Nobody but Us (9 page)

“How about we get a room for tonight?” I ask. “We can ask around to see how long it’d take to get to the lake and figure something out, okay?”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Why not? It’s gonna be too cold to sleep in the car. Don’t you wanna sleep somewhere warm and toasty?”

I wait for her cheeks to flush like strawberries, but they don’t. She looks worried.

“What?”

“Hotels are expensive.” Her voice is low, like a shy child’s, and she says this like she’s scared. Like she ain’t too sure how I’m gonna react. I’m not sure I do a good job. She faces away from me when I look at her. I can’t help it. I feel like she’s poking needles in my pride, searching for the raw places and finding them with the tips of her weapons. I’m the man. I’m supposed to take care of everything.

“We can do a hotel tonight. I saved up. I got cash. A little room somewhere. Cheap. They’re all over the place. Don’t worry about it, Zoe. I’ll take care of it.”

“I know. I mean, I know you’ll take care of things. But we have to be careful. Things get expensive, and the little things? They add up. We have to make sure we’re okay for Vegas.”

“It’s one night. After this we get out of the mountains and it’ll be warmer.”

“I just don’t think we should waste your money.”

I downshift, holding the stick harder than I need to.

“It ain’t my money. It’s ours.”

“I didn’t earn it. You worked for it. It’s yours, and someday I’ll pay you back.”

I clench my jaw. Grind my teeth. I don’t want it to be like that. Like me and my money, and her and nothing. I didn’t work for nothing. I didn’t risk getting caught with Shelly’s card for nothing.

Why won’t she take what I want to give her?

I reach for my wallet and pull whatever my fingers grab. I push it into her lap.

“Here. You wanna divide everything? This part’s yours. It’s a gift. Spend it however you want. Rest’ll be mine. Work for you?”

I ain’t looking at her, but she’s quiet, like, sad quiet. She don’t touch the money. I just want her to take it, to believe I wanna give her everything. I see it out of my peripheral vision, her hand swiping across her cheek.

Shit.

I gather the money and put it back in my wallet. I hold it out to her. She won’t take it.

“That wasn’t cool. I’m sorry, Zoe.”

She nods.

“Let’s figure this out now, okay?” I set the wallet in her lap. Try to be soft about it. “This money belongs to us together. That’s what I want. You be the accountant person. Count the cash, make a list or whatever, like a chart, and figure out what we should be spending. You got that.”

She nods and handles the wallet.

“You can do that? Like, you know how?”

“I can manage that. A chart, or whatever.” She’s smiling a little now. Good.

“I don’t know what they’re called. Like, balancing your checkbook, right? ’Cept I never had checks or a bank account or nothing like that.”

“How did you manage to save up for your car?”

“I put the money in a box under my bed.”

She’s pulling out the money, counting it or something, but she stops when I say that and looks at me like I just said the most amazing thing.

“You stuck your money in a box? Like a
shoe box
? And no one in the house
stole it
? You’re joking.”

“It weren’t a shoe box. It had a lock and everything. And everyone knew if they messed with it I’d beat the sh—crap out of them.”

“Right.”

“C’mon, you know everyone in the house. Just ’cause you get screwed over in life don’t make you a crappy person. They were decent.” I grip the wheel tighter.
They
were, at least.

“Yeah, I knew them. They had issues.”

“So do I.” I meet her eyes. “Hell, so do you.”

She swallows and nods and looks back at the cash.

“Okay, so they were cool. But when we get to Vegas and you have a job that pays with a paycheck and not a fistful of twenties behind the tractor, you’re going to get a bank account and debit card and everything.”

“Long as you, like, monitor everything. I don’t want to deal with all the numbers.”

“Big baby.”

She grins at me, so I grin back. Yeah, so I’m grateful she can crunch numbers so I don’t got to. Big deal. Some people are good at that stuff and some ain’t. I’ll do other things, and put together it’ll be good.

