I swore I didn’t sleep at all that night, but I must have at some point, because I woke to Kalo licking my face and the smell of sausage McMuffins. With a groan, I rolled until I was facing away from her, pulling the covers over my head.
“Morning, sunshine.”
At the sound of his voice, I sat upright.
Emery was sitting at the edge of his bed, which was still exactly how it had been left after his nap yesterday. He was halfway through his breakfast sandwich and he tossed one at me before I could register it. My hands flew up, catching the greasy paper before it smacked me in the face.
“You’re here,” I said, setting the sandwich on the bedside table with my eyes on him.
His hair was messy, his sexy smirk just barely playing at the edge of his lips. It was infuriating to me in that moment, that he could look that good that early in the morning. Especially because I had a pretty good feeling as to why he looked so happy.
“Of course, I’m here. Where else would I be?”
With Emily, I almost said, but I just stared at him and shrugged instead.
“I fed Kalo and took her for a walk. I’m all showered and ready to go whenever you are.”
He was perky and cheerful, and I was annoyed. Where was this guy yesterday? Was Emily the reason he felt so great today? What happened to wanting to stay in bed?
My eyes glanced at the bedside table where I’d thrown the journal the night before, but it was gone, packed away.
Well, he made me wait yesterday, so he can do the same, I thought, waiting until he was typing a text in his phone to slide my leg into place. I rolled my pant leg down while still under the covers before swinging my legs over the edge of the bed.
I coughed to cover the sound of it clicking into place, the little black pin popping into the hole as I bent for my yoga mat.
“I’ll be back.”
“You don’t want your sandwich?” Emery asked as I passed him, heading for the door. “It’s sausage, egg, and cheese. It’s a delicious heart attack in a bag. And I got you OJ to wash it down with.”
“I’m not hungry,” I answered, and then I let the door shut behind me, heading to the gym with thoughts of last night replaying in my head.
I focused on meditation more than poses that morning, spending almost double the time in Savasana before finally making my way back to the room. My shower was hot but short, then I changed quickly and packed my bag, slinging it over my shoulder and heading to the car with Kalo in tow. I didn’t tell Emery I was ready to go, or ask him if he wanted me to drive again, I just gave him the same silent treatment he’d given me the day before and decided I didn’t care if it bothered him.
Part of my silence was driven by my stupid girly emotions over him hanging out with Emily all night. I was annoyed not only at him, but at myself, because there was absolutely zero reason for me to be upset. I had no right, and yet, still I was.
But the other part stemmed from what I’d read in his journal.
My eyes were still puffy from the tears I’d spilled, and I pressed my cold fingers underneath them as Emery pulled onto the highway, studying my reflection in the small mirror on my sun visor. I looked like shit, and felt like it, too.
Popping it back into place, I chanced a glance at Emery, suddenly seeing him in a completely new light. I wanted to ask him about a million questions that morning, but instead I just stared at him until he returned my gaze, and then I turned to look out the window.
Eight hours passed without a single word between us.
Unlike me the day before, Emery seemed completely content with letting me be silent. He was too busy jamming out to his music, which ranged from classic rock to modern day country, to ask why I was sulking. I’d never heard such an eclectic taste in music, and had it been a normal day, I would have been laughing and singing along with him.
But it wasn’t a normal day.
The more I sulked, the more frustrated I became. I never sulked. I was always the happy girl, the positive girl, the silver lining girl. Tammy would always get annoyed at how positive I was. She would roll her eyes and scoff at me when she wanted to rant and I just gave her solutions, and positive quotes, and meditation mantras. The way I saw it, life was too short, too delicate to spend time and energy being miserable.
It was the first time in a long time, maybe ever, that I was alone with my negative thoughts.
I went from being ecstatic about leaving Mobile and chasing my dream to cursing myself for being so stupid. I ticked through all the reasons getting in the car with Emery was a terrible idea as we drove through Texas.
I don’t have a place to stay in Washington.
I don’t have a job lined up.
I don’t even have an acceptance letter to Bastyr.
