Song of the Fireflies (7 page)

We drove southeast toward the ocean and wound up in Savannah. Things quieted down while we were on the road. We sat mostly in silence for the four-hour drive, but every now and then one of us would bring up the what-ifs and the maybes, which always rendered us silent again, left us to think heavily about this ever-expanding web of disorder we were creating for ourselves. One question would produce three more, but never any answers. By the time we found a small shithole of a motel to stay in, we had exhausted the topic. For a short while, anyway.

I chose this motel, likely the first choice of hookers and drug dealers, because it was one of the few that accepted cash and didn’t care if I’d “lost” my driver’s license.

The only thing that worried me as I stood at the front desk waiting to get my room key was that I was already in fugitive mode. It was like something was triggered in my brain that told me that we had to be careful in everything we did. Use fake names. Pay only with cash. Don’t call home. Don’t answer the phone when home calls us. And we hadn’t even officially been targeted as suspects yet. Hell, we didn’t know if Jana’s body had even been found.

“I’m starving,” Bray said, sitting down on the end of the bed.

“I’ll get us something,” I said. “There’s a few fast-food restaurants farther down the road.”

She reached out to me, and I took her hand and crouched on the floor in front of her. She brushed her fingers across my unshaven face. I kissed them.

“I love you,” she said with a weak smile. She was exhausted. Physically and mentally. We both were.

I raised up on my toes enough to reach her lips. “I love you, too,” I said after I pulled my lips away from hers. Then I stood up and grabbed my keys from the nightstand. “I’ll be back soon,” I said and left her in the room.

Instead of stopping at a restaurant I drove right past them all and went straight to my father’s house about ten minutes away.

He welcomed me at the door with open arms. “Elias! It’s good to see you, son. Come on in.”

If there was any person in the world whom I could trust and count on even more than Bray, it was my father. Unlike my mom, who was always the voice of reason, the do-gooder, my dad was the one who wasn’t beyond doing the wrong thing if, in his heart, it happened to be right. His was another kind of voice. Like father, like son. In more ways than one. I favored my father. I inherited his dark hair and blue eyes.

“You didn’t mention you were coming to Savannah las’ time we talked,” he said.

He brought two bottles of beer from the kitchen and handed me one as I sat on his old beige sofa.

“It was an unexpected trip,” I said.

“Well, I’m always glad to have ya here,” he said with a proud smile. He pushed his glasses up to the top of his nose.

We took a sip of beer at the same time and silence ensued.

“Dad, I’m in trouble.” I got right to the point. Not only was I not afraid to tell him, but I didn’t want to leave Bray alone in the motel for longer than I had to.

My dad cocked an eyebrow and his beer hung inches from his lips in pause. Slowly he lowered it. “What kind of trouble?”

“The worst trouble I’ve ever been in.”

He set the beer on the coffee table. All traces of him being happy to see me dimmed on his face. He looked intent and worried and, as I had expected of him, very fatherly and ready to do whatever he had to in order to help me.

“Talk to me, son.”

“You remember Brayelle, don’t you?”

He nodded and smiled again briefly. “Of course I remember her. Cute little girl. Beautiful like your mother later on when she grew up. Had a mouth like a biker chick.” He laughed and then said, “She was the one your mom whipped you over because you snuck out that summer I went to Michigan. Brayelle always was the Bonnie to your Clyde.”

His words stunned me. He had no idea how relevant the seemingly innocent comparison was.

He smiled again and winked at me. “Yeah, I knew all about her.” He grinned.

“Then you knew how I felt about her,” I said.

“Umm-hmm.” He took another swallow. “You were in love with that girl from the moment you saw her. I may not’ve been around much, but some things are easy to figure out in just a few visits. You two were always together.” He rested his back against the chair. “I used to look at your mom like that.”

“Well, something happened last night,” I began. “I’m not going to tell you the details—don’t want to drag you into it any more than I am just by being here. But I want you to know that it was an accident.”

He narrowed his gaze on me subtly. “Was it her accident, or yours?”

“It was Bray’s.”

“And you’re
sure
it was an accident?” He looked at me in a short, sidelong manner.

“Yes, she said it was an accident, and I believe her.”

“Do you?” He raised his back from the recliner and slumped over forward, resting his arms across his pant legs. “Think about it, Elias. Think about it long and hard, because the answer really is the difference between you doing what the law says is right and you doing what your heart says is right. You have to be sure. One hundred percent, son.”

I thought about it, just like he said to do, but I didn’t have to think long. I already knew.

