Regretful Love

Chapter Nine

                  

Kell woke up, the morning air cool and refreshing. He'd slept through the night, he realised—the first time in a while. The girl was nowhere to be seen. Experimentally stretching, he found that he felt good. Really good. Not a perfect kind of good, but good for now. Rummaging through his pack, he found a bag of cookies and ate a few, their sweetness making his mouth water and then grow sticky. He packed up the camp, kicked dirt over the fire, everything he needed to do before they left, and then realised he hadn't opened the metal box.

Tempted as he was to leave it alone—he felt good, after all—after a few minutes thought, he decided not to. There was no point in repeating the last couple of days. Maybe avoiding the pain was a better plan than chasing it once it had already started. So he did his thing, the needle stinging his skin, and put everything away again. When he stood up, the girl appeared, sneaking up like she always did.

"How do you do that? Be so quiet, I mean. Like you're a ninja or something?" He was teasing.

She shrugged. "Natural talent, I guess. Ready to get going?"

"Yeah, we're not far off now. We should get a good day of walking in."

Tramping his way back onto the road with her, Kell drew the map he had in his mind. He knew where they were going. After ... after everything, he'd remained in touch for a while. There were people he spoke to, wrote to. Mostly people he tried to borrow money from. He knew where Angelius had gone, what she'd done and where she'd lived. The little piece of paper with her address was soft and worn from being stuck inside his pocket, like cotton now with faded blue writing. He didn't really need it, as he knew the address by heart, but he liked to keep it with him.

The day was hot and heavy, the kind of heavy that he could tell was going to break into a storm. The road smelled of dust, and sweat crept down his body, tickling and growing sticky as they walked. Humidity made it like walking through soup, and they didn't cover as much ground as they should have before it was lunchtime already, and they hadn't spoken a word.

"Town coming up." Kell was the first to speak.

Town was an overstatement for what looked like a couple of farms and a few houses. It might have a store if they were lucky. He felt in his pocket, wondering how much money was in there and feeling a couple of bills and a handful of change.

"Hungry?"

The girl nodded.

"We'll pick up something there if there's a store. Then we gotta start looking for someplace to shelter. This weather's gonna break sometime, and we don't wanna be out when it does."

He'd hoped to be close enough that he could be knocking on her door by morning, but that wasn't going to happen now. Whatever. One more day wasn't going to make a difference. Better to keep them both dry and safe than to be out when this storm hit.

The little store stocked only essentials. It wasn't like a supermarket. Kell didn't like supermarkets. Considering how many of them he'd been involved in robbing, he actually had only been inside one or two in his whole life. He preferred places like this where there wasn't much choice. If there were only two options, there was less chance of making a mistake. He didn't like having choices. The girl waited outside, and Kell came out with the makings of sandwiches and some potato chips. He'd blown more cash than he cared to, but they were close now. Besides, it was tough to make a fire in a storm, so better to have something they could eat wherever.

As they walked away from the little blip of the town, Kell was still feeling good. It surprised him that he could still have days like this. It made him happy, too; happy just to be here to be doing what he was doing, and happy to be breathing and moving and smelling and tasting.