Nobody but Us (4 page)

I’m loving this freedom to kiss Will in his stalled car on the middle of a highway in South Dakota. I clearly remember the first time he kissed me. He’d caught up with me as Lindsay and I waited for the bus the day he came back to school after his suspension. He didn’t say anything—just took my hand with a mischievous smile and tugged me away from the curb.

Lindsay giggled at me when I remained flat-footed, pulling back against the force of Will’s insistence, not knowing what to do. I knew I wasn’t supposed to go, that I would deserve the trouble I’d get into if my father found out. “I’ll cover for you,” she said. She gently pushed me toward Will. I bit my lip.

“My father—”

Will made a dark sound and wrapped his arm around my waist. His touch sent the breath from my lungs; heat rushed up my neck, into my cheeks. No one had ever touched me like this before, with the surety of wanting to touch without hurting, and now Will had, twice in a row.

I craved his certainty.

We hurried to his car just as the bus pulled up to the curb. He unlocked the passenger door with a sweeping gesture, and I laughed at his gallantry as I climbed in. I reached over to unlock his door, then paused, realizing that I was sitting in Will’s car. I’d never been in a boy’s car before. I took in the crumpled receipts littering the floor, the empty soda can in the center console, the scratches in the dash and fine-lined cracks in the seats. The interior smelled softly of worn leather and oil.

His shadow filled the driver’s-side window. I froze, my hand somewhere between the steering wheel and the lock. He inserted the key in the lock, watching me through the window. I couldn’t move under his dark molasses stare. My arms tingled. I swallowed and slowly dropped my hand as he opened the door and slid in with only a whisper of sound.

The car door shutting startled me, but he reached out and brushed my bangs to the side.

“How come you wear them so long? In your eyes?”

The air was too thick—heavy—for my tongue to move. I felt safe behind them, I wanted to tell him. Even now, with my forehead exposed, I felt too open to the world, to him. His shirtsleeve moved up, revealing a tattoo that stretched around his biceps.

I touched it with the tip of my finger, then snatched my hand away as fire filled my body. I looked at the dash, the radio, anywhere but at him.

“I got that last summer,” he murmured. “Worked on a ranch. They used barbed wire fencing to keep the animals from getting out. So I got that. Thought it’d help keep my animal from getting out.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. He wanted to keep things in, and all I wanted to do was get out.

“When you look at me like that,” he said, a little breathless, “it’s like you understand things about me I don’t even get. And you don’t even say nothing. You’re the quietest person I’ve ever met. And I know you’re smart, so it can’t be that you ain’t got nothing to say.”

“I don’t have anything to say that really means anything,” I whispered.

“I think you got so much to say.” He leaned in until I could feel his breath on my lips. “You don’t have to say it right now, though.”

My pulse quickened, but I didn’t move, caught in a moment of indecision. Do I let this happen or not?

He hesitated and tension washed over us. “I ain’t never asked permission before,” he said. “But is this … okay?”

His eyes flickered from my mouth to my eyes. My lips parted against my will, but I knew I was incapable of forming words. I nodded.

I watched him press his lips to mine, then dropped my lashes as I sank under a wave of warmth and sweet-salty taste. The scent of his car mingled with the musk of his skin. The silence inside the vessel enveloped us gently. He was soft, careful, so that all I knew was the press of his lips, the whisper-tickle of his breath, the tips of his fingers on the back of my neck.

A new craving.

When he pulled away and brushed my bangs aside again, I knew I would risk sneaking out a million times to kiss him again.

But now there’s no sneaking around to avoid my dad, who hated Will from the moment he set eyes on him. He called him “bastard orphan.” I’m not sure that makes sense, but my dad liked the name well enough. Will ignored it. He ignored everything my dad said and did to him … but not the things my dad did to me. There’s enough hate for my dad in Will to create a life philosophy.

That’s left behind now. Here, in this heap of metal, I can savor Will’s mouth, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the earthy smell of his warm skin close to mine.

