Driving With the Top Down

by Beth Harbison

  The silence in the room was suddenly too much. She turned away from her reflection, yanked open the door, and left.

  She pounded down the cement steps of the motel—it was nicer than it had sounded, but still had that wraparound porch-type look—and walked out into the streets of whatever downtown she was in.

  She kind of liked not knowing. That way she didn’t have to say, I remember that time in _______ when I was the saddest I ever was. At least this way she could say, I don’t know where I was, but I know I hated myself.

  Tam be easy

  Tam sucks dick

  Tam gets filmed

  Now just click

  God, she was melodramatic.

  She walked around for twenty minutes before realizing she had forgotten her cigarettes. She stopped at the next group of approachable-looking people who were smoking. Luckily, since it was a nice warm night and it seemed like a pretty walkable southern downtown, there were a lot of people doing that.

  She had another crazy imaginary flash in her mind. Of being in a place like this with friends. Just, like, two girls or something, sitting outside of … say, that burger place over there. Drinking sodas and chatting. Maybe a couple of shopping bags at their flip-flopped feet. Maybe going to a movie later on. Or maybe having a sleepover. Something. Not aimless basement-sitting.

  She fluffed her hair a little and walked up to a relatively cute dark-haired guy. He was leaning over, his elbows on his knees, laughing at something another guy said.

  “Um, excuse me … could I bum a jack?”

  The guy looked up, and then sat up. “I didn’t hear the magic word.” He cupped his ear at her, smiling. He was teasing her.

  She smiled back. “Please? …”

  “That’s better.” He rested his cigarette between his lips and pulled out a cigarette from his pack. They were Camels. She never smoked those.

  She held out her hand. “Thanks.”

  “Now, hold on, Grabby,” he said, the cigarette still in his mouth. “Now, I’m thinking for this, I deserve to know your name, and for you to have a seat with my friends and me here. Jake, move.”

  Jake—one of the friends who had been watching the exchange with amusement—scooted his chair over. The main guy, who had called Tam “Grabby” reached behind him for a green plastic chair and set it next to him. He patted the seat.

  Tamara looked up. It seemed to be a bar. This was confirmed when she saw everyone was drinking. Of course.

  She took the seat, and then the cigarette.

  “I’m Rich.”

  “Well, then, I’m interested.” She immediately regretted the joke. It was probably over his head, and now he thought she meant something she didn’t mean.

  He raised his eyebrows and inhaled. He leaned back and surveyed her with a seemingly expanding opinion on her. “Funny girl, huh?”

  Rich smiled at her, and it was such a boyish and endearing smile that she grinned back. He lit her cigarette and looked back to the other guys. They had all started talking to each other again. Clearly, if the girl was to be claimed, she already had been.

  “So, your name is—?”

  “Tamara. Tam.”

  “Which one?”

  “Tam…”

  “All right—cool, Tam. You visiting or do you live around here?”

  “Just passing through.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “Florida somewhere. I don’t even really know. I’m with my aunt and her friend.”

  “Aunt and her ‘friend’ or, like, aunt and her friend?”

  “What—? Oh God no, they’re not, like, undercover lesbians.” The very thought made her laugh again. “No, just her actual, like … friend friend. My aunt refinishes furniture and is going to farm auctions and stuff.”

  “Cool cool. And you got dragged along.”

  “Yep…”

  “So, then, uh … you’re probably pretty bored, huh?”

  “Yeah. Had a kinda shitty night. Whatever.”

  “I can tell. You already burned through that cigarette.”

  She looked down. It was almost to the filter. “Oh … yeah. I guess it kinda shows, huh?”

  He lit up another one and handed it to her. “Do you like to party?”

  “Um … yeah, sure.” Was she agreeing to go somewhere with these guys?

  “Well, if you wanna tag along on something actually fun, we are going to a house party, like, right around the corner from here.”

  She knew she looked nervous and hesitant. “Um…”

  “It’s walking distance. You don’t have to get in our big white van, little girl.”

  That boyish smile again. It made her trust him.

  “Okay, sure, I guess … I guess why not, then?”

  She knew why not: Because she didn’t know these guys. Because her phone had, like, only 25 percent left of its battery, and because she had said she’d stay in the room.

  “First, let’s do a couple shots. Hey, Tom.” He got the attention of a waiter in jeans and a T-shirt bearing the bar’s name.

  “What do y’all need?”

  “Lemme get four shots of Fireball.”

  She counted. There were five of them, including his friends and her. Oh, she thought, maybe he wasn’t including her. She felt suddenly embarrassed for temporarily thinking he would. Also, she supposed that meant that he was twenty-one. And maybe he knew she wasn’t.

  But when the shots came, he took all four in his hands and handed her two.

  “Two?”

  “Yeah, boo, you gotta catch up.”

  She smiled, somehow taking all this as a compliment, and took one of the shots. Then the second.

  Then he handed her his second one: “Like I said, you gotta catch up.”