“I
know
it was an accident,” I said. “She wouldn’t lie to me. And I could tell she was telling the truth. Bray may be brazen and a little over the top sometimes, but she’d never intentionally do something like that.”

My dad nodded once, accepting my explanation, trusting in me and what I believed. “Y’know, Elias, as your father, first and foremost I have to tell you that I don’t want to see you ruin your life to protect someone else’s.” He set his beer down again and got up from the chair. His camouflaged T-shirt hung sloppily over the top of his jeans. “But I’d be a fool and a hypocrite to expect you not to follow your heart.” He turned and looked down at me. “What do you need?”

I stood up with him, leaving my beer on the coffee table, and I hugged him long and hard. I wondered if it would be the last time I ever saw him, at least without a thick wall of security glass separating us.

I left my father that day with some extra cash to get us by for a little while at least, but more important, with his advice, which I always took to heart. He told me that I should try everything in my power to talk Bray into turning herself in before it was too late.

“Are you sure that’s what’s stopping you?” he had said. “Because you think it’s too late?”

“Yes,” I had lied. “We’re already in this too deeply to turn back now.”

But my father was a smart man. He could see right through me and I knew that he could. Bray and I still could’ve turned back and done the “right” thing, but I couldn’t lose her again, and Bray didn’t want to lose me. We had already established that before we left the ridge that night. And that was the way it was going to stay.

I went back to our motel room with burgers and fries.

We ate in silence. Silence seemed to be the norm for a while. And we watched television, both afraid we’d turn the news on at ten o’clock and see our faces staring back at us from the screen next to a reporter. But for the first several days, from Savannah to Fernandina Beach to Daytona Beach, we were still in the clear. Bray’s cell phone hardly ever rang. Just once when her sister, Rian, called to see how she was doing. Bray let it go to voice mail.

My mom, on the other hand, called me constantly. Not wanting to worry her any more than she already was, I ignored my own rule about phone calls and answered after the third concerned voice mail. I told her that I was on vacation and not to worry. I don’t think she believed me deep down, but she accepted it. My boss at Rixey Construction called only twice. After that, I was pretty sure that was the end of my job. But my mom was the only reason I didn’t get rid of my and Bray’s cell phones earlier. In the back of my mind I worried they’d eventually be what led the police right to us, but I couldn’t listen to reason. The thought of my mom worried sick to death over me kicked my reason in the ass. Until this day. I finally decided that it was time we ditched our phones, and so I stuffed them in a Burger King bag with our leftover fries and tossed everything in the garbage. Bray looked at me like I was crazy, but she understood.

By the end of the month, we were in West Palm Beach soaking up the sun and enjoying the somewhat warmer weather that a little farther south had to offer.

And we were already beginning to get settled into a false safe zone.

“We can’t afford too many more motels,” I said as I came out of the shower. “I have some money in the bank, but if I withdraw it or write a check, everybody will know where we are.”

It was the only reason I borrowed cash from my father in the first place. We left Athens so fast I didn’t think to stop at an ATM and withdraw the money before we left.

“How much do we have?” Bray said, coming up to me. She fit her fingers between the towel and my waist and pulled my body toward her.

“A few hundred bucks, but that’s it. We’ll need that for gas, unless we find a place to park it for a while.”

She kissed me lightly on the lips. “I say we find a place to park it then,” she said, but she wasn’t thinking much about the conversation. She was horny.

That was one thing that never changed about the two of us. Despite all that was going on, nothing ever ruined the many intimate moments we had on a daily and nightly basis. She seemed as addicted to sex as I was. But I’d never say that to
her
. And I definitely wasn’t going to complain.

“I don’t like all this driving around anyway,” she added, tugging on my bottom lip with her teeth.

I slipped my fingers down the front of her panties.

“I don’t either,” I said and found her wetness.

She gasped when I slid my middle finger between her lips and touched her clit.

“Then what do you think we should do?” she asked breathily.

“I dunno, we’ll figure it out later.” My mouth closed around hers and I sucked on her tongue, then I pushed her backward onto the bed, where I fucked her for a long time.

It would seem that it was too early for Elias and me to stop being afraid and on edge about what happened. I admit it. But really what we were doing was looking for any way out of that mind-set, because if we didn’t, it would’ve killed us. We just wanted to live life. And, well, it’s easy to forget about the significant things when you find other things to cover it up. Partying quickly became our means of salvation, the way out that we longed for. We learned fast how to replace misery and fear with happiness and enjoyment, and with drugs and alcohol. We couldn’t afford much ourselves, and the last thing we wanted to do was waste what little money we did have on shit like that, but we got by with freebies usually. A joint passed around a room. A group of partygoers already lit on alcohol, offering to buy the table the next round. And occasionally guys would buy me drinks when they thought I was alone.

