Page 32 of Anywhere with You
She stretched it out, examining the scraped skin. “Not too bad. Just a little bruised.”
“Are you okay to walk back to the car?”
“As opposed to living in the cliff dwellings and eating cactus until it doesn’t hurt anymore?”
“Yes, smart-ass. Or you could lean on me. Or if it’s really bad, I can go find you crutches or some big strong paramedics.”
Cara grinned. “Tempting, but I’m good to walk.”
We waited until a bigger group of tourists was leaving and followed them, letting them flush out the wildlife for us.
We were exhausted and drained from the adrenaline rush when we finally pulled back onto the road.
Cara had poured clean water over her knee, insisting that it was her turn to drive. I pulled out drinks and snacks from the cooler for both of us, noting that Cara’s supply of bagged, prepopped popcorn was already dwindling and wondering how I could still be hungry with javelina musk lingering in my nose.
As soon as my mouth was full, I started searching for appealing local restaurants. We were distressingly far from a city with a decent population.
“It looks like an hour and a half,” I said.
Cara groaned. “I’m finally starting to miss home. There are probably two hundred restaurants within an hour and a half of my apartment.”
“I could go buy ingredients from four different stores and cook a three-course meal in an hour and a half,” I said.
“I could have Japanese appetizers, a Brazilian main course, and a French dessert in an hour and a half,” Cara said.
“I could get a custom cake with my face on it and deliver slices of it to my ten closest friends, at each of their homes, in an hour and a half.”
“I could make a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge with supermarket baguettes and then eat it—all—in an hour and a half.”
We were ridiculous, but at least we entertained each other.
Cara pulled face wipes out of the glove compartment, offering me one after she saw me side-eyeing her cleansing ritual. She brushed her hair and applied lip gloss and looked very much like she hadn’t been running for her life minutes before.
I took one look at myself in the mirror and decided I’d better try to do the same. There was something about that streak of purple that made me look either extremely cool or deranged, depending on how recently I’d brushed my hair. I braided each side into a thick braid, then held a bottle of water from the cooler against the back of my neck.
Finally, finally, we found a Mexican restaurant. There were even enough cars in the parking lot to give the impression that the food was edible.
“This is perfect,” Cara said.
“Because they’ll immediately bring us chips and salsa?”
“Exactly, Honey. Exactly.”
In five minutes, we were seated at a table and had already placed our orders and were halfway through our first basket of tortilla chips.
“Not the best chips. Not the best salsa. And yet, somehow I don’t mind,” I said.
“It’s the near-death experience. Being almost gored by wild animals always makes me hungry, too.” Cara seemed to be trying to scoop more salsa than was possible onto her chip.
I gestured to it. “Does it make you try to break the laws of physics, too?”
“Always,” she said, giving up and putting the chip in her mouth, then pouring a little salsa straight from the bowl into her mouth.
I laughed out loud. “I don’t know if I can keep going places with you if you’re going to embarrass me with your poor salsa etiquette.”
Without expression, Cara poured the remaining chips onto a plate and placed the empty chip basket upside down on my head, like a hat.
“Ah…” the waiter said, setting down our margaritas. His nametag readFenske.
