“Isn’t that stressful?” he asks.
“What? Hanging my clothes up neatly?”
He smiles and shoves the small mound of clothes into my arms.
I look down at them awkwardly and back up at him.
“Never mind,” he says and points behind me in the room. “Can you put those in that duffle bag hanging from the workout bench?”
“Sure,” I say and carry them over.
First I set them down on the black vinyl bench and then grab the duffle bag hanging from the weights.
“So, where are we going to go first?” I ask, folding the shirt on top of the pile.
He’s still rummaging through the closet.
“No, no,” he says from inside; his voice is kind of muffled, “no outlines, Camryn. We’re just going to get into the car and drive. No maps or plans or—” He’s popped his head out of the closet and his voice is clearer. “What are you doing?”
I look up, the second shirt from the pile already in a half-fold.
“I’m folding them for you.”
I hear a thump-thump as he drops a pair of black running shoes on the floor and emerges from the closet towards me. When he makes it over, he looks at me like I’ve done something wrong and takes the half-folded shirt from my hands.
“Don’t be so perfect, babe; just shove them in the bag.”
He does it for me as if to show me how easy it is.
I don’t know which has my attention more: his lesson in disorganization, or why my stomach flip-flopped when he called me ‘babe’.
I shrug and let him have his way with his clothes.
“What you wear really doesn’t matter much,” he says, walking back to the closet. “All that matters is where you’re going and what you’re doing while you’re wearing it.”
He tosses the black running shoes to me, one at a time, and I catch them. “Shove those in there, too, if you don’t mind.”
I do exactly what he says, literally shoving them inside the bag and I cringe while doing it. Good thing the bottoms of the shoes look like they’ve never been worn, otherwise I would’ve had to protest.
“You know what I find sexy in a girl?”
He’s standing with one muscular arm raised high above his head as he searches through some boxes on the top shelf of the closet. I can see the very end of that tattoo he has down his left side, peeking just at the edge of his shirt.
“Ummm, I’m not sure,” I say. “Girls who wear wrinkled clothes?” I scrunch up my nose.
“Girls who just get up and throw something on,” he answers and takes down a shoe box.
He walks back out with it perched on the palm of his hand.
“That just-got-up-and-don’t-give-a-shit look is sexy.”
“I get it,” I say. “You’re one of those guys who despise makeup and perfume and all that stuff that makes girls, girls.”
He hands me the shoebox and just like with the clothes, I look down at it with vague question.
Andrew smiles. “Nah, I don’t hate it, I just think simple is sexy, is all.”
“What do you want me to do with this?”
I pat the top of the shoe box with my finger.
“Open it.”
I glance down at it, uncertain, and back up at him. He nods once to urge me.
I lift the red top off the box and stare down at a bunch of CDs in their original jewel cases.
“My dad was too lazy to put an MP3 player in his car,” he begins, “and when traveling you can’t always get the best radio reception—sometimes you can’t find a decent station at all.”
He takes the shoebox top from my hand.
“That’ll be our official playlist.” He smiles hugely, revealing all of his straight, white teeth.
Me, not so much. I grimace and scrunch up one side of my mouth sourly.
Everything is here, all of the bands he mentioned when I met him on the bus and several others I’ve never heard of. I’m pretty confident that I’ve heard ninety percent of the music I’m staring at at one time or another being around my parents. But if anyone were to ask me the name of this or that song, or what album it’s from, or what band sings it, I probably wouldn’t know.
“Great,” I say sarcastically, frown-smiling at him with a wrinkled nose.
His smile just gets bigger. I think he loves torturing me.
She’s cute when I’m torturing her. Because she enjoys it.
I don’t know how I got myself into this, but I do know that as much as my conscience is ripping into my fucking ears, telling me to leave her alone, I can’t. I don’t want to.
We’ve already gone too far.
I know I should’ve left it at the bus station, bought her a First Class plane ticket home so she would feel obligated to use it since it cost so much, then called her a cab and had it drop her off at the airport.
I should never have let her leave with me, because now, I know that I won’t be able to let her go. I have to show her first. It’s mandatory now. I have to show her everything. She might get hurt in the end after all is said and done, but at least she’ll be able to go back home to North Carolina with something more to look forward to in her life.
I take the shoebox from her hands and place the top back over it and set it on top of the opened duffle bag. She watches me as I throw open the top dresser drawer and fish out a few clean pairs of boxers and socks and then shove them down inside the bag, too. All of my basic hygiene necessities are in the bag out in the car that I brought on the bus with me.
I hoist the duffle bag strap over my shoulder and look at her.
“Are you ready?”
“I guess so,” she says.
“Wait, you guess?” I ask, stepping up to her. “You either are, or you aren’t.”
She smiles up at me with those beautiful crystal blue eyes. “Yes, I’m definitely ready.”
“Good, but why the hesitation?”
She shakes her head softly to say I’m wrong.
“Absolutely no hesitation,” she says. “All of this is just … strange, you know? But in a good way.”
She looks like she’s trying to untangle something in her head. Obviously, she’s got a lot on her mind.
“You’re right,” I say. “It is kind of strange—OK, it’s a lot strange because it’s not natural, stepping out of the box like this.” I peer in at her, forcing her to catch my eyes. “But that’s the whole point.”
Her smile brightens as though my words rang a little bell inside her mind.
She nods and says with a fun and eager air, “Well, then what are we waiting for?”
We walk back out into the hall and just before we start to head down the stairs, I stop.
“Wait