Page 35 of Challenge Me

You glanced away from the road to frown at me. “You’re going to lie to me now?”

“Watch where you’re driving.” I corrected your steering with a light tug, but I didn’t turn us away from the painfully familiar road. You took the offramp and drove down until the streets thinned out to rural roads, then pulled me onto the shoulder and brought me to a complete stop. The silence after my engine settled was unbearable.

“Ghost,” you said.

The bitterness I had worked so hard to bury bubbled toward the surface like putrid oil from the bottom of a ruined pan. I had sealed it beneath pride and anger, hoping that if I behaved as though John had meant nothing, eventually he would. But thirty years did not simply vanish just because a man signed a piece of paper.

My grief and rage filled my throat and coated my tongue with venomous words that I choked down rather than spit at you. “This…” I began, then had to stop and clear my throat. “This used to be where my home was.”

You looked out through my windshield, studying the narrow country road ahead. Your expression softened in a way I did not appreciate.

“Can we go?” I asked before you could speak.

“Go where?”

The question felt like a trap, though you asked it gently.

“Away,” I answered, trying to hide pain in my voice, hoping you wouldn’t ask questions anymore, that you would floor the accelerator and take me away to where pain and memories could not follow. “Just take me away from here.” I didn’t ask to be taken home; I had no home, not anymore. I belonged to you now, legally speaking, but belonging to a man and having a home were not always the same thing. My home had been in Hempstead with John, but John didn’t want me anymore. He had taken the insurance payout, signed me over, and left me injured and alone.

I had to forget him. I had been telling myself that every day since the auction.

I had to.

But the look on your face told me loud and clear that forgetting wasn’t on the agenda that night, and I realized, with creeping dread, that the vicious little surgeon that was sharpening the knife was you.

You weren’t going to let the wound fester, no matter how much it hurt to cut it back open.

“You won’t heal without closure,” you whispered as you reached for my shadow. I knew one touch would make me fall apart; I disappeared, sinking deep into the metal frame, leaving you alone in the driver’s seat, my frame shuddering in shame.

“I mean it, Ghost,” you continued, not seeming to take any offense from my cowardice. “I’ve been there. You just gotta face it and move on. Sometimes it’s better to rip the bandage off. Better to hear someone say they don’t want you than spend years wondering why.”

My radio crackled involuntarily. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Do you really believe that?” You leaned back in the seat, apparently content to argue with my dashboard until I reappeared, your thumb stroking slowly over the leather of my seat. “Trust me, Ghost. You might keep driving past this exit for another thirty years, and you’ll still wonder what happened every time you see the name.”

I reformed next to you, hesitant and ashamed. Maybe your words had some truth to them; I’d only ever had one owner. You had far more experience with being abandoned than I did, and despite that, you were still here.

“Let me talk to him.” You began fixing your outfit, pulling the sides of your coat together and adjusting the collar until it sat neatly over your bare chest. You combed your fingers through your tangled hair with little success, wiped the last of the oil from your face with a handkerchief, then inspected the result in my mirror.

“Maybe there was a reason,” you continued. “Maybe the reason is that he is an asshole who never valued you. Whatever it is, it will be better than wondering forever.”

That was what I had been doing, day after day, asking myself the same useless question. Why?

I had been good to John. He’d said he would never sell me, and people made offers; once a week, it seemed, whenever we stopped for fuel or pulled into town.

‘Hey, that’s a nice Challenger you have there.’

John would grin because he knew. Then he would climb behind my wheel, rev my engine, and leave them standing in a cloud of smoke.

He was proud of me.

I had been certain of it.

So why had he given me up?

I knew that without you I’d never find out. I couldn’t drive back and ask, could I?

I closed my eyes for a moment before I gave you a nod.