Confessed

by Nicola Rendell

  “Why do you think?” I say. “Because I’m going to rob you.”

  She gapes, and the curve of her neck straightens. I shake my head at her. “Relax, Helen. Joke.” Sucker.

  Her spine relaxes about a millimeter and her eyes flash in the light of the dash. Those lips shift into a little side smile.

  I cross my arms. If I don’t cross them, I’ve got a feeling my hand will wander over to that sexy, bare thigh. It’s lit just perfectly by the lights from the dash, which happen to be red. Makes her look double-illicit. Dangerous.

  But not more dangerous than her driving. She’s got to be going 90, and the speed limit down here is 75. I find myself pressing on the imaginary brake pedal and wincing as she tailgates a minivan so hard the woman pulls off onto the shoulder to let her pass.

  Again, totally unbothered. Standard operating procedure. Her front wheel touches the rumble strip. She straightens it out. I’ve been in a lot of seriously dangerous situations, but this one might take the cake. We come up behind a cop, and what does she do?

  Passes him.

  “Jesus Christ,” I say, halfway under my breath.

  But the cop doesn’t seem the least bit interested. It’s like I’m in some alternate driving universe where nothing makes any fucking sense at all.

  Then she inhales, quick and sharp. “I don’t know where I’m going exactly. Just a road trip.” I watch her eyes trace their way up and down my body, before she snaps her head away again.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, alone. I’m taking a road trip alone.” It’s like as she says it, she realizes how totally ridiculous it sounds. But she’s gonna stick with it. She sure fucking is.

  “To an unknown destination.” Fists clench. “Yes, okay? Is that a problem?”

  I shake my head slowly at the highway. “Nope.” Then we sit in silence for a minute. The highway is, thank fucking God, wide open for her to drift from lane to lane.

  She starts messing with Spotify on the screen built into the dash and takes her eyes off the road. I let her do this for about two seconds before I clap my hand over hers, grip it hard, pull it away, and press it into her lap.

  “Ouch,” she says, shaking her hand in the air.

  “Listen. Eyes on the road. You got lucky with me. Next time you ram into the back of someone, you could end up with your pretty legs broken and your teeth on the windshield.”

  She gulps and slinks back. “Geez. Okay. Fine.”

  This gives me the chance to fuck around with Spotify. It’s not at all what I’d expect from a girl that looks like her in a car like this. No Shawn Mendes or Beyoncé or whatever. Way moodier shit. More like my type stuff, actually. Which has to be some kind of fucking accident. “These your lists?” “No,” she says, changing lanes, “They belonged to the dead guy in the backseat. See him?”

  So deadpan I actually turn to look. Fuck.

  “Gotcha,” she says under her breath. “Of course they’re my lists. I’ll bet you were expecting One Direction.”

  Nailed it. Her choices are a little girly, maybe—Banks, Mø, Florence and the Machine. But some other surprising stuff too—Hozier. Eels. Amongster. Interesting. Very.

  “So…where are you headed?” she asks.

  I put on a song called “Lucy The Tease.” It was right there on her favorites. I happen to be a fan myself. Just because I’m a convict, doesn’t mean I have no taste.

  Slowly her face lifts up into a smile but then drops back down again. All upper-class respectability. No flirting with guys who look like and actually are felons.

  “I’m heading to Mexico,” I answer. Actually, I have no fucking idea where I’m going, except as far away as possible from the Tri-state area, the Russian mob, and the stack of warrants with my name on it.

  Her cheeks lift. “I love Mexico. My parents have a house in Pu—” Her eyes dart to me and back to the road. “Never mind.”

  Yeah. I was right… Custom Beemer, house in Mexico, gold jewelry. Not wanting to call her insurance. Dangling from her keys, I see a shield or crest or whatever. I squint. Blue, white. I squint harder. Yale. Yeah, I see exactly what’s going on here. “Running away, huh?”

  “What? Of course I’m not.” Again she flexes her fingers over the wheel. That’d be her liar’s tell. Making angry fists with those pretty little hands. Some people sip their drinks. This one, she clenches her fists. I’ll tell you where I’d like those fists to clench a little…

  I watch her chest shift in the dim light, moving with her breath. Her posture, it’s like a dancer’s. Angular and straight, just oozing this confidence all over. Nothing hotter on earth than that.

