Seven Days (21 page)

“Would you want me any other way?”

“Not in the slightest.”

Silently, we worked together to pack everything up and cleared out any trash from the campsite. Even though we’d called attention to and joked about the end of our trip, neither of us wanted to actually map out how we would get home. Ryan and I moved in tandem, but in slow motion. Making our way toward Tucson where we scoped out a café for breakfast.

Thanks to my nightmare, we’d gotten an earlier start than usual. In fact, it was our earliest start since the beginning of the trip. The jovial mood that we’d shared when he woke up was definitely gone. I knew there was only one real way to get it back, aside from an unequivocal agreement to not go through with my plan to run away the second we cleared the town lines this evening.

“There’s one place we
have
to stop on our way back into town,” I smiled at him from across the booth we sat in. I took a slow sip of my coffee, savoring the hazelnutty goodness a moment and letting him anticipate my suggestion. Rolling my head back and forth on my neck in an effort to pop it, I continued to hold in my knowledge. “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to offer me another massage,” I joked.

“You still owe me one, why would I double up?” he shot me a puzzled look at the abrupt subject change.

“Because the noises I make while you rub me down make you hard, and now you can do something about it,” I pointed out, rubbing my back against the booth like a cat, pushing my chest out to draw his lascivious gaze.

“Haha,” he said, blandly, trying to seem unaffected by my movement and words. “Very true,” he conceded as he refilled his mug from the carafe in the center of the table and tried to reach under the table to adjust himself discreetly. I couldn’t hold back my smirk at the knowledge that I’d succeeded in turning him on in a place where we were surrounded by kitschy old country chachkies. I decided to leave it at that, returning to my own coffee, wondering how long it would be before he pressed me for the idea I hadn’t verbalized. After a few minutes passed, I felt a tap on my ankle from where I’d propped on to the empty seat beside him.

“Well?” he asked, trying to hold back a laugh at my evasiveness.

“Well, what?” I knit my brows together like I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Where do we
have
to stop on our way back into town?” his eyes widened as he mimicked my words.

“Oh, that,” I sighed and sat up in the booth as the waitress chose that moment to bring our orders. His giant stack of chocolate chip pancakes looked incredible, but the pile of biscuits and gravy, with bacon and eggs on mine almost brought a tear to my eye. The diner didn’t serve biscuits and gravy anymore, so this was a rare treat. “Food now, trip later,” I grunted and started to dig in, only to find my plate moved from in front of me faster than I could catch it. “What the—”

“Where do you want to go, Carrie?” he asked, again, though he was still playing along, I could see his patience for being kept in suspense hanging by a thread.

“Oh, that,” I laughed. “I thought the bad ass science teacher needed to take a tour of the Biosphere before we left this horrible town.”

I don’t know what it was, but I couldn’t stand being in Tucson. The town was fine enough, and had plenty of attractions that people flocked to. Yet, my skin crawled whenever I veered into its limits. I don’t think I always felt this way, but it started around the time that I learned it was Ben’s hometown. I couldn’t imagine how horrible the place had to be to incubate such evil.

“Oh shit!” he grinned, hugely. “I completely forgot that was down here! Fuck! You have the best God damn ideas, Carrie,” he hooted before pouring an illegal amount of syrup over his pancakes and returning my plate to me.

“Most people do,” I frowned. “The University uses it for research now, but they have tours. I’ve always wanted to go,” I confessed, picking up a piece of delicious pepper crusted bacon.

“Then we’ll do it,” he nodded before digging into his breakfast, too.

After a few minutes of eating in companionable silence, Ryan’s head shot up and his eyes locked with mine.

“What?” I asked, using my napkin to wipe any stray gravy that might’ve gotten his attention.

“So an hour eating, an hour or two at the Biosphere, then another hour and half on the road? We’ll be home just after lunch,” he frowned as he calculated the remainder of our journey. “That’s way too fucking early. I’m still not ready for this to over. I need more time.”

