Wanderlust (3 page)

Finally, the waitress approached my
table, wearing a more reserved expression than she had before.
Almost cautious. I didn’t fully understand it, but I felt a flutter
of nerves in my full stomach.

She paused as if thinking of the right
words. Or maybe wishing she didn’t have to say them. “The man over
there has paid for your meal. He’d like to join you.”

I blinked, not really understanding.
The gentleness of her voice unnerved me. More than
guilt—pity.

“
I’m sorry.” I fumbled
with the words. “I’ve already eaten. I’m done.”

“
You have food left on
your plate. Doesn’t matter how much you want to eat anyway.” She
paused and then carefully strung each word along the sentence. “He
requests the pleasure of your company.”

My heart sped up, the first stirrings
of fear.

I supposed I should feel flattered,
and I did in a way. He was a handsome man, and he’d noticed me. Of
course, I was the only woman around besides the waitress, so it
wasn’t a huge accomplishment. But I wasn’t prepared for fielding
this kind of request. Was this a common thing, to pay for another
woman’s meal?

It was a given that I should say no.
Whatever he wanted from me, I couldn’t give him, so it was only a
question of letting him down nicely.

“
Please tell him thank you
for the offer. I appreciate it, I do. But you see, I really am
finished with my meal and pretty tired, so I’m afraid it won’t be
possible for him to join me. Or to pay for my meal. In fact, I’d
like the check, please.”

Her lips firmed. Little lines appeared
between her brows, and with a sinking feeling I recognized
something else: fear.

“
Look, I know you aren’t
from around here, but that there is Hunter Bryant.” When I didn’t
react to the name, her frown deepened. “Here’s a little advice from
one woman to another. There are some men you just don’t say no to.
Didn’t your mama ever warn you about men like that?”

Anxiety swelled in my
chest. My mother
had
warned me, so many times, but I hadn’t wanted to
believe.

No, I refused to believe.

The world wasn’t a scary place where a
woman had to be afraid. Instead I embraced my annoyance. This was
awkward, and I didn’t know how to get out of it without insulting
him—or her, for not understanding a basic request or doing her job.
She had conveyed the question and been given an answer.

I enunciated each word as if she had a
hard time understanding, and for all I knew, maybe she did. She
certainly wasn’t listening to me. “I’m sorry, but I won’t be dining
with him. I’m finished. Please give me the check, and I’ll pay for
my own food.”

She frowned. “You’re a mouthy little
thing.”

I scooted back a little. I didn’t want
to be mouthy. I hadn’t really meant to offend. But it seemed
inevitable. Each small misstep was a blow to my thin confidence.
I’d been prepared for the big problems. Finding housing, dealing
with money. Driving across the country. Eventually having a
boyfriend and figuring out if I could have sex like a normal woman
after what had happened. I hadn’t counted on my complete lack of
social graces. Like a thousand tiny cuts, they were tearing me
apart before I’d even gotten to my destination.

“
I’m really sorry,” I
said, and I meant it. Whatever was the right thing to do or say in
this moment, I didn’t know it.

But I couldn’t agree to eating dinner
with him, to letting him pay for my meal, and then owing him…what?
What was the proper etiquette when a man bought dinner? A goodnight
kiss, more? I didn’t know that either. But I did know he made me
uncomfortable. If I could put my foot in my mouth around this
waitress, it would be so much worse around him. Even several booths
over, his dark gaze tied my tongue in knots.

“
I can’t,” I whispered,
trying to convey to her the urgency of my situation. The
impossibility of it.

“
Have it your way.” A
strange light entered her eyes, like one of remembrance. “Maybe you
have the right idea anyway. It always ends the same way. Might as
well hold onto control as long as you can.”

Her words sent a chill down my
spine.

I fumbled with my coin purse. “I don’t
need the bill. Here, this should cover it.”

The twenty dollar bill I left was more
than the total should have been, even with a tip, and I couldn’t
really spare any money but neither could I stay there another
minute, pinned by his gaze and terrified by the ancient pain in
hers.

Pointedly avoiding looking at him, I
slipped out the door and scurried along the broken concrete until I
reached my room. I shut the door, twisting the heavy deadbolt to
lock it.

CHAPTER THREE

The first person to see and
describe Niagara Falls in depth was a French priest who accompanied
an expedition in 1678.

My skin still prickled as I huddled in
my motel room—something about him had been off. The way the man had
looked at me, unflinching, unnerving, had tripped off all sorts of
animal instincts inside me that I couldn't precisely interpret
except to know to avoid him.

I latched the little hook on the door
for good measure. Glancing sideways at the heavy drapes, I sent
silent thanks for the metal burglar bars on the window.

In the diner, where even the waitress
had seemed intimidated, I'd felt vulnerable. But now I was well and
truly encased in the motel room, where I would stay until morning.
It felt a little like failure, falling back on my old ways, but I
considered it only a temporary retreat. Things would be different
in Little Rock and even that was only until I’d saved enough money
to continue north.

A shower was the next order of
business, so I headed across the shadowed room and bumped directly
into the round dinette table.

“
Ouch,” I
muttered.

Had that been directly aligned with
the door before? I wasn't even sure where the light switches were.
It had been daylight when I'd first been in the room, with the
sunlight streaming through the window...through the open drapes.
Now they were closed. I had seen that clear enough even in the
darkness, the vertical lines where the barred window had once been
visible.

A shiver ran through me. Who had
closed the curtains? Had someone been in my room while I’d
eaten?

Housekeeping. It must have been the
maid service. Please, God, let it have been them.

