Page 11 of Anywhere with You
I hugged them both, hugged Badger an extra-long time, sniffing his warm puppy fur, and headed to Cara’s apartment.
Was this a terrible idea? Or was I only wondering now because I was sad about leaving my dog? I couldn’t decide. But it was only nine days. How big a mistake could it be when it would be finished before the milk in my fridge expired? Wouldn’t it? I probably should’ve checked the date.
But I was already parking and walking to Cara’s door, so it seemed too late, both to check the milk and to change my mind.
And the idea of leaving my wedding picture behind, neither looking at it nor being tempted to look at it when I was trying not to look at it, was already making me think maybe I’d made the right choice.
“You’re here!” Cara said, wheeling out a suitcase. “Grab your bags. You can move them right from your car to mine.”
Cara pressed the remote key in her other hand, and a tiny hatchback across from us opened.
“Your car is very orange,” I said.
“Yes. You’ve seen it before, haven’t you?”
“No, I definitely would’ve remembered. It’s like an Orangesicle.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“It’s like a traffic cone. It’s actually not much bigger than a traffic cone, either. Is it a traffic cone pretending to be a car?”
She sighed.
I grinned, unable to stop now that she’d shown she was irritated. I tilted my head, eyeing the car and thinking. “You should put a stem on it for Halloween.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what? I like it. And I never have trouble finding it in the parking lot.”
“I bet you don’t.”
Cara helped me with the cooler, the bag of snacks with Mom’s cookies balanced on top, a bag that was mostly charging cords and headphones, and another that was entirely full of books.
When we were finished, I brought out my guitar case.
“I’m not sure there’s room,” I said, hearing and hating the tentative note in my voice.
“We can make it work,” Cara said without hesitation.
She shifted the cooler. I wedged a snack bag against the other door, and somehow, the guitar case fit.
“It is a guitar in there, right? Not like drugs or guns or—”
I had to laugh. “I think it’s supposed to be a violin case, if it’s a gun. And for drugs, something less conspicuous, like a thousand rubber ducks.” I unlocked the case and showed her. “Just a guitar, a strap, a tuner, a Glock, a capo, and an alarming amount of my hair.” I picked out a purple strand and shook it off my fingers into the parking lot. “Not even an amp because I figured we definitely wouldn’t have room for that.”
“What a pity,” Cara said sarcastically, and I remembered her Led Zeppelin comment and grinned. “I tried to play the guitar,” she added, “but I couldn’t figure out where my elbows were supposed to be. It felt awkward as hell. Probably looked awkward, too.” She closed the hatchback. There was a faded Houston Audubon sticker on the back with a picture of a black and yellow songbird.
I had the sudden mental image of standing in the same spot while Cara watched a rare red-butted canary for two hours.
“You don’t have a fancy camera with a giant lens in there, do you?” I asked. Even I could hear the suspicion in my voice. I sounded like Cara had, asking if there were drugs in my guitar case.
“Nope,” she said. “No cameras at all but this one.” She held up her phone.
“Good,” I said.
We took last-minute bathroom breaks, then we were on the road.
Chapter Eight
It took an hour just to get out of Houston. I spent that time staring at the map on the car monitor. For all that the car was bright orange on the outside, it was comfortable inside, with black seats and plenty of cup holders and USB ports. That was the extent of my car knowledge.
