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A squeal of guitar feedback caught my attention. Collin was standing onstage, the veins and tendons standing stark under his pale skin as he sang, “ ’Cause I’m a LIAR!”
The sight of straight-laced, polished Collin, shirtless and sweaty—and with a pulse, if that angry red flush to his cheeks was any indication—was enough of a shock that I froze. And I was whacked in the face with a flying combat boot for my troubles. Still, it didn’t break the spell of Collin’s stage presence, especially when he looked right at me, blue eyes blazing, and screamed, “Yeah, I’m a LIAR!”
Jerking awake, I sat up slowly, my mouth dry and my head fuzzy. A bit of drool had dried against my cheek, and I swiped at it vigorously. “What the hell?”
My cell phone was blaring Jason’s ringtone from the center console. Fumbling for it, I pressed my thumb to what I thought was the “ignore” button. But my fingertip slid across the screen, and I hit “speakerphone.”
“Oh, shoot,” I hissed, cursing my ineffectual thumbs.
There was a weird thumping noise on the other end of the line and the tumbling crash of furniture being knocked over. I huffed, rolling my eyes. Jason must have ass-dialed me again. I’d almost hit “end” when I heard her.
“Jason!” a high-pitched female voice squealed from the phone. “No tickles! You promised!”
“I’m going to get you,” Jason sing-songed in the stupid voice he sometimes used as “Playful Sex Jason.”
My jaw dropped as I stared at the phone in my hand, transfixed by the source of the obscene giggling.
“No!” the woman squealed, clearly delighted with Playful Sex Jason. More delighted than I can remember being in months. “No, Jason, not the knees!”
“Yes, the knees,” Jason insisted, and I could hear sloppy kissing noises smacking through the receiver. There was a weird muffled thumping sound and more squeals. Jason groaned, and the girl sighed happily. There was another clear, hard thump. And another … and another … and another.
I guessed the “emotional affair” had taken a turn for the naked.
“Lisa!” Jason moaned. “Oh, Lisa, baby, I love you so much.”
“What?” I yelled at my phone. “You son of a bitch!”
Collin snatched the device out of my hands and hit “end,” just as Lisa’s rapturous moans hit a crescendo.
“You didn’t need to hear more,” he said quietly, keeping his eyes on the road.
Speechless, I stared at the phone as if I could reestablish the connection, reach through it, and throttle my former fiancé. Collin actually leaned away from me at the wheel as if he wanted to stay out of smacking range. I crossed my arms over my chest and seethed silently.
What in the actual fuck? How long had Jason been sleeping with Lisa? Had he been lying when he swore that he hadn’t touched her while we were engaged? Had he waited until I was out of town to jump into bed with her? Did it really matter?
I thought about all of the times Jason had apologized for what happened with Lisa, all of the gifts and tearful talks. And I just couldn’t wrap my head around why he bothered. What was his plan? To keep screwing Lisa until the wedding? For the rest of our lives? Why did he spend all that time asking me to come back to him if he loved his childhood friend? If he was in love with her, fine! Why not just take my breaking off the engagement as some sort of sign that they were supposed to be together? Was it that he couldn’t bear being dumped by me? Did he want me back just so he could do the official dumping?
I rubbed my hands over my face, realizing that this was the question that had been eating at me, keeping me from committing to a life with or without Jason. If he loved someone else, why did he say he wanted me?
I’d never trusted his sudden change of heart. I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop all this time, and it had kicked me in the face months ago. All this time, I knew deep down that as much as I wanted to, I’d never be able to forgive him. Not really. I mean, I assigned him “Liar” as a ringtone. That should have been a whopping subconscious clue.
My heart had known for a while. It just took my brain a few months to catch up. And just when I was starting to feel a little bit better, I realized that we had a bigger problem looming ahead of us.
“Hey, Collin, where are we?”
NOT OK, JOHN DENVER
8
We were supposed to be in Kansas City by now. Instead, we seemed to be stopped on the proverbial dark country road in the drizzling rain, in front of an ancient, rusting bridge. Well, half of an ancient, rusting bridge. The span that was supposed to project over the ravine seemed to have broken off and fallen in, leaving a precariously tilted bridge stump on our side of the crevasse.
“Collin.” I straightened in my seat. “Where the hell are we?”
“I didn’t trust the GPS system on your phone,” he said hesitantly. “I believed I remembered a shortcut from my previous travels through the Heartland.”
“Previous travels through the Heartland? Decades ago? Before modern highway systems were built?”
>“Miranda!” he cried. “Wake up!”
