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“It’s starting to rain.”
“I’m okay. Really.”
“You be careful, then.” Gloria’s brows drew together beneath straw-colored bangs. “I don’t like this, y’know.”
“It’s okay.” Rosalie zipped up her jacket and stepped into the night before Gloria could argue with her. As the diner’s door shut behind her, she heard Gloria saying to Barry, the cook, “I don’t know what her mother is thinking letting that girl walk alone this late at night.”
Sharon wasn’t thinking. That was the problem. Her mom wasn’t thinking of Rosalie at all because of crappy Mel, her current husband, a burly, gruff man Rosalie just thought of as Number Four. He was a loser like the others in her mother’s string of husbands. But Sharon, as usual, had deemed Mel “the one” and had referred to him as her soul mate, which was such a pile of crap. No one in her right mind would consider overweight, beer-slogging, TV-watching Mel Updike a soul mate unless they were completely brainless. He owned a kinda cool motorcycle that she could never ride, and that was the only okay thing about him. The fact that Mel leered at Rosalie with a knowing glint in his eye didn’t make it any better. He’d already fathered five kids with ex-wives and girlfriends that were scattered from LA to Seattle. Rosalie had experienced the dubious pleasure of meeting most of them and had hated every one on sight. They were all “Little Mels,” losers like their big, hairy-bellied father. Geez, didn’t the guy know about waxing? Or man-scaping or, for that matter, not belching at the table?
Soul mate? Bull-effin’-shit!
Sharon had to be out of her mind!
Rosalie shoved her hands deep into her pockets and felt the other cash that she’d squirreled away in the lining of her hooded jacket, a gift from her real dad. The jacket was never out of her sight, and she’d tucked nearly nine hundred dollars deep inside it. She had to be careful. Either Mel or one of his sticky-fingered kids might make off with the cash she was saving for a car. Until she could pay for the Toyota outright, as well as license and insure it for six months, she was forbidden to own one.
All around, it sucked.
Her whole damn life sucked.
As rain began to pelt, striking her cheeks, splashing in puddles, peppering the gravel crunching beneath her feet, she began to wish she’d waited for Gloria. Putting up with a little cigarette smoke was better than slogging through cold rain.
She couldn’t wait to get out of this hole-in-the-wall of a town where her mother, chasing the ever-slippery Mel, had dragged her. Kicking at the pebbles on the shoulder, she envied the people driving the cars that streaked by on the interstate, their headlights cutting through the dark night, their tires hu
mming against the wet pavement, their lives going full throttle while she was stuck in idle.
But once she had her car, look out! She’d turn eighteen and leave Sharon and hairy Mel and head to Denver, where her dad and the boyfriend she’d met on the Internet were waiting.
Three hundred more dollars and five months.
That was all.
A gust of wind blasted her again, and she shuddered. Maybe she should turn back and take Gloria up on that ride. She glanced over her shoulder, but the neon lights of the diner were out of sight. She was nearly halfway home.
She started to jog.
A lone car had turned onto the road and was catching up to her, its headlights glowing bright. She stepped farther off the shoulder, her Nikes slipping a little. The roar of a large engine was audible over the rain, and she realized it wasn’t a car, but a truck behind her. No big deal. There were hundreds of them around Stewart’s Crossing. She expected the pickup to fly by her with a spray of road wash, but as it passed her, it slowed.
Just go on, she thought. She slowed to a walk, but kept moving until she saw the brake lights glow bright.
Now what?
She kept walking, intent on going around the dark truck, keeping her pace steady, hoping it was only a coincidence that the guy had stopped. No such luck. The window on the passenger side slid down.
“Rosie?” a voice that was vaguely familiar called from the darkened cab. “That you?”
Keep walking.
She didn’t look up.
“Hey, it’s me.” The cab’s interior light blinked on, and she recognized the driver, a tall man who was a regular at the diner and who now leaned across the seat to talk to her. “You need a ride?”
“No, it’s only a little farther.”
“You’re soaked to the skin,” he said, concerned.
“It’s okay.”
“Oh, come on. Hop in, I’ll drive you.” Without waiting for an answer, he opened the door.
