“Oh, it was anything but tedious.” Angie glanced aside at Vince and caught him wincing behind his menu. “The Rehab office was really interesting. And class was—” She trailed off, at a loss for an appropriate adjective.
“Some idiot attacked her,” Vince all but growled, dropping his menu flat onto the table in front of him.
Angie was surprised by the anger in his tone. She studied him in silence as he relayed the incident to his friend, gesturing sharply all the while. He’d maintained such calm through the ordeal, she thought he must have waited to fully process it. She took some comfort in the fact that she wasn’t the only one who found the incident a little crazy.
“Whoa.” Grady’s response came hushed as he peered at Angie for a long moment. “Are you okay?”
Angie squirmed against the cold metal of the patio chair, feeling the focus of both young men on her. Before she could stop herself, she’d lifted a hand to cup the sore side of her neck. “I’m fine, really. No permanent damage.” She waved off the attention and pretended to continue scanning the menu, hoping they would change the subject.
“You can tell how she really is by her eyes—they change color.” Vince mentioned to Grady, with what Angie thought might be a hint of satisfaction over the privileged information. She glanced at him questioningly before her gaze slid to Grady to weigh his reaction.
“Yeah, my sister’s do that,” Grady said without skipping a beat. His eyes locked onto hers and he leaned forward in assessment. “They’re brown now. She’s happy,” he added with a confident nod.
“Content.” Angie corrected him without thinking. She glanced from Grady to Vince and then down at her menu again. She thought Vince looked somewhat perturbed with his friend’s casual insight, but then decided she could be imagining it. Examining her snap response, she began to wonder if being content was as close to happy as she’d ever been — or could hope to be. Their waitress’s arrival cut short her dreary introspection.
The evening went on with another hour of bantering between the three. Vince’s levity returned as he took playful jabs at his friend, seemingly at every opportunity. Grady took it in stride, to such an extent that Angie began to conclude he had difficulty asserting himself. In the end she was the first to succumb to drowsiness, in spite of three refills on the sweet tea. Noting she’d begun to droop, the other two agreed it was time to part ways and begin the hour-long drive back to Cropwell. Angie didn’t argue.
Walking back to the car, she monitored Vince out of the corner of her eye. At one point he seemed to reach for her hand, but stopped himself. He did, however, manage to usher her along while dutifully keeping himself between her and the street for the entire trek. When she began an unconscious drift toward the curb, he nudged her back into a straighter trajectory with his shoulder.
“I could swear you have some sort of a magnetic pull toward the most obvious source of danger,” he joked, which earned him another puckish attempt by her at stomping on his foot. He dodged with skillful anticipation and an amused grin.
“My mom always said I like to keep my guardian angels on their toes,” Angie said. She struggled to dampen her awareness of every fleeting instance his arm brushed against hers.
“Angels?” Vince probed, stressing the plural.
“Right. Obviously, I’m the kind of person who needs more than one of them.” Angie laughed, meeting his intent gaze with a sidelong glance. She held his stare a moment longer than she’d intended before forcing her attention back to the sidewalk ahead.
“Maybe angels just aren’t as good at looking after their own as they are the rest of us,” Vince said, his voice a muted murmur.
If he’d meant for her to take him seriously, Angie didn’t dare entertain it. She cut her eyes to him, shifting her weight to the side enough to deliver a teasing jab with her elbow. “That’s a great line. How long have you been waiting to try that one out?”
Vince emitted a soft snicker, but didn’t answer.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
They arrived at Vince’s house after 10pm. He had insisted Angie lay her seat back so she could rest during the hour-long return drive, which took the edge off of her weariness, but not enough to give her confidence in her condition. Her neck still bothered her, and there was no telling how it would feel the next morning. She decided to play it safe. While Vince took a shower, she set about calling her contacts and delaying her departure an extra day.
