Infinity + One (11 page)

“There’s a big difference between saying it like it is and telling all there is to tell!”

“You’re probably right.” I nodded. “I’ve always been . . . blunt, but something happened to me when I let go on the bridge,” I explained softly. “My give-a-damn broke. I don’t care anymore. I just don’t. I’m not afraid. I’m not feeling suicidal, but I don’t give a rat’s ass. Does that make any sense?”

Finn nodded. “Yeah. It does. I’ve been there myself. But I just fixed my give-a-damn, unfortunately. So you need to have a little respect and show a little restraint. Deal?”

“Okay.” I sighed. “Tell it like it is, but only in doses Clyde can handle. Got it.”

“Thank you,” he said sarcastically.

I resolved to freeze him out and didn’t say another word, staring out the window, composing song lyrics in my head so I wouldn’t go crazy.

Finn sighed again. “Why do you call him Bear?” he asked, all but admitting he had been thinking about what I’d said for the last twenty minutes.

“He says he got the nickname because he’s big, black, and cranky. His mama even calls him Bear. He’s a forty-five-year-old, divorced father of two. He’s actually a grandpa. But I love him, and I thought if I could have my first time be with someone I loved, someone I trusted, than I would be safe while getting it over with.”

“He didn’t take you up on it, I hope.”

“No. He didn’t. He said that was the most disgusting thing he’d ever heard, and he was going to wash my mouth out with soap, tell my Gran, and let her do her worst. And she would have too. He said I was like a daughter to him. A scrawny, white daughter to boot. His words, not mine. He said I shouldn’t feel bad, but he didn’t find me attractive. At all.”

“Nice.” Finn was smiling a little now.

“Yeah. Really boosted my ego. So, I was hurt and more confused than ever, and I managed to hook up with a rising star who’d had one decent hit and was looking for more air time and a little one-on-one time with someone who could boost his celebrity status. Enter Bonnie Rae Desperate. And it was awful. And humiliating. And I realized something then. I’d been lied to. I’d been singing, and dreaming, and writing songs about something that was a big, fat lie. So I convinced myself that surely it must get better, otherwise, why would everyone do it? So I endured it a few more times. It didn’t get any better.”

Finn was tense again, listening, probably wondering where I was going with this confession. He fiddled with the radio when I didn’t continue and then flipped it off with finality. I was waiting him out again. He was going to have to ask for the juicy tidbits after his lecture on saying it like it is versus telling it all.

“And the point to that very personal story was?” he prodded finally.

“When you kissed me, Clyde? I felt more in that one, pissed-off kiss than I felt in those three or four attempts at making love. And I realized it wasn’t a lie, after all. That was the best kiss I’ve ever had. By far. So tell me what I have to do to earn another one, because embarrassingly enough, I always seem to be the girl begging for affection, and even with a broken give-a-damn, I don’t know how much more humiliation I can take.”

“That kiss didn’t mean a damn thing, Bonnie Rae. I kissed you so I wouldn’t kill you. That’s all. There won’t be another one, because the next time I want to kill you, I’ll just drive away without you.”

I would have been hurt, but Finn Clyde was blushing and that just made me like him more. For someone so big, bad, long-haired, and tattooed, he was remarkably uptight. I put my boots up on his dashboard and started to laugh. I liked this new feeling. When you stopped caring, things got very interesting and a whole helluva lot easier. Finn flipped the radio back on, and I sang along loudly, feeling lighter than I’d felt in a very long time.

THE SNOW THAT had started falling that morning continued in fits and starts as we crossed into Ohio and beyond. We moved slowly through patches of rough into patches that seemed untouched by the storm. Not knowing what was coming was part of the adventure, and neither of us were particularly worried at that moment about the world outside of the vehicle. It definitely wasn’t blizzard conditions yet, and the old Blazer hummed along, windshield wipers flying. But as day descended into night, the snow that was on the ground was caught up in high winds, and it was almost impossible to tell what was coming down, what was going up, and which way was what in the dizzying swirl.

“Let’s get off at the next exit. I think we should stop for the night. It’s getting bad,” Finn said.

I tried to make out what services were available on the large green road sign, but it was covered in a fine layer of snow and what little was visible was obscured by the flakes sticking to the passenger side window.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“We’re somewhere between Cleveland and Columbus. I can’t tell you much more than that.” Clyde slowed to a crawl, not wanting to miss the exit. We inched along that way for several miles and had almost decided we’d missed it when I spotted the exit marker.

“There’s an exit!”

Even at the crawling speed, the fat, black tires on the Blazer were no match for freezing sleet and snow and roads that had not been cleared, and the Blazer fishtailed as we descended the off-ramp. I squeezed my eyes shut and crossed my fingers, a habit from childhood that I still fell back on when a situation required luck or divine intervention.

“Try clicking your heels together in those boots, too,” Clyde teased, but his eyes were clinging to the barely visible road in front of him, and both of his hands were on the wheel as the tires finally found purchase, and the slide down the off-ramp was halted.

In those few, nervous moments, when our attention was on the ice and the snow, maybe we missed a sign or a landmark, or maybe we should have gone left off the exit instead of right, but regardless, as we inched along the road, heading with hope and little else, we definitely missed a vital piece of information that would have saved us from what came next.

The blinding white was relentless, and we may as well have been in outer Siberia for all the luck we were having finding signs of life. There weren’t even any other cars traversing the road in either direction.