“So we’re good for a hotel, right? I mean, the other option is freezing our tails off in the car.”

“If that’s the only other option”—she laughs—“I guess we’d better.”

THERE’S MORE MONEY IN HIS WALLET THAN I THOUGHT there would be. Money he wants me to think is mine, too. I have a hard time letting myself think that. Is it wrong to depend on him? It feels unnatural, frightening. But people who care about each other shouldn’t feel that way, I know. It’s just for now, I promise myself. Things will change. We’ll be equal someday.

Large-denomination bills slide through my fingers, and I’m surprised that he’s been able to save this much for so long. He must’ve been paid well, and I guess he never had much to spend it on. That, or he had a plan and was able to restrain himself so he could carry it out. I’m impressed. Because of that, and because I know the kind of backbreaking work he did at the ranch all day over the summers and on weekends and early mornings during the school year. He’s not afraid to work. And he’s not afraid of his plans.

I wish that were me. Not afraid. A worker. I’ve never been given the chance to be either.

The trees clear away after a half hour more of driving and we enter a mountain town, quiet at this time of night. Or maybe because it’s a weeknight or because the ski season’s winding down. Probably all of those things. Whatever the reason, I’m glad. Hotels will be empty and rooms easy to find, maybe even a little cheaper. Already I see Will glancing side to side, checking the vacancy signs and ducking his head to see the prices posted on the boards. We slow down to ten miles per hour as he looks.

“You just drive,” I tell him. “I’ll pick the hotel.” I touch his leg and my fingers tingle.

“Sounds good, money girl.”

I squirm inside at the nickname, even though I know he’s teasing and hasn’t given a second thought to the fact that I have control over the money. Holding Will’s money—I can’t think of it as anything but his, no matter what he says—makes me feel like an obligation with a high price tag, like I’m this thing he feels he has to take care of because it can’t take care of itself.

Soon, I tell myself again. I’ll make it up to him.

“Oh, hey! Turn around. That place looks good.” I point to the right as we pass by a motel with a fake log cabin exterior. Will whips the car around right in the middle of the road and enters the parking lot. There are molting wood-carved owls keeping guard high in the corners of the building and splotches of half-peeled white paint in between the “logs.” Like they don’t get enough snow here and have to fake it.

“Thirty-four ninety-nine. We can do that.”

“You want to stay here? What if the rooms are as bad as the outside?”

I shrug. “We just need someplace warm, right?”

“You, me, a bunch of bedbugs, maybe a dead body under the mattress. We’ll all stay real toasty.”

“Will.”

“I just wanted it to be …”

“What?” Heat sears my cheeks. He catches my eye, and my breath falters.

“Nicer. For you. Like you deserve.”

I swallow but can’t think of anything to say. Not when he’s looking at me like that.

“All right,” he says. “Let’s check it out. But if you itch your legs all night I’m shoving you on the floor.”

We get out of the car and I wrap my arms around him with a giggle. “But you’ll join me on the floor, won’t you? You wouldn’t leave me there all alone.” I stick out my bottom lip.

“Uh, no.” He pushes my lip back in and pecks my nose. “Unless you make it worth my while.”

I pull away as he wiggles his eyebrows at me, take his hand, and lead him to the motel office. There’s a moose head on the wall with a string of colored lights on its antlers and a middle-aged guy half asleep at the counter. He sits up straight and tugs his ski sweater over his belly when we walk in.

The guy looks us over and does this funny thing with his mouth where he sucks his teeth, then his lips, and pops them back out again. It’s gross.

“Can we get a room?” Will asks.

“We take cash or credit.”

Will shrugs and I hand him his wallet. He hesitates to take it, and I realize too late that I’m supposed to do this part. We’re awkward for a second, testing out a dance neither of us knows the steps to. But I can’t dole out his money like that, like I own any of it. I nudge his arm with the wallet and Will reluctantly takes it.

