38.
Rich
“Well, I’m not sure what to say. I really thought she’d be home soon. Do you want some more coffee?”
“No, thanks. Any more and I won’t be able to sleep for a week,” I say, setting my empty mug on the coffee table, my head buzzing and my hands shaking from all the caffeine. It’s dark out now, as it’s been for some hours. In a cardboard box next to my empty mug is a half-eaten pizza. When Becca had failed to materialize after the first hour of waiting, Sophia had called down to her favorite pizza shop and ordered a pie—asparagus, goat cheese, pesto and sun-dried tomato—to be delivered. While we’d eaten, we had talked about everything under the sun, from my childhood in rural Nebraska to Sophia’s college semester in Hong Kong.
“Well, you’re more than welcome to stay as long as you’d like. I really think she’ll be home soon.”
I glance down at my watch. Just past ten. Over five hours we’d been waiting. The nervousness I had arrived with had long since dissipated, leaving in its wake only a curious sort of exhaustion. Though I was no less resolved to make amends with Becca than before, it was beginning to look like perhaps the universe had other plans in mind, at least for the time being.
“Hmm,” I say, stifling a yawn. “Actually, I think I might get going.” As say this, thunder cracks overhead. It’s followed by the sound of rain pattering on the roof. “It’s a pretty long drive back.”
“Well, alright, I guess. Although we do have a makeshift guest room in the basement…”
“It might be better to just come another day, some day when she’s actually responding. Maybe next weekend?”
“Come whatever day’s most convenient for you. I’ll postpone work any day to make a true life love story come true.”
I chuckle. “Well, I’m not sure it’ll be a happily ever after, but—“
“Oh, please. You and I both know it’s going to end like every sappy romance novel ever. The two of you will ride off into the sunset, your long hair flowing in the wind, ‘I love you’s on your lips.”
“You know, you’re really quite the strange one.”
“I know,” Sophia says happily, rising with me as I climb to my feet. “It’s why I’m so damn likeable.”
“Well, Grant is a very lucky man. I look forward to meeting him sometime.”
“I’m sure he’ll love you. He was the one who recognized you, after all. I’m pretty sure he knows more about your stats than you do.”
“I don’t doubt that. Not with all the knocks to the head I’ve taken.”
I slip on my shoes and grab my jacket from a hook near the door. Folding it over my arm, I turn to Sophia just as a particularly loud crash of thunder rattles the windowpanes.
“Drive careful, okay, Richie?” Becca’s best friend says, pulling me in for a hug. “And again, I’m sorry you had to come all this way for nothing. I know what a pain the drive from Seattle can be.”
“Ehh, it’s not like I was up to much else.”
“Well, next time we’ll make sure she’s here.”
“Sure thing, babe.” Pulling open the door, I step out onto the porch, the wind whipping the jacket in my hand as rain spatters against my face. “Whew, looks like this is going to be quite the storm.”
“You better not speed.”
“Wouldn’t think of it. Alright, see you soon!” Covering my head with my jacket, I dash down the front steps and up the gravel pathway to the front gate. I leap over it, landing lightly on the other side.
“Impressive!” Sophia shouts as I skip around to the driver’s side of my car and yank open the door. Good thing I had had the foresight to close the top. This would have been quite the mess if I hadn’t. In a moment, I have the engine purring, the lights on. Sophia is still standing on the porch, her tiny body framed by the light streaming from the living room. Giving her one last wave, I pull out into the street, my wipers turned high as rain pours down my front window.
The storm has moved in quickly. It’s raining so hard now that I have to crawl through the streets because they’re already ankle-deep with water. The going get a little easier when I reach the main road back to the highway, though it’s near impossible to see with how much water’s coming down.
It takes a good twenty minutes, but finally I make it back to the highway and am headed north. For a moment, I consider returning to Sophia’s. But no. After my failed expedition, all I wanted was to be in my own bed.
With how hard it’s raining, I have no choice but to remain focused on the road, which is fine by me since it means I don’t have a chance to think about the day. It’s not long before I’ve passed back into Washington. The rain lightens on the other side of the river, the clouds parting to allow the nearly full moon to peek through.
The letup doesn’t last long. Soon, with a vicious crack of thunder announcing its arrival, the rain begins to come down even harder.
An hour passes, the night edging towards midnight. Still the rain doesn’t let up. I’m crawling along, having barely traveled twenty miles since passing into my home state. Where was all this rain coming from? It was like God had decided to pick up the entire Pacific Ocean and drop it onto our heads. At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t get home until nine a.m.
