Road-Tripped

by Nicole Archer

  She clapped her hands and laughed. Even in the worst situations, he always made her laugh. “How romantic!” She leapt into his arms and gave him a passionate thank-you kiss—because she was—so incredibly thankful—for him.

  After they ate, she played tunes from the seventies’ songbook, and Walker threw a ball of rolled up socks to Leonard. When the puppy came galloping back an hour later with half a torn up sock, Walker patted him on the head. “Way to go, Mr. Smarty Paws.”

  Leonard responded to his praise by feverishly licking his hand.

  “What are we going to do with him?” she asked.

  “Reckon I’ll keep him. How’s that sound, Len? You want hang out with me?” The puppy clawed his shins, attempting to scale his legs up to his lap.

  “But where are you going to keep him?” Specifically, where was he going to live after the trip? And where did she fit in?

  “Not sure yet.”

  His indecision sank her spirits. He probably hadn’t even considered a future with her.

  Despite the tiny bud of panic sprouting inside her, she pushed aside her fears, because for now, she didn’t have to worry about it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Movin’

  Texas, New Mexico and Arizona

  Soundtrack: Kristy MacColl, “In These Shoes”

  Soundtrack: America, “A Horse with No Name”

  Soundtrack: Commodores, “Easy”

  After three days, they finally broke out of the parking garage prison and made it to Houston. Miraculously, the dealership fixed the camper in two days.

  During that time, they loaded up on supplies and did laundry.

  For mentioning the veterinarian on the RoadStream blog, Leonard Nimoy received a free exam, shots, and a microchip.

  A local pet store sponsored another post and gave him a bath, fancy organic food, way too many toys, and a bed, which he didn’t need since he slept with them.

  Callie also bought the puppy several smart-ass t-shirts.

  As for the mobile tour—it was a resounding success. Thanks to Hot PR Chick, Skip’s latest hire, mainstream media picked up their hurricane puppy story, and RoadStream sales skyrocketed as a result.

  Once the camper was ready, the three of them piled in the Silver Dildo and raced through Texas. Since they were behind schedule, they drove longer hours and stopped less. And instead of writing long blog posts, they shot video clips and made a montage of their travels through the next three states—one version for the client and another for themselves.

  Theirs started off with her riding a mechanical bull in a honkey-tonk bar. They lowered the speed to the same setting as a grocery store horsey ride, and Callie waved her hand overhead and rolled her pelvis in a slow sexual circle.

  Later, she practiced her bull-riding skills on Walker.

  In Austin, they swam in Barton Springs. Afterwards, he surprised Callie by hiring a mariachi band to serenade their picnic in Zilker Park. After they ate, they danced together with Leonard Nimoy sandwiched between them.

  At a dude ranch somewhere in the middle of Texas, he filmed her galloping her horse off into the sunset. Over her shoulder, she shot him the sexiest look ever. Riding a horse with an erection had to be one of most uncomfortable experiences he’d ever had.

  The next day, he dressed in a hat and boots and sat in front of the ranch, mimicking James Dean in the movie Giant. She burst into the frame and straddled him, wearing her new pink cowboy boots and nothing else. Then she rode him off into the sunset.

  Callie had custom t-shirts made in truck stop gift shop on the Texas state line. Hers featured a taco over each boob. Leonard Nimoy wore a tiny shirt that said you bet your nalgas I bite. And Walker’s shirt said mi verga es grande y peluda.

  He had no clue what that meant, but since he couldn’t say no to his girl, he wore it anyway.

  Dressed in their t-shirts, the three of them posed for a family picture in front of a giant saguaro cactus shaped like a penis and balls.

  Later, Walker wore the shirt out to a Mexican restaurant and found out what the words on it meant. “The waitress just translated my shirt while you were in the john,” he said to Callie.

  “And?”

  He squinted. “My cock is big and hairy?”

  “Well it is.”

