Page 45 of Experiments in Offline Dating

No? Screw you too!

I grabbed the back of the seat and pulled, expecting to fly headlong into the spitty jaws of death, and that this mortifying ass-in-air moment would be my very last before my shameful demise.

Then my hips budged and, with another pull, gave way. The hell-dog didn’t bite me. Ass finally in, I flopped it down in the seat and let out an “ooph.”

Another chuckle/dry heave made its way over to me as the sadist threw his seat back with a snap.

“Enjoy the show, did you? Douche canoe.”

“Kinda. Yeah.”

Christ. This is going to be a long trip.

He turned the key and revved up the engine while the dog, one of those black-and-white sheepdogs, gave me side-eye. They always looked so cute and obedient on TV. Not this one, evidently.

I was an animal lover, sure, but I was also a big fan of personal space. And dogs didn’t understand personal space. They had their nose right up your snake charmer within two seconds of meeting you. Not to mention that this dog hated me for no damn good reason. I was noticing a trend.

“You should have been a cat,” I told the thing.

And you should have been a sheep, she seemed to answer.

He scoffed. “This is going to be a looong trip.”

“Right? That’s what I’ve been saying!”

The car pulled out of the drive, and for a moment, I forgot all about the asshole competition. As we drove farther away, the little clusters of cottages and farms grew less frequent. It was green, of course, but there was also so very much stone. Light gray stone stretched out where I expected soil, and entire hills and mountains grew from this same stone that broke and shingled off, destined to become walls and cottages and castles. We passed a castle then, my first of the trip, in ruins, its roofless skeleton dark and mysterious against the gray sky.

“What’s that?”

“Leamaneh Castle.” He didn’t slow down.

“Can we stop?”

“No.”

I sighed. I guessed this was where my assholery had gotten me. Oh well. He’d deserved it. “So, where are we going again?”

He let out a big breath to make very clear just how much these monosyllabic answers were costing him. “The Burren Perfumery.”

“A perfumery? For a date?”

“Da probably thought you could use some help.”

Got a lot of words in there, I see. “Here’s hoping they’ll have something special for your just-rolled-in-fresh-sheep-ass smell.”

IT WAS A bit of a long drive. The scenery was beautiful and peaceful, mostly because we rode in silence, as it seemed decidedly less likely that we might accidentally murder each other that way.

But somewhere along the drive, I decided that he needed to answer more questions.

“Hey. Do you think your dad is okay? He seemed really excited, planning this trip with me the last few days, and now he can’t go all of the sudden? Just seems weird.”

“He was never going.”

“What? Of course he was.”

“Nope. If he seemed excited, it was probably at the prospect of gettin’ you out of the house.”

“You know, other people can feel a wide range of emotion—not just PMS. Jackie loves having me around.”