Ready To Go (13 page)

Daniel woke up abruptly from a crazy dream. He and Nicole were in it together, and they’d decided to stay in this particular hotel room for the rest of their lives. Then it turned into some weird garbage with purple flying hippos moving into the next room and keeping them up all night with their disco music. But when he opened his eyes and saw Nicole staring at him, he realized the first part of that dream had been pretty nice. He smiled at her. “Good morning.”

“Bad morning,” she replied with a groan. “Stupid phone’s going off.” It was then that Daniel heard the sound of the tinny samba-like tune coming from the suitcase.

“You want me to answer it?” he offered.

“No,” she sighed. “Just ignore it. The bed’s warm. I want to stay here until the phone’s off at least.”

His arm wrapped around her and pulled her closer to himself.

“I dreamed about California,” she said.

“Mm?” Daniel kissed her temple.

Nicole gave a lazy smile before kissing him, a move that just days before would have been a big deal. Now, it was just a kiss before she spoke. “I dreamed I was a famous movie star, and the movie I was in was premiering, so I invited you as my date to the premiere, but you ditched me for Scarlett Johansson.”

Daniel grinned as if he was considering the idea. “So, was she into me?”

Nicole just rolled her eyes and snuggled into his embrace even more.

He suddenly turned over with her, so he was kneeling over her. “So, should we make the bed even warmer?”

She grinned. “Maybe just a little bit.” She placed a hand on his bare chest, and he suddenly recoiled.

“Your hands are
cold!
”

She squirmed out from under him so she could sit up. “Well, maybe if
someone
hadn’t hogged the covers, they’d be warmer. My phone stopped, anyway. I’m getting up.” She headed off to the bathroom, but when she emerged, she seemed tired. She slowly walked back to the bed and lay down beside Daniel, turning her face to the mattress.

“Are you okay?” he asked, concerned for her. She was acting a little strange again.

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “I’m just having second thoughts about this whole running away thing. Not really second thoughts, more like fifteenth at this point.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. His voice was lower, like he was talking to a feral animal.

She sighed again. “No. I’m just homesick. And scared.” It wasn’t a lie.

He nodded. “Okay. I want to let you keep lying there, but we do have to check out soon.”

“Fine,” she said, drawing out the word in exasperation. She rolled off the bed and grabbed some clean clothes to wear for the day.

“I’ve got somewhere in mind to go today,” he told her as he picked out his own outfit for the day.

That somewhere turned out to be a café that offered free wireless internet. Daniel had not been good about remembering that he was, in fact, still a student. He really needed to catch up on his work.

“You are so boring,” Nicole muttered as she looked over his shoulder, a latte in her hand. “This is what you wanted to do today?”

“Yesterday we washed your clothes,” he pointed out.

She shrugged. “Fine. After you’re done, can I use your computer to check celebrity gossip and stuff like that?”

“Yeah, no problem,” he said absently. He had a
lot
of work to do, but luckily most of it he could do in the next hotel, without an internet connection. He clicked open another email. “Shit.”

Nicole looked over his shoulder again. “’Mr. Everett, as you have clearly demonstrated a lack of respect for this class, I have no choice but to drop you from it.’ Wow, that sucks. ‘You will receive an incomplete for this semester.’ Can’t you just go back and finish it?”

“It’s a lot of work to redo,” he said. “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

“Can I have the computer now?” she asked impatiently. He pushed the laptop over to her, and she smiled as she started checking her websites. He stood up to get himself some coffee.

When he returned, he found Nicole checking some Livejournal community and laughing at the comments on it. “More celebrity gossip?”

She nodded. “I know it’s shallow, but I like knowing what’s going on. Even if it doesn’t affect me, it gives me something to talk about.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “You said you wanted to get to LA, this is like research for you, isn’t it?”

She laughed, and replied, “Not at all. This is just for fun. I’m not a crazy celebrity stalker, and I don’t even know if I
want
to be a star. I said that was just a dream, didn’t I?”

He shrugged. “I don’t pay attention to your exact words.”

“Yeah, but you sure paid attention to the mention of Scarlett Johansson.” She clicked something, and then slid the computer back to him. “I need more latte. Here’s your computer.”

The line at the counter had grown long, and as Daniel researched the history of penicillin for an assignment, he stole glances at Nicole standing there. She clearly did not like lines, as she kept fidgeting. She picked at her nails and braided a few strands of her hair. But he soon got bored with watching her, and definitely bored with researching, so he clicked open Facebook.

“Anything interesting?” Nicole asked when she returned.

“Actually, yeah,” he said. “One of my old friends sent a message. This is ironic, but I sort of forgot that he lived in LA. So I asked him if he would mind giving you a place to stay when we get there.”

She nearly dropped her coffee, and made a noise like a squeak. “That’s so great! Thank you!”

“I don’t know if he’ll agree to it,” Daniel warned. “Like I said, this is an old friend, and I don’t know what’s going on with him right now, if he has room to take you in.”

Nicole nodded eagerly. “Still, that’s a big help. If I have a place to stay long enough to find a job, that’ll be great.”

He smiled. “I’m glad I could help you. Again.”

As the two were back on the road, a Panic! At the Disco CD blasting from the car’s speakers, Nicole couldn’t stop talking about what her life would be like in California. Unfortunately, it was her turn to drive, and Daniel had to keep reminding her to look back to the road.

“I’ll be a movie star!” she said excitedly. “Except probably not, because I’m not pretty enough.”

“Yeah, you are,” he told her with a grin. “I’d watch a movie with you in it.”

“Okay, I’m kind of pretty,” she conceded. “But I’m not a size double zero like a superstar actress. I actually like to eat.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. Road.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, smiling. She glanced over at him, and he motioned for her watch the road again. “Maybe I’ll be a writer for a TV show. I always kind of liked writing.”