  In Roswell, New Mexico, they used dental floss to hang a UFO fashioned out of Leonard Nimoy’s Frisbee. Midway through the scene, the puppy jumped up on the table and ran off with the spaceship in his mouth.

  One day he filmed Callie naked in bed, singing and playing “Easy Like Sunday Morning” on the ukulele, while Leonard Nimoy yelped and howled along.

  He watched that clip at least three times a day.

  In the mountains of New Mexico, he begged her to pose nude by a freshwater lake. Under the sun, she arched her back in a sexy pose right as a condor-sized bird flew by and crapped on her tits.

  He collapsed on the ground in a fit of laughter. In a snit, Callie flung bird shit on his face.

  They left out the shower scene.

  Later that night, they tried to film their moonlight swim, but Leonard knocked over the tripod, and the camera shot five minutes of him licking his balls.

  On the way through Arizona, they attempted to film a music video. She made a tiny saddle out of a cardboard box and strapped it to Leonard Nimoy’s back, then played “A Horse with No Name” on her ukulele. At the same time, Walker beat a spoon on a frying pan and sang the “la la la la” part, while the horse/puppy peed on various tumbleweeds and chased his tail in the background.

  They finally gave up after twenty takes because they couldn’t stop cracking up.

  There were many more poetic moments they shared, but most of the time they were so absorbed in each other they forgot to capture it on film.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Worryin’

  Flagstaff, Arizona

  Soundtrack: Chet Faker, “Talk is Cheap”

  Early morning before sunrise, Walker tied the bar towel around Callie’s eyes.

  “We really need to invest in a better blindfold,” she said, shivering in the chilly desert air. The day before, the temperature had been in the hundreds, but it’d dropped sixty degrees during the night.

  “Don’t rag on the rag, lady.” He brushed a swift kiss on her lips. “Stay put. I’ll be right back.”

  It was dead quiet wherever they were. A few minutes later, he returned and steered her toward a hissing sound. “Hold still,” he said. “I’m gonna pick you up.”

  “Don’t drop me.”

  “What? Think I can’t lift your tiny butt?”

  “Considering all the times you’ve held me up while we fucked in the shower, I’m pretty sure you’re strong enough.”

  A man who wasn’t Walker laughed.

  “Shh! Jesus, Blue.” He hoisted her up and set her down next to a padded railing.

  “Why didn’t you tell me someone was here?” she whisper-cried.

  “Didn’t think you’d shout out the details of our sex life,” he whisper-cried back.

  Actually, if there were a megaphone handy, she’d shout it to the world. Maybe clean it up a bit first and say something like, I’m having the best sex of my life with the most wonderful man ever.

  His finger traveled across her bottom lip. “What are you smiling about?”

  “Just going over the details again.”

  “Before you blurt out anything else . . . Calliope, meet Jack. Say hi, Jack.”

  “Not a good time to use the word hijack, buddy,” the guy said, detonating a full-bodied guffaw.

  The ground moved and she grabbed the railing. “Where are we?”

  He wrapped his warm body around hers. “A few more minutes then I’ll take off the rag. I promise it’ll be worth the wait.”

  Something clattered and the hissing grew louder. Walker’s camera beeped several times then he untied the rag.

  Above her, a burst of fire filled a giant yellow orb. “A hot-air balloon!” s
he cried. Covering her mouth with both hands, she peeked over the basket.

  Below, the Grand Canyon spread out forever, its brilliant indigos and reds growing lighter by the minute.

  While she watched the sun rise, a rhapsody of emotions pumped through her—skin tingling elation, heart-thumping excitement, and bubbles of tenderness that clogged her throat and filled her eyes with tears.

  “You scared?” Walker asked.

  She replied by cupping his face and mashing her mouth against his.

  “Get a room!” The pilot chuckled.

  Behind them, Hemingway’s twin grinned through a white beard. He popped open a bottle of champagne and pulled out a basket of food.

  But she was hungry for something different—for the beautiful man by her side.