“I love kissing you,” I say as I scramble back to my side of the car. “But I’d also love to learn how to drive this piece of crap.”

Will’s hand flies to his chest and he winces at my words. “Shh, she didn’t mean it,” he murmurs to the cracked dash.

I’m still giddy from our kiss, so I jam one foot on the clutch, put the car in gear, and slowly trade the pressure on the pedal on the left for the pedal on the right. It’s a trial-and-error kind of thing, releasing the clutch just right, while pressing down on the gas the same amount. But after a minute of very slow movement, I’ve got the car rolling down the highway at a respectable ten miles per hour and my foot is off the clutch completely.

“Okay, how do I go fast?” I press a little on the gas, but the revving noise doesn’t sound right.

“You’ve got to upshift now. See that gauge, right there? That’s the RPMs. You can watch the needle and shift when it gets to around three thousand, but it’s better to just listen. Go a little faster. That’s it. Hear how the decibel ain’t really rising no more? Yeah, that’s when you gotta shift.”

I can hear it. I press down the clutch and put my hand on the stick. Will guides it into second gear.

“Nice job.”

His praise lifts me, makes me feel like I could fly.

“You’re a good teacher.”

“Not so much, but I know a piece of junk like this old car.”

He calls the car a piece of junk, and it isn’t much to look at, but it means a lot to him. He saved up for two summers to buy the car and do the work it needed to run as smoothly as it does. I know he wants to do more, but that will have to wait until we’re both working.

He guides my hand into third and fourth gears, and by now we’re soaring down the road. It’s exhilarating, like a first taste of real freedom, to be in control of a machine that can take me far, far away from where I’ve been. I’m enjoying the ride so much that I pass right by the diner we’re supposed to eat at.

“Oops.” I turn the steering wheel, but we’re still going really fast and I don’t know how to slow down. I can’t take my foot off the gas, because I remember what happened last time, and braking would be pointless. I steer as hard as I can, putting my whole body into the movement. The wheels screech on the road, and I yelp. We’re headed for a ditch. “Will!”

“It’s okay. Use the brake and the clutch at the same time. I’ll downshift.”

It’s too much to keep track of—the wheel and the shifting and the brake, the clutch, the gas—and my head’s spinning and there’s the ditch and my feet get tangled under the dash. I’ve got the clutch but forgotten the brake or the other way around, but as we slow, I hear a nasty grating sound and see Will wince again.

“The clutch, baby.”

My hands are gripping the steering wheel like it’s a lifesaver. I take a breath and try to focus on the pedals. The clutch goes in and I’m turning the wheel for all I’m worth. The car’s slowing down, but not fast enough. “Will!”

He leans over and takes the wheel. “Brake! Just brake!”

I slam both feet on the middle pedal, and we slide halfway into the ditch with a shudder. A shattering sound splits the air as a semi truck whizzes past us, horn blaring, driver’s middle finger extended out the window.

I try to catch my breath. It feels like I’ve been running for miles.

“I’m sorry.”

“No. You did great.” His voice is a little shaky. “We’ll try again later. But I’m hungry, so …” We get out and push the car back to the road. I’m useless because every time he lifts his arms to push, I get the urge to tickle his sides. We end up sprawled on the weeds, hands and mouths seeking, twice, before I am flushed and out of breath enough to leave him alone.

I want it to be always like this. Cars in ditches and tickling and kissing in the weeds because we can’t help ourselves.

I never want us to be able to help ourselves.

I FIGURE I COULDN’T CARE LESS ABOUT MY DAMN CAR.

She’s there driving it into the ditch and I start to get more scared that she’s gonna hurt herself than I am about the fender getting smashed up. But then that passes and we’re okay and the whole thing’s way too funny.

It’s a good thing she tickled me. I don’t want her to think I was laughing at her driving.

