“Okay, do you want to start with the bacon?” she asked.
Opus’s tongue lolled out the side of his mouth and he seemingly shook his head.
“Don’t tell Rick,” she said, pulling out a package of bacon they would have to toss soon anyway.
Opus whined in anticipation as she peeled three slices off and put them between two paper towels, then on a plate. The microwave dinged a minute later and she put the plate on the counter to cool, dodging the furry missile that wound between her legs, tripping her up.
She pulled down the foods that they’d planned for the trip. She knew the staples and she was relieved that Rick had been eating healthier lately. She wanted him around a long time, and he hadn’t really complained about jogging with her any more. He still loved going to the gym, but she thought that had more to do with the TVs and the noise that would drown out his obsessive need to squeeze every moment he wasn’t spending with her, creating worlds.
Opus whined again, and she followed his gaze to the counter.
“Oh, all right,” she said, and pulled the top paper towel off the bacon and held a strip up. “It’s still a little hot.”
Opus gave out a quiet bark and Tina rolled her eyes at his impatience before dropping it. He caught it in midair and devoured it.
“Not too fast, I don’t want you burning your tongue,” she said, before turning and pulling down spices to pack.
Opus gave a small moan, so, with a sigh, she grabbed another piece of bacon and held it over his head. He sat down, his back legs tensing, his front legs barely on the ground.
“Who’s a good boy?” she asked.
Opus whined in impatience, and was ready for when she dropped it. She did the same thing with the last piece before putting the plate on the ground, wadding the paper towel up before throwing it in the trash can. She’d have to remember to leave a note for Char, asking her to take the kitchen garbage out in a couple of days so it wouldn’t smell when they returned. Opus did his part to help, licking the plate eagerly.
Her arms were full, and she was losing the last of her energy for the day. That in itself was surprising, but they had been on the move for the last hour. Rick hadn’t talked about the incident where he’d sort of implied Char might have been messing with him. Instead, he’d talked about the upcoming trip. Her mind was in free-wheeling mode, trying to pay attention.
Her father would probably like Rick. He was quiet, but when a gun had been pulled on her, she hadn’t had to wait to get out of the situation herself, though she could have. She’d seen her fiancé jump over the desk like a TV detective and nearly knock out the guy who’d been holding her up.
What was his name again?
She couldn’t remember, and had been worried that, with Lance’s notoriety, somebody might have put two and two together when she’d been robbed at gunpoint. It had barely made the news, but nobody was paying attention to her, which suited her fine. She didn’t want that spotlight.
Rick also hated the spotlight, but his career had skyrocketed and she was proud of him. She was at a loss sometimes on how to show him, or tell him. She definitely had fun watching him squirm when she was messing with him about it. That was when she had the idea. It might not only help her get him to come out of shell a bit, but it would also get him more exposure that might help him with book sales.
She would live blog the trip, something she knew his readers would love. Once in a while, she would be contacted by a fan of his, asking if she minded if they sent her a friend request. She trusted him completely, so it was kind of funny and she almost always said yes, with the exception with new profiles… no friends… and had profile pictures that looked to be glamour shots from the 1980s. She’d found out that these were almost always a scammer and did her best to protect him.
Which brought her back to her thoughts of her father. Rick was confident, but something about meeting her parents seemed to have unnerved him. Was it because he’d lost his parents so early? She knew her father would approve of him, even though he’d hated everyone else.
“I’m getting tired. I think all we need now is your go-bag,” Rick told her.
“I’ll grab it,” she said, and turned to walk to her truck.
“Do you want anything else to go with it?”
Tina considered his question.
She shook her head. “I can’t think of anything. We’ve spent a week planning it.”
“Is there anything you’d like to see on our way there?”
“I’ll see when we are on the road. I really don’t know.”
“Fair enough,” he said, and watched her walk away.
Both of them hoped they could put the faux-argument behind them, but neither had mentioned it.
7
Rick
We got everything all squared away at the house, and I finished the packing without sticking my foot in my mouth too horribly. Tina and Opus gladly climbed into the van to go on a road trip, one I’d been sort of looking forward to, but was still scared of.
I checked everything off the list I thought we might need; sleeping bags small foldable air mattress that would easily fit in my backpack, kitchen utensils, different ways of cooking food, two five-gallon jugs of water.
Tina didn’t even raise an eyebrow when I showed her. I loaded up the van with two of the one-month buckets of freeze-dried food that I’d ordered from Amazon. They supposedly contained a month’s worth of food for four people, but I never believed that. I had set out to try those before, but never really had the occasion to do it.
"Does your dad know that you want to ride up front?" Tina asked Fur Face.
Opus let out a chuff, and came up and put his nose under my right arm. I lifted my arm up like my fuzzy buddy wanted and scratched his ears, and looked over at Tina who shot me this 10,000 watt smile. I had to grin back, it was too difficult not to.
That woman had my heart, all of it.
"You're my buddy, aren't you?" I asked Opus.
He chuffed in answer, and I give him another scratch before putting both hands on the wheel.
