Finally, I feel my shoes touch the concrete. I look at him and I do stop laughing because I want him to talk to me. I can’t let him leave his father.
But he speaks up first:
“I just can’t cry around or for him, like I told you before.”
I touch his arm gently. “Well then don’t cry, but at least stay.”
“I’m not going to stay, Camryn.” He stares deeply into my eyes and I know just by the way he’s looking at me that I’m not going to be able to change his mind. “I appreciate you trying to help, but this isn’t something I can give in to.”
Reluctantly, I nod.
“Maybe sometime during this road trip you agreed to, we’ll be able to tell each other the things we don’t want to tell,” he says and my heart, for some reason, reacts to his voice.
There’s a flutter inside my chest, just between my breasts behind my ribcage.
Andrew smiles brightly, his perfectly-shaped green eyes like the centerpiece of his sculpted face.
He really is gorgeous …
“So, what have you decided?” he asks, crossing his arms and looking all inquisitive. “Am I buying you a plane ticket home, or are you really set on the road to Nowhere, Texas?”
“You really want to go with me?” I just can’t believe it and at the same time, I want more than anything for it to be true.
I hold my breath waiting for him to answer.
He smiles. “Yes, I really do.”
The fluttering turns into hot mush and my face smiles so hugely that for a long moment, I can’t seem to soften it.
“I just have one complaint about tagging along though,” he says, holding up a finger.
“What?”
“Riding on that bus,” he says. “I really fucking hate it.”
I chuckle quietly and have to agree with him on that one.
“So how else are we supposed to go?”
One side of his mouth lifts into a knowing smile. “We can take the car,” he says. “I’ll drive.”
I don’t hesitate.
“OK.”
“OK?” he says, pausing. “That’s it? You’re just going to hop in the car with a guy you barely know and trust him not to rape you on a deserted highway somewhere—I thought we already went over this?”
I tilt my head to one side, crossing my arms. “Is it any different than meeting you at the library and going out with you a night or two later, alone in your car?” I tilt my head to the other side. “Everybody starts out as strangers, Andrew, but not everybody meets a stranger who saves her from a rapist and takes her to meet his dying father practically in the same night—I’d say you passed the trustworthy test a little ways back.”
The left side of his mouth lifts into a grin, disrupting the seriousness of my heartfelt words. “So this road trip is a date then?”
“What?” I laugh. “No! It was just an analogy.”
I know he’s aware of that, but I need to say something to help distract him from my reddening cheeks. “You know what I mean.”
He smiles. “Yeah, I know, but you do owe me a ‘friendly’ dinner in the company of a steak.” He quotes with his fingers when he says ‘friendly’. The smile never leaves his face.
“I do, I admit it.”
“Then it’s settled,” he says, looping his arm through mine and walking me toward the cab waiting near the parking lot. “We’ll pick up my dad’s car from the bus station, stop by his house and grab a few things and then we’re on the road.”
He opens the back door on the cab to let me get in first, shutting it behind him once he slides in next to me.
The cab pulls out of the lot.
“Oh, I should probably set a few ground rules before we do this.”
“Oh?” I turn at the waist and look at him curiously. “What kind of ground rules?”
He smiles.
“Well, number one: my car, my stereo; I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on that.”
I roll my eyes. “So, basically you’re telling me I’m stuck with you in a car on a road trip and can only listen to classic rock?”
“Ah, it’ll grow on ya’.”
“It never grew on me when I was growing up and had to endure my parents listening to it.”
“Number two,” he says holding up two fingers and dismissing my argument altogether. “You have to do whatever I say.”
My head snaps back and my brows draw together harshly. “Huh? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
His smile gets bigger, crafty even.
“You said you trusted me, so trust me on this.”
“Well, you’re going to have to give me more than that. Really, no joke.”
He leans back against the seat and folds his hands between his long, splayed legs.
“I promise you I won’t ask you to do anything harmful, degrading, dangerous or unacceptable.”
“So basically, you won’t be asking me to suck your dick for five hundred dollars, or anything like that?”
Andrew throws his head back and laughs out loud. The cab driver shifts in the front seat. I notice his eyes veer away from the rearview mirror when I look up.
“No, definitely nothing like that—I swear.” He’s still sort of laughing.
“OK, but what would you ask me to do then?”
I’m totally leery of this whole idea. I still trust him, I admit, but I’m also a little terrified now in a worried-I’ll-wake-up-with-a-Sharpie-moustache sort of way.
He pats my thigh with his hand. “If it makes you feel better, you can tell me to screw off if you want to refuse anything, but I hope you won’t because I really want to show you how to live.”
Wow, that totally catches me off-guard. He’s serious; nothing humorous about those words and once again I find myself fascinated by him.
“How to live?”
“You ask too many damn questions.” He pats my thigh one more time and moves his hand back into his lap.
“Well, if you were on this side of the car, you’d be asking a lot of questions, too.”
“Maybe.”
My lips part halfway. “You are a very strange person, Andrew Parrish, but alright, I trust you.”
His smile becomes more warming as he lays his head against the seat looking over at me.
“Any more ground rules?” I ask.
He looks up in thought and chews on the inside of his mouth for a moment.
“Nope.” His head falls back to the side. “That’s about it.”
It’s my turn.
“Well I have a few ground rules of my own.”
He lifts his head with curiosity, but leaves his hands flat over his stomach with his strong fingers interlocked.
“Alright, shoot,” he says, grinning, prepared for anything I can throw at him, surely.
“Number one: