Andrew catches my eye briefly and his smile dissolves, leaving his expression standard. “He told me that a real fighter never cries, never lets the weight of any blow bring him down. Except that final blow, the inevitable one, but even then they always go out like men.”
I’m no longer smiling, either. I can’t tell exactly what’s going on in Andrew’s head right now, but we share the same sober mood. I want to ask him if he’s OK, because it’s obvious that he’s not, but the timing doesn’t feel right. It feels weird because I don’t know him well enough to be digging around inside of his emotions.
I say nothing.
“You must think I’m a dick,” he says.
I blink, surprised. “No,” I answer. “Why do you say that?”
He backs off immediately and downplays the seriousness of his own question, letting that devastating smile slip back to the surface again.
“I’m going to see him before he kicks the bucket,” he says, and his choice of words shocks me a little, “because that’s what we do, right? It’s a customary thing, kind of like saying ‘bless you’ when someone sneezes, or asking someone how their weekend was when really you don’t give a shit.”
Damn, where is all of this coming from?
“You have to live in the now,” he says and I’m quietly stunned. “Don’t you think so?” His head falls to the side and he’s looking at me again.
It takes me a moment to get my head together, but even then I’m not sure about what to say.
“Living in the now,” I say, quoting him, yet at the same time thinking of my own belief of
loving
in the now. “I guess you’re right.” But I still wonder exactly what his take on the belief is.
I straighten my back against the seat and raise my head a little to look over at him more closely. It’s like suddenly I have this great desire to know all about his belief. To know everything about
him
.
“What is living in the now to you?” I ask.
I notice one of his eyebrows twitch for a second and his expression shifts, surprised at the seriousness of my question, or the level of my interest. Maybe both.
He straightens his back and raises his head, too.
“Just that dwelling and planning is bullshit,” he says. “You dwell on the past, you can’t move forward. Spend too much time planning for the future and you just push yourself backwards, or you stay stagnant in the same place all your life.” His eyes lock on mine. “Live in the moment,” he says as if making a serious point, “where everything is just right, take your time and limit your bad memories and you’ll get wherever it is you’re going a lot faster and with less bumps in the road along the way.”
The silence between us is just two minds thinking about what he just said. I wonder if his thoughts are the same as mine. I also wonder, more than I want to admit, why so many of his thoughts already make me feel like I’m staring into a mirror when I look at him.
The bus glides heavily over the freeway, always loud and rarely soft. But after so long, it’s easy to forget how unpleasant a bus ride is compared to the luxury of a car. And when you’re thinking more about the positive aspects of a bus ride, instead of the negative, it’s easy to forget that there’s anything negative about it at all. There is a guy sitting next to me with beautiful green eyes and a beautiful sculpted face and a beautiful way of thinking. There’s no such thing as a bad bus ride when you’re in the company of something beautiful.
I shouldn’t be here….
ANDREW
9
I CAN’T BELIEVE SHE brought up my dad. Not that I’m pissed about it, but I’m surprised that she seemed to really want to know. That she even remembered. She didn’t dive into questions about what I do for a living to calculate how much money I might make, or giggle and blush and look all stupid while reaching out to touch my tattoos, using them as an excuse to touch
me
. Huge fucking turn-off. I mean yeah, it’s a turn-on when you’re just looking to get laid—makes it easier—but for some reason, I couldn’t be happier that Camryn didn’t do it.
Who the hell
is
this girl?
And why am I even thinking about this stuff?
She falls asleep before me with her head propped against the bus window. I resist the urge to watch her, noticing how soft and innocent she looks, which makes me that much more primal, more protective.
The pervert seems to have stopped watching her when he saw us sitting together inside the last terminal. In the eyes of men, he probably sees her as my ‘territory’ now, my property. And that’s good thing because it means he’ll leave her alone as long as I’m around. The truth is though, we’ll only be together until Wyoming and this worries the fuck out of me. I hope the man changes busses before Camryn and I have to depart ways. Two more rest stops between here and Denver—I hope like hell Denver is his last stop and if not, I’ll be watching him the rest of the way to Wyoming.
He’s not going to Idaho. I’ll kill the son of a bitch first.
I gaze through the dark and stillness of the bus. The man is asleep, his head pressed back against the aisle seat. A woman sits beside him next to the window, but she’s way too old to catch this guy’s eye. He likes them young, probably
really
young. It makes me fucking sick to think of what he may have already done to some other young girl.
Despite the bus generally being loud, the whistling of the wind pushing against the metal, the fast crushing sound of rubber moving swiftly over the road, the large engine progressively humming as it compels the heap of metal across the freeway, it’s still quiet. It’s almost peaceful. As peaceful as a bus ride can be.
I finger my earbuds in and turn on the power on my MP3 player, setting it to shuffle. What will it be? What will it be? I always let the first song set the mood. I have over three hundred songs on this thing. Three hundred different mood-setters. I think my MP3 player is biased though because the first song is almost always between Kansas’
Dust in the Wind
, Zeppelin’s
Going to California
or something by The Eagles.
I wait for it, not looking down at the information on the playlist as if it’s some kind of guessing game and I don’t want to cheat. Ah, good choice. Aerosmith’s
Dream On
. I lean my head back against the seat and shut my eyes, not realizing until after I’m in the middle of doing it that my finger is gently pressing the volume down. Because I don’t want to wake Camryn up.
I open my eyes and look over at her, how she clutches that bag of hers so tightly that she must still be completely conscious of it even in a deep sleep. I wonder about what might be inside, if there’s anything in it that could tell me more about her. If there’s anything in it that can tell me the
truth
about her.
