by Audrey Bell
He shrugged. "Bored."
"Well, we can watch Dance Moms.” I said. “Or whatever you used to do, figure skating.”
"Figure skating?"
"Hockey. Whatever."
"Are those two things really interchangeable in your brain?"
"It's all just chasing around a ball to me."
"It's a puck," he said, like this made a big difference.
"You chase it around, correct?” I asked.
He laughed. He finished his whiskey and poured himself another cup. "More or less, yeah."
I picked up the book again. Didn't read a word. Thought about him sitting on the edge of the bed. Sure he was staring at me.
"Good book?" he asked.
"Amazing," I said, turning a page. I'd have to go back and reread the whole chapter.
Christian
She slept like a hedgehog—curled up tight, her forehead practically at her knees. I held a cup of coffee from the lobby, wondering how that could possibly be comfortable.
I cocked my head at her compact form. "January."
Nothing.
"Wake up, January."
She uncurled out of the ball. She had long legs. Long, smooth, perfect legs. And she was still asleep and this was getting creepy.
“January.”
I poked her shoulder. She screamed and kicked me in the stomach.
"Oh my god," she said, terrified. She saw me at the ground. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," she said, horrified. "Did I kick you? I totally kicked you. I'm sorry. Are you okay? Oh my god." She ran a hand through her hair, while I shook out my hands. She got out of bed and pressed her hands to my chest. "Are you okay?"
I took a breath. The wind had been briefly knocked out of me. I coughed once. "Yes, I'm good."
"But I kicked you."
I nodded. "I'm cool."
"Oh my god."
"I’m fine." She sat down on the floor, across from me, her back to her bed, my back to the one I'd slept in. She ran a hand across her face.
“God. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I repeated.
"Look, you can't drive me Dallas."
I cleared my throat. "Why not? Because you kicked me?"
"It's just crazy," she said. “Are you okay?”
I got up, wincing.
"I'm really sorry," she said. "I'm a spastic sleeper." I looked at her, eyes wide, hair astray. I laughed…painfully.
"But you can't drive me to Dallas," she added. "I'll just wait in New York for the next flight."
I nodded. "Airport's still closed. The runway has to be de-iced. You're not getting out of here today. If we leave now, we can get to Memphis before midnight." I pulled her up by her wrists. "Come on. Get dressed."
"Are you sure your stomach's okay?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I think I should drive," she said seriously, grabbing clothing from her suitcase and walking into the bathroom to change.
"You're not driving my car."
"Bossy," she said. She closed the bathroom door behind her. "Why not?"
Because.
She came out in black jeans, with her hair in a messy bun, and a white tank top. She looked like an off-duty model.
Perfect. She looked perfect. I would’ve driven her to the Southern Tip of Argentina if she needed to go there.
She whistled as she zipped up her Louis Vuitton luggage. "I want to drive your car if I'm going to let you drive me to Dallas."
"Let me?" I repeated. "Let me drive you to Dallas?"
"Yes. Let you," she said.
"You still think Olivia put me up to this?"
She looked at me. "I wouldn't put it past her."
"You wouldn't put it past me, either?"
"The jury's still out on you, Christian," she said. "Well. They're not out-out. We know you hate me."
"I don't hate you."
"You would have preferred to never have to see me again."
"It's too early in the morning for this."
"Right. I'm driving your car."
"It's got a manual transmission."
"You think I don’t know how to drive a stick?"
I looked at her. "Yes."
"You're a sexist."
"What?"
"You. Are. A. Sexist."
"I'm not a sexist."
"You think, just because I'm a girl, I can't drive a stick."
"Can you drive a stick?"
"Yes."
Damn.
"Fine. You can drive. When we get to your part of the country. I don't trust you on ice. Come on," I said, nodding at the door.
She grabbed her bag and staggered after me.
"I'm not helping you with that after your little ERA speech."
"I didn't want your help," she said, wrangling the bag out of the room and down the hallway.
I stood by the car trunk, watching her unsuccessfully lift the case into the back of the car.
She cleared her throat. "You're in my way."
"I'm not in your way. I'm spotting you. Pretty sure you're going to wipe out."
"Does anybody like you?" she asked breathlessly.
"Darrin likes me."
"Darrin thinks you're a massive douche bag."
"My parents like me."
"Your dad thinks you're a massive douche bag."
"What?" I said outraged.
She slipped and I steadied her and lifted the suitcase into the car with one hand.
"My dad does not think I'm a douche bag," I said, closing the trunk.
"He seemed like it when I met him."
"That was because it was two in the morning, you were wasted, and he thought I was sleeping with you."
"How'd he feel about Olivia?" she asked, as we got onto the highway headed south.
"He didn’t meet her. He’s not going to. You know, you're really hung up on this Olivia thing."
"Well, when did you start sleeping with her?" she asked. "Before or after you stopped talking to me."
"I didn't stop talking to you."
"Oh, please."
"After."
She drummed her fingers against the car door. "Are you guys, like, dating now?"
I laughed.