“Relax,” I shook my head, letting a small smile play on my lips. “I just so happened to have figured out a way to go home that adds four hours of drive time alone,” I offered, with a wink.

“Still not long enough,” he growled. “We’ll need to make a lot of stops, stretch it out,” he emphasized.

“Is that so?” I smirked, taking a long sip of my coffee, trying not to think of all the ways we could get in trouble on the sparsely traveled roads we’d be taking on the first leg of the trip.

“I’m not giving you back until I absolutely have to,” he declared. “I don’t even want to give you back then,” he grumbled, digging into his pancakes again. This time, it was Ryan who was pouting like a petulant child. I didn’t want him to give me back either.

**

Ryan showed me the text as soon as we exited the small roadside restaurant where we’d just shared a very late and very leisurely lunch. Our entire day could be summed up by using one word: SLOW. Every move we made that morning and into the afternoon was done with forethought and deliberation.

We’d hung back during our tour of the Biosphere and Ryan had pointed out all the interesting facts above what the guide shared about the different ecosystems. I’d read about the place and its origins when I was in school, but I never imagined something like this could exist in the desert. It was humbling, much like many of the other places we’d been on this trip. Seeing what was possible, knowing that adaptations could be made to house an ocean that had a freaking coral reef, alongside grasslands all under a glass structure in the middle of the Sonoran desert begged me to second guess my plans for the following week. They screamed at me to stay, to fight for what I could have with Ryan.

Now, we were travelling the back roads of Southeastern Arizona, taking our sweet time. Anything that caught our eye meant it was time for a pit stop. So far, we’d stopped at a historical society museum and attended a Sunday afternoon mass at a mostly Spanish speaking Catholic church. Ryan said that it didn’t matter about the language, just the message. Even though we’d stopped at the Monastery in St. David, I didn’t realize how into his faith Ryan was. That did not necessarily bode well for me when he discovered everything I had yet to divulge about myself. I was starting to feel like I was being split in half with how quickly I was going back and forth with my decision. If I couldn’t find a way to figure it all out soon, I could genuinely see a padded cell in my future, with a companion diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder.

Tell my sister, we need to talk.

With a deep sigh, I reread the text on his phone. Somehow, I knew if I scrambled to call my sister in this moment, it would shatter the bubble we’d been able to recapture since our morose morning.

“I’ll see her in a few hours,” I frowned, knowing I’d just acknowledged what we were trying to avoid anyway. “If it were
that
important, she would’ve called, right?” I justified, fitting myself against his side and looking up at his breathtaking profile. Other than the tightening of his jaw, which seemed to be his go-to move when he was trying to keep his reaction under control, it didn’t seem as though he registered my question at all. I’d learned over the course of the week, the jaw clenching was his way of taking a deep cleansing breath to process his thoughts before speaking. It was almost as if you could tick off the point he could make with every flex.

“I’m of two minds,” he started after a few minutes, not taking his eyes off the road. He slid his arm around my shoulders and pulled me even closer as we made our way back toward the Gila River. We’d crossed over it before lunch and had agreed that we would go back and explore after filling ourselves up. Luckily, our waitress was able to give us the local’s scoop on an old bridge that used to be in the path of the freeway that we’d be able to check out. She’d also mentioned another attraction close by that we shouldn’t leave town without seeing, an open pit mine that was still being utilized. “The selfish side of me wants to agree with you so hard right now,” he admitted, signaling to turn onto the street that would take us to both destinations. “But, the practical side of me keeps coming back to the fact that aside from the call
you
requested, Britton hasn’t attempted to contact us all week,” he pointed out. “I mean, that alone says it shouldn’t be ignored, right?”

I felt the blood rush from my face at his observation as he drove toward the mine area first, bypassing the bridge road. He was right. Seven days on the road and I was ready to blow off my sister. Who was I becoming? This wasn’t me. The horror on my features settled deeply inside of me and tears stung my eyes.