  No one spoke. And except for her heartbeat and the burner firing, there was no other sound. She gave her lover a look that silently conveyed how much the moment meant. And he met her gaze and smiled back, quietly telling her how much her happiness meant in return.

  With them, words were just unnecessary noise.

  “Time doth flit; oh shit!”—Dorothy Parker

  Soundtrack: Robin Thicke, “Dreamworld”

  They dragged their pillows and blankets outside that night and made love under the desert sky. Afterwards, she closed her eyes and caressed Walker’s skin, reading his body like braille. She read sunshine and peach pie, blue silk and bubbles, pink drinks and lumpy Piña Coladas, the Rolling Stones and the One-Night Stands.

  With Walker nothing felt the same. He’d turbocharged her senses. Sights, sounds, tastes, sex—he amplified everything.

  Speaking of sex, with him it was downright evolutionary. She’d gone from Cro-Magnon Daniel, a mediocre lover at best, to superhuman Walker, who could dampen her panties with a dimpled grin.

  One minute he was dirty and wild, and the next, he was tender and loving. That morning he’d eaten her out on the kitchen table then wiped his mouth and thanked her for breakfast.

  Another time, he’d tied her up with Leonard’s leash and peppered sweet feathery kisses all over her while they made love.

  A few days before, he’d bent her over the bed, spanked her, and fucked her like a porn star.

  Walker was pleasure personified. And it wasn’t just because he was great in bed. The whole Rhodes package turned her on. His charm and warmth, his talent and intelligence, his passion and humor—everything about him rocked her world.

  He made life luminous.

  “Watcha thinking about, Bluebell?”

  “That I can’t get enough of you. I want to make Walker smoothies in the morning and wear a Walker skin suit to work.”

  “You scare me.”

  She pretended to pout.

  He grabbed her bottom lip. “Just kidding, nutter. Lie next to me and look at the stars.”

  She stroked Leonard’s satiny cow ear while she gazed at the Milky Way, splattered across the sky like white paint on black velvet. A dog barked in the distance and the puppy raised his head.

  “Ah, this is so nice,” she said. “I’ve only slept under the stars one other time—in music camp in the sixth grade.”

  “Bet you had pigtails,” he said.

  “I did!”

  “I knew it. I can totally see you back then, all scrawny and scrappy. Bet you were a tomboy.”

  “I was! And my sister was the girly girl. She kissed the boys, and I kicked them.”

  “Uh huh, figured as much.”

  “At that same camp, I intercepted her love note. The only love note I’ve ever received, and it wasn’t for me.” Adding a pinch of poignancy, she wiped a fake tear and sniffled.

  “What’d it say?”

  “Sadly, it was the most unromantic piece-of-crap ever written. It had ridiculous yes-or-no questions. Do you like ice cream, yes or no? Do you like Chopin? Remember it was a music camp. Effie hated Chopin. What else? Oh, do you like brown eyes? And so on. At the end he wrote, do you like me? And then, do you want to make out behind the boathouse?”

  “Loving ice cream is definitely a prerequisite for making out behind the boathouse. So did you give it to her?”

  “Of course not. Why would I do that?” That sounded slightly sadistic so she elaborated. “I checked everything no, except the make-out question, and gave it back.”

  “Did your sister make out with him?”

  “Yes!” She blew on her knuckles and rubbed them on her bare breast. “Just call me a pre-teen matchmaker.”

  They chuckled together. “I’ve never gotten a love letter either.”

  “No way! I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. Girls ran from me when I was in junior high. Literally. And I know how much you hate that word. I asked one girl to a dance, and she just took off.”

  “You’re joking?” He wasn’t that frightening back then. Okay, a maybe a little.

  “Yep. First and last girl I ever asked to a dance.”

  “Aw, that’s sad.”

  “I know! Girls were so mean to me back then.”

  “Bet if they saw you now, they’d run right to your bed.”

  “And I’d chase ’em right back out because you’re already in it.”

  All at once grief grabbed her by the throat. It was probably the first and last time she’d sleep under the stars with him. Every moment was a first and last on that trip. “Walker,” she asked.

  “Mm-hmm?”

  “What happens when this ends? When we get back to New York?”

  He rose to his elbow. “What do you want to happen?”

  “Nice way to evade the question.”

  His finger drew circles around her breasts. “I don’t want it to end.”

  “But what about work? You’re leaving.”

  “Let’s not think about that right now.”

  The question that’d been plaguing her bubbled to the surface. “What if I’m pregnant?”

  “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

  “I can’t get rid of a baby.”

  “Then I guess we’ll have us a baby.”

  “Us?”

  The space between his brows puckered. “You think I’d take off and leave you with my kid?”

  “You said you didn’t want children,” she reminded him.

  He sat up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, this is scary stuff we’re talking about. You’re right. I never imagined myself having kids. But I would never leave my child without a daddy.”

  But would he leave her? Of course he would. He wasn’t the type to settle down. He’d get too bored.

  No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t picture having a family with him. Not because she couldn’t imagine him as a father, but because he’d made it clear he didn’t want to be one.

  And that caused a rift in her heart as wide as the Grand Canyon.

  Callie woke up the next morning and found a folded-up note on her pillow.

  Dear Bluebell,

  Do you like lumpy Piña Coladas? Yes or no?

  Do you like getting caught in hurricanes? Yes or no?

  Do you like the smooth sounds of the seventies? Yes or no?

  Do you like champagne? Yes or no?

  Do you like banana splits? Yes or no?

  Do you like making love at midnight? Yes or no?

  Do you like the Boy in the Plastic Bubble? Yes or no?

  Do you like female pop singers? Yes or no?

  Do you want to make out on the kitchen table later? Yes or no?

  She circled everything yes and passed the letter back to him.

  “What the—? You like female pop singers?” he said. “I’m not making out with you.” Feigning outrage, he crumpled the paper and threw it on the ground.

  When he wasn’t looking, she smoothed out her very first love note and hid it in her suitcase.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Strippin’

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  “What fresh hell is this?”—Dorothy Parker

  Som
ewhere she’d read that homicide rates went up during heat waves. On the day they shot the commercial, the plastic orange detour cones melted into puddles on the street. Anyone would plot murder in those conditions. Add a few dickheads to the extreme temperatures, and you’d be planning a first-degree killing spree like Callie was.

  First on her list? The client. Shocking, right? Double Dickhead insisted the commercial be shot on the Vegas strip. Outside. Midday. In Las Vegas. In a hundred and fifteen-degree heat.

  As if burning everybody alive weren’t enough of a dick move, he’d rewritten the script. We’re not talking little changes here and there. He rewrote the entire thing . . . with jokes. Hilarious jokes. Hilarious, as in they were so bad they were funny.

  Literally (and she never used that word incorrectly), she’d put blood, sweat, and tears into rebranding that company over the last several weeks, and Dick ruined it all by writing canned humor into the script.

  She left Skip five urgent messages. “Call me ASAP. We’ve got Dick problems.”

  “The client just replaced the actors with Vegas strippers. Just thought you should know.”

  “Dick wrote himself into the script. Call me, motherfucker.”

  “If you don’t call me back, I’m posting a blog article about that time in college you stole that kid’s weed and got your ass handed to you by a bunch of sixth graders.”

  “Skip, if you ever tell anyone I had anything to do with this commercial, I’ll tell Steven Segal you snuck into his party and pissed in his pool.”

  He never called back.

  Meanwhile, back in hell . . .

  Just like the last shoot, Barbie plastered herself to Walker, most likely using the makeup she’d put on with a spackling knife. She was all over him like a slut suit, which incidentally, was what she was wearing. If she didn’t have a life-threatening reason for her whoreish behavior this time, Callie was about to give her one.