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I flung open the door to my Airstream — his, I reminded myself — and stormed in. At least he hadn’t taken away my keys.
Jo-Beth was lounging on the bed, doing a wing of black eyeliner in her compact mirror. The moment I walked in, she snapped the mirror shut and flipped over to face me.
“Um, did somebody spend the night with a certain sexy hunk?!” she shouted with glee, as though Christmas had come early.
“Yeah,” I sighed, not even sure how to talk about all this.
Her brow crinkled. “Why doesn’t somebody seem happier?”
“It’s a long story.”
She sat up, scrunching her knees beneath her, silky pajama shorts and top gliding over her skin.
“Is it that long story that isn’t yours to tell?”
I nodded. “Ding ding.”
“Okay, so… how can I help?”
Good question. I sat down next to her on the bed, massaging the bridge of my nose with my fingers, trying to clear my nasal passages of the dirt brought in by arid desert winds.
“You can’t,” I said finally. “But there’s something we have to do.”
“Aw man, do we have to run drugs? I knew it was drugs, every ‘artists’ town’ is secretly just a laundering—”
“No, nothing like that. We just need to stay in the trailer today.”
“All day?”
“Yeah.”
That was how I’d decided to tackle this. Was it brilliant? Probably not, but it was the best I had. By tomorrow, we’d get the part for my car and could leave. Until then, we’d stay shut up in the trailer, where nobody could get inside. There was only one entrance, and the windows locked. Which is not to say that Meghan was really out there, but… just in case. In truth, the match had scared the shit out of me, and I wasn’t exactly looking to take my chances.
Jo-Beth shrugged. “Okay, I don’t mind. I guess I can’t get any work done, but no biggie.”
“Great, thank you.”
She chewed her lip and hesitated before asking, “So are you and Carter… ?”
I shook my head. “It’s over. He hates me, he’s made that pretty clear.”
Now that made Jo-Beth’s jaw drop.
“Wait, but you two were like, totally great last night. I mean, you were canoodling at dinner, then you slept over with him — and I’m assuming slept with him. What happened?”
“I can’t tell you,” I said again, frustrated not with Jo-Beth, but the situation in general.
“Right, right, sorry.” She paused, thought about it for a moment, then asked, “Should we be, uh, staying in his trailer if you’re on the outs?”
“Our only alternative is taking a cab,” I replied, thinking of Carter’s offer. “There’s nowhere else to stay here.”
I didn’t want to do as Carter suggested, because that would kind of be letting him win, but I also knew that Jo-Beth was right — staying here after everything that had happened between him and I would be challenging. No, not challenging — heart-wrenching.
In any case, it didn’t matter, because Jo-Beth wasn’t on board with the cab plan.
“We gotta get your car out to my cousin,” she pointed out. “I promised. And we’ve come so far, it seems stupid to quit at the very end.”
Oh, if only she knew why I was suggesting backing out now. Would Jo-Beth feel differently if I explained that there was potentially a crazy woman lurking in the plants who wanted to, at the very least, have strong words with me? Strong words being the polite way of saying ‘kill my ass.’
Jo-Beth continued, “Plus, I don’t have that kind of money, do you?”
She was right again. Even Carter’s contribution wouldn’t take us very far, and besides, I was going to leave that money, and his cellphone, on the front porch as soon as I got up the courage to walk back outside. I couldn’t accept help from a man who said that his emotional availability had been a sexual ploy.
“So we’ll just stay here for the day,” I said.
“Yeah, sounds fine to me. I mean, we were gonna spend today hanging out anyways, right?” she smiled hopefully, and I realized that my friend had felt a little more abandoned than she’d let on.
I scooted closer to her on the bed, leaning my head on her warm shoulder.
“Duh,” I said, wrapping my arms around her waist. “It’ll be great.”
“Girls’ day! I’m gonna dive into The Handmaid’s Tale. Did you bring anything to read?”
I shivered as I remembered the one book I’d packed. “Just an Agatha Christie.”
“Oooh, spooky.”
Yeah, you don’t even know the half of it, I thought.
We grabbed our respective books and snuggled under the covers. I hadn’t thought as far as to what we’d do for lunch, but felt certain that we’d sort it out somehow. It didn’t seem like a good idea to walk into town — not after all the chills I’d gotten last night — but maybe it’d be better during the day. And, all that failing, I was fairly sure Jo-Beth had packed a few protein bars. It was worth one day of hunger to avoid Carter.