  Up ahead, there’s the motel that the tow lady mentioned. It looks like a huge, ugly, fake log cabin. It’s called the Forest Inn Motorway, and it’s got this god-awful thirty-foot concrete bear in the front holding a vacancy sign. Actually, it says “V C NCY.” I point at it.

  “I know, I know. I see it,” she says, all testy.

  I lean over and flip on the left turn signal. She gasps. I say, “I don’t know where you learned to drive, but you’re missing some pretty important shit.” I’m halfway expecting her to turn off the clicker out of the principle of the thing, but she doesn’t. She just bites her lip like she’d like to get me back for that. She sure fucking would.

  “What do we do about your truck?” she asks. She squeals to a stop in a handicapped parking space right by reception.

  Christ.

  But I stay cool and put an unlit cigarette in my mouth. “Just a truck. It’s alright. I’ll get another.”

  Her eyebrows go down in the dim red light. I can tell she’s trying to figure that one out. I’ll bet they don’t teach grand theft auto at Yale.

  “Suppose I should stop for the night myself,” she says. She reaches around to get her purse from the floor behind me. I see that curve of her breast, that superfine white skin. That’s what heaven looks like, right there. God, this woman’s got me upside down. Feels like really, really good weed. Top grade, no seeds or stems. Just pure bud.

  In the side mirror, I see a bar across the street and I smell burgers in the air. “Let me buy you dinner, Helen,” I say.

  “Hang on,” she says, looking suspicious, and cuts the engine. She stares at me. “I total your truck and you buy me dinner? How does that work out?”

  I run my fingers across my jaw, making a scraping sound. “Can’t a guy buy a beautiful woman dinner? Is that a crime?”

  “Possibly,” she says. Then she opens her door and the dome light pops on between us. I get my first really good look at her face.

  So pretty it makes my gunshot wound hurt. Perfect skin, freckles on suntanned cheeks. She’s got the softest, prettiest, biggest eyes. So much hair, I’m just aching to knot it in my hands and kiss that mouth. Again and again.

  She looks at the tattoos on my left arm, then looks at the ones on my right arm. I flex my bicep just a little as I move to open the door. She looks me right in the eye. I don’t feel a shiver, no fucking way.

  Alright, fine. I do. I feel her in my central nervous system.

  She zips the charm on her necklace back and forth and smiles. And right then, when she’s got me on my heels, she throws the knockout punch: “You look like you could make getting communion into a misdemeanor.”

  4

  “Ladies first,” he says, opening the front door of the motel’s lobby for me. The way he holds the door, I have to pass under his outstretched arm. I smell gum, cigarettes and fabric softener as he guides me through with his other hand on the small of my back. It smells yummy and manly and sinfully good.

  He presses on the seam of my dress with his fingers while digging his thumb slightly into my waist.

  My full-body shudder has nothing whatsoever to do with the wave of cold air from the air conditioning.

  His palm sits just perfectly on me. His pinkie just hovering there above my tailbone. He pushes a little more firmly than is necessary. I press back against him, just a lit
tle. I hear him groan, and he tries to hide it with a cough.

  Tingles all over.

  I glance around. The motel is decorated to be cheerful, but instead just feels really, really dismal. It’s like an explosion of bear stuff. Fake bear rug, little clusters of ceramic bears on the tabletops, bear notepad. Bear cuckoo clock. In the corner, there’s a TV with a row of stuffed bears on top. It’s tuned to CNN but muted. I’m relieved to see it’s some talk show about the Republican convention. Although, at any minute, they could break in with new dreadful news about Burchett Meats. They do tend to do that. I manage to step away from his grasp and switch off the television.

  He narrows his eyes at me.

  “I find the news depressing,” I say, and reassume my position right by his hand. This time, he loops his fingers a little more fully around my waist, and I feel him exploring the line of my underwear with his pinkie.

  The only thought in my head is More, please. More.

  There is a sign on the desk that reads, “Please wait,” so we do. Side by side, sunburn-like heat between us.

  “Holy bear collection, Batman,” he says, right near my ear.

