Page 30 of Coiled Tight
“Sure.”
“Um. Can I ask you a question?”
Saúl barely moved, arm bent over the windowsill while he drove with one hand. It shouldn’t look as hot as it did. “Go on.”
I fidgeted.
I was a terrible sidekick for long trips. It didn’t have to do with wanting a certain music playing, or stealing all the snacks, or being terrible with navigation, which I also was. No, the problem was that I had nothing to do, and I ended up blurting out more than I had to because I kept thinking about shit I should be leaving well alone.
“So. Let’s say I had a best friend, and she was in a very bad, abusive relationship, and she got out of it, but then she was healing from all the trauma and stuff, right? And I basically ghosted her, and obviously fucked her up even worse, and then I hired a PI and learned that she moved all the way to Spain. But it doesn’t end there, and the other day I sent her a very lengthy, kind of embarrassing message where, among a million other things, I confessed to the PI thing, even though I know she was terrified that her ex would follow her or find her wherever she went and, um. She read it sometime last night. And she hasn’t answered. Should I text her again?”
That was the question I kept going back and forth on. Did I realize the hypocrisy when I’d told her it would take me up to an entire month to text back if she ever replied? Yes. Did that stop me?
No, no, it didn’t.
I was fretting, and there was nothing to distract me, and I also blamed Saúl for dragging me to Texas when I could’ve just been burying my face in Golden’s fur and pretending the world around me didn’t exist.
Of course, there was no sudden reaction from Saúl. He did turn his head to stare at me, which made me a bit nervous, but I reasoned that we were in the middle of a highway with no other cars around and nothing but a straight road ahead of us.
Still.
“Do I get the story of why you ghosted her?”
“Do youhaveto?”
I curled up against the passenger door. Not the best, and a few sheriffs could take offense to it, but it wasn’t like I’d moved my feet all the way to the seat or anything really noticeable like that.
It was easy to find things to panic about when I was avoiding a topic, though.
“You don’t seem like the ghosting type.”
I laughed. It came out shrill, but… Yeah. He clearly didn’t know enough about me if he thought I wasn’t the ghosting type. Look, it wasn’t great, but ghosting was doable. It avoided conflict and uncomfortable conversations, and sure, those weren’t the reasons I’d driven away from Kara, but I wasn’t going to sit here and pretend I had never done it.
Besides, maybe part of the responsibility also lay on the people I had genuinely ghosted for not taking a first negative the way it was intended.
“Surprise?”
Was that too self-deprecating?
Yeah.
I was in a self-deprecating mood, sue me.
“You do realize we have more than two days on the road ahead of us, and you’ve already proven you can’t handle silence well.”
“I still think I could’ve got us an airplane.”
“An airplane doesn’t let us carry everything we need.”
Yeah, he’d said that already. Seventeen hours, though? I shivered.
Why the fuck did I say yes to this? To being trapped in a truck for two days with Saúl? Only to go to Houston and have tospeakwith people we needed to drain their bank accounts? It was a terrible idea. I was not made for marketing enterprises.
“Can I yeet off the truck after I tell you?”
It might be worth it long-term for everyone involved.
But if I did that, I should definitely text Kara again.
