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I take a right and turn into the drive-through, scanning the menu board as I do. I turn to ask Calix what he wants. He’s staring at the menu with that odd blank look on his face, once again reminding me that when he went away, a lot of this shit didn’t exist.
“Trust me to order for you?”
He looks at me and nods.
“Anything you don’t like?”
“Pickles.”
“What? Jesus, you think you know a person, and then boom, I find out I married a freak.”
He cocks an eyebrow at me, but just I grin.
“Hello, can I take your order?” The woman’s voice comes through the intercom in Greek before she repeats the question in English. I guess this place sees a lot of tourists.
I adopt a French accent, just because I can, and order two burgers with everything, one with no pickles. Two large fries, two chocolate shakes, and two chocolate muffins. Then, just to be sure the man beside me doesn’t go hungry, I add two chicken wraps and two Cokes.
The voice repeats back my order. I confirm it’s correct, and she tells me to drive up to the window to pay. All the while, I’m conscious of Calix taking everything in, memorizing what I’m doing so that he knows for next time. I don’t draw attention to it or say anything. There will be a lot of things the man will need to adjust to now that he has his freedom back.
Once the food is ready, a young guy—probably still in high school—hands the brown paper bag to me through the window, which I pass to Calix before taking the drinks. I hand one of the shakes to Calix and put the Cokes in the cupholders while I take the other shake and set it between my thighs. I drive away as the impatient bastard behind me starts laying on his horn. He’s so lucky I’m not in the mood, or he’d be blowing that horn out his ass.
“Do you want to find somewhere to park so we can eat?”
“Yeah, but you may as well eat while it’s hot.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice. He sticks his hand into the bag and starts munching on the fries as I head toward a local scenic spot I remember being around here somewhere. It’s getting dark, so I almost miss the turn, but I see it at the last second and make a sharp left.
“Hold on. The roads are gonna get a little bumpy,” I warn him as he holds his drink in the air.
I drive to the end of the road, then turn right and park. There is a steep drop, but it only goes down to a wide ledge about thirty feet below. Even so, sitting here at the edge where the earth meets the sky, I always feel something stir inside me.
As a kid, I was fascinated with nature, specifically weather phenomena, and natural disasters. I watched this movie as a kid, where they studied the weather and investigated ways to produce early warning systems so people would have more time to evacuate. I’d always loved the idea of doing something like that when I grew up, but we all know how that turned out.
Now, sitting here, I wonder if there is a parallel universe out there somewhere where another version of me got to live out that dream. I wonder if it’s everything she hoped it would be.
“How did you know about this place?” Calix asks, looking over at me. He hands me the bag of food with one hand while he continues eating his fries with the other.
“I came here once or twice many years ago.”
I dig into the bag and pull out a burger. No pickle is scrawled across the top, so I hand it to him before taking out the second one for myself.
“That’s it? You don’t like to reveal much about yourself, do you?” he grumbles, which turns into a moan when he takes a large bite of his burger.
I do the same so that I don’t have to answer, but then realize that if I don’t at least make an effort, this is all there will ever be between us. Stilted conversation and sparks of lust.
“I don’t like talking about myself. When people reminisce about their lives, it’s because they are thinking about happy memories. I don’t have many of those, so I’d rather look to the future than to a past I spent a long fucking time escaping.”
He swallows before taking a sip of the milkshake, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. I have to fight back a moan of my own, and it has nothing to do with the food and everything to do with that one simple action.
“I get that,” he states before going back to his food. I want to laugh. If only he knew how linked our histories are. A part of me feels I should warn him, at the very least, of where we’re going. But the other part, the piece of me that’s a vindictive bitch, demands her pound of flesh. I want to see the emotions on his face when our pasts and present collide in the most spectacular fashion and he figures out who I really am.
I need to see if he feels anything. Though I’m desperately trying to keep past Calix and present Calix separate in my head, my heart isn’t quite so forgiving.
We finish eating, leaving the wraps for later. I’m full, and after the events of the day, exhaustion tugs at me.
“How much further until we get to wherever it is you’re taking me?”
“You make it sound like I’m kidnapping you,” I mutter as I wipe my fingers and toss the paper napkin in the bag.
