AllFreeNovel
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He opens the passenger side of my Lexus and slides into the leather seat. His stature is stiff, as if relaxing in my car is as foreign to him as spending five hours with the asshole is to me.
“I plan on driving straight through, so…”
“Yeah, sorry, but I’ve barely eaten. Can we go through the drive-through…?”
“That’s a hard no. Sorry.” But I’m not sorry.
He doesn’t say a word but slides the zipper of his backpack open, pulling for a bag of chips and half-empty soda bottle.
“Absolutely not,” I command.
“Unless you want me to barf all over your hundred-thousand-dollar car, I have to eat, or I’ll get sick, so what will it be?” He pops a chip in his mouth without my permission.
“Fine,” I sigh, “but don’t get a single crumb anywhere, got it?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” he returns. This fucker. It’s going to be a long five hours until we arrive at the resort, and I’ll hate every fucking minute of it.
Shifting the car into drive, I pull out cautiously. “No wonder you wanted to leave at eight. At this speed, we may get there by noon tomorrow.”
I look in my rearview mirror at the red and white thirty-year-old clunker. “Assholes drive crazy downtown. I don’t want someone to clip my car.”
“Yeah, since this is more than most people earn in a year, I would, too. Could you have a more pretentious car that screams Mr. Money Bags?” he asks, shoving a large handful of chips into his mouth.
“Can’t help it. After all, it was a gift. Wouldn’t say no to it.” My voice is clipped, but most of our conversation for the next four days will entail this tone from both of us.
“No, I guess you couldn’t.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a few crumbs drop onto my leather seats. “Crumbs, Farmer.” I stop at a red light, turning my attention to him.
He moves his gaze to the seat and stares at the few crumbs between his legs. He’s tall and has at least three to four inches on me, and I’m not short. His long fingers grab the few crumbs with a napkin he pulls from his backpack. Why am I fixated on his fingers, and why do my eyes stay focused on the area between his legs? Fuck, now I’m thinking about what he’s packing. I’ve never hidden my sexuality, but I can’t let him catch me. Yet, I don’t look away.
“Green, Lynol.” His voice is low, and as I move my attention from the middle half of him, his eyes track where mine had been. “See something you like, Xan?” I hate when he calls me Xan. Only my friends can refer to me by this name, and he isn’t my friend.
“I’m ensuring your greasy shit doesn’t ruin my leather seats, asshole.”
The traffic picks up, and attempting to get out of town on a Thursday afternoon is more complicated than I assumed. “Lexus, tell me what the weather is like north of our location?”
The car begins to speak to me, and in my peripheral, this causes Clark to jolt, but he stays quiet.
“It is currently raining north of your location. Temperatures are anticipated to drop to freezing by four p.m. central time. There’s a forty percent chance of snow by five p.m. central time.”
“Shit, at this rate, we’ll be hitting the worst near Tofte. This is the exact reason I wanted to get an earlier start.” My rants are ignored by the man as I turn my attention to him, and he’s placed his AirPods in his ears, and his focus remains on the outside.
With my right hand, I shove his shoulder to get his attention. “Yo! I’m not driving this whole way for you to enjoy your music.”
He takes an AirPod from his ear. “You want to talk? You hate me, and I’m not too fond of you either, so I thought you’d rather have it this way.”
“True, but if I have to sit here and drive, taking my life and yours into my hands, you can’t just sit back and relax.”
He leans over to touch my radio, and I reach out and smack his fingers. “And hands off, I drive. You just sit there and be miserable.”
“Well, fuck me. I can’t eat, we can’t stop and get food, you don’t want me to listen to my music or turn on yours. I have no other option but to be miserable. I’m close to that anyway because I’m with you, after all.”
“Yeah, right back at you, golden boy.”
I lean over to turn on the radio, and he groans when Mozart begins playing through the speakers. And I let out a sizable radiant smile because somehow this trip has become fun.
* * *
