Bend (21 page)

So this is the one she got. And I get to have an anxiety attack at work every time paramedics call in a Code 3 and it’s a young female crash victim.

It’s not that Mia is a bad driver. She’s not—though she’s quick to defend herself by pointing out that she’s never been in an accident, which to me is like saying there’s nothing wrong with smoking because you’ve never had cancer. No, the problem is she’s an aggressive driver. In her world, a yellow light means punch it, turn signals are for sissies, and speed limits are mere guidelines.

As I’m making the slight turn onto the freeway on-ramp, Mia asks me about my shift yesterday, and I share the most interesting parts, including the wanted-to-says, of which there were several. We talk about that for a while, and then she goes back to looking at her phone while I follow the thankfully steady flow of traffic.

At least this part of our relationship hasn’t changed. Talking about work is something we do a lot, I realize, but it’s not usually something we get emotional over. The toddler drowning case got to me, yeah, which happens now and then. But I never let it drag me down. I couldn’t do this job if I allowed that. Life is filled with heartache, tragedy, and cruelty. It’s shit piled on top of shit. I’ve learned, through necessity, how to cope.

Mia, though. She’s another story completely. Her breakdown a couple of weeks ago caught me completely off guard, and I’ve been trying to figure out how she’s dealing with it. She seems like she’s okay. Not that that means anything. You can never truly know what’s going on inside another person’s head, can you?

Why did she decide to attend that patient’s stillbirth? A patient who wasn’t even
her
patient, and Mia chose to spend her own time to stay by that woman’s side through such a god-awful ordeal. I was—and still am—surprised and confused by it.

Mia doesn’t like to step out of her comfort zone. It’d be pretty easy and fitting to call her privileged, sheltered, even kind of innocent. Not innocent in a way that makes her clueless about the uglier sides of life. More like an innocence based on lack of experience. She knows the shit exists. She just doesn’t have any idea what it’s like to be buried up to the neck in it.

I don’t begrudge her that naiveté. Mia wouldn’t be Mia if she hadn’t grown up secure in the bosom of her picture-perfect family, with her successful and loving parents, who gave their kids everything children need—and also a whole lot of what they strictly speaking don’t. Such as enough college savings to pay for each of the three siblings’ entire educations. Buying this car was the first time Mia took on any kind of debt.

Maybe I am just a little bitter about that. I’d love to be in that position, trying to build a career while owing nothing to anybody. She’s got a pretty sweet deal going there.

I’m pretty sure Fuckface cheating on her was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to Mia. Which either says a lot about how little experience she has with shit, because that asshole just wasn’t a great loss, to either of us. Or it shows how hung up she was on him.

How hung up she still is.

I glance sideways to see what she’s doing and find her with her hands and phone limp in her lap, her head lolled up against the car door. Wow. That looks seriously uncomfortable, but she’s out. Guess she wasn’t joking about being tired.

I alternate between keeping an eye on the road and looking at her. Sleeping with her lips slightly parted, she draws shallow breaths in through her mouth, her expression smooth and serene.

Beautiful Mia. Sharp-witted Mia. Passionate Mia.

Unspoiled Mia. That fits, too—and maybe that’s why I can’t make myself reveal the uglier parts of my past.

Because the shit? I don’t want it to touch her. I want her to stay just the way she is.

My Mia.
In this moment, at least, I can call her that.

We’ve left the seemingly endless clusters of suburban housing developments and strip malls behind when Mia awakens, her head jerking upright. Straightening herself in the seat, she blinks out the window at the passing landscape.

If she’s trying to figure out where we’re at, good luck to her. Lining the road on either side are hills covered in light-brown dirt and dry, yellow grass and dotted with bushes and low trees, and this is pretty much going to be our view for the next few hours. The I-5 is not the scenic route.

She taps the power button on her phone and turns it off again right away, clearly checking the time. “Wow. Didn’t think I’d actually fall asleep.”

I throw a glance at her. She’s yawning and stretching, arms raised, her slender body arched away from the seat back. I turn the music down a bit and ask, “Late night?”

“Yeah, kinda.” From the corner of my eye I see her push her sunglasses up on her head, flip down the sun visor, and check her face in the mirror. “I went to a party at Angela’s.”

Who? I take my eyes off the road for a second to frown questioningly at her.

“Angela from work?” she clarifies while nudging the visor back into place.

Oh, yeah. Now I remember. Tightening my grip on the wheel, tilting it slightly to steer us through a curve, I state flatly, “The one who knows about us. And wanted to meet me?”

Mia is quiet for a second. Then she says with briskness that sounds kind of forced, “Right.”

Not for the first time I’m wondering why I agreed to go on this trip. I got a bad feeling about it the minute she mentioned it that night two weeks ago, and this reminder of her inability to control her mouth isn’t doing much to diminish my foreboding.

“Does Angela have a lot of Thursday night parties?” I ask just to keep the conversation going. If I made a Venn diagram with one circle representing this woman I’ve never met and the other circle being how much I care about her, the only thing filling the overlapping area would be exactly what Mia has told her friend about me. Finding that out might be interesting. But I’m probably better off not knowing.

“It was a home sale thing,” Mia explains, reaching for the water bottle in my cup holder. “Like Tupperware?”

Uh. What? I shoot her a look. “You went to a Tupperware party?”

Unscrewing the bottle cap, she says, “No, it was a Secrets party.”

