Waiting for You (13 page)

“All right, so we go to
Birmingham and see what happens from there?”

Dylan nodded.
“Sounds good to me.”

We paid for our meal
and walked to the parking lot in silence. When we got back in the car and
pulled out of the parking lot, I thought about how this reminded me of a movie.
“It’s like Thelma and Louise.”

“That’s a bad example.”
Dylan gave me a sideway scowl. “They died in the end.”

“Oh, right.”

There was a comfortable
silence until we stopped for gas and food in Riverside. Dylan had refused to
stop in Los Angeles even though I begged. He justified this by saying I wasn’t California
material and we needed to get out of the state as fast as we could. Turns out
his GTO and its twelve miles per gallon wouldn’t allow that.

“Did you plan on moving
to Birmingham to be closer to Drew?” I was trying any angle I could to learn
more about why Dylan had left home and at some point I realized it wasn’t going
to happen, but I still tried. I felt like I wanted to get to know Dylan and not
the ten-year-old that I barely knew anymore. So much about our lives had
changed.

“I never planned on
staying in Birmingham.” He said strolling through his playlist on his iPod and
balancing the wheel on his knees.

“If you could live
anywhere, where would you live?” Dylan asked placing his iPod on the seat.

“A
trailer park.”

Dylan gave me that
side-eyed look that he was so good at. “Sounds like fun.”

“Where would you live
Mr. Rebel-Without-A-Cause?” Kicking my shoes off again, my bare feet rested on
the dashboard. “Let me guess, Detroit?”

Another side-eye judge
came my way but with an eye roll this time. “Seattle.”

“Really?
Why Seattle?”

Dylan shrugged, the
motion relaxed, thought out and suggestive to his demeanor surrounding the
subject. “It’s just a city, brown eyes.”

He went on to explain
that he always enjoyed his time there with his uncle and Landon had moved up
there too. He also explained that he wasn’t making any decisions this summer
about his future. To him, this was a time not to make decisions, take what came
his way.

As the sun began to
set, a time when I did most of my thinking, I contemplated what Dylan meant.
Colors smeared over the southern California desert blending into the dark of
the night. My stare caught Dylan occasionally but like I said before, he was
quiet and it was something I enjoyed very much.

We were outside Phoenix
looking for a hotel when searched my bag on the floor for gum.

“Yuck, get rid of that
gum.” Dylan gagged when he could apparently smell the gum. “I mean it, get rid
of it.”

“Why?” I must have
given him the “What the fuck?” look because he nearly laughed.

I laughed at his face
and that’s when he made a face shaking his head at the sudden wave of nausea
and grabbed his stomach when my breath moved his direction. “I once got so
fucked up on Fireball that I puked for twelve hours straight. I haven’t touched
that shit since.”

“So
why the connection with cinnamon gum?”
I pointed to a sign on the side
of the freeway for a Holiday Inn. Dylan immediately shot across three lanes of
traffic to the exit on the right.

“It smells the same.”
He looked at me again. “I will never kiss you again if you don’t spit that shit
out right now.”

Immediately I rolled
down the window and spit that gum out.

He said nothing but
smirked, slightly and the though the light was dim, it was noticeable.

“What else don’t you
like?” I asked about the time we made our way into the parking lot of the
Holiday Inn.

“Lemons.”
He answered turning the car off and gathering his phone, iPod, and wallet on
the dash. “I hate them and cardboard. I don’t like cardboard.”

“Why?”

He shrugged, again,
another shrug, as he opened the door to get out. He looked over his shoulder at
me. “Just don’t. What about you?”

“I don’t like socks.” I
said catching up with him as we walked through the dark parking lot toward the
office. “Actually, I don’t like anything on my feet at all.”

Dylan looked down and
noticed my bare feet as I held my flip-flops in my hand. “I’ve noticed.”

When
we finished getting the room, and after a long day in the car, sleep was easy.
This time we managed to get two beds, which I found comforting. Not that I didn’t
want to sleep next to Dylan, because there was that, but I was afraid of what
“sleeping me” would do to him.

