“I can’t let you drive damn near three thousand miles in three days. Do you realize how completely crazy that is?” He seems genuinely concerned for me. “I can’t let you get in that car by yourself. You need a driving partner. We could drive three thousand miles together. But you sure as hell can’t do it by yourself.”
His staunch declaration serves as a challenge, making me want to prove him wrong, but I know in the end, proving him wrong is pointless because I’m never going to see him again. I also know that he has a point. An image of myself stranded in the desert, my engine steaming and some kind of predatory bird circling overhead comes to mind. Plus, I can’t deny the fact that it’d be nice to have someone to share the driving with.
“Fine.” I place a hand on my hip after giving it some careful consideration, but I may as well be waving a white flag. “You can come with me. But I have some rules.”
“Okay.” He lifts a brow.
“I’m the pilot. You’re the co-pilot. I call the shots. I make the final decisions. You’re not allowed to backseat drive, and the driver controls the radio.”
“Fine.”
Heading to the desk, I check out of the Diamond Suite and turn to see a shiny, tiny Toyota parked in the drop-off lane.
“That’s us.” I exhale as he grabs our bags and wheels them past the sliding doors.
An attendant from Goodman rental agency stands beside the trunk, greeting me with a pen and a stack of paperwork. When I’m through signing my life away, he climbs into another car with a similarly-dressed man, and they speed away.
Glancing at Cristiano, I find a puzzled look on his face. His forehead is wrinkled and his hands rest on his narrow hips.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“It’s a small car.” He states the obvious. And then I glance at his long legs. Forty-plus hours in that chicken-nugget-on-wheels with his long gams isn’t going to be fun, but I refuse to pity him because this is exactly what he wanted. What he all but begged for.
“It’s all they had left. You coming or what?” I wave to get his attention.
Pressing the trunk release button, I stand back as he hoists our bags in. They fit side by side, leaving little room for anything else. Climbing in the passenger seat a moment later, he scoots it all the way back. Still, his seat fully configured, his knees are a couple of short inches from the dash.
I take the driver’s seat and stick the key in the ignition and turn to accessory mode. The dash lights up and the air begins to blow, pointed at our faces. With my foot on the brake, I start the engine, buckle my belt, and turn to him.
“You said you have a wedding in Jersey, right?” I ask.
He nods.
“I’m going to New York,” I say. “Upstate.”
“If you can get me as far as Scranton, I can get a ride from there.”
Nodding, I pull up the GPS on my phone and plug in Scranton, Pennsylvania as our destination. The automated voice tells me to drive fifty feet to Sierra Vista and turn right. The interstate is ahead on the left, and I can spot the shiny sign from here.
“I need to call my sister first.” Swiping my phone out of a cup holder, I pull up Delilah’s number and press the green button.
“What’s up?” she answers on the second ring.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, pulling out of the parking lot.
“About ripe for the picking. Where are you?”
“I’m on the road . . . heading east . . .”
“I can’t believe you’re really going through with this. I thought you were joking yesterday. You’re clinically insane,” she says. “And I diagnose people for a living, so I’m certified to make that judgment call.”
Rolling my eyes, I flick my blinker on and merge onto the eastbound interstate. Traffic is light this morning, then again it’s a Wednesday. And a holiday. The rest of the world is hung over, sleeping in, or lounging in pajamas in the comfort of their home.
“If all goes as planned, I’ll be home by Friday night,” I say.
“Don’t you think that’s pushing it a little? Maybe shoot for Saturday? I don’t want you doing all that driving in such a short amount of time,” she says, sounding once again like our mother.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I found myself a co-pilot.”
She’s quiet, just like I knew she’d be when I dropped this bombshell in her lap. I can only pray this doesn’t make her go into labor. It’d completely defeat the purpose of this entire endeavor.
“Daphne,” she says, voice low. “Is someone in the car with you right now?”
“Mm hm,” I say, lips pressed into a closed smile.
“Daph-ne,” she says, her voice staccato.
“De-li-lah.”
From the corner of my eyes, I notice Cristiano’s watching, his lips painted in a smirk like he knows where this conversation is headed.
“What’s his name?” my sister asks.
“Cristiano,” I say, meeting his gaze.
“I want to talk to him. Put me on speaker,” she says.
I press the phone against my chest first and turn to him. “She wants to talk to you.”
I put her on speaker and hand him my phone.
“Hi, Delilah,” he says. “I’m Cristiano, and I’ll be escorting your sister across the country.”
“Hi, Cristiano,” she says. “I hope you don’t mind if I ask you a few questions.”
“Not at all.”
“What’s your last name?” she asks.
“Amato.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Any brothers or sisters?” she asks.
“Four brothers.”
“Names?”
“Alessio, Matteo, Dante, and Fabrizio,” he says.
“And where do you fall in that line up? Oldest, youngest? Middle?” she asks.
Oh, god. She’s psychoanalyzing him. I should’ve known this is exactly what my sister would do.
“Second to the youngest,” he says. “I’m number four.”
“Would you say you’re inclined to have middle-child tendencies?” she asks. “Would your family say you’re the ‘peacemaker’ of the bunch?”
