Page 6 of Love You To Pieces

“Yeah, uh, it wasn’t like a big town or anything,” I remind her, unable to not think about the sheriff’s face. His grin, his hair.

His warning.

But I push that away, telling myself it was his way of getting us to leave so Tyler wouldn’t get himself fucking arrested, leaving us stuck until he could bail himself out. There’s no way it was a real, honest-to-god threat about being killed in some small town in Texas with an ancient gas station attendant and a surprising lack of tumbleweeds on the roads.

Though I doubt he’ll enjoy us needing to call him or some mechanic from his town for help.

“Do you have service?” Her question is hopeful, rather than mocking, but I still shake my head and hold up my phone to show her the picture of me smiling, dirty, and holding the neighbor’s Pomsky.

But no bars.

She grimaces and does the same, showing me her phone and the artfully edited selfie of her in her room, but the same no bars. “Tyler! Scotty!” Scotty pokes his head out of the car, his eyes obviously wide and unfocused even from this far away. Tyler leans around the now-open hood, a scowl on his handsome face. “Service?”

Tyler shakes his head, grumbling a few words that definitely aren’t so nice. Scotty actually fumbles for his phone, drops it, then picks it up to stare at the screen for a solid ten seconds before he too shakes his head with the saddest look I’ve ever seen on anyone over something that isn’t a death in the family.

“No service,” he laments at last before looking up at all of us like a little kid who’s been told he can’t have more candy. “Can you fix it, Tyler?”

“Of course he can’t,” Ariana mutters from beside me, though she’s quiet enough he can’t hear her. “He can’t fix a fucking thing. Christ.” She looks at me, a desperate hope in her eyes. “I don’t suppose you’re hiding any ex-mechanic training under all that hair?” she asks jokingly, gesturing to the mess of blonde hair that’s now half out of the braid I put it in hours ago.

I snort and give her a quick eye-roll. “No. I wasn’t the fixer in my friend group. That was…” But I trail off.

She doesn’t know them anyway.

And it doesn’t matter anymore. The old pain hits me harder than I expect it to, even after a year of having lost my friend group. It drives through me like a railroad spike, though with less dire consequences to my physical body.

Fuck, I think to myself as I trail after Ariana while she marches toward the front of the car to glare at Tyler.

This is such an awful time for longing and bad memories.

But still, that small voice in my head whispers. The one I constantly have to duct tape and throw in a box. Emma could’ve fixed this easily. She never would’ve let the car get this bad in the first place. There would’ve been a plan. Directions. Carter would’ve made sure everyone stayed on track, like the Boy Scout leader he is.

But Emma isn’t here.

Carter isn’t here.

They’re never going to be here.

Lights behind me make me pause, and I turn to look over my shoulder, down the empty desert road that never changes for miles and miles. Now, however, headlights are breaking through the blackness, and my heart cautiously unclenches as a large, loud truck slows to pull up beside us on the road, not bothering to pull over onto the shoulder. It’s not like there’s enough traffic on this fucking road to merit it, anyway, I figure, and I walk again to catch up with Ariana and Tyler as they approach the stopped vehicle.

The back window of the four-door truck rolls down, and when pale eyes peer at us from inside, a cloud of smoke puffs outward as the man sucks on his vape. My steps slow, and I look right at him, only for him to just stare right back, unbothered.

He takes another inhale of the cartridge in his hand and blows it out the window before cracking an unfriendly grin at me. But a second later his face is out of view, and the window is rolled back up, obscuring any details of the passengers in the truck once more.

But it was enough. A shiver trails down my spine and my fingers clench around the phone I’m still holding. My toes curl in my sneakers until I shake it off, quite literally, and finish walking to Tyler and Ariana, where they’re standing at the passenger window.

“Battery, I think,” Ariana is explaining, much to Tyler’s clear disapproval of her being ‘the man’ of the group to strangers. He makes a face, shifting his weight with one hand on his waist, and shakes his head like he wants to say something. But a look from Ariana just makes his scowl harder. “And we don’t have service out here.”

“Bad place to break down,” agrees the passenger, leaning out with his arm resting on the window frame. He eyes up Ariana, who doesn’t seem to notice, before looking at Tyler with a look that feels calculating rather than truly interested. “Pretty big stretch out here where there’s no service. No-man’s-land, and all.” Finally, he turns his eyes on me, though I can’t see much of his face as he is backlit by the truck’s interior lights.

I meet his gaze too, unlike Ariana or Tyler had, and give him my own surveying appraisal, with my hands on my hips and my brows raised. I’ve had enough depression binges of low-budget horror movies to know we shouldn’t trust strangers on a Texas back road where there’s no service, no gas station, and no one to hear us scream.

As if he can read my mind, the man gives me a half-cocked grin and salutes me before looking away. Relaxing slightly, I shake my head, keeping my distance and my position clear. My eyes survey the truck, taking in the slightly crooked passenger mirror with a chunk missing out of the corner of the glass, though I stop myself from doing more than giving it an appraising look. Not my vehicle, not my problem. If they’d rather spend money on blacked-out windows and fancy rims, more power to them.

“We could give you a ride back to Wolf Lake, if y’all want,” the passenger offers to Ariana and Tyler, no longer treating me like I’m a relevant part of the conversation.

“No.” The word is out of my mouth before I can even consider stopping it. But once it’s out, I’m not looking to try to stuff it back in, or soften the quick, blunt sentiment.

Three pairs of eyes turn to look at me, and from somewhere behind me, I hear Scotty start to heave.