"So, Tina, about what happened yesterday…" My voice trail off waiting to see if it would darken her mood or not.
"I know, I know. You explained. Do you really think it was the guy that was trying to break in the mini storage?"
"I never really said it was. It's just that Opus was hesitant about going inside the house when we returned. He made a growling noise and he was trying to tell me to stop, or proceed with caution. He hadn’t done that before. And then I get that creepy message on the computer… It just threw me off. If it was just Char coming in to get a glass of water, I wouldn't care."
"I wouldn't care either," Tina told me, she was still smiling so I knew I was okay.
"I know she wouldn't have done that to my computer. Maybe it was just a bored teenager somewhere out on the net who guessed my password, and the rest is a weird set of coincidences."
"I thought you didn't believe in coincidences?" Tina asked. When I looked over she was grinning at me again, poking fun at me in her own way.
"Usually," I told her, “but if Opus hadn’t been on edge, I would have chalked it up to that. I dunno.”
We’d had an early start to the day, which for me meant about four hours ago. An early start to the day for Tina was just about before 9am. Since the mini storage didn't open until 10am, she was never late. We both ran on our own different versions of the internal clock, just mine was wired for me to sleep really crappy, and to wake up at the crack of dawn. Since it was my favorite time to write and my most efficient time to write, it worked out.
Leaving between eight and nine o'clock in the morning from the Flint area meant that we ended up missing rush-hour traffic trying to head south on US 23. For a moment, just a fleeting one, mind you, I’d thought we were going to be stuck in slow traffic.
Instead, I had a notebook out, where I’d hastily scrawled the other two outlines the night before. Tina and Opus curled up, with Opus laying on the
passenger seat while Tina leaned against the window. It wasn't long before both of them were snoring softly, succumbing to the mesmerizing effects of being on the road. I took the opportunity to get some writing done, via my recorder. I would look at my outline, read a sentence I wrote about my scene, and I would dictate it. Writing paranormal romance, eventually, I got around to where there was going to be a sex scene. I dictated that, from the female point of view.
Suddenly, Opus made a chuffing sound and pushed himself away from Tina. I looked over to see her entire body shaking. Her body was shuddering in mirth.
"Hey, what’s so funny? You okay?"
"Yes, I can't believe… Just hearing your mouth say…" Her voice came out in a squeaky falsetto version of herself, imitating me, "and then he ran his hands up my silky thighs…" She laughed out loud, and Opus made another grunting sound, and sat up and looked at her.
I tried not to turn red-faced, but it was a little difficult. As long as we’d been together, even dancing around the issue of marriage, moving in together and everything else, I didn't actually think she'd read any of my stories. I guess she must have read some of them, but she'd never mentioned it, not really. That in itself, hearing her laugh, I suddenly realized how ridiculous it must sound coming out of a quiet, shy guy like me.
There I was, turning into a runner and a workout junkie like Opus and Tina, while having a voice that sounded a little bit like James Earl Jones narrating sexy times between a man and a woman... from a woman’s point of view.
On top of that, I was a bit of an introvert. I just didn't like to be around a bunch of people, and I never liked to be in the middle of the drama. Everything that had happened in †˙e last year wasn't typical of my life, I never got involved in things like that. So, to hear me dictating sexy times, she must've been dying over there. I could only guess how long she'd been listening, and how long I’d be teased about it.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I do what I gotta do to pay the bills," I told her with a grin.
"So, you're a pimp with your views." Tina snickered.
"Yeah in a way I guess. I mean the stories are kind of fun to write, but after a while, you get bored writing all the sex scenes," I told her seriously.
"Why don't you write about something else?" Tina asked. “If you’re getting bored or tired of writing them, write something different.”
I opened my mouth to disagree, then realized she was right. What if I could write about something else? I was about to ask her what she thought would be fun when I saw flashing lights in my rearview mirror.
There was a Michigan state patrolman coming up fast and hard behind me. I let off on the gas pedal noting that I was not speeding. I watched the mirror for a second, and Tina noticed my preoccupation, so she looked in her rearview mirror as well.
"I don't think he's—"
"No, he's got the guy in front of me," I said, watching as the trooper passed to the left of us. I slowed down so he could pull into the right lane in front of me, right behind the semi-truck in front of us.
Opus barked and wagged his tail, and licked me on the elbow before turning and licking Tina on the arm.
"You're a good Opus, you know you are," Tina cooed.
After stopping for gas, we got back on the road again. We were crossing Illinois when I got the idea. Writers are supposed to be normal everyday people. The truth of the matter was, they were all just a little bit introverted, but we have the superpower we can do really, really well.
This power is being able to write.
Writing a story isn’t just enough to be a good author. I'm not talking about prose or grammar chops. What I'm talking about, is the ability to finish a story. I looked at everything I had been doing… Romance, romance action, thriller's, mysteries… Romance was really the only thing that had paid off so far. What I was starting to wonder was, if I could make my ideas and old genres mesh together even more. I spent some time thinking about that.
Tina said, “Did we just cross the Mississippi River?"
