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“Here, drink,” Morgan says, clasping one of the large drinks between her hands and hoisting the straw toward my mouth. I suck in as much cherry coke as I can in one swoop, trying to drown this awful sensation that truly may actually kill me.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, shaking the drink and encouraging me to drink more.
My eyes are watering, and I’m not sure if it’s from suffocating from the fire or because the burn hurts so bad. I gulp down more soda, the carbonation not really helping but the syrup doing the trick. After nearly five minutes of breathing fire, scraping my tongue on napkins, and drinking thirty ounces of cherry Coke, I’m able to use my vocal cords again.
“How’s my soul?” I cough out.
Morgan blinks, then levels me with a long blank stare, clearly confused and probably feeling guilty.
“You said you could read a person’s soul based on how they handle those evil little fuckers.” I reach into the food bag and pull out a handful of fries. I hold them up for her to approve, sort of a safety check that I’m not going to hurt myself ingesting these.
“They’re safe,” she says, her mouth a regretful, pouty smile.
I stare intently at the fries for a beat, as if second-guessing her word, then pop them in my mouth and grin through chewing.
“You passed, by the way,” Morgan says, pulling a napkin from the bag and leaning toward me to dab my chin. I cross my eyes to see what she’s clearing from my face but stop when the thought that I coughed up pickle on myself enters my mind.How embarrassing.
“I passed, huh?” I say, digging back into the bag for my burger.
“Uh huh,” she says, unwrapping hers and pulling the bun from the top before proceeding to layer the inside of her burger with the fire pickles of death. She replaces the bun then takes an enormous bite, giving me a triumphant stare while she chews methodically.
“Trucks. Burgers. And fire-retardant taste buds,” I say.
Morgan laughs and holds a napkin over her mouth. I smirk at her while I continue eating my burger. I’ve never really stared at a person through an entire meal before, but that’s what Morgan and I do. No radio playing. No outside chatter interrupting our quiet. Only the occasional crunch of fries and lettuce and freaky pickles until we’re both left pushing our straws in and out of our drink lids.
I lift a leg up against the seat back and rest my empty cup on my kneecap while my eyes memorize every inch of her face. Her cheeks flush under my scrutiny, and her head falls to the side, resting against the seat back.
“What’s on your mind?” I ask, hoping she’s thinking about how amazing this simple moment is.
“Your soul’s perfect, James Fuentes. Fucking perfect.”
The center of my chest dents. I swear it does. Something inside me cracks open with her words, and I’m rendered speechless. I bite my tongue, smiling from the flattery. As much as I want to stay here in this patchwork parking lot with carloads of families coming and going around us to celebrate Little League games or birthdays or the simple joy of a Wednesday night, I also want to take her somewhere away from it all. Somewhere we can be alone. Maybe I take her where I wanted to in the first place.
“How long can I keep you out?” I ask.
“I’ve got a press release to write for two old ladies at my internship tomorrow at nine a.m. I’m clear until then.” Her mouth curves up on the side closest to the window, the glimmer of light from outside highlighting the perfect shape of her lips.
“I can work with that,” I say, gathering our trash and lowering the window enough to toss it into the trash receptacle.
Morgan shifts in her seat and buckles her safety belt while I pull us back out onto the highway and head toward Southside. She keeps her sweatshirt rolled up in her lap, which makes me downright gleeful because I’m certain she is not wearing a bra. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I swear her nipples are hard.
It’s a thirty-minute drive to where we’re going, and I spend the time trying to unravel the mystery that is Morgan Bentley. I find out that she likes trucks because her half-brother drives one and he used to take her to the shore to camp and go fishing whenever she felt her parents were ignoring her. She also shares how her half-brother came to be discovered, and the countless affairs her father has had. She almost gets nostalgic when she talks about spending holidays at the country house when her grandparents were still alive. And I feel a pang of jealousy that she has those memories because my grandpa died way too soon.
We’re close to our destination when I decide to let down my walls enough to actually show her some of my soul, if you can call it that. It’s definitely the stuff that forms me, and something deep inside tells me it will make her feel less alone to hear how much we’re alike.
“My parents almost divorced last year,” I say, and hearing it out loud rather than whispered by one of my parents in a dark kitchen when they think I’m not listening is somehow liberating.
“But they seem so perfect. How?” Morgan asks.
I think about my parents, the many memories of our close family as I grew up and the way they are now.
“They do seem perfect. And maybe they are, really. Perfect doesn’t mean a straight line. It’s about where you are in the end, the destination and resilience of the journey,” I say.
The cab of the truck hums with the sound of the heater and nothing else, so I glance to my right to check Morgan’s reaction. Her mouth hints at a smile, almost the way the Mona Lisa seems to hide a secret. It’s a little unsettling, and I’m not sure why. I think because I’m afraid she sees someone better than I really am right now. I almost want to challenge her to find all my faults. I’m too greedy to give up the warmth of her admiration though, so I keep my mouth shut and simply bask in it for a few more minutes until I reach our destination.
We pull into the parking garage at the perfect time, and I round the turns quickly, dashing to the top floor and parking on the south end that overlooks the busy train yard below. The cargo cranes glow in the distance as they lift heavy containers, plucking them from the tracks to stack on the cargo ship like a giant game of Jenga.
“Incredible,” Morgan says, releasing her seat belt and scooting forward to rest her arms on the dash, a fist holding her chin in place as she stares. I think she’s kind of incredible, but I keep that thought to myself—for now—content to watch her enjoy a piece of my youth.