Our first night hitting the bars and nightclubs in Florida was the first domino to fall in a swirling maze of hundreds of dominoes.

And every fucking one of them would later prove to be a bigger mistake than the last.

“Hey, that’s our song!” I said over the music bumping through the speakers inside the club.

I grabbed Elias by the wrist and tugged. He slid down from the bar stool and hit the dance floor with me. He had always been a hot dancer, and it helped that he had the body for it. But usually, it took a few drinks for him to loosen up enough to dance in public. He wasn’t afraid of it; he just never cared for it much.

Even that started to change with our new lifestyle.

“Since when did this become
our
song?” he shouted over the music.

I danced my way around, putting my back to him, raising my arms up and around both sides of his neck.

He ground his hips against me from behind, his fingers splayed against my thighs.

“Since that time at Matt’s party, remember?”

The beat picked up, and his grinding hips moved with it flawlessly. I about fucking died. The boy could dance.

I danced back around, facing him again, moving my upper body in a lithe, swaying motion against his.

“Oh yeah, I remember that night,” he said, leaning toward my ear. “But if I recall, after we danced to it in front of everyone, you left with Dane Weatherby.”

“Dane was just a friend,” I countered. And he
was
just a friend. “I was his shoulder to cry on that night. Nothing more. But you and me, we had the whole room. We owned it!”

Elias grinned and fit my hips in the palms of his hands, his long fingers spread like claws as he grinded against me some more.

He was
so
getting laid tonight.

“I guess we did, huh?” he said with a grin.

Suddenly Elias snatched me forward, his arm around my waist, and pulled me out of the path of a tipsy couple barreling through the crowd.

“Oh, sorry about that, man!” the guy said.

He was as tall as a tree and had short brown hair buzzed around the back. He grabbed hold of a strawberry-blonde woman’s elbow to keep her from falling over. She laughed and fell into his arms on purpose. Her huge boobs bulged into view from the force of his arm, which he held across her chest.

“I think I’ve had too much,” she said, raising her wine cooler out in front of her and then happily taking another drink.

The guy apologized again. And again. I wondered if he was just too drunk to remember he had already gotten that much out of the way.

“It’s all right,” Elias said, still holding me around the waist. “No harm done.”

We started to walk away from the dance floor and back toward the bar, but we only got halfway before the couple came up behind us.

“I’ve never seen you in here before,” the guy said.

“You must come here a lot, then,” I said, still being pulled along by my fingers. “To remember every face in a place this populated.”

A small part of me was worried he’d seen my face on a Most Wanted poster somewhere. But it was just the paranoia kicking in.

“We’re here every weekend,” the girl said.

She never stopped smiling. Neither of them did. They wore permanent, drunken smiles.

We finally made it back to the bar. Elias put his hands on my hips and lifted me onto the stool. He then sat on the empty stool next to me.

“I’m Anthony,” the guy introduced himself. “And this is Cristina.” He smelled of musk cologne.

I started to show them the same courtesy, but Elias jumped in a second before. “I’m John and this is my fiancée, Julia.”

Fiancée? That certainly got my attention. So much so that I had already forgotten the fake name he gave me.

“You live around here?” Anthony probed. He leaned against the bar next to an empty bar stool rather than sit. Cristina, who I assumed was his girlfriend, continued to use him as her makeshift crutch.

“No, we’re from—”

“—Indiana,” Elias jumped in.

I narrowed my eyes at him secretly from the side.

He softened his baby-blues, as if to say,
Sorry, babe
.

Instant forgiveness. He was in the right, though, because I had been about to say Georgia, just as I had been a second away from telling them our real names.

I didn’t know if I’d ever get used to this covert lifestyle of lies and highways and shitty motel rooms. But Elias was with me, and that made it all OK.

“How long will you be in town for?” Anthony asked.

“A day or two,” Elias said. “Then we’ll be heading back home.”

As Anthony helped Cristina onto the bar stool, his hands pushed underneath the fabric of her short flowered skirt. I noticed he wore hemp bracelets like mine, five or six thick ones wrapped around his left wrist. I wore them on both. Probably for different reasons.

Cristina called for the bartender, and he came over.

“Are you staying close by?” Anthony asked. He put up his hand and added, “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Why are you asking anyway?” Elias was wary of this guy, but just like me, it was only the paranoia.

Anthony smiled and paid for Cristina’s drink. “I own a beach house not far from here. We’re always trolling the clubs lookin’ to find people to invite. You’re welcome to come.”