“Which is?”

She tips her head back, her throat working as she swallows several mouthfuls of water. When she’s done, she holds the opened bottle out to me and replies, “Sex toys.”

What the…? I freeze in the middle of accepting the bottle from her. Alternating between watching the road and gaping at her, I ask, “Seriously? That’s a thing?”

She waves the bottle at me, and I grab it from her. As I gulp down some water, it occurs to me that this sharing drinks thing is new. I guess that’s expected to be okay when you’re swapping other body fluids on a regular basis?

“It was actually a lot of fun,” she says as I hand the bottle back to her. “Food, drinks, and games. Their slogan is ‘The Ultimate Girls’ Night In.’”

Wow. The things women do. I let out a disbelieving laugh. “So you go to this party, and there’s a lady there who sells you sex toys?”

“She had other stuff, too.” Putting the water back in the cup holder, Mia unbuckles her seat belt and starts shrugging out of her jacket. “Like creams and lubes, beauty products, and lingerie. But, yeah.”

My mind. It’s boggled. “And you actually bought something?”

“It’s kind of expected. If I wasn’t interested in buying, I wouldn’t have gone.” Tossing her jacket into the backseat, she tugs the seat belt back down, snapping it into the buckle.

I give her another look. She gives me a shit-eating grin, her pretty green eyes crinkling mischievously.

Feeling compelled by some involuntary curiosity, I ask, “What did you buy?”

“Well.” She stretches the word out just as she’s doing the same to her long, slim legs. “Picking stuff out of the catalog felt like too much work, so I just went with what she had in stock with her. Something called a Survival Kit. I didn’t look too closely at what was in it.”

Typical Mia. Oh, of course she’ll buy some sex toys. Doesn’t matter what kind. She’ll find a use for it regardless.

Jesus.

And then I’m lost. It’s like my brain short-circuits, and all I can do is picture Mia using those toys to get herself off. The mental images won’t stop. It’s like
click, click, click
—a high-speed series of snapshots of her masturbating, all of them dirty and sexy and such a goddamn turn-on. My dick springs to life, starts growing hard.

“What?” Her voice is part chuckle, part challenge, so I guess my thoughts are showing on my face.

I shake my head slowly. Give a small cough. No way am I sharing what’s on my mind, so I say, “Could you imagine if guys had parties like that? Women would think it was disgusting.”

She lets out a snort-laugh. “Gender inequality is a bitch, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but women complain about it a lot more.” As I come up on an old, beat-up Toyota Camry going way too slow, I signal to move into the left lane so I can pass it. Driving with an erection is kind of uncomfortable, and I’m resisting the urge to reach down and tug on my shorts.

“Oh, give me a break.” Mia doesn’t sound amused anymore. “Tell you what: if you want to host a party for your buddies, I’m more than happy to get Rachel the Secrets lady’s contact info from Angela for you.”

Rolling my eyes, I let that go without comment. My thoughts refuse to be redirected, though. I’m picturing a group of women gathered in a living room, nice-smelling women, dressed up and made-up, because their appearance is just as much about impressing each other as it is for men, right? I see brightly painted nails wrapped around colorful cocktails. And a lot of giggling as they pass around the goods. Most of it phallic-shaped and battery-powered.

Jesus Christ.

“You played games?” I ask because I’m a fucking idiot and just can’t help myself. “Like what?”

She’s silent for a moment, and I sneak a peek at her. Her head is tilted back against the headrest, and she’s squinting into the air, like she’s conjuring memories.

“First we introduced ourselves by saying our names,” she starts, “and how old we were when we lost our virginity…”

I shift in my seat. Glance at the speedometer, making sure my distraction’s not giving me a lead foot.

“Then a little later we all made a list of the different locations where we’ve had sex, and the person with the longest list won this little tube of flavored lube.”

Yup. That’s it. It’s not safe for me to stay in the fast lane anymore. I signal and turn back into the right lane, setting cruise control while I’m at a good distance from the car in front of us. There are dark clouds up ahead, looming over the hills in the distance. Looks like we’re going to run into some nasty weather soon.

“Did you win?” I ask, trying to sound casual, disinterested. Probably failing.

“Didn’t even come close. I think I was the second youngest guest, so it wasn’t really fair, though.”

I swallow hard. Stare at her longer than I should while in control of this little bullet of a car. Telling her with my eyes that it would be my privilege to help her make her list longer. Was a car on there? It should be. Not this one, though. Something roomier. Parked someplace private.

Leaning on the headrest and watching me, the playfulness gone from her expression, she says, “At the end of the night we did this game where we were all supposed to anonymously write down our dirtiest fantasy on a piece of paper, and then Rachel read them aloud, and we all had to guess whose fantasy it was.”

I hesitate. My mouth feels dry. There’s a pulsing in my groin that’s absolutely impossible to ignore. “What did you write on yours?”

With half an eye on the road, I see her flash a tiny smile, looking almost embarrassed as she answers, “Double penetration.”

Say what?
Air whooshes from my lungs. She’s messing with me, right? “As in a threesome?” I ask incredulously.

Heaving a big sigh, she puts her elbow on the ledge by her window and rests her head in her hand, staring out the windshield. “See, that’s the part I don’t know about. Two guys at once kind of seems like too much work. I’m not the best at multitasking.”

What the hell? I just blink and say nothing, focused on keeping the car on the road. She sounds one hundred percent serious.