Pulled out of my thoughts, I looked up and saw the sign. I’d barely been paying attention to the changes in the road, I’d just been following the muted directions of the GPS. We’d gone from US 23 to 94 and had now been on I-80 West for some time.
"Sure looks like it to me," I said, looking around.
“I guess I knew it came up this far, but the only other time I've ever crossed the Mississippi River was near St. Louis, Missouri," Tina said.
"What did you do, go down there when your parents first moved?"
"Sure, just one instance. But I’ve traveled all over."
I’d spent almost my entire adult life living in Michigan, traveling around to short trips here and there, but this was my first time making a multi-week road trip like this. It would take us four days to get to Salt Lake City, Utah. I could make it easily in two days. Depending on what Tina and Opus wanted, we could definitely put in as many miles during the day and see the sights as we went.
"You know something I forgot to ask you. Is there anything along the way you’d like to see, in particular?” I asked Tina.
"Well, now that you mention it…" She hesitated, letting her words fall off.
"Yeah? What is it, we got all the time in the world to go see stuff."
"Well, this is going to sound silly, but… I want to go see the world's biggest ball of twine."
I looked over at her to see if she was serious, and laughed at her expression. She was sticking her tongue out at me and making faces.
“I don't even know what there is along the way," I admitted to her. "If you want to goof around, we've got plenty of time and places to do it."
"Well, we have all this camping gear. You want to just take it slow, camping along the way?"
"We can if you want. I’m also good with just a hotel wherever we end up."
"You know what Sarge would have to say about that, don't you?" Tina asked me sweetly.
"Probably tell me I'm wasting some kind of opportunity, for something, or something."
"No, that's probably what Annette would tell you. Sarge would probably tell you to take me back into the bushes."
I busted up laughing. Her voice had grown worse and raspy. Hearing the caricature voice coming out of a tiny woman like Tina made me grin.
Opus let out a happy bark as put his paws up on the dash. I ran my hand up and down his coat a couple of time giving him a good scratch and then looked back at my phone that showed I had email.
I pulled my cell phone from the cavity on the left, next to the driver's door, and looked over at Tina. "You mind taking pictures with my phone? If you post it on my Facebook account as we go, the fans I've got might be interested in following along.” The last I said softly, feeling like a social reject for even bringing it up.
Tina's eyes got wide, and she immediately snatched my phone out of the center console where I’d placed it a moment before. "I wish we would've gotten a picture crossing the Mississippi River," she said immediately snapping pictures. "But I won't… you… I mean I won't tag the locations in my posts. That way if there are any creepers—”
"What? Creepers?" I interrupted, grinning.
"You know… as always. Creepy people. Creepers. The Annie Wilkes type of people."
"Misery? I didn't know you're a Stephen King fan."
"I’m a reader. But now that we’re living together, I don’t get my Kindle out as often and read."
I raised an eyebrow comically, and she just smiled back at me, me trying to look like the rock.
"You know, I did read one or two of your books," she told me with a grin.
I wanted to look over, but traffic was starting to get heavy.
"Which ones have you read?" I asked her without looking up.
"Bearing the Mistresses baby," Tina said with a grin. "I'm not sure how someone does that exactly?"
"You see, back in Victorian times…" I looked over for half a second. She was smirking at me, trying not to laugh.
Man,
it was going to take me some time getting used to talking about my work and my writing, even with the woman I loved.
I reached over and grabbed her hand over the top of Opus's back. He chuffed at me sniffed at my arm and then lay down in the space between the two seats.
"You know what, Tina?"
"Yeah?"
"I just wanted to tell you… like I always told Opus… I mean, telling Opus is one thing, but I haven't really told you even though you know how these things go, and I haven't really figured out what I want to… What I mean is… I just wanted you to know how much I really, really—”
With a loud bang, the rear end of the van swerved across the highway.
8
Rick
We were sitting on the far-right shoulder of the highway. Opus sat near Tina after doing his business while I wrestled with the big tire. The nice thing about having a one-ton Dodge Ram, is that you can carry, tow and load anything. The bad thing about having a one-ton Dodge Ram is that my tire had seven lug nuts and not five. The other problem with a big van was that it wasn't the regular 32 pounds of pressure. By the time I had got a flat tire off and on, I was just about done, and for the day. Tina had been sitting in the van with the motor running the air conditioning for a while, before turning off the van and coming out, sitting next to Opus in the shade.
"Hey, did you know that posting pictures and commentary while you're driving is giving you a lot of Facebook attention?" Tina asked me.
"No, I had no idea." I hadn't been checking my phone at all.
She had been taking pictures and typing updates; I’d seen some, but only a couple. She had taken a video of me trying to change the tire on the big van and had caught me in a pretty funny exchange just a moment before. I’d smacked my knuckles and cursed some. Opus had just laid down and put his paws over his nose when he’d heard me. Tina had said that people would definitely hear her laughing as she had made the video live on Facebook. Let her have her fun, for now - I was going to take that one down later on in the day when she wasn’t looking.
Opus Odyssey: A Survival and Preparedness Story (One Man's Opus Book 2) Page 5