But it doesn’t matter. I won’t know her after Wyoming and she’ll probably never even remember my name. But I know it’s better that way. I have too much baggage and even as a friend, she doesn’t need any of it in her lap. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
The low, melodious droning of Steven Tyler’s voice lulls me to partial-sleep. Except when he’s screaming that high-pitched scream, where I wait for him to let it all out and then I drift off the rest of the way.
~~~
“Dude, seriously,” I hear a voice say.
Something is pressing against my shoulder. I wake up to find Camryn pushing me off of her with her little arms. It’s actually kind of funny, that awry look on her morning face and how no matter how hard she pushes, the weight of my body is too heavy to move me completely.
“Sorry,” I say, still trying to wake up. I lift up disoriented and feel the back of my neck as stiff as wood. I really didn’t mean to end up with my head pressed against her arm, but I’m not as mortified about it as she’s pretending to be. At least I’m pretty sure she’s pretending. She’s trying really hard not to break a smile.
Let me help her a little with that.
I grin over at her.
“You think it’s funny?” she says, her mouth partly hanging open and her eyebrows rumpled in her cute little forehead.
“Yeah, actually I do think it’s funny.” My grin gets bigger and finally that smile of hers breaks softly in her face. “But I am sorry. Really.” And I mean it.
She narrows one eye and looks at me sideways, scrutinizing my sincerity, which is also kind of cute.
I look away and reach my arms above my head to stretch and that makes me need to yawn.
“Gross!” she says and that word doesn’t surprise me at all. “Your breath smells like
ass
.”
A single voluble laugh comes out through my words: “Damn, girl, how would you know what ass smells like anyway?”
That shuts her up. I laugh again and rummage through my bag after dropping my MP3 player inside of it. I pop the cap on my toothpaste and squirt a dab on the end of my tongue, move it around inside my mouth real good and then swallow. Of course, Camryn’s watching me do all of this with a look of revolt, but that’s what I was shooting for.
The rest of the bus seems to have woken up before me. I’m surprised I slept this long and without waking up at least three times to find another comfortable position, which always manages to elude me.
My watch says that it’s 9:02 a.m.
“Where are we anyway?” I ask, gazing out the large window next to Camryn, searching for any freeway signs.
“About four hours away from Denver,” she answers. “Driver just announced another rest stop in ten minutes.”
“Good,” I say, stretching one leg out into the aisle, “I need to walk around. I’m stiff as hell.”
I catch her grinning, but she turns to face the window. Stiff as hell. OK, so she also has a dirty mind. I just laugh thinking about it.
The next rest stop isn’t too much different from the last several, with a series of gas stations on either side of the freeway and two fast food restaurants. I can’t believe this girl has me actually debating whether or not to head inside one like I normally would without a thought otherwise. I just can’t really tell if it’s because I want to prove to her that I can choose to eat better stuff if given the choice, or because I know she’s going to yell at me.
Wait a damn second. Who’s the one in control of the situation here?
Clearly
she
is. Goddammit.
We file out of the bus, Camryn in front of me, and after walking around the front of the bus she stops and turns at the waist, crossing her arms and looking up at me, pursing her lips.
“Well, if you’re so smart,” I say, sounding sort of third grade and I admit it, “then see if you can find something healthy to eat—that doesn’t taste like rubber dipped in shit—in one of
these
places.”
A grin tugs one corner of her mouth.
“You’re on,” she accepts the challenge.
I follow her into the gigantic convenience store and she makes her way first to the drink coolers. Like that blonde chick on that game show (I don’t know which because I don’t watch game shows, but everybody knows about that blonde chick) Camryn waves her hands in front of the cooler doors, as if revealing the world of fruit juices and bottled water to me for the first time.
“We start off with a variety of juice, as you can see,” she says in her proper showcase voice. “Any of this is better than soda. Take your pick.”
“I hate juice.”
“Don’t be a baby. There’s plenty to choose from. I’m sure you can find
something
you can stomach.”
She moves back two steps to let me see the dozens of flavored bottled waters on display behind the next door.
“And there’s water,” she says, “but I just don’t see someone like you sipping on a fancy bottle of water.”
“No, that’s too douchy.” Really, I have no issue with drinking bottled water, but I like this game we’re playing.
She smiles, but tries to keep a straight face.
I wrinkle my nose at her, purse my lips and look back and forth between her and the juice cooler.
I sigh heavily and step up closer, scanning over the different brands and flavors and mixed flavors and I wonder why there’s so much with strawberry or kiwi, or strawberry
and
kiwi in it. I hate both.
Finally, I open one glass door and settle on plain OJ.
She sort of winces.
“
What?
” I ask, still holding the door open.
“Orange juice isn’t so good to wash stuff down with.”
I let out a spat of air and just look at her, unblinking.
“I pick something out and you tell me it’s not good enough.” I want to laugh, but I’m trying to lay a guilt trip on her here.
And I think it’s working.
She frowns. “Well, it’s just…well that’s more of grab-n-go vitamin C boost, really. It just makes you thirstier.”
She actually looks as though she’s worried that she offended me and this strikes me in the strangest way. I let myself smile just to see her smile again.
She grins at me like the Devil.
Oh, she’s
good
….
CAMRYN
10
DENVER FINALLY FLIES BY and we’re drawing closer to Andrew’s final stop in Wyoming. I can’t lie and say it doesn’t bother me. Andrew was right in saying that it’s dangerous for me to be traveling alone. I’m just trying to understand why that fact didn’t faze me much
before
I met him. Maybe I just feel safer with him as my company because he does look like he can bust a few jaws without breaking a sweat. Damn, maybe I shouldn’t have ever talked to him in the first place; definitely shouldn’t have let him sit next to me because now I’m sort of used to him. Once we’re in Wyoming and we go our separate ways, I’ll be back to staring out the window watching the world fly by and not knowing where in it I’m going next.