I stood frozen in fear and indecision
for a moment before forcing myself forward. The cool vinyl wall met
my outstretched palms, and I fumbled until I found the switch. It
flicked up with a click, flooding the bathroom with a blinding
yellow light.

My heart thumped wildly for one moment
as all the things my terrified imagination had conjured didn't
happen. Nothing but an empty, dingy, slightly dirty motel bathroom.
A shower with a questionably yellowed shower curtain, a sink, a
toilet. No beasts or monsters in sight. No scary men with ill
intent.

I spared a glance for the room, now
lit faintly by the spill of light from the bathroom. The bed was
made, my bag still sitting on top, gaping open from where I had
pulled the dress out earlier. The table and chair sat in the empty
space between the bed and the wall, obtrusive for the blind and
clumsy like me.

I was freaking myself out with this.
No, he had done that. The man at the diner with his too-knowing
gaze. Well, he was pushy and inappropriate, and I was done being
scared of strangers.

The tile was cool against my bare
feet. I undressed quickly, finding relief in the warm water that
rained on my skin. I even used the bitter-smelling soap wrapped up
in paper, comforted by the intensity, feeling cleansed of the man's
presence and safe again. More importantly, I was free. Independent.
Exactly what I had always longed to be—though I had little
experience with it. Maybe that was what made me so jumpy. Maybe he
was a normal man, a nice one, and I had jumped to
conclusions.

I had always considered myself
self-reliant. I'd had to be with my mother. I cooked for myself
when my mom was on a binge. I got dressed for school and took the
bus, otherwise a child-protective-services woman would come around
and we’d all get in trouble. As soon as I was able, I took the
part-time job at the photography studio.

All that self-sufficiency, but it
wasn't the same as being truly alone. My mom had always been around
the house. Even when I’d desperately wished for privacy, for a
brief respite from her clinging, cloying fear, I’d never gotten it.
Now I was on my own and I’d have to get used to that, somehow. That
was what I wanted…wasn’t it?

The thin motel towel turned soggy
after a couple swipes at my skin. I examined myself in the mirror.
Pale blonde hair that looked golden when wet. Light brown eyes that
looked hazel in a certain light. I thought those were my best
feature but my one boyfriend from high school had thought it was my
lips. Kissable, he'd said.

Then the other man, later, had been
less diplomatic, more succinct. Fuckable. I had flinched,
instinctively knowing what he meant even though I shouldn’t have.
My mother’s lists of abducted girls had never been specific about
what had happened to them. Sex was a vague concept for someone who
had only ever been kissed after homeroom. But then she had dated
Allen, and he had said my lips were made for kissing a place other
than his lips, lower down, and he'd taught me how to do it, again
and again.

At first I had gone along with it, too
afraid of setting my mother off with a confession. But then he’d
gotten rougher, more forceful and scary and also tingly hot in ways
I didn't fully understand. One evening when he wasn’t there, I had
tried to tell my mother what was happening.

I’d expected her to help me. After
all, she’d always told me something like that could happen at any
time. But she hadn’t believed me. She’d said I was making up
stories, that I wanted the attention those girls on the news had
gotten. That I was jealous of the time she spent with Allen and
that must be why I had made up such lies.

I cried into my pillow and let Allen
do his business that night. But the light had turned on, a flood of
painful light, and my mother had seen. After that, she’d apologized
for not believing me.

She’d been kind, understanding. Too
understanding, and that had been the final straw. She’d quit her
job, claiming she needed to stay home and watch me, that the world
was too dangerous for either of us. Especially me.

She said I attracted them, the very
worst kind of men. And maybe she was right to a point. There was
something there, something large and scary lurking under the water.
Every once in a while it would surface with a flip of my stomach,
like when a man would speak to me with a certain authority, give me
an order—or a certain look, like the one in the diner.

I didn't like it, or maybe I liked it
too much, but I couldn't stand being like my mother. I wouldn't end
up like her, broken and lonely and so desperate for any man that
I’d put up with someone like Allen. That was why I'd had to leave
home, why I insisted on getting a college education. This was my
ticket away from a life of subservience and fear.

Well then, why did I feel so afraid?
But the wide-eyed girl in the mirror didn't have an
answer.

With the towel still wrapped around my
body, I stepped out of the bathroom onto the coarse carpet of the
motel room. Immediately I knew something was horribly wrong. The
air felt... shared.

"Nice to meet you, Evie," said a deep
voice.

My whole body strung up tight. He was
sitting in the chair, the one that had been empty when I'd gone
into the bathroom. It was him, the man from the diner. Though I
hadn't heard his voice before and I couldn’t quite make out his
features now, I was sure of it. He had the same blithe arrogance,
the same element of command—sure his word would be followed.
Besides, how many psycho assholes could there be in a remote truck
stop?

His silhouette was long and reclined,
as if he were having a relaxing chat instead of breaking and
entering. My gaze flicked to the door, but the deadbolt was
sideways, unlocked, when I was sure I’d locked it.

Always lock the
door,
my mother said. I had scoffed. Who
would come in?

Here was my answer.

Nausea roiled through me. "How did you
get inside?"

It wasn't the most important question,
and we both knew it. What was he going to do to me? That was the
bottom line, but I couldn't let my mind go there just
yet.

His broad shoulders shrugged. "I've
been coming around here for years. The owner is a personal friend.
I explained I had some unfinished business in this room, and he
gave me a key."

So easy, that was all I could think.
My safety, my life had been compromised with a shrug.

How could I get out of this? I
couldn't. I knew that with the same certainty that I knew my mother
would die in that house. But I had to try. I knew what he meant by
unfinished business. He was offended by my refusal earlier. It
wouldn't help to pretend I didn't know.