I was getting ready to pull away from Ryan to make the phone call when his phone suddenly beeped again.

When she gets home. Not now, enjoy the drive back. Just let her know I’ll be home and waiting.

I typed out a quick response. I wasn’t happy about her going back to the trailer early and without me. We’d agreed she wouldn’t do that. I wasn’t planning on hitting the town limits for another four hours, at least, even though Ryan and I were only two hours from home now.

Meet me with my car at the diner.

Britton
I’ll drop the car at the diner. Tildy will give me a ride home. There is too much to do to wait any longer. Take your time though.

Her text reminded me that she was right. My trip meant that neither of us was packed to leave in the morning. Maybe letting her go home ahead of me would give us a head start on everything. Whether we left town or not, tomorrow we would drive out of that trailer park and never look back. Because Ryan had refused to let me pay for much, I could afford to hole us up in a motel until we made the more concrete plan we were supposed to have come up with this past week.

True. Just be careful. Keep the doors locked.
I texted her back. Not that the doors provided any real security. Thirty-five year old aluminum doors that had to be slammed to close properly and a flimsy dead bolt weren’t going to keep the monsters at bay for long, but it was better than nothing.

Will do.

“Everything okay?” Ryan asked, squeezing my shoulder and bringing me back to the passing landscape that made up Arizona’s copper corridor.

“Yeah, I guess it wasn’t an emergency,” I mumbled as he found a spot to park on the side of the road. Taking in the stair-step appearance of the stripped rocks, I found myself, once again astonished by the world around me. There were places where the mineral oxidation was more prevalent and the face of the mine was splashed with blue and green, like someone had spilled their paints. So many times on this trip, I was reminded that my life only accounted for a microscopic piece of the world. The whole thing should’ve been overwhelming. Maybe if I’d lived a different existence, it would’ve been, but, oddly, it gave me peace, knowing my sins were merely a tiny ripple in the sea of life, not the tsunami I’d feared.

“Okay,” Ryan nodded as he turned on the truck’s radio and rolled down the windows. Grabbing the boxed dessert from the restaurant, he opened the cab door and slipped out offering me his free hand for assistance.

As we moved into the bed of the truck, the opening strains of Relient K’s
Be My Escape
blasted from the speakers like he’d planned it, even though the radio had been on shuffle all day so I knew he hadn’t. He’d found the one spot where you could enjoy a view of the river along with a view of the mine. Luckily, we were parked under a mesquite tree so that we didn’t have to battle the heat of the day while we ate our dessert. Though the words to the song were probably meant to be an ode to God from the band, every single lyric flowed through me as if they were tailor-made for my situation with Ryan.

Thinking back over the week, emotions I’d been struggling to suppress started to wash over me. I wanted to be mad at him for what he’d done to me. I’d been so fucking sure of what I wanted, what I needed to do to escape, but now my future was blurry. Watching Ryan open the container of apple pie and the side kicker of vanilla ice cream that was just barely starting to melt, I wondered if I had everything I needed right here.

That couldn’t be right though. Someone was missing, right? Someone I’d sacrificed myself for over and over. Someone I always put first. I couldn’t just abandon her because of some guy. I wanted to be sick at the direction of my thoughts, when the devil’s advocate decided to pipe up. Would it really be abandoning her? Or would I be setting her free to choose her own path without making her feel guilty for my choices? Did she feel just as obligated to me as I did to her? Were my plans holding
her
back now?

As if sensing my thoughts, Ryan looked up at me with a smile before handing over a plastic spoon. “You look like you’re deep in thought,” he started, clearing his throat. “I’d ask you what you were thinking but I’m afraid of the answer.”

“Me, too,” I whispered as the song drew to a close and I scooped a bite of our shared dessert. How could I say good-bye to this, not knowing if I was truly headed for something better? I, honestly, wasn’t sure if I could.