  My snort is sudden and involuntary. His fingers tighten on my waist.

  I hear him laugh, and turn my head to see him smile. I’m expecting some sort of half-suppressed, too-cool-for-school smile. But nope.

  That smile.

  It’s a sincere, sparkling beam. So big it makes smile lines around his eyes deep and rugged. I gaze up at him for a long second, long enough to watch his smile fall away into something a whole lot more determined. Focused right on me.

  So focused on me, I feel the blood come up to my cheeks and have to look away. I smooth my dress. I didn’t expect him to be funny. I love funny. Life is hard and weird and upsetting, but if you can see the absurd there underneath it all, it’s so much brighter. Funny makes all the difference.

  I see a bell on the counter. It’s shaped like a dancing teddy bear and I ding it. There’s something wrong with the bell, clearly, because all that happens is a sad clack.

  We wait. I listen to his breathing behind me. He pulls me closer to his thigh.

  “Could I interest you in a snack,” I whisper, and slide a basket of Teddy Grahams towards him.

  “Or maybe…” He pulls a teddy-bear lollypop out of a mason jar. He hands it to me the way I’ve seen guys hand women flowers in movies. It’s one of those big complicated ones with frosting on top of the sucker. The teddy bear wears a bow tie and a sweater vest.

  It’s got a price tag stuck on it. $1.00

  I press my hand to my chest. “So generous.”

  I unwrap it without taking my eyes off of him for even a second. I draw my tongue up the teddy bear’s back, staring at him over the ears. It tastes vaguely like root beer, but I’m not sure because, God help me, that face.

  His eyes follow my tongue. His mouth moves slightly, the way people mouth words from a play when they know all the lines. But this is like he’d rather be saying unspeakable words into my mouth. He’d like to be that teddy bear.

  I’d like him to be this teddy bear.

  He keeps caressing me with his thumb. It’s unbelievably sexy. I remember the weight of his body on mine there in the dirt. It’s not every guy that actually saves your life five minutes after meeting you.

  Chemistry. So this is what they mean.

  “You’re fucking beautiful,” he says. His voice is like he just woke up now, extra deep and heavy. I slide my eyes up his right arm. It’s one single canvas, from his wrist all the way past the edge of his T-shirt: It’s that M.C. Escher drawing with the fish turning into black birds.

  “That’s Escher,” I say. “M.C. Escher.”

  His nod is slow and sultry. His eyes move from mine down to my lips. I take another lick of the teddy bear and look to his other arm. More rugged, skulls and saints and the Virgin Mary. A somewhat unconscious relief bubbles up that exactly none of them appear to be the result of a hot Bic pen in a cell block, or however it is that they do prison tattoos.

  “Sorry I was rude earlier,” he says. “I’ve got anger management issues.” Now he shifts my skirt slightly with his fingers. The hem moves up my leg half an inch. “I’m sure you’ve got your own Triple-A membership.”

  I nod and smile a little. I feel my lip get stuck on my tooth and have to unstick it with my tongue. He’s making my mouth dry. He’s that hot. “Yes. I do.” Actually I don’t, but I don’t even know what I’m saying. I put the bear’s head in my mouth.

  He pulls my hips closer. “You do, huh…” And it’s very clear, we’re not talking about emergency roadside protection anymore.

  His fingers grip my hipbone, and his eyes get doubly bedrooomy. Those eyes, gray like winter clouds.

  With one hand, he touches the small row of buttons between my breasts. Just the buttons, though. He doesn’t touch my breasts. Not yet. My wrist goes weak, like all my joints, and the teddy bear falls forward in my hand.

  I study him. He’s older than I am. Maybe 35, maybe less, maybe more. He looks like he lives hard and likes it that way. No wedding ring, no jewelry except for his belt buckle. A meaty, sexy, tarnished, silver rectangle right above his fly. As I’m staring at it, his hand comes down and hitches it up.

  Massive fingers, strong, veined hands. And those wrists. God, those wrists. That’s when a hacking sound startles me and I turn around.

  From the back room appears a little old man with a cane, adjusting his hearing aids with sheet marks on his face.

  “Apologies for the delay!” he says, a little too loud. “What can I do you for?”