Ever since I could remember, I’d saved and prepared for what would be the life-changing move for me. And then I threw all that out the door and jumped in a car with a stranger, a stranger who I now knew was suicidal — is suicidal? — and took a chance like it was exhilarating and fun and the stuff life is made of.
Stupid.
We passed a sign that said forty miles to Amarillo, and my eyes roamed the colors of all the fallen leaves surrounding the highway. Some trees were already completely bare, ready for winter, while others were still bright with yellows, oranges, reds, and browns. I personally liked the ones with just a few leaves left, those persistent ones that were holding on for dear life, not ready to leave summer yet.
The music died in the car, and I turned to Emery, who just pulled his hand back from the dial and placed it on the steering wheel again. He glanced at me, and we watched each other for a moment before I propped my chin on my hand again, eyes flashing over the sea of color.
“It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” he asked, speaking over the sound of the wind whipping through the car. “How beautiful everything is when it’s dying.”
I didn’t answer, but I glanced at him over my shoulder, eyes surveying the sad smile on his lips before I turned back toward the road.
“So, did we trade places?” he tried again. “Is this payback for me being a prick yesterday?”
“At least you admit it,” I murmured.
Emery chuckled, cutting around a Honda. “So, it is payback. An eye for an eye, huh?”
“I’m allowed to have a bad day,” I said, facing him as I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I never said you weren’t,” he mused. He was watching me through the dark tint of his sunglasses with an amused smirk on his stupid face. “It’s just that you’re usually so… sunshiney.”
“Don’t act like you know me. You don’t.”
“Fair point,” Emery agreed, shifting his hands on the wheel. “Let’s change that. Tell me more about you.”
At that, I laughed. Full-on, head tilted back, deep from the belly laughed.
“You are so…. ugh!”
“Frustrating? Annoying? Unfairly charming?”
“Yes,” I grunted, and then I realized the last thing he said. “No!”
Emery laughed. “Just get it all out, Little Penny. You’ve been stewing for eight hours now, that pot has got to be ready to blow.”
Huffing, I turned in my seat, tucking my prosthetic leg up under my other knee so I could face him more. “Fine. You want to know what I’ve been thinking?”
He nodded.
“I’ve been thinking about how stupid I am. Not just for jumping in a car with a guy I don’t know and leaving literally everything behind other than my yoga mat and a few changes of clothes, but for doing so without making any kind of plan at all. I don’t have anywhere to stay in Washington, no job, no idea if I’ll even get into my dream school that I based this whole…” I paused, hands flitting around my face. “Hair-brained plan around. And, quite frankly, you make me feel stupid, too.”
His brows pulled inward at that.
“Because for some unknown reason, I like you, and I want to know more about you, but yesterday you made me feel more like a nuisance than anything else. Not only did you not talk to me all day, but when you finally did, you put me down for wanting to find love in my life, like it was a naive fantasy for little girls. Then you left with Emily,” I added, throwing my hands up to stop him from saying anything when he opened his mouth to interrupt me. “And that’s fine, because you don’t owe me anything, and she was gorgeous and sweet and fun and I get it. You’re a guy, you… wanted to have a fun night. Fine. But I’m not like you, okay? I’ve never done this before.”
He watched me have a mental breakdown in his car, and I swear it was like he was seeing me for the first time.
“I’m not accustomed to sleeping in a room with the opposite sex, or driving across the country without a plan, or sharing this much space with someone whom I can’t tell if I annoy or intrigue. And it may sound stupid to you but I was worried last night. I didn’t know where you were, or if you were coming back to the room, or if I would have to somehow try to hunt down your body and find your phone and call your mom to tell her you were dead.”
My heart slipped into my stomach at that admission, because I knew it stemmed from reading his journal, from prying into his private life that he hadn’t invited me into.
I sighed. “And I don’t know, I just… I just feel stupid. I feel like a stupid little girl with stupid little dreams and a stupid little belief that life will turn out to be everything I’ve ever wanted it to be, because it sure as hell hasn’t been even anything remotely close up until this point.”