The guy behind the counter glances at our hands, not bothering to hide his disapproval at our naked fingers. He watches his register drawer open as he rings us up, as though he can’t bring himself to look at us again.

“You two even legal?”

He holds out Will’s change but doesn’t let go of it until Will meets his eyes.

“Not your business, is it?”

“This is my property. Makes it my business.”

“Yeah, well, don’t worry. We’re good.”

He lets go of the change and nods, picking up the phone on the table to his left. He dials, but he’s still talking to us, telling us about when he bought the place, about the lady who cleans the rooms. Will jams the money in his wallet and holds out his hand for the key, but the guy puts his hand up for us to wait. Will tenses.

“What’s wrong?” I whisper. Will shakes his head.

We listen to the conversation, the owner telling the person on the other end that he has customers. Will turns away and I follow him to the door of the office. We look out the glass pane at the black street. There’s a wailing sound, and the darkness is broken up by a flash of bright color.

“Get back, Zoe,” Will hisses, pulling me away from the door. The sirens are louder. I watch Will’s face, see the way his eyes run over the office as though he’s looking for something vital. His jaw muscles tighten and relax and he pulls me close. We move back to the desk as the motel owner hangs up.

“Hope nobody’s hurt,” he says as he makes a mark in a ledger.

Will turns his back solidly to the door, but he watches over his shoulder. His hands grip my upper arms.

“So what brings you to the mountains?” the owner asks Will.

Will doesn’t answer. He’s listening. Listening to the sirens come closer, closer. What is he expecting? What is he dreading? Who was on the other end of the phone call?

Will shuffles his feet, restless. I place my hands over his and he startles.

“We’re on our way to Vegas,” I tell the owner. But my focus is on Will and the noise, so loud now. I wonder if the motel owner notices the way Will’s muscles are taut enough to snap.

“Getting hitched, huh? Better off staying here and doing that. You know how many of them Vegas weddings go for broke? Too many.”

Lights strobe through the office. We hear the engine noises mixed with the siren. Will pulls me closer. The owner turns to grab a key. There’s a rush, one last high-pitched whine. A rattle of old door on an older track. The car sails past the motel and I’m awash in relief, giddiness. Will drops his hands from my arms and his breath rushes past my ear.

“Vegas wedding?” I repeat, trying to recall what the owner had said. “Do you have statistics for that? I’d be interested in seeing them.” His assumptions grate on my nerves more than they should. I realize how nerve-racking the last minute was, how it felt like an hour. He raises his eyebrows pompously and sits back in his chair.

“I hear things. I see things. If you watched the news instead of MTV, you’d know about it, too. All those celebrities that get married there and divorce in a couple of months. Pay attention, girlie, and you’ll learn something.”

“I don’t—” I begin, but stop myself, pursing my lips. I wouldn’t put it past the guy to hold off on giving us our room key if I upstage him, and this argument doesn’t really even matter.

He smirks as he passes the key to Will. “Room should be nice and clean. I called Heather just now to make sure. You kids have a good night.”

I turn to leave, but Will gets directions to a twenty-four-hour Denny’s before we exit the office.

“He was kind of a …”

“Get used to it. They’re everywhere,” Will mumbles, clutching the key in his fist. He’s visibly shaken and I want to hug the tension away. “But there’re more good people in this world than bad, right?”

“Like we’d know,” I say, my worry for him making my words bitter.

His eyes flash. “Hey! Don’t you start talking like that.”

I rise up on my tiptoes and rub my nose against his.

Will takes my hand with a dubious laugh and checks the number on the key ring. “Five. Room five’s right there. Here, take the key and I’ll pull the car closer.”

My first impression of the room is that it looks like something out of an old made-for-TV movie. Stocky pine bed and dressers without handles, a thin bedspread in a paisley print, and a Technicolor gold shag carpet grace the interior. I expect to see a mirror on the ceiling, but it’s just cream-colored popcorn.