"What?" she demanded. "Don't laugh at me."
"I'm not dating Olivia. Why are you so hung up on this?"
"Because," she said.
"Why?"
"Because. We were friends. And then you stopped talking to me. And then I found out you slept with Olivia. And I thought they might be related. Olivia…" Her voice trailed off. “Olivia isn’t very nice. And she doesn’t like me very much.”
I looked over at her. She looked fragile, soft blond strands of hair escaping from the bun at the nape of her neck. "Hey, January," I said.
She looked at me.
"I'd never say anything about you to some random girl I slept with," I said. "Okay?"
She held my eyes for a second. "Okay."
I thought about saying something else, something honest. I probably owed her an explanation. I hadn’t known, when I slept with Olivia, that she had feelings to be hurt. I mean—I didn't know she cared that we were friends.
But we passed a sign for a Starbucks and she turned her head at me sweetly, "I'm sorry I kicked you and ruined your Thanksgiving, but I won't hurt you again if you take me to Starbucks."
I laughed. "Yeah, no problem."
January
He seemed to think Pennsylvania counted as the South and decided it was time to buy a t-shirt. I went along with it, only because I still felt terrible about kicking him.
He ran into a Target near a rest stop and I got two more Venti cappuccinos at a Starbucks.
He had gotten the most basic t-shirt in the world. Two of them. Navy blue. Basic. Basic. Boring.
"What?"
"You should've gotten something commemorative. Like, Pennsylvania is for Lovers. Or Go Penn State." I looked at him. "I mean, what is that?"
"It's a t-
shirt. And Pennsylvania is not for lovers."
"But we're on a road trip," I said.
"So?"
"I've never been on a road trip before."
"Okay. Well, I've been on a ton and they really aren't that special."
"Bullshit," I said. "You've never been on a road trip in your life."
He laughed, way too hard. "What?"
I shrugged. "That's what you would say to me if I said that. That's what you say to me every time I say anything."
"Hockey," he offered. "I went on a road trip every other weekend in college. And more than that in high school." He smiled. "And I only tell you something is bullshit if it is."
I cleared my throat and drank my coffee. “I’m sure you really believe that.”
"The amount of coffee you're drinking is frightening."
I looked at him like he was stupid. "You're scared of coffee?'
He smiled slightly. "Not what I said."
"I'm going to tell Olivia you're scared of coffee," I said.
He looked over at me and smiled more broadly. "I'm not afraid of coffee. Just for the record. You and that much caffeine is frightening. Objectively."
I nodded. "I could probably kick your ass if I had enough caffeine."
He chuckled to himself. "Delusional," he muttered under his breath.
"That's new," I said. I smiled. "Brat. Spoiled. Crazy. Bullshit. But delusional is new. I like it."
"The further we get from Boston, the less uptight you get."
"It's the caffeine," I said. I looked at the shirt he'd picked out. Maybe a little tighter than what he normally wore. And navy was nice on him.
He yawned. "I might actually need one of those."
"I can drive," I said.
He grinned. "Once we get to Tennessee, she's all yours."
Christian
When we reached the Tennessee state line, my leg started to hurt in a bad way. I gnashed my back teeth together, thought about what January had been through, and dug my nails into my good leg, like I could distract my brain from the pain gnarling in my leg.
But I couldn’t take it—not for hours longer. "Change of plans. We're staying in Nashville," I grunted.
She looked at me. "It's only seven."
"I want food,” I growled.
"You sound like a gorilla," she said.
"Do you object to Nashville?" I fought the urge to pull over and grip the cramps shooting up and down my leg. I steadied my breathing.
She shrugged. "It’s not that bad of a city." She pulled her hair out of the bun and it fell in loose, soft curls. "Let's find somewhere inoffensive to stay."
"Inoffensive meaning?"
"No bed bugs," she said.
She was talking in a rasp again. That made me crazy. We checked into a rundown motel on the edge of a road running out of Nashville.
When I got out of the car, she noticed my limp.
"Christian. You’re in pain," she said. And she didn't say it in a way that bothered me. I didn’t even know it was possible for me not to be bothered by someone noticing I was in pain. “We should get you ice.”
"It's fine," I said automatically. "Just need to walk it out."
They only had one room and it had a king bed, and I paced in the room, feeling the knotted tendons in my leg slowly start to loosen.
She was staring at the bed skeptically.
"I'll sleep on the floor."
"I'll sleep on the floor,” she said.
I smiled. "You know I’m not going to let that happen.”
She looked at the bed. “It’s a big bed. We’ll build a wall.” She nodded. She tossed the cheap thriller she was reading in the center of the bed.
“A wall?”
“Like the Berlin Wall.”
“You might need more books,” I pointed out—the paperback made little headway in terms of a wall.
She frowned. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a mental wall.”
“The Berlin Wall was real.”
“You’re the Soviet Union. I’m America.”
I grinned. “Of course.”
She nodded and looked at me. “I can spot a communist from a mile away, Cutlass.”
I smiled at her.