My chest deflated along with the hope I’d held onto for so long, and I sank into the seat, staring through the front windshield at the cars ahead of us.
Emery was still looking at me, his attention bouncing from the road to me and back again. He was quiet for a moment, then he cleared his throat, shifting in his seat.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “You’re not stupid. Sometimes I have bad days, and yesterday was one of them.” He swallowed, and my throat was tight again, his handwriting still fresh in my mind. “I can’t promise it won’t happen again, but I just want you to know it had nothing to do with you. You don’t annoy me.” He made sure to look at me again when he said that part. “And I’m an open book. So, what do you want to know? Ask me anything.”
“An open book,” I challenged, face flat. “Like the kind from Harry Potter with the teeth the size of my head inside?”
He laughed, the sound warming me from the inside out. “Careful, your nerd is showing.”
“I like my nerd.”
“So do I,” he answered quickly, and a blush creeped its way up my neck when he pushed his sunglasses up, his eyes connecting with mine.
I didn’t mind when he looked into my eyes. I didn’t mind it at all.
“Well, first thing’s first, what’s your phone number?”
Emery chuckled, listing it off as I typed it into my phone.
“When’s your birthday?”
“Hey, it’s my turn. Don’t be greedy.”
I threw my hands up in mock surrender.
“You keep talking about your dream school,” he said as we pulled back into the passing lane. “Which school?”
Kalo popped up from her seat in the back, excited we were talking again. She licked his ear and we both laughed as she climbed into the front seat and onto my lap.
“Bastyr,” I answered, rubbing behind Kalo’s ears. “I want to go into Naturopathic Medicine.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“Voodoo,” I joked. “Basically medicine without stuffing people full of pills. Trying to use what the earth gives us naturally to live a long and healthy life.”
“This from the girl who devoured an entire bag of beef jerky in front of me yesterday.”
I sighed. “Yeah, well, I’m sure my diet will change once I’m there. In my defense, it’s kind of hard to eat anything even remotely healthy in Alabama.”
“Fair,” he said with a smile. “So, you want to help people. I’m shocked. Never would have guessed.”
I swatted at his arm. “Funny. When’s your birthday?”
“June first.”
I squinted one eye, thinking through the calendar as Kalo hopped out of my lap again and into the back. She propped herself between our seats, her tongue blowing in the wind.
“Gemini,” I finally said, and it all clicked together. “Oh, yeah, I can totally see that.”
“See what?”
“It just tells me a lot about who you are,” I explained. “The need for adventure, the charming personality, the habit to go from light and fun to pensive and deep in a split second.”
Emery threw his head back in a laugh. “Oh God, please tell me you don’t actually believe that my sign tells you who I am? Let me guess, you’re an Aquarius and have it tattooed on your foot.”
My mouth popped open and I sat up straighter. “I am an Aquarius, actually.”
“Of course, you are,” he laughed the words. “I promise you, there’s nothing my sign can tell you about me, nothing that’s actually substantial, anyway. Horoscopes and all that? It’s bullshit. Say something vague enough and you can apply it to anyone’s life.”
“That’s not true!” I argued. “I am a textbook Aquarius. Like, it’s scary how much my sign is accurate for who I am.”
“That so?” he asked, and he pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Don’t text and drive.”
He frowned. “I’ve got it, Mom. Okay,” he said, eyes on the road again, but they kept flicking down to his phone. “So, you’d say you’re loyal and kind, and hardworking, but that your weakness is that you tend to worry and you’re overcritical of yourself? And you’d also say that you love books and nature, but you dislike being the center of attention.”
I nodded. “Yep, that’s me to a T.”
“Congratulations. You’re a Virgo.”
He tossed his phone to me as I scoffed, rolling my eyes. But when I looked down at the screen, it was the same astrology site I referenced all the time, and the traits he’d been reading were for a Virgo, not an Aquarius.
My mouth popped open again.
Emery eyed me from the driver seat, a shit-eating grin on his face as my eyes scanned the screen. Even Kalo seemed in on the joke, licking my shoulder, and I just tossed the phone back to him and crossed my arms. “You’re an asshole.”