While her hosts in Atlanta didn’t seem to mind the change, Scott had sounded annoyed. Considering it was the first time she’d spoken to him in several weeks, Angie was disappointed by his lack of consideration. When she suggested she could drive straight home and spare him the inconvenience, Scott became apologetic. Ultimately, they agreed she would arrive 24 hours later than originally planned.
Finding herself with leftover time as she waited for Vince to reemerge, Angie succumbed to snooping around the upstairs of his house. She told herself that as long as she didn’t open any doors or drawers, it could only be considered browsing. That left her with the pictures on the walls and various mementos. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just a better sense of understanding. It seemed like the safest way of gaining more insight into her friend’s life without displaying a misleading degree of interest.
Despite his current build, Vince had been a chubby baby. The year-by-year progression of his development lined the hallways from within mismatched, wooden frames. She laughed to herself when she came across a picture of him at the age of four, kneeling in front of a rodeo-themed backdrop while dressed in jeans, western boots, and a cowboy hat. The next few showed him masked in freckles, wearing various baseball uniforms along with a proud smile. At what she guessed to be between the ages of ten and twelve, he’d worn braces. It was at about that same age she noticed his bright, boyish smile seemed to lose its gleam of authenticity. Whether that was due to the braces, or the onset of teenage angst, she couldn’t speculate.
A small shelf along the kitchen wall held a family portrait, where a long-haired version of Vince’s mother sat on a bench, holding an infant Vince in her lap. His father perched beside them with an arm around his wife. The picture beside it was a bit older, and it took a moment of study before Angie realized its significance. It had been taken in what looked like a garden in front of an old farm house. Vince’s mother wore a summery blouse and tea-length blue skirt, cradling a bouquet of orchids in one arm as she leaned into Vince’s father. The bearded man was clad in a crisp white dress shirt and had his arm hooked around her waist. A worn wooden sign over his left shoulder read: “Justice of the Peace.” Their wedding photo.
Angie had the picture in her hands before she could stop herself. Did touching constitute snooping? If so, she’d already crossed the line. She glanced toward the bathroom door — which was still closed — and then flipped the frame over. She pried at the backing with her fingernail until it came free.
The scrawled writing on the back of the picture confirmed her suspicion. “Just Married,” along with their names, the county, and the date. Angie committed it to memory and replaced the backing before setting the picture back on the shelf. It wasn’t enough information, but it could be critical if what she suspected proved true.
Moving on to the living room, the most current picture of Vince she found was his high school graduation portrait. If not for the distinct vividness of his eyes, she might not have recognized him. In addition to sporting a scraggly attempt at a beard, his coopery hair was grown out straight, parted down the middle so it fell evenly to chin-level on either side of his slim face. His current clean-shaven look was a vast improvement, in her opinion. Hanging on the wall beside the frame were the gold, white, and blue honor cords he’d worn in the portrait. She didn’t find the evidence of his academic record to be the least bit surprising.
The bathroom door opened. Startled, Angie began to dart out of Vince’s eyeshot. She was too late.
“Like the hair?” he called out with a smirk.
He’d thrown on a fresh white undershirt over his cargo pants, though for the first time since she’d arrived, he’d left his hair laying flat and free of gel. As he walked toward her he slipped his narrow-framed glasses back on.
“I can’t say I’m a fan.” Angie chuckled, looking from him to his old portrait. “I don’t see how you kept it out of your eyes.”
“I didn’t.” Vince laughed. “It used to drive my teachers crazy how I kept having to tuck it behind my ears. But I liked it for some reason. I kind of thought if it hid my eyes, it made me look more mysterious.”
“Why’d you cut it if you liked it that way?”
“I tried out for a scholarship through the Auburn University fire department,” he explained. “It was like boot camp with all of the physical testing and courses we had to run. It kept getting in my way, so I had it hacked off.” He ran his palm over his head, and his hair fluffed in response.
“But you don’t go to Auburn,” she said, cautiously.
Vince shook his head. “They only gave out ten scholarships that year, and I came in eleventh in the testing. I was the best of the runner-ups. Not much of a consolation prize.”