After smoking a
cigarette, Dylan made his way to his bed near the sliding glass door and was asleep
before I had the chance to ask any more questions.

Though I was tired,
sleep hung over me as I thought about what I was doing. I gave up everything I
knew and now here I was lying in a hotel room some two thousand miles from
home.

Rolling over, I tucked
my left arm under the pillow and stared at Dylan’s back again until I could
sleep.

The following morning we got up early
intending on making it to Oklahoma City that night.

“You know what every
road trip needs?” Dylan asked as we passed through Holbrook, a landscape that
offered nothing but tumbleweed and the occasional dead animal alongside the
road.

I laughed handing him
his water bottle that had slide toward me when he jerked the steering wheel to
avoid yet another dead animal.
“A portable shower and a
tent?”

“Both good ideas but I
was thinking more for entertainment.”

“What?” I gave him a
curious smile.

“A CB
radio.”

The idea seemed good to
me so we stopped at a sporting goods store Dylan noticed off the highway and
purchased a tent, sleeping bags, a cooler, a lantern, flares, the CB radio,
flashlights and some first aid supplies.

After putting all the
supplies in the trunk, Dylan hooked up the radio.

For one hundred miles,
we switched from station to station looking for something entertaining. That’s
when we settled on channel two.

There were these crazy
lunatics on the station,
Chaz
and
Reeper
.

Dylan was thoroughly
entertained by them. I’d never seen him laugh that much. He went on to tell me
that if we were going to travel, we needed to hear shit like this.

“Breaker
breaker
, one ninety…” the radio cracked before we heard,
“Shit man, we’re talking about a female that weighs two-ninety-five and solid
as a fucking rock.”

“Damn, that’s a huge
bitch.”
Reeper
said.

“She’s next to me son,
watch your fucking mouth.”

“Where
ya
at, I
wanna
see her?”

“You just
wanna
wrap your ball sack on her lot lizard chin.”

“
Ain’t
that the fucking truth?”

Every station was like
this but
Reeper
and
Chaz
were by far the most descriptive.

“Damn, this is turning
me on,” I said sarcastically fanning myself.

“Fuck…” Dylan groaned
shifting in weight more toward the door, right hand draped over the steering
wheel. “What a bunch of raunchy motherfuckers.”

Strolling through the
stations, the next station was the same but Dylan made me turn it back to
Chaz
and
Reeper
. I think he was
beginning to get attached to them. “She’s the
fuckin
’
whore of B-city.”

“One of her nipples
faced south,”
Chaz
cackled in a really creeper
manner, “the other north.”

This went on for probably
another hundred miles and I was beginning to wonder about Dylan when he
wouldn’t turn the station from those two
creepo’s
.

Along the highway near
Amarillo, we stopped for food and it happened to be a truck stop. Dylan joked
that he wanted to find this
Chaz
guy and see what he
looked like. Naturally, he
strolled
the parking lot
once looking for anyone he thought might resemble him. I hated to inform him
that this
Chaz
, his trucker hero, was probably not
here but I didn’t want to squash his dreams.

After trolling the
parking lot once, Dylan gave up and we sat across a row of about fifteen log
trucks.

We were in the middle
of discussing that movie Joy Ride when a trashy woman wearing red peep toe high
heels, fish net stockings, a leopard skinned mini skirt and what appeared to be
a gold bra, no shirt. Dylan eyed her appearance, a little taken back by her
forwardness of approaching his car and gave her a small smile, his weight
shifted slightly toward me.

“Hey baby doll, come
stick your shifter in my tranny.”

Dylan whipped his head
around. “What the fuck?” he mouthed with panic-stricken eyes setting his
milkshake on the dash.

My eyes were just as
wide. I’d never seen anything like this before.

The lot lizard, as the
radio had called these type of girls, wasn’t taking no as an answer.

“I’ll suck your dick
sweetie,” she said, eyes scanning the two of us, moving closer trying to hang
inside the window, her whorish hand rubbing Dylan’s shoulder.