“Is that a Gemini thing, too?”
I tried to fight it, biting my lip so hard I left an indent, but in the end I gave into a loud laugh, one that rolled through me in a mixture of embarrassment and amusement. “Jerk.”
Emery laughed, too, before tapping my chin gently with his knuckle. “Hey, you say you’re an Aquarius, I believe you. No judgement. To each their own.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I’m serious,” he said, and his eyes were more sincere then. “And for the record, you’re not stupid for having dreams and taking crazy risks just to see if you can make them happen.” He swallowed. “You’re brave. And you’re living. That’s more than most people can say.”
There was an honesty so real it hurt under that last sentence, his amber eyes searching mine, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. I wanted to ask him if he was living, if he had dreams, too.
But I didn’t get the chance.
Suddenly, Emery’s eyes narrowed, like something felt off, and as soon as he looked back to the road, there was a loud pop. I screamed like I’d just been set on fire. Kalo jumped from her spot, ducking behind Emery’s seat, and my heart raced in my ears as the car thumped along with the smell of burnt rubber assaulting my nose.
“Shit,” Emery mumbled, pulling off onto the shoulder. I was still trying to calm down when we finally stopped and he jumped out, jogging over to my side of the car and cursing again. “We blew a tire.”
Cars and trucks were still whizzing by us, each one rocking the car with force. I grabbed Kalo’s leash and we both got out, too, surveying the damage. The rubber on the back passenger tire was completely shredded, the car resting most of its weight on the bum leg. I sighed, peering up at Emery, who was already typing out a number on his phone from a card he held in his hand.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
“Roadside assistance.”
I nodded, Kalo plopping down in the long, overgrown grass next to me. “What are we going to do now?”
Emery went to answer me but then paused, his call being connected to a human being. Once he was finished telling the person where we were located, he tucked his phone back in his pocket.
“They’ll be here in about thirty minutes or so, closest shop is right off that next exit, so we shouldn’t be too far behind.”
“And then what?”
Emery looked at me like the answer was obvious, shrugging his shoulders. “We grab dinner at a weird diner while they fix the tire.”
“But we have to pay them,” I pointed out.
“That’s usually how that works.”
“Okay, so…” I waited for him to connect the dots, but he didn’t. “We have to earn some money. We’ve got to do something crazy and weird to get back on the road, like how the girls in Crossroads did the karaoke contest.”
Emery watched me with a blank stare, blinking twice before he threw his head back in a laugh.
“I’m serious!” I defended, smacking his arm.
“I have my parents’ credit card, Little Penny. We’re fine.”
I scoffed. “But we can’t just charge it. That’s no fun, it goes against all the road trip rules.”
“Rules?”
“Yes, rules!” I started counting on the fingers on my right hand, tapping each one with my left. “Survive on potato chips and beef jerky, never pick up hitchhikers, and if you break down, figure out some crazy way to make the cash and get back on the road.”
“None of those are real.”
“They’re unwritten.”
Emery laughed, crossing one arm over his chest and balancing his elbow on it, hand finding his smooth chin. “It’s just a tire. It’ll take maybe two hours to fix, and that’s only if they have to go somewhere to pick up a part. And it’ll be like three-hundred dollars max.”
“Your point?”
He couldn’t stop smiling at me. “You’re not going to let this go, are you? You really just want to make this difficult.”
“The rules, Emery.”
I didn’t say his name often, and the sound of it, the way it felt rolling off my tongue made me pause, my eyes flashing to his, cheeks warming when I saw the same pause in him.
He tucked his hands in his pockets, looking down at Kalo before his eyes surveyed the car and the highway again. After a moment, he turned back to me, shaking his head with his signature smirk creeping out. “Fine. What’s our next move, game maker?”
I squeaked, clapping my hands together in excitement as Kalo popped her head up to look at me. My heart deflated a little when I realized I didn’t actually have any idea of what our next move was, but then the universe sent a sign, as it so often does.
My eyes locked on the billboard behind Emery’s head and I grinned. “Let’s get the car to the shop, and then I have a plan.”