Nobody but Us (5 page)

“How long till we’re there?” she asks.

“Another couple of days, I guess. Depends how much we drive each day. You in a hurry?”

She shakes her head. “Every minute I feel more and more free. We can go slow, I don’t mind. It just draws the nice feeling out even longer.”

“Yeah.” I feel the same way, but I’ve never been as good as she is about just saying it. Her honesty catches me off guard.

I shove down the yawn that’s creeping up and reach for my glass of ice water. I’d figured the food would wake me up, make me more alert. But I’m getting more tired than before. Crunching the ice between my teeth helps. The cold’s painful on my teeth, but at least I feel awake. I kiss her on the top of the head.

“Cold.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” and she kisses me on the lips. Her mouth is burning hot over mine, but I hold the kiss until I’m as warm as she is.

“It’s gonna be good when we’re a little farther south, though. Get a change of scenery, feel like we’re actually getting somewhere.” She blushes and I nudge her. “What?”

“I’m slow. I’m holding us up.”

“Nah, you’re fine.” I’m pretty sure that ain’t why she’s blushing, though, and I’m dying to find out what the real reason is. I always wonder about what she’s thinking, what she sees when she looks at me, how she feels when she’s with me. Her expressions and her actions don’t hide much, but I can’t help it. I want to know it all. Make sure I’m doing the right thing, saying the kind of stuff she needs to hear.

I don’t get girls like I should, I guess. Didn’t have no sisters, didn’t have a mom. Wasn’t the sort of thing I could learn from the girls at the home. Those girls didn’t know normal, either.

“Let me know if you need anything.”

“Yep.”

I sit and smell her hair while she finishes eating. It ain’t a perfumey smell, or fruity, like coconut or nothing, but something in between. A smell I could get used to.

“You got, like, shampoo and stuff? Everything you need?”

Her cheeks turn pink again, and I can’t figure out what I’ve said that made her blush this time. This whole “taking care of someone else” thing ain’t something I’m used to. I spent most of my life looking out for me, moved from foster home to foster home until I was finally put in the group home. I didn’t get close to nobody. You never could know when your new foster parents would be drunks or crazy or … you know. Or when the other kids were more fucked-up than you were. So now I gotta try and figure out how to not be in her face too much but still be supportive enough. I feel like I never learned where the line is. It’s just one more thing I got to figure out.

“Just tell me if you need to stop for whatever, okay?”

“I will.”

The little bell above the door tinkles. I look up. Then down again. Zoe eats her oatmeal like nothing’s happened, ’cause she ain’t noticed. She’s gotta hurry up.

Look up.

There’s two of them and, yeah, there’s the car with lights across the roof out the window, at the corner of the parking lot. The waitress ain’t got to them yet. They’re still standing in the entryway.

“You almost done?” She looks guilty.

“Sorry. I’ll hurry.”

I sink down in the booth. “No, it’s cool. Didn’t mean to be mad.”

She looks where I look and drops her spoon. The cops shift their stances like they’re impatient. Or looking for something. My stomach clenches.

“Don’t look at them,” I tell Zoe.

“Do you think—”

“Nah. Gotta be cops around these parts, right? It’s okay.” I fumble with the saltshaker. “It’s probably the only place to eat.”

“Let’s go.”

“It’ll look bad if we just go. And we still gotta pay.”

The waitress comes out from the back. Grabs two menus. Small talks. Walks this way. I sit up, pick up my fork. They ain’t here for us, I know it, so why’s my blood racing? Shit. Don’t look up. Don’t look.

They approach.

I look up. Lock eyes with the younger one. Do I look guilty? He’ll know that I shouldn’t be here if I look away.

Shit.

I swallow and nod. Zoe clatters her spoon against her bowl, and that cop, he’s gotta know something’s up. His hand goes to his belt and I’m ready to bolt. He nods back. Slides into the booth behind us.

Zoe makes a sound.

“It’s fine,” I tell her.

“I’m done eating.”

“Wait just a minute.”

“We have to go.”

“Hang on. It can’t look rushed.”

The waitress slips us our bill on the way back to the kitchen. I grab it.

“Let’s go.”

HE GOES UP TO PAY THE BILL AND HE LOOKS SO COOL, but I’m shaking as I stand in the aisle between table and booth and watch him pull money out of his wallet. I’m trying not to look at the police a few feet away. Why had I never thought someone would come after us? Stupid, naive girl.

The waitress takes the bill, and Will eyes the pocket of his wallet as though counting what’s left. The only money we have is what was left after he bought his car. I don’t know how much that is, but I can’t contain the guilt I feel that he’s paying for everything. I have to contribute somehow.

“Ready?” His voice is clear and his eyes a forced bright.

“I can try driving again, once we’re far enough away from the police.”

He laughs, then quickly pulls me into a hug to hide it.

“I don’t think so. Let’s just get on the road and get some loud music on. That’ll help. We’ll stop when it’s warmer and take naps, ’kay?”

He wears a T-shirt like it’s warm already. I run my hands over his bare forearms, mottled with moon-shaped scars whose history I don’t know yet. His arms are lean but strong, and I suddenly believe he can take care of everything. Even half asleep. Even if we were being chased.

The loud music does help. Especially since it’s loud rock music and Will doesn’t know the words to the songs. That doesn’t stop him from singing at the top of his lungs in his enthusiastic but tone-deaf voice, though.

“…
if a braid weight should fall
…”

I choke on a sip of water.

“That’s not how it goes!”

“…
runaway with my horse
…”

“Wrong again!”

I laugh even harder when he bites his lip and waves his fists in the air during the bridge. His black hair flops around his face as he moves to the beat and his warm eyes glitter.