I tune the radio to the weather station just in time to hear the weatherwoman issue a flash flood warning for half the state. A freak storm, she says, likely caused by climate change. Please be advised to stay indoors if at all possible. Once the storm passes, she continues ironically, tomorrow will be exceptionally clear.
About an hour after I hear this report, I pass the coffee stand where I’d stopped on my way to Portland. Somehow, I’m able to spot it through the nearly impenetrable curtain of rain. For whatever reason, seeing it lifts my spirits.
I’m getting sleepy now, my eyelids growing heavier and heavier with every passing mile. Though I know I should stop and find a hotel, all I can think about is my bed. How nice it was going to be to curl up with the covers over my head! A good sleep in my own home was exactly what was needed to forget all about this strange day. Tomorrow, once I was well-rested, I would work out what to do next.
“Shit!” I exclaim when the gas light blinks on another fifteen miles up the road. It’s the first word I’ve spoken since leaving Sophia’s and my voice sounds oddly flat inside the car. For the last ten miles, I’ve been making great headway, cruising along thanks to finding myself behind an 18-wheeler whose giant bulk blocked the lion’s share of the wind and the rain. Keeping one eye on the road, I use my phone to look up a gas station. There’s only one in the next thirty miles. Apparently, I had passed the last sizable town for some time just a few minutes before.
I slow down, keeping an eye on the dash as I plug along, watching as the number of miles my tank has left slowly dwindles to nothing. I was going to be cutting it awfully close.
It’s another twenty minutes before the glowing sign of the gas station appears on the opposite side of the highway. It’s been the only sign of civilization for miles. I exit, inching down the feeder because the water is halfway up my tires. Crossing over the highway, I pull into the station. Not surprisingly, only one other car is in the lot. Through the window, I can just make out the dark shadow of someone inside.
I pull up to the lone pump, noticing only when I’m right up next to it that it has no credit card machine. I was going to have to go inside to pay. Sighing in resignation, I shut off the engine. For several minutes, I sit there, unmoving as I listen to the drum of rain upon the car’s roof. Not even an awning covers the pump. Through the window of the gas station, I can see a bored-looking cashier flipping through a magazine, the fluorescent light flickering over his head not appearing to bother him in the slightest. Hadn’t I seen this in some horror movie before?
Grabbing several bills from the small stash of cash in the passenger-seat glove compartment, I take a deep breath in preparation for my mad dash. Opening the door, I step quickly out into the deluge. In an instant, I’m soaked from head to toe. Never before have I seen such a rain as this; it’s coming down so thick, I may as well be swimming.
Slamming the door behind me, I take off for the station. The cashier doesn’t look up when I enter, nor even when I approach the register. For almost a full minute I stand there, despite how tired and miserable I’m feeling, quite amused by his lack of customer service. Finally, I clear my throat. Flipping a page of his magazine, the cashier sighs and looks up.
“How can I help you?”
“I’d like some gas,” I say, slapping a soaked twenty onto the counter. “Twenty.”
“Anything else?”
“Do you have coffee?”
He points behind me. Following his finger, I spot a decrepit-looking coffee pot sitting on a counter on the opposite side of the small store, the coffee inside a thin, sickly brown.
“No, thanks,” I say, turning back to the cashier. “Just the gas.”
He’s already back to reading his magazine. Without glancing up, he grabs the twenty off the counter and hits a button on the wall beside him.
“You’re good,” he murmurs.
“Thanks.”
Just inside the entrance to the store, I spend a moment steeling myself for another mad dash back to my car, though I’m not entirely sure why considering how soaked I already am. Besides, if I was going to have to stand outside to pump the gas anyways…
Realizing this, I open the door and step out into the downpour, my socks squishing in my shoes. No longer in a hurry, I saunter across the parking lot, hopping over puddle after puddle as I make my way leisurely back to my car.
Halfway there, suddenly I get the feeling that I’m not alone, that there’s someone behind me. When this feeling strikes me, I spin around, expecting to find the gas station attendant returning something I had somehow forgotten.
“No…” I murmur, my heart stopping in my chest when I see the person standing there, shimmering like a mirage through the thick curtain of rain. No. No, it couldn’t be. I was seeing things. I was hallucinating. I was—
“Rich?” Becca says, her voice an unbelieving whisper. She takes a step towards me. “Rich, is that really you?”