The heavens opened again as soon as we were on the way home, this time with huge gusts of wind. I slowed the truck as the visibility went from bad to worse and checked the rearview mirror.
Colt’s dark BMW followed, as well as a smattering of other cars. It seemed he’d decided to follow me. I really appreciated that, but wondered whether I’d have to invite him in, or if he was just seeing me home. Ugh. This whole special friends thing was driving me nuts. I didn’t know what was expected of me, or scratch that … what he expected of me. Was I supposed to kiss him and let him think this was something more out of some warped sense of duty? I didn’t think so. I wouldn’t. But spending time with Colt had given me a whole new understanding of the general dating scene. It was an ocean of unspoken expectation and misunderstanding. And pressure. Some real and some imagined. There was also undoubtedly a lot of frog kissing on the way to the prince. Not that Colt was a frog …
No, this was Colton Graves, my brother’s best friend and friend of mine. And I had definitely made myself clear, both by explicitly stating I wasn’t ready for a serious relationship, and with my endless comments about friendship. Then again, I had agreed to go out with him. Several times.
I glanced nervously in the rearview mirror again just in time to see the blue tarp I’d strapped down to cover all my pieces earlier rip clear off one side and flap wildly over the edge of the truck bed.
Damn!
I slowed and put the blinker on to pull over. I hated to stop on the side of a highway, but I risked a certain accident if the tarp got caught in the wheels. Just as I rolled to a stop, I thought I felt it do just that. A ripping sound emanated from behind me and the truck shuddered.
Wrenching open the door, I climbed out into the warm and driving rain that had me soaked within nanoseconds. I bent to inspect the wheel then heard Colton’s door slam and looked up as he approached, holding a dark windbreaker over his head that he extended over me, too.
“It’s jammed. Dammit,” I yelled over the gusts of wind and passing cars, kicking the tire with my wet sneaker.
“We’ll probably have to take the wheel off like we’re changing a flat.”
I nodded at his yelled words, just what I was thinking. “I have a jack in the truck bed.”
Turning to go get it as Colt did what he could to pull the tarp away from the wheel, I saw a silver Jeep Wrangler slowing down and pulling onto the hard shoulder ahead of us. Then it reversed closer. I was glad I wasn’t out here alone. No one got out right away. I caught Colt’s eye and we both shrugged.
I was soaked and getting more chilled from the wind by the second. Grabbing the iron and the jack, I went back around the truck in time to see the door on the Jeep open. A long denim-clad leg ending in black biker boots, the kind that were etched in my memory, like forever, swung out the door of the Jeep and hit the pavement at about the same time my stomach did. And perhaps given the loud clang, the tire iron, too.
This was not happening.
My eyes traveled upwards over an olive green button-down shirt that was not only rapidly turning dark khaki in the rain but was also plastering to the body beneath. Then I looked up over a familiar roughly stubbled jaw to the shadow of a ball cap, where eyes I couldn’t see, but could certainly feel, should be.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I heard Colt say harshly next to me.
My eyes tracked back down to the boots, and I watched as they headed toward us. I willed my mind to work. Hadn’t I thought of this scenario a thousand times? Ok, maybe not on the side of a highway, but hadn’t I rehearsed what I would say, over and over, and pathetically, over again?
But, nothing.
Nothing came to mind as the boots approached. The boots I remembered sitting by my fireplace after a rainstorm like this one. And as the water poured, streaming rivulets over me, I couldn’t look up. I just stood there.
Part of me wanted to look up and feast my eyes on the face I thought I would never see again in the real world. Of course, the other part of me kept saying, don’t do it. So I just stood there, in the rain, on the side of the road.
I’d seen him in the last five months, of course, online and on the front of tabloids here and there. And yes, in a fit of self-destructive misery I had given in to the urge to read every damn thing about him, thinking if I knew all his sordid details, it would help me get over what he did, or help me understand. It didn’t.