Page 33 of How You See Me
“Why are you standing there and not getting in?”
“I’m in love.”
Excuse me? My pulse falters.Love? I can’t feel my arms. That’s a sign of a cardiac arrest, right?
She jogs closer, stopping by the back bumper with that love she mentioned shining bright. But she’s not looking at me. It’s the van she’s caressing, talking to sweetly like it’s a long-lost lover.
Thank God.
I give a minute or three to my racing heart. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t believe this hippie van is yours. It’s like a watercolor painting of a basket of tangerines or a sunset. I love it, but it’s sooooo not you."
Heard that before.
“Is that an example of the open communication you were talking about?”
“Shut up.” Peering through a back window, she gasps. “There are beads on the ceiling. Did you know that?”
“I did.”
“And you kept them?” Her hand slaps over her chest as if I left them for her. Maybe I did. “Open the door.”
I do as I’m told, and she crawls in the back to examine the tiny space.
“I can’t wait to camp out under the stars with the doors open. It’ll be so ro—” She cuts herself off and redirects. “Roadtrip awesome.”
“Road trip awesome?”
That’s not what she was going to say, and there will be noromance on this awesome road trip.
“Ready?” I urge. “You can ride back there if you want.”
“Nah.” She scoots back to the door and hops out. “I prefer to sit up front and ask you a hundred questions.”
“Great.”
“You know, if you’d tweak your tone, that might sound a bit more positive.” She points a finger at me. “Then, you might actually start to feel it.”
“Oh, I feel it exactly how it sounded.”
“No doubt. Another thing we’ll work on. This is a team building exercise now.”
“Great.”
???
We’re not ten minutes on the highway heading west when she starts in on the questions, and I don’t know where my opinion falls on the matter. I was half enjoying the silence and half missing her random chatter. She’s cross-legged in the passenger seat, sandals kicked off and hair blowing out the open window.
“Let’s start with the most important question.” She twists her long curls into a bun.
“That makes me nervous.”
“Don’t be. We’ll be living together for the next week. It’s better to get everything out in the open.”
“Why not leave some things for discovery along the way?”
“Mmm. I like that, but there are a few things I have to know up front.”