  She took it. Like a champ. Her head started to spin after only a few minutes. On the walk there, it occurred to her that she really should have eaten that sandwich earlier.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Colleen

  The second the door shut behind them and they took off down the steps and onto the road, Colleen realized that this was the first time she and Bitty had been alone together since college. The thought of time passing so much and so quickly sent shivers down her spine.

  Next to Harry’s, Colleen spotted a martini and wine bar.

  “Would you want to maybe grab a drink before dinner?”

  “Absolutely,” Bitty answered before Colleen had even finished asking. It had been a long day, and they both needed to relax.

  They sat at the bar, and each ordered a perfectly respectable glass of white wine. Chardonnay for Colleen and a sauvignon blanc—preferably one from New Zealand, if they have it, she asked nicely—for Bitty.

  “Probably best to fit the alcohol in while we’re out of sight of the truant, huh?” Colleen said with a slightly nervous tinkle of laughter. “Don’t want to set a bad example.”

  Bitty bit her lip and then put her hand up to flag down the bartender. Colleen watched, wondering if Bitty was going to change wines. It was eight dollars a glass, an extravagance to Colleen, so she’d drink it regardless of whether it was perfect or not.

  “Two double SoCo and Lime please,” Bitty said to him.

  Colleen’s eyebrows shot up, along with the corners of her lips. “Ha! Really?”

  Bitty took in a deep breath. “You only live once, right? So far, anyway.”

  “Whoo. Our old go-to shot. Doubles, even.”

  The bartender, who clearly didn’t get a lot of shot requests in this sleepy tourist town, took the Southern Comfort off the shelf, put two rocks glasses in front of them. Each was filled with a very decent amount of brown liquid and garnished with a lime. Colleen’s tongue prickled with the remembered sting she was already anticipating.

  “Bottoms up,” said Bitty, holding hers up to cheers with Colleen.

  And the next thing that happened, Colleen wouldn’t have seen coming in a million years. Old habit kicked in, and they did their old tradition without saying a w
ord.

  Put lime in the left hand.

  Cheers glasses.

  Tap bottom twice on bar.

  Hook arms.

  Take the shot.

  Suck the lime.

  They both locked eyes, brows furrowed from the burn, and started to laugh like kids.

  “I guess that confirms that we did too many shots in our youth,” said Bitty, now dabbing her lips daintily with a bar napkin.

  “You say ‘in our youth’ like we’re that old.”

  “We’re not in our youth anymore—that much is for sure. We’re damn close to middle age, if we’re not already there. You want to tell me you look at Tamara and say that that age doesn’t feel like a million years ago?”

  Colleen watched Bitty as she spoke, her cheeks starting to get a tinge of pink from the alcohol. Now that she was alone with her and looking directly at Bitty, she felt like she could really see her. When they’d first spoken again at Henley’s, she thought Bitty looked old. Not old old, but aged. But now as she saw her up close, she realized she didn’t really look that way. The most noticeable signs of her age were by her eyes, and they didn’t even look bad. They weren’t actually wrinkles so much as faint lines. It was the way she set her face that made her look older.

  Once upon a time, Bitty had had alert, almond-shaped eyes, cheekbones that didn’t stick out like a skeleton’s, but rather tightened in constant amusement. She might have been an occasional prude and hard to get out of her shell every once in a while, but Bitty was bright and sweet, and undeniably pretty.

  Now her face was generally set in a bit of a frown, her cheekbones were skeletal, her nose a little too thin, and her eyes looked worried and sad-dog. That was what had given her the look of more years passing. Not real aging.

  That said, the fact that she’d been actually eating and drinking this past week instead of dieting psychotically, had plumped her out ever so slightly. When they first met up, there had been a skeletal quality to Bitty’s face that was now noticeably softened.

  “I agree that seventeen years ago was seventeen years go,” said Colleen, shaking herself from staring at Bitty. “But we’ve probably got a good second half of our lives left in us yet. Hopefully longer.”

  Bitty seemed to give a quick laugh—it was hard to tell—before taking a generous sip of her wine.

  “Bitty, what is going on with you?” The SoCo had already given her the voice that had gotten her in trouble more than once.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. Something is up. I can tell.” When Bitty took a long few seconds of silence, she added, “Is there more to the situation with Lew than you said?”

  Bitty shot her a look. “If you’re lucky, right?”

  “What?”

  “I know you never liked Lew, so you must be dying to say ‘I told you so.’”

  “I’m not— This has nothing to do with any feelings I might have had about Lew a thousand years ago—”

  “So you admit it was a lifetime ago.”

  “Oh, Bitty, knock it off. It’s really clear that you are stressed beyond your limit, yet when you talked about it the other night, you sounded so calm, so reasoned, like your husband going off with another woman was just one of those things.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  Silence. “Well what, Bit?”

  Her arms were crossed, and her face was expressionless. The way she tended to look when she was both embarrassed and terrified to discuss something.

  “I’m curious. What exactly was it that you didn’t like about Lew back then?”

  “What does that matter? It was college—I also thought chasing Rumple Minze with Corona was a good idea. I didn’t know shit from apple butter.”

  The southern saying slipped from her lips before she could stop it.

  “Just tell me what you remember. What was it?”

