Page 13 of Desert King

Using, the navigational app on my phone I set my new destination. “New life, here I come! No more, being a mouse, Amber. It’s time to change.” With that vow, I start making a new list. I’ve been given a second chance. It’s time to truly be re-born. I turn on the radio, blasting a country station. As the truck rolls down I-40, I even do something risky like open the windows. The air whips through the cab, blows my hair back and I’m relieved when no dust particles cause my lungs to clench.

I’m making good time to Santa Fe and my foot presses the gas pedal to the floor. The truck doesn’t cough or protest like my Subaru did. Instead, it accepts the challenge. I laugh out loud.

I’m free.

I’m flying, still high from the bad boy biker’s kiss.

But my grumbling tummy wants more than the butterflies. I need coffee and food. Phase one of my new plan is to gain the weight I lost and add some. I’m going to have a curvy body. Somehow. Someway.

I pull off an exit and sail into the lot of a diner. No one glances my way once as my skinny chicken ass glides into a corner booth. But that will change. I sense it. I’m not running from any sordid past, brutal ex, or broken-down family. My past is as boring as my mud-colored hair and that’s the problem. It’s time to paint my life with bold, fresh color. It’s time these sexy, beastly men stop categorizing me as a plain Jane. I don’t have a pug nose or thin lips. I don’t need plastic surgery. I need to change the inside as much as the out. I just never cared or bothered to paint my canvas. It was easier just to stay invisible for so long.

But I don’t want to be an unseen ghost floating through life anymore. I want to be the desert rose.

It’s not about a man either. It’s about letting myself feel sexy, womanly and in charge of my own narrative. Taking a pen out of my purse, I get started on my new to-do list:

“That’s quite a list.”

I drop my pen, flip the napkin over, quickly looking up feeling so exposed. “Uh, I’ll have a coffee with full cream and sugar. A toasted blueberry muffin, buttered toast… white not—that whole-wheat crap, and a fried-egg sandwich with bacon and cheddar cheese.”

The waitress cocks a hip, “Girl? Now where are you going to put all that?”

I smile faintly. “I’m famished.”

“Clearly. You sure?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, then. You’re a tiny thing…and we hate wasting food after what we’ve been through…”

“I know firsthand. Please don’t preach to me.”

“You a survivor?”

My chin lifts, “damn straight I am.”

“Good for you, honey. Eat up. It’s on me.”

“No, really I can pay.”

She places a hand on my arm. “My cousin didn’t. Please.”

“I guess, I’ll have to eat every last bite now.”

She smiles with her eyes as she walks away to grab the pot of coffee on the burner behind the counter. My eyes look out the glass window to the horizon. Life’s almost returned to normal after years of intermittent lock downs and death. Trillions of dollars and so many leads touted by major pharma companies—and yet it was a high school genius working in a lab at a local community college who broke the viruses genetic code and found the cure. The boy is nineteen now and has more money than Mark Zuckerberg and that guy who runs Amazon.

The waitress brings over my coffee and after adding a generous dollop of cream and three packets of regular sugar, I raise the mug to my lips, close my eyes and savor the taste. “To backyard geniuses,” I murmur.

My cell buzzes on the table causing me to grimace. I debate ignoring it for the tenth time but after what my family went through, I know I can’t.

“Mom?”

“Where are you, Amber? I have not been able to sleep. I kept picturing you lost on the road somewhere.”

I pick up the spoon, using it to slowly stir the coffee. “I’m fine. I was just tired from all the driving and crashed at a hotel for a day.”

“Did you sanitize everything? Please tell me you didn’t touch the comforter.”

“The pandemic is over, Mom.”

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