I listen to him play for the next fifteen minutes and then it goes silent. I had turned the TV off when I first heard him and now all that I can hear is a constant drip coming from the bathroom sink and the occasional car driving through the motel parking lot.
I drift off to sleep and the dream comes back:
That morning, I didn’t get my usual string of text messages from Ian before I got out of bed. I tried calling his phone, but it rang and rang and the voicemail never picked up. And Ian wasn’t at school when I got there.
Everybody was staring at me as I walked through the halls. Some couldn’t look me in the eye. Jennifer Parsons burst into tears when I walked past her at her locker, while another group of girls, cheerleaders, turned their noses up at me and eyed me as though I was something contagious. I didn’t know what was going on, but I felt like I had walked into some freaky alternate reality. No one would say a word to me, but it was so damn obvious that everybody in that school knew something that I didn’t. And it was bad. I never really had any enemies, except sometimes a few of the cheerleaders showed jealousy towards me because Ian loved me and wouldn’t give them the time of day. What can I say? Ian Walsh was hotter than the star quarterback and it didn’t matter to anyone, not even Emily Derting, the richest girl in Millbrook High School, that Ian didn’t have much and that his parents still drove him to school.
She still wanted him.
Everybody did.
I went on to my locker, hoping to see Natalie soon so maybe she could tell me what was going on. I lingered around my locker longer than usual waiting for any sign of her. It was Damon who found me and told me what happened. He pulled me off to the side, in-between the alcove that housed the water fountains. My heart was hammering inside my chest. I knew something was wrong when I got up that morning, even before I realized there were no text messages from Ian. I felt…off. It was like I knew….
“Camryn,” Damon said and I knew right then the seriousness of what he was about to tell me because he and Natalie always call me ‘Cam’. “Ian was in a car accident last night….”
I felt my breath catch and both of my hands flew to my mouth. Tears were burning my throat and streaming from my eyes.
“He died early this morning at the hospital.” Damon was trying so hard to tell me this, but the pain in his face was unmistakable.
I just stared at Damon for what felt like an eternity before I couldn’t stand up on my own anymore and I collapsed into his arms. I cried and cried until I made myself sick and finally Natalie found us and they both helped me into the nurse’s office.
I wake up from the nightmare sweating, my heart racing like mad. I throw the sheet off of me and sit in the center of the bed with my knees drawn up, running my hands across my head and I let out a long sigh. The dream had stopped a long time ago. In fact, it was the last dream I remember having. Why is it back?
~~~
A loud banging on my room door jolts me up.
“RISE AND SHINE BUTTERCUP!” Andrew says harmoniously from the other side.
I don’t even remember when I fell back asleep after the dream. The sun is shining through a sliver parted between the curtains, pooling on the tan carpet just below the window. I rise up from the bed and push back the sloppy hair away from my face and go to open the door before he wakes up the whole motel.
He’s gawking at me when I open the door.
“Damn girl,” he says, looking me over, “what the hell are you trying to do to me?”
I look down at myself, still trying to wake up the rest of the way and realize I’m in those tiny cotton white shorts and varsity tee with no bra on underneath. Oh my God, my n**ples are like beacons shining through my shirt! I cross my arms over my chest and try not to look him in the eyes when he helps himself the rest of the way inside.
“I was going to tell you to get dressed,” he goes on, grinning as he walks into the room carrying his bags and the guitar, “but really, you can go just like that if you want.”
I shake my head, hiding the smile creeping up on my face.
He plops down on the chair by the window and sets his stuff on the floor. He’s wearing a pair of tan cargo shorts that drop just past his knees, a plain dark gray t-shirt and those low black running shoes with no-show socks, or no socks at all. I glimpse the tattoo on his ankle; looks like some kind of circular-shaped Celtic design positioned right over his ankle bone. And he definitely has runner’s legs; his calves are bulging with tight muscles.
“Wait there and I’ll get ready,” I say, going toward my bag sitting on the elongated dresser where the TV sits on the opposite end.
“How long will this take?” he asks and I detect a hint of interrogation in his voice.
Remembering what he said back at his dad’s house, I think about my answer first and weigh my options: my usual thirty-minute prep time, or cave to a throw-it-on-and-go?
He helps me out with the dilemma:
“You have two minutes.”
“Two minutes?” I argue.
He nods, grinning. “You heard me. Two minutes.” He holds up two wriggling fingers. “You agreed to do whatever I said, remember?”
“Yeah, but I thought it was going to be crazy stuff like mooning someone from a moving car or eating bugs.”
One of his brows rises and he draws back his chin as if I just slapped two ideas into his lap. “In time you will moon someone from a moving car and eat a bug—we’ll get to that.”
What the hell just I just do?
My head rolls backward in dispute and mortification and my hands fly to my hips. “Uh, there is no way—.” I notice his grin has changed into something more ‘crafty school boy’ and I look down, realizing my arms are no longer covering my n**ples poking so proudly through the thin fabric of my shirt. I let out a spat of air and my mouth falls open. “Andrew!”
He lowers his head with false shame, but it just makes him appear more devious the way he looks back up under hooded eyes at me.
He is so f**king hot….
“Hey, you’re the one who’d rather complain about the ground rules than protect your girls from my eyes—I should warn you they have a mind of their own.”
“Yeah, I bet they aren’t the only things on you with a mind of their own.” I smirk and grab my bag, shuffling my way barefooted into the bathroom and shutting the door.
I’m smiling like one of those 1980’s cheesy portrait studio photos when I look at myself in the mirror.
OK, two minutes. I literally dive into my bra and tight jeans, jumping up and down to get them to slide over my butt. Zip. Button. Brush teeth thoroughly. A quick shot of Listerine. Swish. Gargle. Spit. Comb out raggedy hair and twist it into a sloppy braid over my right shoulder. A little bit of foundation and a light layer of powder. Black mascara, because mascara is the most important piece of makeup in the arsenal. Lipsti—
BAM! BAM! BAM!
“You’re two minutes are up!”
Two and a half hours later, we’re in Owasso, Oklahoma.
Camryn looks up at the big yellow and black restaurant logo and I think she’s debating whether she wants to eat here, or not.
“There’s really only one place to eat breakfast,” I say, pulling into a parking space, “especially across the South—kind of like Starbucks, there’s a Waffle House on every corner.”
She nods. “I think I can handle this—do they have salad?”
“Now look, I agreed not to make you eat the fast grease,” I tilt my head to one side and turn at the waist on the seat, “but I draw the line with salads.”