He laughs, and I kind of love that he’s humoring her. “Yeah, sure. I just like to have a good time. I don’t get caught up in drama. I don’t take sides. I’m pretty peaceful.”
“Would you say you have realistic expectations in life?” she asks. “Would you say you’re used to sharing the spotlight? And you handle disappointment well?”
“Yes.” His tone is serious, but he flashes an amused smirk my way. “Yes to all of that.”
“Good, good,” she says, her voice growing distant. I can imagine her sitting there, a pen and notebook in her lap as she takes notes. “Would you say you had a fairly typical childhood?”
“Not at all,” he says.
Delilah’s end is silent. I know my sister, and I know she wants to dig deeper. If there’s anything to be uncovered about anyone, Delilah can’t help herself. Like our father always said, it’s just how she was built. She practically came off the assembly line curious about anyone and everyone and what made them tick.
She clears her throat. “Where did you attend college, Cristiano? And what did you study?”
“I attended a private college in Massachusetts,” he says, “on a full scholarship. Pre-law. Actually finished law school last year, but I never sat for the bar exam.”
“And why was that?”
“I wanted to explore the world instead. I didn’t want to feel stuck in one place, working long hours with no life outside the office,” he answers. I’m sure my sister is eating this up right now, the wheels in her head spinning faster than her questions can keep up with.
“Delilah, enough,” I say. “I said you could talk to him. I didn’t say you could do a full psychological evaluation.”
“I just have a few more questions and then I’m done,” she says, speaking more like a professional than a sister
.
“No,” I say.
“Yes,” she says, harder.
“De-li-lah.” I reach for the phone and Cristiano hands it over. “I love you, and I’ll call you tonight when we find a hotel. Bye.”
Hanging up, I stick my phone in a cup holder and grip the steering wheel, eyes on the road.
“I’m not going to apologize for her,” I say. “You signed up for this when you hopped in my car. She has every right to worry about me traveling across the country with a complete stranger.”
“A stranger that you made out with for hours last night,” he adds. “Daphne, it’s totally fine. I don’t care. She means well.”
“All right. Just wanted to get that out there.” I clear my throat and pull my shoulders back.
It’s quiet for a few beats.
“What kind of music do you like?” I ask, reaching for the radio and scanning stations. The presets are set to mostly country, oldies, and talk radio.
“Classic rock. But you’re driving. You pick,” he says. “Your rules, remember?”
I decide to be nice and tune in to a classic rock station. The Rolling Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want comes on the radio, and I wonder if I’m going to associate this song with this moment for the rest of my life.
Probably.
There are a lot of songs that have latched on to epic moments in my life, good and bad. I can’t listen to Louie Armstrong’s version of La Vie En Rose without thinking of the night Pierre kissed me outside a little café in Bordeaux just before midnight. The song was piping through outdoor speakers as his hands found my hair and his lips pressed onto mine with such feverish passion that the world stopped spinning.
Buena Vista Social Club’s El cuarto de Tula reminds me of the night I met Weston, the football player. There was a live band playing on an outdoor stage at some Cuban bar in downtown Miami, and when I asked him what this song was, he didn’t know, so he ducked inside the bar to flag down the owner to find out for me. When he came back out, he took me by the hand and twirled me beneath the streetlights when I told him I wished I knew how to salsa dance. We laughed and then he wrapped me in his arms in a single second that felt like sweet eternity.
The Darkness’ I Believe in a Thing Called Love was practically the soundtrack of my entire relationship with my high school boyfriend, Corbin Dietrich. Every time I hear it, all I can think about are those never-ending summer nights, picnics at the falls, school formals, Friday night football games, and aimlessly cruising around Rixton Falls in his shiny black Firebird with the windows down. Corbin left for college the summer before my junior year of high school, and I never heard from him again. I heard he’s married now, with a kid on the way, and I often wonder if he thinks of me – of us – when that song comes on the radio.
The GPS instructs me to take an exit a quarter of a mile ahead, and I check my mirrors before getting over. I spot him checking the mirrors as well, though he’s trying to be sly about it.
“No backseat driving,” I remind him.
“Excuse me?”
“I saw you checking the mirrors.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Just the fact that you had to double check my mirrors tells me you don’t trust me driving,” I say, slightly teasing. “If you’re having reservations about this, I’m more than happy to drop you off at the nearest gas station so you can call a cab to take you back to Seaview.”
“Zero reservations,” he says. “And I checked the mirrors because I’m your co-pilot. I’m fifty-percent responsible for a safe arrival at our destination, and these California drivers are crazy.”
“I’m from New York. We invented crazy drivers. Ever heard of the New York State Thruway?”
“I’ll see your thruway and raise you one New Jersey turnpike.”
“This isn’t a competition,” I remind him with a smirk in my tone. “Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.”
Reaching for the radio knob, I turn up the volume and focus on the road. Cristiano stays quiet as the mile markers pass, and the music droning from the speakers does very little to drown out thoughts of last night. If I concentrate hard enough, I can still feel his weight over me, the pressure of his mouth against mine, and the feel of his hand cupping my jaw. Even the tingles radiating down my spine. It’s like they’re right there where I left them.