  “I told you then.… I thought he was a dick, frankly. He was possessive and controlling, and once you were with him, you spent ninety percent of the time apologizing for your actions or rationalizing his anger at you. You hate controversy and confrontation, and here you were faced with a guy who antagonized the living hell out of you, and rather than confront him or cause an issue, you always just put up with his crap because it—to you—seemed easier than arguing your point.”

  “I needed that, though. I needed discipline, I liked a little of being told what to do. I used to do that with everyone, just let them walk all over me. He wouldn’t let me do that—he helped me grow a little.”

  “Oh, sure, okay, but one of the things he hated so much was when you went out and had fun with me. I was the enemy to him, and eventually you just got so sucked up in him that you dropped me.”

  “I needed to grow up, Colleen, I couldn’t go out taking shots and—”

  “You were on the President’s List, never missed a class, and went out only sometimes with us! You had every right to do that—you were twenty-one and in college!”

  “Yes, I was, and was about to graduate and become an adult. I needed what he gave me. I can’t regret that now, or my entire life will have been a waste.”

  Colleen took a swig of her chardonnay. “That’s not true. If anything, it proves how much better off you are without him. Do you want to feel like your life with him was ‘worth it,’ or is it better to feel like your life without him is going to be a million times better? You hung around and put up with his crap, I don’t even know how much you blocked out on a daily basis, but he said unforgivable things to you. He just wanted to whip you into shape to become his perfect little Stepford wife, and you were more than willing to comply, for whatever reason.”

  Bitty narrowed her eyes and bit the inside of her cheek. “Duty. Always duty.”

  Colleen fought an internal battle of whether or not to say what she wanted to say next. “Fuck duty! How could that even have appealed to you after what you’d been through? You had already been in love. Truly in love.”

  “What, with Blake?”

  “Yes, with Blake!”

  “That was young, stupid love.” She clenched her jaw, a muscle ticcing. “It was meaningless.”

  “I’m calling absolute bullshit on that.”

  “How? That’s exactly what it was.”

  “No, it wasn’t. Let me paint you a little picture here: When you were with Blake, you smiled and laughed all the time. You didn’t let any of your responsibilities fall by the wayside, but you didn’t stress over every little thing. When you got together with Lew, you were quick to anger, tired, and constantly living on the defense and walking on eggshells. I don’t know how you can think that a person making you happy ninety-five percent of the time versus five percent of the time can possibly be called meaningless. If I could have chosen a person for you to be around, it would have been him every time!”

  “Yes, well, Blake didn’t exactly leave either of us with that option, did he? And how can we act like Blake cared more or was better for me?”

  Colleen bit back the next comment. That Blake had loved her, and that Lew had looked at her like a convenience, and that it had been painfully obvious even back then. Good timing. Pretty little wife. Somewhere inside, Bitty knew it—she’d always known it—but for some reason, she wasn’t allowing herself to see it even now.

  Colleen took a deep breath and said, “I remember perfectly what you told me about each time they said they loved you.”

  Bitty didn’t look at her, but tilted her head toward Colleen in attention. “I don’t remember.”

  “You said—”

  “Two more,” said Bitty as the bartender passed.

  Colleen caught the look of surprise on the bartender’s face. He came back with two more.

  “Okay, go on,” said Bitty, taking a sip from the glass without the college performance this time.

  “What you told me about Blake, was that you had been sitting on the back of his pickup truck, eating tacos from that gas station.”

  A small smile tugged
at Bitty’s mouth, and Colleen saw again how still-young and bright she could look. “Those tacos were so flipping good. It was so weird.”

  “Yeah, I remember everyone talked about them, and I didn’t believe you until you said they were good. And then I tried them. And they really weren’t that great.”

  “You’re crazy! They were incredible.”

  “Well, anyway … you told me you had just been laughing over something, and then he put an arm around you and pulled you in. You were sipping on your drink, and he said—”

  “He said, ‘I love you so fuckin’ much, you know that?’” Bitty rolled her eyes, her cheeks lifted with a smile she didn’t want to convey.

  “Yep.” Colleen let her live in the moment a little, before going on. “And when Lew said it to you, it was at the end of a long night of fighting, where you had tried to break up with him. And he had sat next to you on your couch and said—”

  “Lew said, ‘I’m not sure if you want me to say this or not, but I’m in love with you.’”

  Colleen nodded again. “Look, I’m not saying your choice was always between the two of them. But at the time, I was angry on your behalf. I felt like you were scared of losing someone that mattered so much to you again, so you went with the next person you could. He was rich, did the right things, like taking you to dinner and buying you presents, and he told you he cared. He took the right steps, and you knew you’d end up where you wanted to be. I can’t blame you for your choice, but that was why I was so mad. That’s why I screamed at you and said how much I hated him for you. That’s why I was a bitch to him.”

  Also he had been a jealous freak, who was angry all the time, and got pissy like an unlikable-girlfriend character on a sitcom.

  “Yeah. I get that. I always … I mean I always got it. But it’s what I did. I wanted it to work out with him, and you weren’t happy being a part of that particular picture, so…”