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Being out here feels like living. Plain and simple.
Also, another thing that’s plain and simple?
I have pretty good hearing, and my ears are telling me that something isn’t right. A noise is out here that doesn’t belong to the regular noises I’m used to hearing. It’s a scraping, dragging, and plodding sort of noise.
I pause, my hand on the wooden fencepost I was about to pound into the hole I just dug for it, lift my head up, and search the horizon with my eyes.
What the ever-loving hot sauce is that?
A shape. It’s a shape on the road, and it’s getting closer and closer, coming this way. I can’t say it’s walking so much as dragging its feet, which would account for the sounds of gravel crunching and scraping. I’m glued to the spot, half in horror and half in fascination, when I realize the shape is a woman. What’s a lone woman doing out here in the middle of nowhere? I suppose she could be a tourist who has run into some extremely bad luck. Or maybe her car broke down. If that were true, then there were lots of places a lot closer than wherever I am, though.
I tense up, not ready to interact with anyone this early in the morning.
Alright, so it’s four now. And I don’t mean the morning. It’s already afternoon, but it’s still too early for me. Any hour of the day is too early.
My shock only increases as the shape comes shuffling straight up to the fence. She lifts her head and looks at me, andholy smoking hot dogs,I recognize this woman. I know her. I even met her once when we were both very young. I was six, and I distinctly didn’t want to hold the baby that had clearly soiled her diaper, even when my parents insisted.
And okay, a few times throughout my life, my granny and mom have laid pictures of her out where I would just happen to stumble upon them.
Nina Geraldson. Or, as she’s known more colloquially to my family, the person I’m supposed to marry.
To say she looks like a dusty, bedraggled turd would be doing a disservice to turds all over the world.
At this point in my life, I can say I’m not very much into playing the hero or the gentleman—going back to my words about my assholism. I grasp the fencepost for dear life and stare Nina down. The pictures that were strategically laid out as traps were good ones. She always kind of looked like a blond-haired, blue-eyed angel in them. But she doesn’t look like an angel now unless she was making dust angels on the road earlier. “What happened to you?”
“Me?” She points indignantly at herself as if there’s anyone else around who might be in a similar state of disarray, showing up out of thin fucking air. “I just drove nearly three thousand miles across the country to findyou.”
“Why on earth would you do such an inadvisably foolish thing as that?”
Her eyes narrow—beautiful vast skies in the summer over green hills eyes. She has dust clinging to every inch of her, including her thick lashes and wheat-colored tresses. Even her lips have a fine coating of dust along the edges. I have to admit that her face is rather pretty, especially smeared with all that grime. What? Maybe I like grime. Unfortunately for me, it’s probably a thing because I shouldn’t find this woman attractive at all. She’s holding me prisoner by way of our families. For someone so slight and small, not more than five-four, she looks fierce at the moment. But then she goes and ruins the whole thing by smiling, and it’s…bloodydazzling.
“I needed to talk to you,” she explains.
“There’s a phone for that. I haven’t turned mine off for good, so you could have reached me that way.”
“I needed to talk to youinperson.”
“They make planes for that too. Planes and cars.”
“I had a car!” She’s not even mad. She just sounds…passionate. I shouldn’t be so amused. And my cock definitely should not be waking up like it had a shot of expresso. Neither of us has had one of those in over a year.
Me, I mean. I haven’t.
Definitely not my cock. I don’t do weird things with coffee like that. I’m generally afraid of hot, scalding things when it comes to my vital male parts.
Right. She said she had a car. As in, she said it in the past tense. “What happened to it?”
“I hit a bump way back there on the road. Well, more of ahole. And then, it stopped dead. It was also leaking something out of the bottom.”
“Ahh, let me guess. It was uncomfortable and sporty with no clearance.”
Her eyes nearly cross, and her cheeks flash scarlet under the dirty smudges. The caveman in me finds her even more alluring when she’s annoyed, which makes me grumpy because she’s not alluring. Not at all. She’s annoying. A problem child and mostly the reason my life is so messed up right now. Kind of. Even if it’s not entirely her fault, I don’t like her, and I don’t want her here, disturbing my peace.
“That’s right. It didn’t have much clearance, and the hole damaged something. I had to walk the rest of the way here.”
“On good faith alone? What would you have done if I wasn’t here? It’s not safe to be walking alone in the middle of nowhere.”
She’s wearing a T-shirt that I think used to be white but is now dusty brown. Same with the jean shorts that are way too short and tight, showing off miles of tanned, sleek legs. Someone this short should definitely not have legs that look so long. It’s unfair. Unfair to my eyes. And unfair how they’re betraying me, sending shockwaves through my blood that resound in my groin.