Angie winced. “I’m sorry.”
I know how that feels.
Vince gave her an easy smile and shrugged. “It turned out okay. I’m getting done with school faster this way.” His smile faded suddenly and Angie was startled when he lifted a hand to touch her chin, turning her face toward him. He brought his face closer to hers and she froze, perplexed by his actions and even more by the intense expression he wore. “Are those…bruises?” His voice registered obvious concern.
It dawned on her that he wasn’t looking into her eyes, but just below them. She lifted a hand to touch her face, in case there might be some tactile sign of what he was referring to. “There’s something on my face?” Self-consciousness replaced all previous thought and she pulled away from him, making a beeline for the bathroom mirror.
Angie hadn’t looked at herself at all since getting ready in the morning. Rarely wearing makeup meant that she didn’t have to worry about it smudging or requiring maintenance. But with that explanation excluded, she couldn’t imagine what Vince could have confused for bruising. She hadn’t been near any soot or—
“Oh.” The exhaled word escaped her lips before she knew it had formed. There -was- bruising under her eyes. She leaned toward her reflection and wiped the pads of her index fingers at the tiny speckles of black and blue discoloration, though she knew the effort was useless.
“What’s wrong?” Vince stood in the doorway, seeming hesitant to come any further. His brows were drawn together in worry, and his voice carried an underlying tension. “Did he...did Brad hit you?” Though leaning his shoulder into the door frame gave a casual cast to his posture, his hands tightened into fists at his sides.
“What? No—” Angie shook her head and looked back at her reflection. She lifted her chin and gave her neck a brief examination. No bruising there, at least. But then, she didn’t expect there would be. Fingers left bruising. A forearm would have distributed the pressure. “It’s just…what’s the word?” She rolled her wrist as she pointed to herself, groping for the proper terminology. “Petechiae.” She nodded once at the medical term. That sounded right.
“Petiki…what?” The controlled anger in Vince’s voice cooled into confusion.
Angie lowered her head and slunk past him out of the bathroom, cutting left into his room. “It’s bruising. But not the kind you’re thinking of,” she said, stepping onto the frame of the lower bunk to reach her overnight bag. She sat down with it on the edge of the futon, beside a sleeping Budweiser, and readied a less technical explanation while she rummaged through the bag. The dog emitted a disgruntled sound and hopped off the bed. “I thought he just cut off my airway when he had me in that head lock, but he must have pinched an artery, too. Those are little blood vessels under the skin that burst from too much pressure.”
Vince crossed the room and sank down beside her while she hunted through her things. “You’re saying…he tried to strangle you?” He spoke in a slow, deliberate voice.
“I’m not saying that’s what he was going for.” She shook her head. “It was just reckless and stupid. I never should have put myself in a position like that.” Angie ended her search and sighed, turning up only an old eyeliner pencil and a small pot of lip gloss. Frustrated, she dropped the bag to the floor at her feet. “No cover stick. I guess I can’t hide it.”
Vince’s weight shifted next to her and his hand settled on her shoulder, commanding her attention. Looking toward him, she turned to show as little of her face as possible. It was unreasonable, she knew, but part of her insisted on being embarrassed.
“He almost killed you, and you’re worried about how it looks?” Vince’s tone held a quiet sobriety. With his other hand he touched along her jaw and turned her face fully toward him. “I should have taken you to the hospital.” His thumb slid over her cheekbone and brushed beneath her eye. “Does it hurt?”
“No hospital. I’m fine,” Angie insisted. “Really. It doesn’t hurt. I mean, the back of my neck is still sore, but my eyes don’t—” Her voice caught in her throat when he brought his face closer.
Vince lowered his chin and his forehead came to rest against hers. He held himself there, eyes downcast and subdued. Angie, meanwhile, reminded herself to breathe. He smelled clean — a faint, simple mingling of bar soap and shaving cream. For some reason, she liked that.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “I wanted you to have some good memories of this place by the time you left. So far, I’ve dumped my problems on you, made you carsick, and, oh yeah, nearly got you killed.” His self-directed sarcasm fell short of humorous.
