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“Come on, baby, where’s your optimism?” she asked, reaching over to curl her pinkie around his, taking it off the wheel and over to her lap. “This is exciting.”
“Mm hmm,” was all he said as his fingertips glided up under the hem of her dress.
“Well, I’m excited,” she said, pushing her shoulders back and relaxing her legs to let his fingertips play on her inner thigh.
Excited and flat-out terrified. The heat of anticipation bounced back and forth from positive to negative. Her mood was erratic. Some part of her regressed to being six years old at Christmas. Another part was dark and heavy, obsessing about all that could go wrong. For all she knew, the Rotunda wouldn’t give up its secrets. The alternative was a team of trigger-ready snipers waiting to blast her apart as soon as she set foot in the parking lot.
“Excited enough to pull over and park?”
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said, following the route on the map with a fingertip. “How you drive all day long and still think about sex so much… I’ve lost weight since I got with you, I’m exerting so much energy.”
That was quite an accomplishment given their awful diet on the cross-country drive. Whenever they could, they stopped for proper food and bought groceries to cook for themselves. Still, she’d eaten more candy and diner food in the last week than she probably had in the entire year up to that point.
“It’s a skill,” he said. “I use the drive to do the thinking, so I can get right to it when we stop.”
And usually they did. On many nights, they ended up having sex before even deciding where to eat or exploring the truck stop. It had been fun. Danny speed wasn’t regular person speed. Nothing was rushed. They didn’t set alarms, so woke up whenever they felt like it. They’d enjoy each other for a while until Danny felt like getting out of bed. Then they’d use whatever facilities they could wherever they stopped, grab supplies and gas before hitting the road.
Most of the time, breakfast was an on-the-go job, but if there was a pancake place, Danny had learned to take her inside to sit down for breakfast. She loved pancakes, had since she was a kid, which was funny because Danny’s favorite part was pouring the syrup for her. Tess let him amuse himself trying to get the perfect spiral before the syrup ran into itself.
“I know it’s been tough on you,” she said, pointing to an intersection. “Turn there.”
“It’s not been so bad. I live life on the road anyway.”
Something they had in common.
Tess finished with the directions, and Danny guided them into the lot of the grand circular building. He stopped facing the entrance, though a good fifty feet away. He killed the engine and then they both sat there, staring out the windshield.
“Need me to go in for you?” he asked, probably confused about why they’d driven over three thousand miles to get to a place she was just going to sit and stare at.
“No,” she said, her skin prickling. “No, I got it.”
Danny didn’t know they’d arrived at their ultimate destination. He’d just accepted directions as she gave them, and there they were. Outside the building her mother loved. The building Tess had played in as a child. Whoever H was, if she was right, he’d been there. Just like them, he’d have a connection to the place.
All her life she’d been ignorant to its significance. Sure, she’d had fun times with her mom, but Tess hadn’t known it was their connection to another person. Still, she doubted herself. Maybe H wasn’t Hades. Maybe C wasn’t her mom.
She couldn’t even look at her mother’s urn. Second guessing herself after completing the journey would be ridiculous. If she focused on her mom, thought too much about what she’d endured, maybe she wouldn’t have the strength to do what was necessary.
“Babe?”
“I’m okay,” she said, forcing her focus away from the building to smile at him. “I’m just going to go in and…” She pressed the button to release her seatbelt. “It won’t take long. You should stay here.”
Opening the door, she got out and started across the parking lot before Danny could say anything else.
It was a building. No big deal. Just a building.
Getting closer, the sign under the covered portico became clearer. It declared the prices of admission for the roller disco. Spinning around, losing none of her momentum, she hurried back to the truck, approaching Danny’s side instead of her own.
His window went down.
“I need money,” she said.
He closed the lid over the urn. Dumb as it was, she liked to keep it uncovered while they were driving. Above it, in a shallower panel of the lid, was a tray where they kept their cash.
Danny passed her the stack of bills, but she just peeled off a couple and gave the rest back to him.
“That enough?” he asked. A furious nod was her only reply. “Hey…” Danny snagged her hand to pull her back as she turned. He smiled. “You’ve got this, Little Red. You’ve got it. Don’t stress your pretty head.”
His support, and the gorgeous dimples, relaxed some of the tension from her tight muscles.
