His eyes flash on me, intense. It’s as though he’s trying to read my thoughts—god, I hope he can’t—but when he opens his mouth to say something, he’s cut off by the loud gurgle thundering in his stomach.
I squawk. “Jesus! Is there a baby dinosaur in there?”
“It’s fine,” he says dismissively. “Just a little hunger pang. Can you hand me another chocolate?”
It rumbles again. My eyebrows raise. “I don’t think a Dove Promise is going to cut it, bro.”
“I have plenty of food in my kitchen, but we’d have to stop.”
“Then we’ll stop,” I say simply.
“You gave me a mission, Chuck. You wanted to get to yoursister before sundown and there’s only a few hours of daylight left.” His voice is resolute.
“I love you for that, but I also have a mission, and it’s keeping the only person who knows how to drive this van alive and satiated.”
“Satiated?” His mouth tilts into a wicked grin. “Wow, that’s…so descriptive.”
“Shut up.” I roll my eyes, though I suspect my face is turning the color of a tomato.
But he’s already off to the races. “Such an evocative word choice.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
He pulls off onto an exit. “Yeah?” He’s relentless. “Then how do you mean to satiate me, Chuck? Because I have a few ideas and none of them involve food.”
A choked “Uh” falls out of my throat. An unintentional glottal stop out of nowhere, because Ethan just made a sexual innuendo. About me. Us. The moment in the bathroom I convinced myself was all in my head replays in slow motion, and now I can only blink, manually processing my thoughts in single-syllable increments.Me? Us? There? Here? Van? Huh?
His eyes fall back onto the road. “I’m just messing with you. Chill.” He says it so breezily.
“I know.” I add an extra syllable onto the word “know” and say it entirely too loud. “Me too. We both were. Messing around. With each other, I mean. You know what I mean.” I’m a computer that is spinning the wheel of death. “Oh, look, a road! You should turn,” I shout with an incomprehensible urgency.
“I don’t think it’s public,” he argues.
I’m sweating. Why am I sweaty all of a sudden? “If it’s not public, why are there no signs?”
His forehead wrinkles. “What?”
“Turn!”
“Okay!”
He whips the wheel around and when we straighten out, it’s as though I’ve popped the anxiety balloon. I’m breathing normally. I’m still sweating, but just the normal summer kind and not theOh my god, Ethan joked about having sex with me and now that’s all I can think aboutvariety.
“Are we going to talk about what that was back there?” Ethan asks, a little too pleased with himself.
I give him a firm head shake. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Suit yourself.”
Ethan’s fingers grip the steering wheel tighter as the van rocks over the uneven dirt road that follows the Lake Superior shoreline. Tall grass on either side of us curves toward the center, narrowing the path. He rides the brake in an attempt to regain control.
“I don’t think this is a road,” I admit when the grass sweeps the passenger window.
“You think?” he deadpans.
His arms stiffen when something grabs his attention. He punches the brake, steering us off the path and onto a field. “Shhiii—” he starts through gritted teeth. The front tires lurch onto the grass. They roll and roll and sink until, suddenly, the van is no longer moving.
Ethan pauses. Taps the accelerator uselessly. Pauses again. “Huh,” he remarks.