“No! That’s so embarrassing!”

That makes him dance harder, shaking the car with his movements. He rolls the window down and sticks his head and shoulders out.

“I’ll go wherever you will go, Zoe Benson!” he yells to the wind.

“Get in here!” I grab at his shirt and try to brush away the tears that are streaming down my face at the same time. The car swerves and I shriek-laugh, but I couldn’t care less if we head into a ditch for the second time today.

“Anywhere you go!”

“We might not get farther than this field with the way you drive,” I say when he finally brings himself back into the car and snatches my hand for kisses.

“Doesn’t matter, baby. Long as I’m with you. You make me do all kinds of crazy things.”

“Oh, I do not make you bite your lip when you dance.”

He grins at me and I think maybe I could get used to watching this psycho dance like that.

It’s cold, but I roll down my window, too, and surf my hand up and down the drafts. My hair whips around me, but I don’t care. I don’t care that my lips are drying out or that my ears are stinging. I suck the air into my lungs and the pain is blissful. I feel like I could reach my whole body out the window and let the wind carry me to wherever Will wants us to go.

By early afternoon he’s completely worn-out and even the water and music aren’t helping.

“We could get a Red Bull or a coffee or something,” I suggest as his eyelids fall and the car slows for no reason other than that he’s forgetting to press on the gas.

His eyes snap open like he has something to prove. “Nah, I saw a sign for a rest stop a couple miles ago. It should be coming up here in a sec.”

When we come to the stop, he pulls off into a parking lot surrounded by short, golden-brown barrenness. We step out of the car and stretch and use the bathrooms. I bring a change of clothes in with me and wash myself as best I can with abrasive powdered soap and wet paper towels. It’s not much, but I feel slightly less grimy when I return to the car.

Will is already there, leaning on the hood. I walk into his outstretched arms.

“You still good?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen. About that ID. You’re gonna want to tell people you’re eighteen, if they ask.”

“Why?”

“Why? ’Cause you ain’t supposed to leave the state without a parent.”

“When you say ‘not supposed to,’ do you mean something bad could happen? Maybe we shouldn’t—”

“Nothing bad is going to happen. Don’t worry about it.”

He kisses me, slow like we have time that doesn’t exist for anyone but us. I tuck my fingers up under his shirtsleeves and trace the armband tattoo there. I pull away and kiss it, all the way around his arm.

“I don’t wanna sleep no more,” he says into my lips as he brings my face back to his. He lifts my legs around his waist and turns so that my back is against the chilly hood. I shudder, but from what he’s doing to me or from the cold, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. All I know are these tremors in my belly and how glad I am that he pulled me off my feet before my knees could give out on me.

My head is spinning like a dust devil, and his heat is closing in on all sides, surrounding me until I’m breathless, but I have to get control of it or he won’t sleep.

“Will,” I gasp.

“Mmm.”

“Will. You have to sleep.”

“You taste like rainbows.”

Laughter bubbles up from the depths of my belly, and Will pulls away with an irreverent grin and a hungry glint in his eyes.

“What? And what do rainbows taste like?”

“You. So good.” He grins at me and I push him back.

“Get in the car, dork.”

“Always with the name-calling. Hurts my feelings.”

“I’m sure.”

He must have emptied the stuff on the backseat to the trunk while I was in the bathroom, because it’s all clear now except for a pillow. He moves the front seats as far forward as they’ll go, climbs in, and tries to arrange his frame in the limited space.

“Come sleep with me,” he says, patting his chest invitingly.

“There’s not enough room.”

“Sure there is. Come here.”

I climb in, ducking down into the tight space. He draws me on top of him.

“It’s cramped back here,” I murmur, sinking into his body.

“It don’t matter. I want you all over me, taking up every inch of space around me.”

He breathes it so close to my ear that his lips are a brush of goose down on my lobe. It sends my body awash in shivers. I can’t get close enough. He smells good, and he’s so warm. I’m tingling all over and I want to keep him awake longer, be more important for him than sleep, but I know I can’t. He should rest.

But I need to hear his voice.

“Will, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

Everything about him smiles: his mouth, his closed eyes, the palest shadow of stubble on his jaw.

“A baseball player.”

I sit up a bit in surprise.

“Really? I didn’t know you played baseball.”

He pulls me back down and cages me with his arms.

“I never have. None of my family ever wanted to spend the time and money Little League takes. By the time I got to a decent foster home, I felt stupid asking about it, so I didn’t. But I did swing a bat once, when I was thirteen. This family that had just taken me in, the dad was trying to get into his kid’s room in the middle of the night. She’d put her dresser in front of the door and piled up her clothes and stuffed animals like they could be her army. He made a ton of noise, but nobody came to stop him. Who wouldn’t—There was an old bat in the backyard and I grabbed it and sent the old bastard down the hall with one swing.”

His shoulder twitches as he remembers the swing. “It felt good to hit him. Me and Aubrey—that’s his daughter—we got taken out of there the next day.”

“I bet you saved her a lot of pain.”

“Don’t know what good it did. If I asked what happened to her, they told me it weren’t none of my business.”

He brushes the bangs out of my face and kisses my nose. I settle into his chest; his arms wrapped around me are heavy and tight, like the smell of my dad’s Jack. But I hated Jack and I think I love Will.

I SHOULDN’T HAVE TOLD HER THAT. ABOUT AUBREY. I never want her to be afraid of nothing, the way Aubrey was afraid. Maybe I’m too late for that. Maybe Zoe’s dad took all of her fifteen years and taught her to be scared. I’ll undo it. Help her learn to be strong again. And brave. Not that I’m any kind of example, but we can learn together.