Dylan looked at me, his
eyes pinched together as if he didn’t hear her correctly. Then he laughed once,
briefly looking her direction, and then mine. “Is she fucking serious?”

“I’m sure she is if
you’re willing,” I said through my own laughs.

The woman looked to me
and winked popping her gum. “I’ll lick your pussy too.”

“Roll your fucking
window up Dylan!” I shouted frantically trying to get my hands on the knob for
the window on my side.

“Oh so it’s suddenly an
emergency now?” he said between nervous laughs.

At least he rolled up
the window.

She must have sat
outside his car for about five minutes before she got the hint and moved on.

That chick went from
car to car, then truck to truck, trolling her lot-lizard ass all over the
place. 

“You throw that CB
radio away.” I said to him when we stopped to find a hotel in Amarillo. After
the chick at the truck stop, he didn’t hesitate and dumped it.

We later found out from
a group of guys at a gas station that the truck stop we were at was a
well-known area for prostitution. Honestly though, they should put that shit on
maps to save people the trouble. A lot less murders and rapes would take place
if there was a map that said, “Hey, stay away from here for your own safety.”

After we settled into
another hotel for the night, Dylan wanted to get something to eat, so we did
and then decided it was time for a little entertainment, aside from CB radios.

“There’s a bar over
there, let’s go there,” Dylan said, gesturing to a bar across the street from
the steak house we were eating at.

“Are you sure we can
get it?”

Dylan shrugged once we
were crossing the street. “We’ll see.”

He stepped into the
street, I hesitated and Dylan looked back at me and lifted his hand for me to
take it.

Maybe it was something
about being in the south but when we walked in, they never asked for ID, hell,
they hardly even acknowledged us.

Up until now, I had
never been inside of a bar yet Dylan appeared comfortable. It didn’t surprise
me one bit, this was his thing.

Glasses knocked
together, conversations blended and bodies swayed to the beats of rock music. I
was surprised how crowded the place was for a Tuesday night.  

When we got to the bar,
Dylan ordered us two beers and a shot. Again, they never asked for ID and
handed over the liquor. Taking that time to look around, nobody paid any
attention and acted as if we belonged. Green, yellow, red and orange neon beer
signs scattered the wall. The bar itself was glass and underneath it was framed
photos of patrons that sat here night after night.

“You
wanna
dance?” Handing me a beer and pushing a shot my direction,
Dylan tipped his head to the dance floor near the stage noticing the way it
held my attention.

I’ve danced before at
school dances but this was completely different. It reminded me of something
you would have seen on
Dirty Dancing
. This wasn’t a high school dance
that’s for sure.

His hand found the
sliver of skin between where my tank top met my jean shorts, his finger ran
along the band stopping near my belly button. The touch made me squirm and want
to dance like these people.

I would have agreed to
anything if it meant his hands would be on me, and my hips, I was down for it.
Since our kiss in the lake, he hadn’t touched me. Part of me wondered if he
regretted it but the other part didn’t care. I wasn’t going to act like one of
those girls that constantly debated the guy’s feelings or lack thereof. That’d
never been me and I wasn’t about to start with that shit.

Dylan tossed a shot
back, handed me one and I did the same. The fire burned and before I knew it,
Dylan’s mouth was adding to it. Maybe he was feeling what I was feeling. The
hum, the burn to touch him again was something I couldn’t stop thinking about.
I could stop myself from overanalyzing his feeling yes, but I couldn’t stop
that desire.

Frantically, I twisted
in his arms wanting the contact, needing that contact. I wasn’t sure if it was
the alcohol talking but it took all I could do not to attack him completely and
wrap my body around his.

His tongue was soft and
hesitant but his touch was firm as he walked me backwards to the dance floor.
“Dance with me,” he said against my lips and then laughed when the song
changed. “I haven’t heard this in years.”

“Dylan, I can’t dance
like that.” I said turning in his arms to face the dance floor and referring to
the girls moving with ease against the guys. They moved so naturally I was
jealous.