Cristina almost fell off the bar stool and her drink thumped over onto its side. She fumbled the bottle back into an upright position. Clearly she didn’t need any more to drink.

“I think you’ve had enough,” Anthony said, reading my mind.

She whined when he took the bottle from her.

“Not in the mood to clean up after her tonight,” Anthony said, still with a big smile plastered on his face.

“Hey!” Cristina shot back, feigning offense and reaching out for the bottle. “Don’t be an ass!” She laughed.

Anthony ignored her and turned back to us. “So, are you up for it?”

“I don’t think so,” Elias said. “But thanks.”

“All right, but if you change your mind, I’ll be around here for another hour or so.”

“Thanks, man,” Elias said with a nod.

Anthony helped Cristina down from the bar stool and walked her on her wobbly legs through a small crowd, and they disappeared amid the throng of people.

“Maybe we should’ve gone,” I said over the music. “The guy owns a beach house. We could probably crash there for a few nights. He seems pretty cool.”

Elias held up two fingers and the bartender came over. He ordered a beer and one for me. “I don’t know, maybe,” he said.

I could tell he thought it wasn’t such a bad idea, considering we had begun thinking about staying put somewhere for a while to save money.

We drank a couple more beers and danced some more before we decided to head back to our motel. The more buzzed Elias got, the more he wanted to take me somewhere and strip off my clothes. But he stopped before he got so buzzed that he wouldn’t be able to drive us back.

We gave up the idea of joining Anthony and Cristina and never went looking for them. But we found them anyway, by accident, lingering outside the nightclub in the parking lot.

“Hello again! John and Julia, right?” Anthony said, walking toward us.

Oh,
that
was the fake name I couldn’t remember.

We met him halfway. Cristina was sitting down on the blacktop with her back and head pressed against the side of a car tire. I could see straight up her skirt; she was too drunk to notice she was on display to anyone who happened to walk by. Both of her knees were drawn up against her chest.

“Hey, man,” Elias said with a half smile. “We thought you had already left.”

“Yeah, well, that was our intention,” Anthony said. “But I lost my damn car keys.”

“No shit?” Elias said.

“Maybe someone turned them in inside,” I said, looking back at the club briefly.

“Already checked. I had a guy out here about ten minutes ago with a wire hanger, but we couldn’t get it unlocked. Looks like I’ll be calling either a locksmith or a cab.”

Elias looked over at me. I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking the same thing.

“Well, we could give you a ride back to your place,” Elias offered.

I smiled at them both, glad to see that things with this whole beach house idea were starting to go my way.

“Help me up,” Cristina whined, reaching out her hand.

I went over and helped her up instead, regretting it a little once I realized how heavy she actually was as she leaned against my shoulder.

“Nah, man, thanks but I don’t want to put you out,” Anthony said.

“We don’t mind,” Elias countered. “We’re staying in a motel nearby and we’re not in too much of a hurry to go back there.”

“Well, you two can crash at my place tonight if you want,” Anthony offered.

Elias thought about it for a moment and glanced over at me again, wondering how I felt about all of this.

“Sounds like a plan,” I said and gripped Cristina around her waist.

I wished Anthony would take over. I didn’t sign up for this. Or maybe I did, in a way…

“Then I guess it’s settled,” Anthony said as if he were making an announcement, both arms raised out at his sides. “Where’s your car?”

“End of this row,” Elias said.

Anthony finally noticed the struggle on my face and relieved me of drunken-Cristina duty. They followed us to Elias’s car, parked at the very end of the lot.

“I just thought of something,” Elias said after opening his door and pressing the master lock on the inside. “We’re only paid up in our room until tomorrow. Somehow I doubt we’ll be awake before checkout.”

“Just swing by and get your stuff then,” Anthony suggested. “As long as you don’t need a U-Haul to move it, you can keep it at my place.”

Elias laughed. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “It’ll all fit in my trunk.”

We left the club parking lot and rode back to the motel first, which was on the way to Anthony’s beach house. Since our new guests were going to be riding in the backseat, we stuffed our bags with everything we owned in the trunk. I made it a point to stash my purse back there, too, just in case either of them were the type to help themselves to my belongings.

Cristina was seconds away from passing out next to Anthony. He guided Elias back onto the main highway and we rode for quite a while, longer than I had expected since Anthony had mentioned before that the beach house wasn’t far from the club. And he didn’t talk as much after about ten minutes. The highway became darker and less traveled as it got later.

I started getting nervous, though I wasn’t sure why.

Gut feelings are a bitch.