“Let’s walk around,” she said. She glanced at my leg, and then up at me. “I mean, if…”
“It would help,” I said cutting her off. I smiled. I didn’t need pity. “Walking is good.”
She grabbed two cans of coke, opened them and took a long swig from each. She unscrewed the cap from the whiskey she’d bought in New Jersey, and filled each coke can part way. She handed one to me. “Then let’s find fast food and walk.”
I smiled, accepting a can. “Yeah. That sounds fun.”
You could see a lot of Nashville by walking. The Grand Ole Opry and music row. We walked, eating deep-fried chicken from a bucket. You could just feel it sticking to your arteries when you swallowed.
"I like this," January said, standing before a glowing office building on music row, the kind of place that could as easily house a bank as a record company.
"What?"
"Big cities, being anonymous," January said. She jumped up on the ledge of a sidewalk, placing one foot in front of the other. She held her hands out, but walked quickly, and didn't have to look down. “At Harvard, you know, it's so small. You feel like people should know you. Like you're doing something wrong if they don't know you.”’
I found it hard to believe she ever had that problem. I’d served a lot of girls a lot of drinks and none of ‘em ever looked like January.
She stopped to finish her whiskey and coke and turned her head to smile at me. "You're just a tiny little person here. And everyone else is looking for someone else." She laughed. "I like it. You don’t have to look a certain way or…” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I smiled back at her.
"I mean," she cleared her throat and swung her head back and forth. "Nobody looks at you that hard. It’s nice." She wiped her hands on her jeans.
I was thinking of big lecture classes and running late. And the student newspaper that announced my career-ending injury next to an obituary for my brother, like they were the same sort of tragedy.
It seemed like everyone had looked hard at me for a while, but not to see me—to see whether or not I was still heartbroken. And before that they looked hard because of hockey—that’s Christian Cutlass. He’s the first-round draft pick.
"Yeah. I know," I said.
She nodded. "Because of the car crash,” she said neutrally.
It wasn't a question and I didn't answer it, just nodded.
"People always asked about my leg," I said, without thinking. "I mean, it was easier than asking about Sam. But I’d have rather talked about him.”
She stopped, jumped off the ledge and walked to me. "That really sucks."
I looked away from her, to the dark sky and the faint spray of stars above the bright office lights.
I knew what she was saying about Nashville. But I thought I could do better than this city—just where we’d happened to be when my leg started to hurt.
I bet I could find somewhere quiet. Practically no people at all. Small town, lots of space. That would be better than a big city—that would be better than any city.
She was staring at me when I looked down from the stars and I lifted the can to my lips. "Tell me about Sam," she said.
I shook my head.
"You want to."
Yes. I did. That was the problem. "We should go back to the hotel."
"I know you want to," she repeated.
"It's not a good thing to talk about," I said quietly.
"Why not?" she asked.
"Nothing good is going to come out of it."
She rose up onto her toes and rocked back onto her heels. "Okay." She shrugged. "If you say so."
She turned back towards the motel. We were a long way away, we'd been walking for a while. I followed her. "It's like your dad."
She lo
oked over her shoulder. "That's not a very nice thing to say about your brother." She gave me a small smile.
I shrugged. "That's not what I meant."
She smiled more broadly and kept walking. "You know what we need?"
A break from each other for five seconds?
"Vodka," she said.
"Right."
"So we can build the Berlin wall thingy," she said.
"Ah. So you’ve decided to be Russia?"
"American vodka," she said. She pointed a finger at me. "You don't get to have any because capitalism."
"What?" I said.
"What?" she copied me.
"I think you've had enough to drink."
"There's no such thing when you’re driving to Texas with Olivia’s new boyfriend.”
I shook my head. She was never going to let that go.
She kicked off her shoes when we got back to the room and pulled the cork off of the vodka using her teeth. "It's a good thing you don't like Southern girls, because if you did, you'd get drunk under the table by your girlfriend on a regular basis."
"Give me that," I said. I took a bolt straight from the bottle, remembering freshman initiation—really, just freshman year in general.
She raised her eyebrows. "It wasn't a dare. Just a fact."
I winced, wiping my mouth. "You think you could drink me under the table?"
She looked me up and down. "Yes."
"You're like five two."
"I'm five three," she said. "And I usually wear heels."
"Your heels help digest alcohol?” I asked. “You’re still a five foot two person when you’re wearing heels.”
"Three."
"Whatever. I think I had a pet gerbil about your size when I was eight."
"I could still drink you under the table," she said, taking the bottle back from me. "Gimme that. No vodka for the Russians." She pointed her finger at me, and walked to the flimsy sliding door and pushed it open. It was immoderately warm in Tennessee that night. The snowstorm we left back in New Jersey seemed like a distant place that existed in another season.
January sat down, barefoot, on the plastic chair and kicked her feet up onto the rusted balcony. I followed her into the air. "Well, me and your gerbil? We could drink you under the table."
I took the bottle back from her and knocked back a stupidly large amount. "Tallulah ran away."
"Your gerbil was named Tallulah?"
