Page 4

"I can't hide forever, Angie."

"You're not hiding. You're strategically regrouping. There's a difference."

An hour later, she pulled into another gas station.

"Already?"

"Small bladder," she said cheerfully. "All that Mountain Dew has to go somewhere."

This became our pattern. Drive for forty-five minutes, stop for bathroom and more drinks, repeat. By the third stop, I'd given up protesting and started timing her.

"Eight minutes, forty-two seconds," I announced when she climbed back into the car. "You were really slow that time."

"I had to get more gummy bears. We're almost out."

"Jesus, you don't need more food. You've already made your way through the entire sack. When the sugar crash comes, I'll have to peel you from the wheel well."

"See, that's my point. I need to just keep the sugar coming the entire trip, therefore no crash." She waved her hand at me. "You want to hear about the time Gustavo decided he was going to be a stunt man?"

"Was this before or after he became a doctor?"

"During medical school, actually. He figured he could make extra money falling off buildings on weekends. Lasted exactly one shoot before he broke his collarbone and had to explain to his professors why he couldn't perform surgery rotations."

I laughed, really laughed, for the first time in two weeks. "Your family is like a sitcom that jumped the shark in season three and just kept going."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said about us."

We crossed into Georgia as the sun climbed higher. The landscape shifted from palm trees to pine trees, and the radio stations went from pop to country. Angelica sang along badly to every song she knew and made up words to the ones she didn't.

"You realize you're a terrible singer," I told her after she murdered a Miranda Lambert song.

"That's what makes it fun. If I were good at it, I would just be showing off."

At our fourth stop, this one at a Chevron just past Macon, I went inside while Angelica hit the restroom again. I grabbed a bottle of water and an apple, desperate for something that wasn't processed sugar or mysterious meat products.

"Well hello there, beautiful."

I turned to find a man in his forties standing too close, his breath a toxic mix of beer and cigarettes even though it wasn't even noon yet. His confederate flag belt buckle was roughly the size of a dinner plate.

"Not interested." I turned back to the counter.

He moved closer. "You haven't even really heard me talk. How can you know you're not interested?" He smiled and licked his lower lip.

Ewww.

"Look, I'm just trying to buy an apple. Can we not do this?"

"No can do. You're just too pretty. You outshine a sunrise, little darling. Especially with that shirt showing off your tits."

"Are you for real?" My tone turned to ice. "Let me guess, yours is the red truck out there with the truck nuts, right? You need them because you have a wife at home who has your actual nuts in a jar beside her side of the bed."

He reared back. "Look here, bitch, you keep my wife out of this."

His hand moved toward my arm.

"Try it, just try it, and you'll lose a limb." I wasn't kidding. After my role six years ago in a superhero movie where I had to learn how to fight, I'd kept up with the MMA training and added weekly sessions with a former Marine who specialized in close-quarters combat. Turns out, staying fight-ready was excellent for maintaining my action star physique and even better for handling handsy creeps at gas stations.

He must have seen something in my eyes because he dropped his hand.