Ready To Go (8 page)

“I actually wasn’t going to say that this time,” he replied.

Not long later, they arrived at the mall. It looked just like any other mall, crowded parking lot, a Sears, a Macy’s, a Target. Daniel parked the car outside the sign for the food court.

“Do you want to stick together or split up to save time?” he asked.

“I guess split up,” Nicole replied. “I don’t have much to get, I can probably get it all from one place. Target or something.”

“Want to meet in back in the food court?” he suggested.

“Will you buy me lunch?” she asked. “I mean, if you’re going to be driving me around and paying for hotel rooms, I might as well be taking advantage of it.”

He laughed. “Sure.”

Nicole nodded, and the two parted ways. Daniel headed into the closest department store. He didn’t really need much, a few sets of clothes and a stick of deodorant would be good, and maybe some toothpaste and other things that caught his eye. On his way to the checkout, he spotted sleeping bags for sale. There would probably be a point when they’d have to share a room, he reasoned, and a lot of hotels had an extra cost for getting a cot. So he grabbed one of the cheap bags as well. It couldn’t hurt to have one in his car, after all.

He headed to the food court, bought some lunch, and sat down at a table to eat.

Nicole approached him a few minutes later, and raised an eyebrow at the bulging bags beside him. “You do remember it’s just about a week, right?” she asked him as she sat down at the seat across from him.

“Yeah,” he replied, his mouth full. He swallowed his bite of burger and continued, “I got some shampoo, toothpaste, things like that too. This isn’t that much.”

Nicole laughed. “It kind of is. So what did you buy me for lunch?”

“Nothing yet,” he replied, setting down his burger. He reached into his pocket, grabbed his wallet, and pulled out a handful of one-dollar bills. “I have no idea what you like. You go get something, I’ll save the table.”

She took the money from him and headed off to the restaurants lining the seating area. She returned momentarily, carrying a salad. She dropped the leftover money in front of Daniel, and then gestured towards the bags. “Seriously, what’s in there?”

“I got a sleeping bag,” he said. “What if there’s only one bed left at a hotel?”

She frowned. Did she not like the idea of sharing a room? “Okay.”

Daniel just nodded. He was absently tearing up his napkin.

“You look like you’re thinking about something,” she said. “Having second thoughts about this whole thing?”

He looked at the napkin, just realizing what he was doing. “Oh. No, not yet. I wasn’t thinking, just ripping this up. Sometimes my hands just get a little fidgety, so I need to do something with them.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “And you want to be a doctor? Don’t you need steady hands for that?”

“Only if I decide to be a surgeon,” he replied. “I don’t really know what I want to specialize in yet.”

“Are you sure you even
want
to be a doctor?” she asked. “I mean, you don’t know what you want to specialize in, you’re perfectly fine with leaving school for a crazy reason.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said confidently. He stopped tearing up the napkin. She was pretty sure he wasn’t fine.

After Nicole had finished eating, the two headed back out to the car. They still had a ways to go.

“Let’s stay somewhere with a pool tonight,” Daniel suggested as the sun began to set.

“No,” his passenger replied. “Hotels with pools cost more-“

“I’m paying,” he interrupted to point out.

“-and we’ll only be there overnight. The pool won’t even be open,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken.

“It’s just hot out,” he said.

“Get a hotel with air conditioning and sleep naked,” she suggested. Why was she talking about him naked? That was going to make him think being naked, and
her
being naked, and that wasn’t good. But she kept her expression exactly the same and pretended that wasn’t awkward. She certainly wasn’t thinking about him naked.

“I already do.” He gave her a flirtatious grin, and laughed when she just shook her head at him. “Okay, how about if the hotel we stay at happens to have a pool, we use it a little bit in the morning?”

“Not fair,” Nicole replied. “You’re driving, you’re paying, you’ll purposely pick somewhere with a pool.”

“Fine,” he said. “You’re right, I probably would. We spend so much time just driving, though; don’t you want to take some time to see the country? I’ve never been out here before, have you?”

She laughed and replied with heavy sarcasm, “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to see the sights of, where are we? Iowa?”

“Somewhere like that, yeah,” Daniel said. “Maybe Minnesota? Come on. Let’s stop for the night now and find something to do in this town.”