“That would be a good job,” he said.

She sighed, her smile suddenly gone. “But no one’s going to hire a community college dropout.”

“So go back to school,” he suggested. “It could be a community college still. They’re not bad schools.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just need a job. I mean, I’d like to be a star, but I think living around stars is going to be enough. Especially being on the opposite coast from my dad.”

“What did he do?” Daniel asked. He paused between each word, as though he wasn’t sure this was what he wanted to ask.

“It’s not as bad as you’re thinking,” she said. “He didn’t touch me, he didn’t hit me, he barely ever yelled at me. He’s not bad to me, actually.”

“Then what is it?”

“He’s cheating on my mom,” Nicole said. She sighed, and the car swerved a bit as her hands shook. She looked up at the road abruptly. “Maybe we should get to a rest stop before I tell you the story. It’s hard for me to talk about.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he said in a comforting voice. “There’s probably something up ahead.”

She nodded. It turned out that there was a rest stop just two miles ahead, and Nicole pulled the car into a parking space there. She turned off the engine, but didn’t undo her seatbelt before just looking down at her lap, twisting her hands together. “So what happened is my dad’s cheating on my mom,” she said. “I saw him with the other girl. She’s my age. She’s actually in one of my classes. I had her over to work on a project once and…
this
.”

Daniel didn’t know what to say now, so he settled for, “That sucks.”

She nodded. “I don’t know if Mom knows. I couldn’t tell her. And I couldn’t look my dad in the eyes anymore, either. So I saved up money for a few months, and then I left.”

“Your mom still doesn’t know?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what’s happened since I left. I feel bad about leaving Mom there, but she’s going to be fine. She can just divorce him. I can’t escape him without leaving.”

She was crying now, tears freely streaming down her cheeks. Her face was red and there was a small snot bubble on her nose, but still Daniel leaned over to her and cupped her cheek in his hand, brushing away her tears with his thumb. “You escaped,” he said.

“Did I make a mistake?” she asked, her voice growing small.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “If you couldn’t look at him anymore, it makes sense to leave.”

“It sounds stupid when I say it to you,” Nicole admitted. The tears stopped to make room for the words. “But it wasn’t just that she was my age.” She paused, taking a breath. It was hard to say it aloud. “A lot of people said that she looks like me. If he was just cheating with anyone else, maybe a redhead, maybe someone, someone else, I could get over it. I’d stick by my mom through a messy divorce or whatever. But
her…
I couldn’t stay around him.”

Daniel nodded. He’d run out of things to say—but what would someone say to that?

“Dad always told me I was a pretty girl,” she muttered. “He never did anything to me, he’s a good father. But I kept wondering about it, and I just got scared. I’m not some brave person getting away from a bad situation. I’m a coward running because I can’t face my own paranoia.” She was back to crying.

“Being afraid doesn’t make you a bad person,” Daniel said gently. He didn’t really know what he could say—agreeing or disagreeing would both be the bad thing to do.

“But anyways, that’s why I hated you when I met you,” she said. “You looked at me like all there was to me was pretty. You could have had a girlfriend or something and still look at me like that.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“I didn’t know back then,” she said. “I thought all you cared about was getting laid. Just like him. All guys are the same, that’s all I could think. And if you just thought I was pretty, it would just confirm that I wasn’t anything. Not a person, not really a daughter. Just someone raised to be pretty.”

“Of course, you’re a person,” Daniel said. “There’s no reason you should think otherwise.” Even if it was fucked up, he did like knowing
why
she was acting so weird at the beginning.

“This is stupid,” she mumbled. “We should just go back now. You go back to your life and I go back to mine. You go be a doctor and I graduate school with a useless degree and live with my parents for years before I can escape again.”

He shook his head. “No. Even if this means I’m kidnapping you, I’m not letting you go back on this. You don’t need a useless degree. What would that be in, by the way?”

“English,” she said. “Couldn’t decide what I wanted, so I chose English.”

“Yeah, a useless degree,” he said, making her smile slightly. “You’ll find a job in LA. You’ll be happy there.”

“I need a degree to do anything,” she pointed out. “Well, except show business.”

“Do you have to be in show business?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, tears appearing in her eyes again.

He kissed her to distract her, so that she wouldn’t cry. “You’ll figure out what you like doing,” he murmured. “You have to be good at something, and you’ll find that.”

She nodded. “Okay. I don’t want to keep crying. Let’s just go back on the road. And we need a hotel with internet tonight, so you can check if your friend replied.”

“Good idea,” he said. “Do you want me to drive?”

“No.” She gave him a strained smile. “If I drive, then I can distract myself from this. I don’t want to be thinking about my parents, or what the heck I’m going to do with my life. Thanks to you, I have a little bit of a plan. I’m not going to be homeless.”

“You don’t really know that yet,” he warned. “I still have to hear back from my friend.”

“Still, you’re so helpful.” She turned the key in the car’s ignition, and the engine came to life. But before she pulled the car out of its parking space, she turned it off again. “On second thought, you drive. I need to use my phone while it still has battery life.”

He nodded. They both exited the car to go around and switch seats. Daniel pulled the phone from under a pile of old newspapers he had between the two seats, and handed it to Nicole.

She dialed as the car began to move. Daniel could hear someone shouting on the other line, but couldn’t pick out any specific words.

Nicole just smiled. “Hi, Mom. I’m okay. No.
No
. I don’t want to talk to him.” Her smile fell, but she kept talking. “I’m going to LA. I’m going to find a job there, and I’ll be fine. I’m not alone. I’m with a guy, he’s helping me.
No
, he’s not my boyfriend, I’ve only known him a few days. No-we-are-not-doing-that. No, he’s not like that, really.”