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Seventeen
The sun beats on my face when I open my eyes. My nostrils are accosted by a waft of Nick’s bad habit. Wind whips through the Jeep as he drives eighty miles an hour down the two-lane highway who knows where while Tom Petty’s “American Girl” blasts through the speakers. How long have I been out?
I blink my eyes a few times and catch a glimpse of the clock on the dash when I slide my glasses back on. 1:56 p.m.!
“Have a good nap?” Nick asks, extinguishing his cigarette and rolling up the window.
“Yeah,” I say, slightly disoriented and attempting to bring moisture back to my dry mouth by chugging every last ounce from my water bottle. When I come up for air, I look ahead for any local signs. “Where are we?”
“We crossed the North Carolina border about forty minutes ago.” So it’s official. I’m back in the South. “You know you sleep with your mouth open, right?”
Was he watching me sleep? From any other strange guy that’d be creepy. But when it’s Nick, it’s kinda cute.
“All these trees make me stuffy.” The truth is, trees or no trees, I’m a straight-up mouth breather. And now Nick knows two intimate details about me—dry mouth and dry... you know.
“Is that why you snore too?” he teases.
I make a dismissive clicking noise with my tongue. “I do not snore.” Do I?
“Oh, yeah?” He taps around the screen on his phone that’s secured to the dash, keeping his eyes primarily on the road. “Look at this.” He lifts the device from its place and flashes the screen my way. A video of me completely unconscious, mouth open while the sound of my piglet snores plays through the sound system. Heat slinks up my cheeks. “You’re cute when you snore.”
I take it in stride, feeling more embarrassed than violated. We’re jokesters after all. Still, my heart flutters when he calls me cute. “Recording me while I sleep, huh? Classy.”
“Classy is the mustache I drew over your peach fuzz.”
“What?” I cover my upper lip and flip down the sun visor, horrified. But my face is clean, save for the smudged mascara carefully hidden behind my lenses.
He chuckles. “I’m kidding, Olivia. What kinda guy do you think I am?”
“The kind you can’t trust while you’re sleeping.”
“Touché.”
We come up on a highway sign checkered with logos of nearby restaurants, and one of them is a burger joint I haven’t been to in years. One with real beef. “Remember that deal we made last night?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s time to cash in. Take the next exit.”
—
When we walk into the restaurant, I delight in the vinyl-covered booths and the Lady Liberty statue with her burger-covered torch. “I haven’t been to a Red Robin in years,” I say, my stomach grumbling. The last time I set foot in one of these I was living in Austin. The best part of law school was spreading my books out over the glossed table, studying contract law while I dipped steak fries in a pile of ketchup. Oh, yeah, this is gonna be good.
As hungry as we are, Nick and I seem to have only one thing on our minds. The only thing you can after a four-hour drive.
The bathroom.
When Nick still isn’t back, I slide into our booth and pull out my set notes from last night. On a fresh sheet of yellow paper, I draft up the set changes for tomorrow’s show. I’m so engrossed with what I’m doing that I don’t even notice the figure hovering over me.
“Hey, buddy,” Nick says, startling me. “You write like a crazy person.” He’s either referring to my scribbly, mismatched handwriting (some all caps, some sentence case) or the fact that I write sideways in the margins.
“Creativity has no bounds.”
“I know, I’ve written jokes on a box of condoms.” There he goes, subtly mentioning sex. But at least we’re not talking about me.
“I guess that’s better than writing it on some woman’s ass during sex.”
Nick slides into his seat and fans out his menu. “No. Men can’t think like that during sex. Not even stand-ups.”