“You know, I could drive instead of you,” she said. “I do have a license, just not a car.”

“Wait, how old
are
you?” he asked. “I’m not kidnapping a minor, am I?” He figured not, but he also figured he should make sure.

She laughed, so hard that she lost her breath in her laughter. When she could speak again, she replied, “I’m twenty-two! I can drink, I can drive, not both at the same time, but still.” She knew she looked young, but being called a minor was just ridiculous. No one ever mistook her for under eighteen.

“You kind of act young,” he said. “I mean, no offense, you’re not childish or anything, it’s just…I don’t know what I mean.”

“I get it,” she said. “I live with my parents and go to community college. Or I used to anyway.”

“Used to?” he asked.

“Well, now I’m here,” she said. “Can we just find a hotel?”

She was avoiding the subject of herself again, Daniel realized. He kept his eyes on the road, looking for a sign somewhere that advertised a hotel. At least this way, he got his wish of stopping early. He was slowly getting to know Nicole a little better, even if she didn’t directly reveal anything about herself, and spending some time with her out of the car, being able to look at her instead of the road ahead, would help him learn more.

Once they got to a hotel and got their separate rooms, Nicole headed off to her room while Daniel stayed in the lobby. He browsed the shelves of brochures for local attractions and grabbed a couple that caught his eye. Then, instead of going into his own room, he followed Nicole to hers.

She opened the door after the first knock. She didn’t say anything when she saw him, just gave a small smile and pulled the door open wider so he could enter. He tossed the brochures on the bed and sat down beside them. “See anything that looks good?”

“This one, maybe,” she said, pulling one shiny piece of paper out from under another. It advertised a walking tour of the haunted places in the city. “Looks like tours meet in half an hour. If we can get there in time, that is.”

“You like haunted things?” Daniel asked.

She shrugged. “I like the paranormal, yeah. It’s interesting.” She neglected to mention that of course she believed in ghosts and an afterlife, and she’d believed her dreams were prophetic until she was a teenager. That was maybe just a little too embarrassing to share.

“Let’s try to get there,” he said, standing from the bed.

Nicole stood as well, grabbed a sweater from her suitcase, and headed to the door.

“Damn, I forgot to get a jacket,” Daniel realized.

“I have an extra hoodie if you want to borrow it,” Nicole offered. She went back to her suitcase to dig it out.

“No, don’t bother,” he said, stopping the girl in her tracks. “I don’t get cold easily. I’ll deal with it tonight and get a jacket tomorrow.”

“If you’re sure,” she said.

An hour later, as they were on the tour, Daniel had his arms crossed over his chest, his hands rubbing against his arms to keep warm.

“You want my sweater?” Nicole asked.

He glanced at the sweater she was wearing, a white cotton one with a butterfly embroidered on it. “I don’t think so.”

She laughed. “You want to skip the rest of the tour and go inside somewhere?”

“I just want to get drunk,” he muttered.

“You’re driving,” she pointed out. “I could get drunk, though, if you see a bar anywhere.” He pointed to one sitting just across the street from the tour group, and she laughed again. “Oh. Okay.”

“You’re sure you want to skip the tour?” he asked.

“It’s kind of terrible,” she said in a low voice so the tour guide wouldn’t hear. “Let’s ditch them.”

So when the group went to look at yet
another
‘haunted’ graveyard that just happened to have a few gravestones from before 1940, the two headed across the street into the bar. Nicole asked for something sweet, and the bartender gave her a hard glare. “ID?”

She just smiled and reached into her pants pocket, pulling out a small wallet. She flipped it open to show her license. “I get this a lot. I’m young and I don’t know the names of drinks yet.” The bartender just peered at the license and nodded.

“I’ll have a beer. Any good local kinds here?” Daniel asked, holding out his license. The bartender didn’t bother looking at him, just reached under the counter and grabbed a bottle of something labeled Grain Belt for Daniel before making Nicole’s drink.

“Hey, you’re driving,” she said, all traces of a smile gone from her face.

“I’ll call a cab,” he promised. “I don’t know where we are anyway. We’re close to Des Moines, I’m pretty sure, since we went south after the mall, so they must have cabs out here.”

