Page 32 of Even After Sunset

“Shit.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Sorry. I uh… I just—” I glance around for the shorts I thought I’d tossed on the counter, but I can’t see them now, and Jackie keeps staring up at me from the bottom step, her cheeks glowing pink.

Is sheblushingat the sight of me in my briefs?

She yells again: “Are you actually eating the chocolate bars that youstole?”

Okay, so she’s angry—not blushing. Good to know.

But I have no clue why she gives a shit if I eat the chocolate bars. It’s not like I can give them back.

“Silas. Seriously… what the heck?”

I shrug. “What else did you want me to do with them? You threw a hissy fit when I tossed a breakfast sandwich out the window. I wasn’t gonna risk tossing stolen chocolate, too.”

Her cheeks redden even more and she shakes her head, like she can’t believe I’m for real. I toss the wrapper in the bin under the sink and finish licking theremnants of chocolate off my fingers. I glance up just as Jackie’s gaze drops to my chest, down to my crotch… my bare legs.

Her eyes narrow. “Why are younaked?”

Kind of funny that she’s only noticing my state of undress now.

I glance down. “I’m not naked. I’m wearing—”

“You know what I mean.” Her eyes flutter back to my crotch, the mottled bruises along my sides, then to my abs. I don’t say anything—just wait for her eyes to reach my face. When they do, her cheeks flush again.

Definitelyblushing this time.

I can’t keep from smirking and she gives me this disgusted look, like she can’t believe she has to deal with…this—whatever ‘this’ is.Me, I guess: a half-naked homeless guy eating stolen confections in the back of her canary-yellow food truck.

“Geez…” She lets out a sigh that’s too dramatic to take seriously, then steps down and starts making her way around the camper.

“Can you please put some clothes on?” She calls, still totally flustered as she disappears from view.

I can’t keep from smiling: she isn’t mad anymore. Annoyed, maybe. But not mad. And God knows why, but I feel a twinge of relief. Probably because I’m too exhausted to fight with her anymore. Or maybe there’s a part of me that does still give a shit, despite everything we’ve gone through and everything she knows about me. And everything that she doesn’t.

Once I’ve got my clothes back on, Jackie joins me in the back and she gets out a bunch of sandwich stuff. We stand side by side, silently making lunch like we’re part of a mini assembly-line or something. I don’t argue with her this time, and I make a sandwich for myself. In fact, I pile the ingredients on and smother them in mustard and mayo. I even accept the water bottle and two cookies she hands me from a tupperware container.

Once we’re up front again, Jackie finally breaks the silence.

“We’ll just drive straight to the festival grounds from here.”

She passes me one of her carefully folded maps. “Right there,” she says, pointing, once I’ve opened it. Like I could have missed the neon pink arrow pasted just below the town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, that literally says ‘Old Orchard Beach Festival Grounds’.

There are a few other tiny neon green dots stuck in other spots which look to be on the route we’re taking. And I feel kind of bad because they must be places she was planning on stopping at and, presumably because of the fact that she’s now got a chocolate-bar-stealing-criminal in tow, she’s eliminating them from her meticulously planned itinerary.

“We can stop other places if you want,” I say after a few more minutes of driving in silence.

“It’s fine,” she says.

I think I liked it better when she was asking a million questions about my personal life. When she was all sunshine and smiles.

I don’t miss that playlist, though. The break from the cheery loop from hell is honestly a sweet relief.

I try again: “Make stops if you want to.”

I wait and then after a second, I add: “I promise not to steal from any more gift shops… Not even if they sell those beautiful porcelain bells with naked cherubs hand-painted on the front.”

But she doesn’t even smile.

“I said it’s fine. We’ll go straight there. Those stops were just—”

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