I’m out of the shower. I dry off with a thick white towel, wrap myself in it.
I open the bathroom door and watch the steam escape. I pad out into the bedroom, I smell something. It smells salty and familiar and before I even realize what it is, my stomach starts grumbling.
“Greasy bacon, egg, and cheese?” Sean’s back, standing in front of the couch, a grease-stained brown paper bag clutched in his hand. My heart thumps painfully in my chest. I’m suddenly very aware that I’m in my towel.
“When you’re hungover, you need grease,” he says, staring into the bag. “Scientists, they’ve done studies.” He pulls out a tinfoil-wrapped sandwich. “I found a diner a couple miles away. The Jamies are still sleeping, I think.” He tosses the sandwich toward me, barely glancing in my direction. I reach out awkwardly with one hand. The egg and cheese falls to the floor at my feet. Sean goes over to the couch, sits down, and starts unwrapping his sandwich. “We should hurry up,” he says. “Get on the road as soon as possible.” He takes a bite of his egg sandwich, staring straight ahead. “It’s already past noon and we have about six hours more driving to do.”
“I’m just going to get dressed,” I say, pointing to the bathroom. “Then I’ll be ready to go.”
Sean doesn’t even look up, just nods to his sandwich.
I’m standing here in a towel and he’s staring at a sandwich.
This is worse than I thought.
Twenty-three
The four of us are in the car again.
“Do you want me to turn the air down?” Sean asks. He’s not looking at me.
“That’s okay,” I say.
“What?”
“This is fine.”
“Okay,” Sean says.
“Okay,” I say. “Thanks for asking.”
“No problem,” says Sean. This is how it’s been since he came back with the sandwiches: horrible, awkward, weird. Like we have no idea how to talk to each other.
“Look how polite they are!” Jamie-girl says. “That’s so sweeeeeet. He treats her like she’s this lady? Why don’t you ever treat me like a lady?”
“Well, maybe I’ll treat you like a lady when you start acting like one,” Jamie-boy says. In the rearview mirror I see him grab her boob. She squeals and starts giggling.
More images from last night pop into my head—I shut my eyes. Sean stroking my hair. Sean kissing my neck. Sean’s hands on my…I turn toward him, he’s watching the road. He doesn’t turn toward me and smirk, or make a funny face, or roll his eyes about the Jamies. I feel my heart squeezing and a wave of loneliness sucking at my insides. How are we the same two people that did all that stuff together just last night? It feels like it happened a hundred years ago or that maybe I imagined the entire thing. I think back to Saturday afternoon when he showed up at the store, and Friday when he was staring at me at the party. We feel more like strangers now than we did the very first time we met. My eyes ache with tears trying to get out. I swallow hard, try and remind myself that I’m just here to find Nina, that things with Sean don’t really matter.
But I can’t help feeling like they do.
I bet Nina never had a morning after like this. She never seemed to feel awkward, always felt comfortable, no matter who she was with or what the situation. It’s probably one of the things that made her so attractive to people, her constant ease. I want to say Why can’t we just be normal to each other? I want to say Don’t you like me anymore? But instead all I do is force a cough, because this is the most appropriate conversation starter I can think of.
“You okay?” Sean says.
“Yeah, I just had a tickle in my throat.”
Pause.
“I hate that,” he says.
Pause.
“Me, too,” I say.
Then silence again. If we actually do find Nina, I’ll definitely need to ask her what the hell a person is supposed to say in a situation like this. But for now, all I can think to do is lean my head against the window and stare out.
Twenty-four
It’s like another planet out here: giant green tubes topped with spiky red and yellow balls sit next to cabbage-size flowers with inch-thick petals and delicate ten-foot stalks curve their graceful limbs up toward the sky. The sun is setting now, all brilliant pinks and oranges, somehow different than any sunset I’ve ever seen. The colors are brighter maybe, or the light is different somehow. I don’t know. But my brain has decided we’re no longer on earth, a fact it supports with the strange plants, the hair-dryer hot air, and the red mountains off in the distance. This is, I guess, why people travel in the first place. Surrounded by all this, I am having trouble holding on to my own sadness. It no longer seems to make sense. Nothing does.