Finding Arizona

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter 27

Arizona

Sleeping has always been a sense of clarity for me. Sleeping...as most people can guess, is a way for you to escape reality. It's so that for just a few hours, we possess the ability to be in a state of neutrality. Or...a state of negativity and positivity. Either one is very life altering.

Though I'm pretty sure I'm not sleeping because I'm trying to escape reality.

I'm sleeping because I've reached a state of peace. And in that peace, Dante existed. Clear as day.

When I blinked my eyes open, I realized night had fallen. I didn't know what state we were currently in, but it had a lot of open grass fields and trees. I looked to my left and Dante was driving with weary looking eyes. My heart broke a little just at his appearance.

"Should I take over?"

A chuckle came from him. "So you can crash my dad's RV? No thanks, Arizona."

"This was your dad's?"

He glanced at me before focusing back on the road. "Yeah."

"He traveled?"

"He'd like to tell my mom and I that." He began to say with a trace of dread on his beautiful face. "The sole purpose he bought it was to convince us that he was always traveling because he was a nature kind of guy. By the age of twelve I knew that wasn't it. It took my mom ten years, but eventually she figured it out."

"What was he doing with it instead?"

"Traveling of course. But he was seeing other women. I think he used it as a disguise to take care of other means, but I could never guess what was so secretive that he would keep it away from me and my mother."

"Your mother was a different person then, I suppose?"

Dante didn't reply.

I took that as a no. That she's always been hateful of Dante, and maybe always blamed him for being born. But my heart broke at the thought because it wasn't his fault. Dante was introduced into this world in a state of naivety, just like me. Like all of us. My heart ached at the thought of his father never being around, the one person who actually loved him, and instead being stuck with a woman who hated his existence. It depressed me.

I wanted to change the subject.

"I bet you are stronger now with all of the bullshit you've dealt with, huh? You're not afraid of anything."

"I am stronger." He admitted, with that expression still on his face. "But I wouldn't say I'm unafraid."

"What could you possibly be afraid of?" I chuckled to lighten up the atmosphere as we drove on a long road in the night. "What? Losing this RV? Having to be a normal being?" I stared at the window, gazing at the passing creations the world offered to us for survival. Of course I knew Dante wasn't perfect, and that he wasn't unafraid of anything, but I wanted to make him feel better as a person. Something tells me his mother tampered with his inner confidence as a child.

"I was afraid when you left that night." He admitted softly.

I watched his face as he watched the roads overhead, his look very distant.

"Honestly I thought I was going to be sick. I thought about all the possible scenarios for your leaving. Like, some thug took you away from me. Or maybe that detective took you. But I think the possibility I was afraid most of...was that you left on your own free will." He openly clarified as he pulled onto another lane. "That you finally got tired of me, and decided to just go."