“I’m going to turn around. There’s nothing here.” Finn eased the Chevy around and headed back in the direction we had come, retracing the path we’d just created.

“We’ll just get back on the freeway and drive until we hit the next town. We can’t be too far from Columbus.” Clyde said. But as we neared the point where the on-ramp should be, the visibility was so poor we ended up missing it and turning around for a re-attempt. I even rolled down my window and stuck my head out, getting a face full of frosty flakes, as I searched for the freeway entrance.

“Is that it?” I peered doubtfully at the looming underpass, and Finn tried to take the right onto the on-ramp a half second too late. The Blazer swung in a complete circle, moving sideways as it spun, sending us hurtling in the opposite direction, snow flying into the cab through my still-open window. Without warning, we were off the road, back tires wedged into a snow bank, front tires spinning uselessly against the ice and the steadily falling snow. Clyde jumped out and tried to push us free, rocking the vehicle as I matched his motion on the gas pedal.

But we were stuck.

The back wheels, all the way up to the bumper, were buried, the snow several feet deep where we’d come to a stop. We couldn’t get the traction we needed to get back on the road. I climbed into the passenger seat as Clyde tumbled back into the Blazer, his boots soaked, his pants wet to above his knees, and his hands red and raw. He pulled out his old cell phone and, with frozen fingers, called his insurance company to send out some roadside assistance. An automated voice told Clyde it was “very sorry, but could he please hold?” Clyde held on for fifteen minutes until his phone started bleeping pathetically and died in his palm, at which point I started apologizing for acting like a spoiled baby and throwing Gran’s phone out the window when we really could have used it.

“I’ve got a charger. We’ll just sit tight, I’ll get warm, and I’ll try again in a few minutes.”

The problem was, when he tried again and finally got through to a real, live operator, he couldn’t tell them where we were. He did the best he could, giving them the last sign he’d seen off I-71, but I didn’t think it would help much, especially in the whiteout conditions. The operator promised to get a tow truck sent out in our general direction, promising that they would find us, which, comforting as the words were to hear, was a lie.

We waited for two hours, heat blazing in the marooned Chevy before I had to vacate the warmth of the cab for an embarrassing bathroom break behind the bumper, where my bare butt got an icy bath, and I accidentally peed on my red boots. I made sure to bury the yellow snow, mortified at the thought of Finn seeing where I’d marked my territory. Clyde took his turn next, and then we were both back in the Blazer with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no hope for rescue, at least until the snow stopped falling or morning came, when we could walk a ways and get a better idea of our location so help could be sent.

Clyde worried about the amount of gas we had left, just in case we had to make it through the night before someone found us.

“It’s midnight. I figure it will get light about six or seven, right? We can’t just run the Blazer all night.” He paused as if he didn’t quite know what to say next. He ran his hand down his face, and I suddenly felt like laughing from sheer helplessness. I bit my lip hard, the inappropriate giggle perched at the back of my throat just waiting to jump out. I really was crazy.

"I have a sleeping bag and two pillows, plus those three old blankets. It’s going to get cold when we turn off the Blazer.” Finn stopped again, as if he were uncomfortable, and the giggle escaped through my clenched lips.

“Are you laughing?”

“No.”

“You are. Here I am feeling like a dirty old man because I’m about to suggest that we make a bed and cuddle up to keep warm, and you are laughing.”

“You were going to suggest we . . . cuddle?” My shock immediately cured the giggling problem.

Finn ran both hands over his face, scrubbing at it like he wanted to erase what he’d just said.

“Okay,” I said in a tiny voice. He looked at me in surprise, and I couldn’t help it. I smiled. A big, wide, you-are-my-sunshine smile.

“You do realize we’re in trouble here, right?” Finn shook his head like he doubted my sense, but a smile teetered around the corners of his mouth. “This isn’t a slumber party with your girlfriends and trips to the fridge for snacks.”

“Hey, Clyde?”

“Yeah, Bonnie?”

“You will have officially slept with Bonnie Rae Shelby after tonight. You aren’t going to ask me to sign an autograph, are you? Maybe sign your hiney in permanent marker so you can take a picture and sell it to
US Weekly
?”

“Got a little ego, there, huh?”

I dove over the seat into the back, laughing. “Dibs on the pillow with a pillow case!”

Within ten minutes, we had rearranged Finn’s boxes and our gear between the front seat and cargo area so we could lay the middle seat flat, making it approximately the size of a double bed, an extremely handy feature of the 1972 Chevy Blazer. At least, I thought so. Clyde said it wasn’t a “handy feature,” it was a broken seat, but I thought it was awesome.

We laid the sleeping bag down, topped it with the two pillows, and then shucked our wet shoes, pulled on several pairs of socks each, donned our coats and beanies, and then Finn turned off the Blazer. He didn’t want to open the door and let in the cold, so he crawled over the seat too. Six foot two didn’t fold down very small, but he made it, and then lay down next to me, pulling the layered blankets up and around us.

There was a little adjusting and wiggling until we each found a position we could live with—or sleep with—which ended up being my back to Finn’s chest, a pillow clutched in my arms, and my head on Finn’s left bicep. We lay there quietly, trying to find comfort in an awkward situation. My mind raced but Finn seemed content to let the silence win, and his breath above my head was slow and steady, his weight against my back pleasantly heavy but distracting in a way that made sleep difficult, and the detail that had been demanding introspection all day took center stage.