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“That’s not true, Phoebe. You have a lovely body.”
But it kinda was. I’m not torn up about it or anything. I’m thin and built straight up and down. All skin and bones, nothing much in the way of tits or ass. I’ve got long legs and not much else. My hair is brown, my eyes are brown, my skin is pale. Nothing exciting, nothing interesting, but I did have a smile that went all the way to my eyes and to my hairline. I would always be the extra in a film, never the star. Jo-Beth, on the other hand, is a new age Scarlett Johansson.
Jo-Beth’s gaze bore into me. I knew she disapproved of my tepid self-love, and I didn’t want to have the argument again. Avoiding her eyes, I pulled out my phone, preparing to call someone, anyone. AAA, maybe? It’d take them hours to get out here, for sure, but if that was the case, we’d better call early, before the sun went down.
I breathed out a shaky puff of air. “Jo-Beth, there’s no service.”
She tugged her phone out of her back pocket and glanced down. “Same here. Fuck.”
Okay. So the situation just went from kinda bad to red sirens, screaming children bad. We were in the middle of nowhere. We had no phones. We could trot Jo-Beth and her tits out on the dirt road as much as we wanted but that didn’t do us a lick of good if there was no one on the small country road, and I didn’t see any cars in the distance.
Maybe you’re thinking, But Phoebe, you wanted to go to Rough and Ready! You crashed in a town!
And that’s a cheery outlook, and I respect your urge to look on the bright side. Very sweet. But the only things I knew about Rough and Ready were the mysterious alien lights and the abandoned brothel. There are no internet profiles, such as Yelp, Facebook, et cetera, for restaurants, hotels or most important of all, repair shops. So it didn’t matter that we were right on the edge of where we were theoretically supposed to be, because we couldn’t contact any of them.
I bent over the hood of the car, frantic, hoping to find some kind of Alice in Wonderland hose that said, “Reconnect me!” Why didn’t cars just ask for what they needed?!
“Phoebe, stand up!” Jo-Beth shouted with excitement. “I see a truck!”
Unwilling to get my hopes up, I turned to look in the direction Jo-Beth was facing.
Sure enough, there was a shiny red truck, far away on the horizon. It struck me as being too well-kept for the area, but beggars can’t be choosers. And anyways, if I was a beggar, I’d be delighted by the sight of a nice set of wheels. This perhaps suggest I wouldn’t be a very productive beggar. I digress.
Jo-Beth darted out into the middle of the two-lane highway, bouncing up and down to jiggle her breasts, her flat stomach bared to the sun. If there was a straight man in that car, he was gonna stop.
Several moments passed as Jo-Beth and I waited with suspense for the truck to approach. Distances are confusing in the desert. The waviness of heat off the road makes the background wiggle and the foreground mutable. I’d thought the truck was five-hundred feet away. Now I saw that it’d been more like a mile. Couldn’t this dude drive any faster?
After a seeming eternity of rising anticipation, the truck was closing in. Jo-Beth leapt up and down with even more urgency, and I waved my arms, doing what little I could for the team. The truck was slowing.
“We need help!” Jo-Beth called. “Our car broke down!”
I stayed quiet, knowing she would take the lead on this. She was far more outspoken, and if anyone could convince a stranger to stop for two other strangers in the middle of the desert, it was her.
The truck pulled to a stop about twenty feet from us. My heart raced. Exterior maintenance was no indication of who sat in the driver’s seat. He — or she, the windows were too tinted to tell — could be a murderer. A kidnapper. A general felon about town. In the span of a second, all the possibilities flashed through my mind.
I braced myself. This truck was our only hope, but that didn’t make me any less paranoid.
Then out stepped the hottest man I’d ever had the privilege of laying eyes on.
I did a double, triple take, wondering if he was a desert mirage. Because a man that good-looking had no business being on the edge of Rough and Ready.
He towered at something like six-two or six-three, and though he wore cowboy boots, it was clear that the height was all his own, not enhanced by any hidden heel. His tanned skin and deep brown eyes suggested that he might be Latino, but I wasn’t sure. He had the firm set jaw of a man who knew what he wanted, but the soft expression of one who wouldn’t take it by force. His hair was slicked back, as if he’d just dismounted a horse and was still wet from the ride. Traces of stubble shaded his high cheekbones.
