I'm Comin' Home To You

Chapter Seven

A Week Later

I sat on an upturned bucket, playing guitar with Lucille. She was sitting on a blue crate and we were strumming Nothing Else Matters, one of my favorite Metallica songs.

“I'm starving.” I finally said. I could swear I had lost that 5 pounds I'd been wanting to, then some. Lucille was losing weight at the same speed. I supposed that's what happened when you didn't have hardly enough food. We had finished the trail mix and jerky on day three. And barely eaten since then. Neither of us mentioned food if we didn't have to. I five-finger-discounted some candy bars a few times, but could never get enough substantial food. This was definitely something I hadn't thought of when I had planned this.

Another thing I hadn't planned was showers. We had bathed in a Walmart bathroom three days ago. That was our only cleansing since leaving home. But we had made it to Seattle by a combination of walking and hitch-hiking.

“Me too.” Lucille's stomach let out a growl simultaneous with her words.

I smiled at her. Even grungy, she was beautiful. Her eyes glowed and her hair looked good with a few knots in it. Immediately, I started thinking about putting a few knots of my own into her hair.

“So how does that sound?” She jerked me out of my thoughts. I blushed guiltily and nodded yes. “What were you thinking about? Coz I know you weren't listening to me. I just said we should go find some earthworms to eat.”

I stuttered, physically and mentally. “W-what?”

“So you were thinking about that, huh?” She smiled and laughed at me. Her beautiful laugh... I forgot I was hungry momentarily and laughed with her. We sobered up immediately though. “We need food.” She said, without needing to. I nodded, without needing to. This was something we both knew.

It was then I spotted her. She was walking up, holding hands and talking with another girl. She stopped when she got to us and spoke. “So, do you guys like, play or just sit there, looking hot?”

We had stopped playing when food had come up.

“Yeah, we were just talking about food.”

“Ahh, planning where you're gonna get your next meal?”

“Actually, kinda.”

The girl smiled and held out her right hand, the one not wrapped around the other girl, who still had yet to speak a word. “Hi. I'm Milo Petras.”