The bartender placed Nicole’s drink in front of her, some sort of fruity colorful thing, and then eyed Daniel. “Going to pay now or start a tab?”

“I’ll do a tab,” he replied, pulling out his debit card and handing it to the bartender.

“Just so you know,” Nicole said, “I don’t hold my drinks too well. I may do some crazy things. Or throw up on you.”

“Got it,” Daniel said, taking a swig of his beer. “Do you throw up often?”

She shook her head. “I’m still learning my limit, though. I mean, I live, I mean,
lived
at home, so I don’t go to parties. And I definitely don’t get drunk with my parents.” She never wanted to get drunk around her parents, anyways. It was weird to get as super giggly and crazy as she did and her dad was right there. Eugh. She took a long sip of her fruity drink.

“I’ll stop you before the vomit,” he promised.

It didn’t seem like much long later that Nicole was laughing raucously and close to falling off her seat. She kept trying to show off some dance move, but kept forgetting she wasn’t standing.

She called over to the bartender for another drink, and that’s when Daniel stepped in. “She’s definitely had enough. Can you call us a cab?”

The bartender nodded, and made the call while Daniel tried to get Nicole outside. She stubbornly refused to stand up, so as he was too drunk to argue with her, he just wrapped his arm around her waist and hoisted her out of her seat. She really wasn’t that heavy. At some point he managed to get his credit card back, but he was afraid to know just how much he’d spent.

“Put me down!” she cried, though she giggled with her words. She swung her legs around, but didn’t actually kick him.

“Will you actually walk?” he asked.

She let out an exaggerated sigh and a drawn out, “Yeeeees.”

Daniel set the girl on the floor, but kept his hand around her arm to make sure she would actually follow him out the door. The cab was already outside waiting for them, so all he needed to do was open the door for her and give her a small push into the seat.

“Where are you headed?” the driver asked.

“Motel south of here,” he replied. “I forget the name. It’s in a chain?”

“Super 8?” the driver asked, starting to move the car forward.

“Probably,” Daniel said.

Nicole was definitely right that she couldn’t hold her drinks. She kept laughing for no reason, and kept trying to stand up. She seemed to have forgotten she was wearing a seatbelt, despite having enough sense to put it on herself.

“You are a crazy girl,” Daniel commented as he watched her. He knew he was a little drunk as well, but this girl was way beyond him.

“I know,” she laughed. “Hey! You
like
me!” She felt that exact moment was the right time to point out the obvious, but she couldn’t say why. On some level, she knew she was drunk, but she was enjoying being silly too much to care.

“Random,” he remarked, but before he could say any more, she had leaned over to him and planted her lips against his, or tried to. She kind of missed his mouth, awkwardly ended up kissing his upper lip and his nose. Her breath smelled more fruity than boozey. He placed his hand on the back of her head to gently push her down so her lips lined up better with his. He let the fuzziness from the alcohol take over his mind as he kissed her, not worrying about what she’d think when she was sober. Acting like this, she probably wouldn’t even
remember
kissing him. And her lips were soft and she tasted like sugar.

He was brought back to reality when he heard the click of a seatbelt and the driver yelling, “You, girl! Stay in your seat!” He pushed Nicole away and rebuckled her seatbelt for her, as she all the while kept giggling and reaching for him again.

“At the hotel,” he promised in a low voice. Her eyes lit up at the idea, and he wondered if he accidentally had just agreed to more than he meant. He wanted to kiss her, that couldn’t bring too much harm, but what did she want?

He found out when they got back to the hotel and into Daniel’s room. He wasn’t going to bother asking her for her room key. She was too drunk to care about that. So he took her in his room, leading her around by his arm around her waist. She was all over him every chance she could get, hugging him and kissing his cheek every time they stopped walking for a second. Sometimes, he’d turn to return a kiss, taking pleasure in the feeling of her body pressing against his.

He directed her to sit on his bed as he shut the door behind them. “I gotta piss,” he mumbled between kisses.

After relieving himself, he came out of the bathroom to find Nicole still on the bed, but now completely nude. Okay, that was a surprise. As much as he wanted her, he was sober enough to know this was too far.