  “Hi,” I say. I spin my teddy bear. “We’d like two rooms, please.” Now Vince presses into me a little closer. His thighs against me say, Two rooms? C’mon, Helen. Don’t you feel it? I push my hips back against him to say, I want to make you work for it.

  The old man looks from one of us to the other as his hearing aid squeals. “We only got one left. All booked up on account of the holiday weekend.”

  I turn back to face Vince.

  There’s an ocean between what I should do and what I want to do. What I want to do is take his face in my hands and see what those lips feel like on mine. But that would be insane. That would be impulsive. That would be irresponsible. And the new Lucy, she’s responsible. I think.

  “You take the room. I’ll find somewhere else,” I say. I actually surprise myself that I got the words out, and now I’m feeling proud. “It’s the least I can do.”

  Vince’s eyes look sad for just one flicker.

  But the old man says, “Honey, you best not. Word is, every place between here and Memphis is booked solid.”

  Vince smiles down at me, giving me a lift of his chin and running his tongue along the inside of one cheek, like, So, how you like me now?

  I stare into his eyes and have to suppress a laugh myself. I don’t turn back to the old man to say, “Two beds at least?”

  The look in Vince’s eyes, it says something like Fuck beds. I want you on the floor.

  The old man looks in his book, flipping the page and running a knuckle down the lines. “Room 12. One king.”

  “We’ll take it,” Vince says, slipping his arm around me and gripping my waist again. His forearm is just huge. Impossibly burly. Absurdly sexy. Ridiculously hot.

  The old man smiles. “Just go on and sign in, would you?”

  Vince, the manly man, takes charge and steps forward. Probably wise, given my predisposition for blurting out my real name by accident. I see him write “Mr. and Mrs. Edward Hopper” on the sheet.

  So he looks like that, yet he’s smart enough to make tongue-in-cheek references to mid-twentieth-century American artists? Whose tattoos hint at an abiding love for modern art? Whose very eyes on me make me wet?

  One king bed will be just fine.

  The old man says, “Alright Mr. Hopper,” and hands over the key. “It’s room 12. I got to have it cleaned real quick, though. Wasn’t expecting anybody
tonight.”

  Vince clasps my hand in his. I stare at the contrast between us and go a little limp. My purse slides off my arm and lands in the crook of my elbow.

  “Give us half an hour,” says the old man. “Apologies for the wait.”

  “That place across the street any good?” Vince asks, still gripping me, a little more aggressively now, like now we’re somehow official now that we have a room. I feel the cold of his belt buckle through my dress. I’m feeling pretty official about wanting to get that belt off him; I know that much.

  “It’ll do you just fine,” says the old man.

  “Come on, Mrs. Hopper,” Vince says into my ear. It’s this growly mid-throat whisper. It makes my eyelids flutter. “Let’s go get liquored up.”

  The bar is called the Last Resort. It looks like a shack outside and smells like Pine Sol inside. It’s surprisingly crowded for a place in the middle of nowhere. I’m almost sure there’s a table of Hells Angels to my right as I walk in. Or ZZ Top impersonators with borderline personality disorders. One of them is carving a pentagram into the table with a knife while the rest of them sit watching and grooming their chest-length beards.

  I find myself gripping Vince’s hand, not out of fear but really just to say, Would you take a look at that!

  “’Murica,” he growls. “Fucking ’Murica.”

  “Home of the brave,” I whisper back. His palm is warm and solid against mine. It’s possible mine are slightly clammy. I feel like given the hotness factor, I’m doing pretty much awesome.

  The only open spots are two seats at the bar. He pulls my stool out for me, takes my purse, and hangs it on the hook under the bar as I sit down. The back of his hand brushes against my skin while he studies my face. He isn’t smiling, but his eyes are.

  Low and beasty, he says, “You’re running away. Admit it.”

  I tuck my hair behind my ear and raise my eyes to his. Sideburns just past his ears, and I find myself staring at the place where his stubble leads into his hair. “Maybe.”

  “We got that in common at least.” He spins a cardboard coaster and watches me. I feel heat come up into my cheeks, and his smile turns a little harder, a satisfied tightness.