fruit plate.”
“Eat shit.”
I park at the motel, killing the engine. The H2 pings and hums angrily for a second before finally settling down. Brooklyn looks worried but I wave away her concern.
“She’s fine,” I promise.
“She sounds it.”
“It’s normal.”
“It’s not, though, Butler.”
“It’s normal for her. Leave her alone. She gets self-conscious.”
“Well, not to hurt her feelings,” Brooklyn whispers loudly, “but I can’t wait to get out of her. My ass is killing me. These seats suck.”
She grabs her door handle, pulling it hard.
It doesn’t budge.
“Did you lock it?” she asks.
“No.”
“Well, whatever. Unlock it.”
I hit the button.
Nothing happens.
“Shit.”
Brooklyn frowns. “What’s wrong? Why won’t the doors open?”
“Uh, the locks are—”
“No.”
“Yeah. They’re not working.”
“You mean we’re trapped in this thing?”
“For now.”
She looks around nervously. “Are you kidding me? There’s no way out? Not even out the back doors?”
“They’re locked too. The whole thing is locked.”
“What about the windows?”
I try mine. The window goes down half an inch before it stops. It won’t go back up.
That button is dead now too.
“They aren’t working either,” I tell her.
“We could go out—” she looks up, shaking her head. “There’s no sunroof.”
“Nope.”
“Has this happened before?”
“Once or twice.”
“How did you get out?”
“I waited. Everything started working again eventually. Sometimes it overheats and it needs time to cool down.”
“How long do we have to wait?”
“Probably a couple hours at least.”
She hits my arm hard. “Butler!”
“What?” I laugh. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“We have to sit here for two hours until this beast decides to let us out?”
“Maybe longer. We’ve been driving a long time. Everything’s probably pretty hot.”
“Ugh!” She falls back against her seat. “This finicky bitch.”
“Shhh. She can hear you.”
“Fuck her!” Brooklyn shouts.
I shake my head. “We’ll probably have to wait three hours now that you’re being mean.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I make room for Brooklyn to sleep on the bench seat in the back. It’ll be more comfortable for her to lay all the way down and I wouldn’t fit even if I was willing to take it from her. I’m better off stretching my legs out under the dash, the driver’s seat fully reclined. Her feet are somewhere under my head. She shifts now and then, kicking my seat on accident.
“Sorry,” she whispers for the third time.
I smile into the dark. “It’s okay.”
“You’re still awake?”
