Great.
I wondered if there was a box to check for my neurosis on Match.com. I wouldn’t know, it’s not like I had a computer. Shit, maybe if Owen had really gone for it, I’d have had the time of my life. In my head, I was yelling at myself. If anything, the incident just proved that not only was I one fucked-up cookie, but I needed to build a bigger wall of defense.
One with cannons and guards with big guns.
Of course, it was the moment I was thinking about guns of all things that the ground beneath my feet started to quake, the loose shell rattled around my feet. A single bright light illuminated the night, temporarily blinding me as the motorcycle that was heading right toward me slowed to a stop beside me in the road.
Jake cut the engine and removed clear-lensed goggles from his eyes, but I kept walking. “Little late for a walk of shame, don’t you think?”
“You have no idea,” I said. I wanted to be offended by what he insinuated, but I wasn’t blind to what this looked like: a disheveled mess of a teenaged girl walking home before dawn after attending a party. I would have thought the same thing.
In an instant, he was off his bike and keeping pace beside me. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one taking a deep drag.
“Why are you out and about? Are you doing the ride of shame, or did you have to pop a cap in someone’s ass?” He held out the pack of cigarettes toward me. “No, thanks. I don’t smoke.” He raised a brow at me. “Cigarettes,” I added. He opened his pack and pulled out a joint instead. Then, he lit it and handed it over to me.
What did this guy want?
“Why are you being nice to me?” I took the joint from him, careful not to touch his fingers. “If you feel bad about the gun thing, don’t. I would have done the same thing if someone broke into my place.”
“I’m not nice.” Jake took another drag of his cigarette and gave me a small smile. It was the same way I saw him in my dream.
“But, you are being nice to me,” I corrected him. He ignored me.
“You need a ride?” he asked. I stopped walking and took another hit from the joint. Jake stopped next to me. I held the smoke in as long as possible. “That kind of night?”
I just shrugged and let my high round off some of the sharp corners of the pain I’d experienced that evening.
“Town is a ways away, and on the off chance you don’t get hit by a car you will probably be eaten by either wild boar, coyotes, or at the very least these fucking annoying pterodactyl mosquitoes.”
“Well, aren’t you the eternal optimist.”
“Are you always this sarcastic?” he asked.
“Yes, but usually in my head. Around you, the words just seem to come faster and more…” I was trying to think of the word. “...wise-asser.”
I took another hit and passed the joint to him. “Good word,” Jake said. He stomped out his cigarette in the dirt and took a hit of the joint. “I guess I bring out the best in you then.”
“Why do you carry a gun?”
“Dangerous people out there.” He looked down at his feet.
“Like who?” I knew who was dangerous to me. The question was about who was dangerous to him.
“How about we save the twenty questions for another time, and you let me take you home so I am not responsible for your untimely death by rabid raccoon?”
“I thought it was mosquitoes that would be my undoing.”
“That, too.” His stiffness slowly faded away with the change in conversation.
“All right,” I said. “Get me out of here, please.” I bent down and scratched my thighs. The mosquitoes had already done some damage.
“This way, then.” He gestured with a sweep of his arm, back to where he’d parked his bike.
The moon and the stars had just started to peek out from behind the clouds, finally shedding some much-needed light on the very dark night as we turned around and headed back to his bike.
“You are just going to take me home right?” I asked. After the events of the evening, I felt like I had to ask. Not that this guy would try anything with me, anyway. I was the girl he’d caught sleeping in his junkyard, after all.
When we reached his bike, he took the helmet off the seat and handed it to me. “If you just want to go home, it’s gonna really ruin my plans to dismember you and feed you to the town’s people at the county fair,” he joked.
“Just thought I’d clarify,” I muttered. Jake reached for the strap under my helmet, and I flinched. “I can do it.”
His eyes went wide. “Bee,” he said slowly, “where the fuck did you get all that?” He pointed to the bruise and the scrapes I had gotten on my chin when Owen had lunged for me at the door.
“Dodgeball.” It was none of his damn business. I must have been really tired by that point, because the most important thing about riding the bike seemed to have skipped past my thoughts altogether.