Page 14 of Excitable Boy
It took every ounce of self-control she had not to refresh the flight app every thirty seconds, but when it hit the T-minus two-hour mark until arrival, she got dressed and grabbed her purse to head up to Tampa. The weather was sunny, so no storms to delay her on her drive.
She set the alarm, locked the house…
And pulled up short, jaw dropped as she stared at the SUV.
The front driver’s tire was flat.
Shayla burst into tears.
* * * *
“Motherfucking goddamnedmotherfucker asshole shithead!” Shayla screamed as she swore at the lug wrench. She’d called AAA, but they wouldn’t be able to get someone there any sooner than an hour.
So she’d changed into shorts, sneakers, and a T-shirt to change the goddamned thing herself. If she got it done before the mechanic arrived she could cancel the call.
Except one of the lug nuts was stuck, and even the trick of standing on the lug wrench wasn’t budging the goddamned thing. She was no stranger to changing her own tires, although she hadn’t had to do that since she’d been with Tony.
She couldn’t jack the SUV up until after she got all the lug nuts broken free, either.
She kicked the tire, wincing as pain flared up her foot.
Great. Let’s break a goddamned toe while I’m at it.
She was still at it nearly forty-five minutes later when the tow truck arrived and the mechanic took over.
After giving him all due credit for not laughing at her story, she ran inside to grab the world’s fastest shower and change into jeans and a T-shirt. By the time she made it back outside, the mechanic was just finishing the job. It was about ninety minutes to the airport if traffic wasn’t bad, plus it would take fifteen to twenty minutes for the men to deplane, and they’d have another fifteen to twenty minutes to wait for their bags.
Doable.
She might not be there in the main terminal when they landed, which would be disappointing as fuck, but she could make up time and pick them up at curbside in arrivals.
“Ma’am, by the way, be careful driving on that donut,” the man said after loading the flat tire in the back of the SUV for her.
“Why?”
“Well, it’s smaller than a regular tire.” He pointed at the CRV, where she realized he’d put the spare on the back and put the back tire on the front. “I swapped them out since you said you have to dive up to Tampa, because you wouldn’t want the donut on the front tire for the Interstate. But you need to be careful driving, keep your speed down. You’ll want to get that fixed as soon as possible.”
Her heart sank. “Thanks.”
She shot a quick text to Tony, knowing he’d get it when they arrived, because he’d turn his phone on as soon as they landed, before they even reached the gate. After sending Jenny an update text, too, Shayla pulled out of the driveway and headed for I-75.
“Here we go,” she said as she impatiently waited for the last light she’d have to sit through before getting on I-75 to turn green. Once she merged into traffic and increased her speed, she realized exactly what the mechanic meant. She’d driven cars on donuts before, but the SUV was a different beast. At sixty, she felt an odd shimmy in the back end that she knew wasn’t normal. At sixty-five, she realized she wasn’t going to be able to push it any faster than that without freaking herself out. Making it up to seventy, the speed limit, wasn’t going to happen.
“Motherfucker,” she said.
But she was en route, at least. Better late than never.
Her excitement built with every mile north she drove, until she reached the exit in Bradenton to take I-275 to the Skyway Bridge. As she took the exit, she smiled and cranked up the radio.
Home free!
As she closed in on the southern tollbooth, she changed lanes to take the left automatic SunPass lane. They both had transponders for their cars, although hers was now sitting on their dining room table after she’d removed it from her Civic. It meant not having to go through one of the manned toll lanes and wait for the cars in front of her.
But she found herself slowing even sooner than normal, a heavy amount of traffic she wasn’t expecting clogging all the lanes, red taillights everywhere. Instead of breezing through the SunPass lane, she crept through at a literal snail’s pace, barely making progress, her fear increasing until she finally risked pulling up the Waze app on her phone. Southbound traffic was streaming by them, but a sick feeling filled her as she saw dozens of red dots all over the map between the southern rest stop and the main span of the bridge.
A massive accident.
Bridge closed.
When she finally made it through the tollbooth, she saw FHP officers walking from car to car, and she rolled her window down.
“Bridge is closed, ma’am. At least two to three hours. You can merge to the right and take the southern rest stop exit and detour back to I-75.”
“Thank you.”
She managed to wait until she got her window rolled up and the officer walked away to burst into tears.