Angie’s distraction with his nearness was trumped by distress at his melancholy. She thought carefully before lifting a hand and laying it over the crook of his neck and shoulder. Her impulse was to touch his face, but she was still afraid of leading him on. Encouraging the wrong idea would only cause him more pain, and as far as she was concerned, he’d been hurt enough for one lifetime.
“Stop apologizing,” she said. “It’s not like I regret letting you talk me into coming here. Yeah, it’s been a little weird at some points, but if I excel at anything its weirdness.” She lightened her voice and smiled, willing his gaze to lift. “It’ll make a great story one day.”
Vince’s eyes met hers with some reluctance, and he drew his face back several inches. His brow creased with skepticism.
Angie took a deep breath. If she couldn’t convince him, she could at least redirect him. “Hey, random question—when is your birthday?”
It worked. After a brief flash of bewilderment lit his features, he answered, “The sixth of June.”
Before he had a chance to ask why, she pressed him, “What year?” It occurred to her then that she didn’t have a backup plan if she turned out to be wrong, and she immediately began praying she wasn’t.
He told her the year, still looking mystified by her line of questioning. His hand fell away from her face and returned to him. Angie forced herself to ignore the sense of loss that accompanied his withdrawal.
“So that makes you nineteen—” She stated the obvious in an attempt to buy herself time to count months, though she was already excited.
“Uh-huh,” he said, holding her in a blank stare. “What—”
She pressed onward at a nervous ramble, “I know it’s none of my business and I shouldn’t have been nosy, but I found your parent’s wedding picture and the date was written on the back of it. Its August thirteenth.” When his expression didn’t change, she added the year.
Vince’s jaw slackened and his gaze grew distant as he began to comprehend the direction of her thoughts.
“You weren’t an accident,” Angie said, putting her own elation on hold as she gauged him. “She couldn’t have been pregnant when they got married. I mean, the dates are pretty close. You were probably a honeymoon baby. But th
ey didn’t get married because of you.”
“All this time I was sure—” He looked away after a lengthy pause, and then back to her with sharpened focus. “I don’t know why I didn’t check the dates. I just thought it made sense.”
Angie shook her head. “Not that it should matter. It’s not like you’re any more or less valuable as a person either way, it’s just…I know it was bothering you. But you were all knotted up over believing something that wasn’t even true in the first place. I just thought you should know.”
Vince stared across his room for a moment, blinking rapidly. She wasn’t sure if he was controlling an emotional response or simply processing the information.
“Thank you for being nosy—for caring.” His voice came quiet and pensive as he took his glasses off with one hand and folded them, placing them on a shelf nearby.
Angie felt her pulse quicken, an instinctual reaction to sensing something her conscious mind couldn’t pinpoint. When he turned back, he took her face in his hands.
She wasn’t surprised when he kissed her, only by the enigmatic fervor she’d read in his gaze as he’d pulled her close. His lips met hers with sureness, separating this kiss from the one they’d shared the previous day. This was no nervous conveyance of simple affection or even brave curiosity. His mouth moved with hers in pliant warmth, and a keenness she wasn’t sure how to interpret. She had to wonder if it was all a result of misplaced relief and gratitude. That seemed like the most reasonable conclusion, though it caused a tightening of regret to grip her chest.
Angie told herself she would end it quickly, for his sake. But when the kiss deepened, her rational mind seemed to retreat. His fingers caressed her cheeks and splayed to graze along her neck. Beyond that, she found it difficult to keep track of them. As her reeling senses attempted to derive an underlying meaning from the expression between them, only one word came to her mind.
Cherishing.
It was a sense she’d never encountered before — though granted, she had limited experience with this sort of thing. But she did feel certain there was a driving force at work that stood well apart from physical attraction. And something about that frightened her.
Once Upon A Road Trip Page 36