It’s sunny. Still cold, but definitely morning when we get to Sullivan’s Diner. There’s enough cars in the parking lot to tell me that this’s the joint to eat at in this tiny town. I take Zoe’s hand and hold the door for her when we walk in and wait to be seated. We sit next to each other in the booth. Her leg presses against mine and I feel it in every bone of my body. I clear my throat and pick up the menu. Someday she’s gonna figure out what she does to me. Pretty soon I’m gonna let her know what she does to me.

When the waitress comes, Zoe orders oatmeal and I get eggs and bacon. The waitress pauses for a sec and looks over Zoe’s face, but Zoe don’t even notice. Her brown eyes are hidden by a curtain of dark hair. But those bruised-skin colors ain’t easy to miss. The waitress looks at me with raised eyebrows.

A volcano erupts inside me, fire and suffocating black ash, and I want to take that waitress outside and show her what I ain’t never done, would never, ever do to Zoe. But Zoe hears the butter knife I’m clutching rattle against the table and looks up and sees what’s going on. She glares at the waitress until the bitch walks away with a huffy breath.

We don’t say nothing about it.

Instead, I rub Zoe’s arms ’cause she’s still wearing her coat and I’m worried that she’s too cold. The Dakotas ain’t exactly warm sunshine and blooming flowers in April.

“Do you need anything? Want me to grab the blanket?”

“No, I can’t sit here wrapped in a blanket. That would be way too embarrassing.”

“There ain’t nothing you could do that would embarrass me.”

She gives me a smile and snuggles into my side, but she don’t change her mind about the blanket.

“Do you think I could waitress in Vegas?”

I squeeze the saltshaker in my fist. We’d gone over this already, a couple days ago, when we started mapping out our escape.

“No.”

“That sounds a lot like you telling me what to do.”

“You asked.”

“I have to do my share, Will.”

“You will. You’ll go to school. That’s your share.”

“What about money? It costs money to live.”

She would know about that. She had to get to her dad’s Social Security check each month before he did so she could cash it and pay the bills. She told me about how Lindsay’s dad waited at the end of Zoe’s street the day the money came to give Zoe a lift to the bank. I asked her how come Lindsay’s dad didn’t do more. She shrugged. People mind their own business, she said.

I hope they do. I hope they keep out of ours.

“I told you, I’ll find a job. I got lots of work in me.”

“But I want you to finish school, too.”

I shrug. Someday, maybe, I will. But it takes a lot more effort for me to do schoolwork than her. I just wasn’t made for studying and raising my hand in class and all that sort of thing. I was made for honest labor and there ain’t anything I could figure I wanted to do with a degree anyway, so that’s fine with me.

“Will.”

“We’ll take turns. You go to school first, ’cause you’re so good at it. I’ll work, ’cause I’m so good at that. When you’re done with school, we’ll trade.” It’s a simple solution coming out of my mouth, something so she’ll stop talking about this. But inside, something else is building up. Something bigger. I whisper it to her so it’s out there, so it ain’t nagging me no more. “I will go to school, Zoe. I want you to be proud of me. I want you to want someone like me by your side. And I’ll do whatever it takes to earn that.”

She shifts against me and I feel her lips on my neck, right at the spot that’s tightened up. I’m glad the waitress shows up just then so that I can focus on the smell of our food and not the weird tightness in my chest. I grab the ketchup and dribble some on my eggs.

“I have raisins,” Zoe says in this happy-girl voice. She pops one in her mouth.

“That’s cute. But I’ve got manly food.” And I lower my voice to sound like Tarzan or something. She snickers. I know she loves it.

We eat without talking for a few minutes. Her jeans are pressed to mine and I wanna show her what she does to me—right now—but I got to focus on something else, like the sound of bacon as I crunch it between my teeth.

When I’ve finished my breakfast and she’s halfway through her oatmeal, I pull the map book from next to me and show her the roads we’re gonna travel to get to Vegas.

“See? We’re on the eighty-three right now. We’ll follow that for a ways longer until we hit the two-twelve.”