Turning off the radio twenty miles down the road, I pull in a deep breath and prepare to address the hot pink polka-dotted elephant in the room.
“Can we talk about last night?” My brows meet as I turn to him for a second.
He sits up, dragging his palm along the stubble on his chiseled cheek. His gaze narrows at me and his lips press flat.
“All right,” he says.
“It’s just, if we’re going to be spending the next few days together,” I say, “after last night . . . after yesterday, really . . .”
I don’t know where I’m going with this other than the fact that I want to prove to him I’m not crazy.
And I want to make sure he isn’t either.
“Let me start over,” I say, waving my hand in the air like I’m erasing a chalkboard. “You ever have one of those days when everything goes wrong and you’re not feeling like yourself?”
He shrugs. “I guess?”
“Well, yesterday was one of those days. For me. And I didn’t mean to bite your head off in the airport. Or at the hotel. Let me just apologize for that because it wasn’t me at all.”
“Okay.”
“And the kiss,” I say. “I’ve never cried from a kiss before. I’m embarrassed, honestly, and it’s been bothering me all morning. I really need you to know that I’m not usually this big of a . . .”
“Hot mess?” he finishes my thought.
Exhaling, I turn his way and offer a sheepish hint of a grin. “Yeah. Hot mess.”
We’re focused ahead, and I change lanes the second we get behind an elderly couple in a Buick driving an irritatingly ten miles under the posted speed limit. We’ve got to make good time.
“Is this weird for you at all?” I ask. “I mean, after yesterday. After last night . . .”
I glance at Cristiano, whose gaze narrows my way. His brows meet and he shakes his head.
“No, Daphne. It’s not weird for me. But it’s weird that you’re making it weird.”
“I’m not trying to make it weird, I’m simply asking a question.”
“We made out last night,” he says, exhaling. “It’s not like we fucked. If you don’t make it a thing, then it won’t be a thing.”
His phone rings, and he has to contort himself in this cramped little car in order to retrieve it from his left pocket.
“Hey, Joey,” he answers. “Yeah, still no flights. I found a way back though. I won’t miss your big day . . . I’ll be there . . . promise . . . how you holding up? You doing all right?”
I try not to eavesdrop but when he’s sitting twelve inches from me, it’s kind of hard not to.
“Don’t stress,” he says. “Like I said, I’ll be there. Everything’ll be fine. Hoping to get back Friday night. We can all go out. Maybe get a beer or something to calm your nerves.”
He chuckles, and then he ends the call.
“Cold feet?” I ask.
“Who the hell knows,” he scoffs.
“Is it just me, or is everyone our age either having weddings or babies?”
Cristiano nods, his mouth drawn up in one corner. “Feels like it.”
“Do you want to get married?” I ask. “I mean, do you ever see yourself getting married someday?”
Without hesitation, he sits up straight and looks my way. “Yeah. I do. Guess I’m old-fashioned that way.”
“How crazy is it that in this day and age, marriage is considered old-fashioned?” I muse.
“How about you? You want to get married someday?”
I shrug my shoulders, hands clasped on the wheel. “Maybe? I don’t know. Depends on the day. Somedays I think I do.
Other days I’m one hundred percent sure that I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be with someone. I believe in love and soul mates and all of that good stuff, but marriage?”
I stick my tongue out.
“I made a pact,” he says, staring wistfully ahead. “This girl I grew up with. If neither of us were married by thirty, we were going to marry each other. Have kids. Settle down. All of that. Kind of always thought it’d be her. But she’s with someone now, so I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.”
“I know we just met, but I honestly can’t imagine you settled down living the quiet married life in the suburbs,” I say. “It’s probably for the best.”
His gaze falls to the dash. “Yeah. You’ve got a point.”
“You want kids though?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think so. Maybe ten years from now. One or two would be nice. You?”
Releasing an audible half-groan, my shoulders slump. “I don’t know. Maybe one. Maybe ten years from now. There’s just so much living I want to do, you know? And if I have a baby, I want to be able to give it my undivided attention. I want to give it all of me, and I can’t do that if I’m staring out the window wondering what it’d be like to be snorkeling in Fiji or skiing in the Swiss Alps. I hope that doesn’t make me sound selfish.”
“Quite the opposite,” he says.
“I grew up in a big family. There were six of us altogether, my parents, two sisters, and a brother. The house was always noisy and chaotic and people were always coming and going. I used to lock myself away in the storage room in the basement, flip on a radio to drown out the noise, and just paint and draw for hours.”
“You’re an artist?”
“I studied art, yes,” I say. “I have my MFA in Drawing, though I love oil painting just as much, if not more. I was actually interviewing for a job at a fine arts college in Seaview this past week. Anyway, I heard you tell my sister you have four brothers?”
“Yep.” He sighs. “Bet my house was a hell of a lot noisier than yours. Anyway, speaking of noise and peace and quiet and all that, I’m going to catch a quick nap. Someone had me up late last night, and we should switch off every three to four hours. Figure we’ll need to stretch and grab gas or food or whatever. It’s more efficient this way. And safer.”
Cold Hearted Page 31
