Death and Other Interruptions

Chapter Twenty-One

Okay, so we walked through a gravelly parking lot to his dented Ford pickup and I almost puked twice on the way, but those are the less important details. The sun was, in fact, setting, and he offered to hold my hair back for me should I actually need to throw up. I was still unsettled by the memory of his hand on my back, which had awakened a whole slew of images of Al, and rebuffed his well-intentioned offer.

Our arms were still linked as we walked to his car, but outside the jostling cacophony of the hall it felt less natural. Dropping his arm would also call attention to it, though, and I struggled to choose which would be less awkward, finally fiddling with my sweater to give me an excuse to disentangle my arm. If he noticed my lame pretext, he didn't mention it.

We reached his truck, and he helped me up into the passenger's side, politely avoiding touching me anywhere other than my arm. With my ungainly new weight, that meant I almost pitched sideways on top of him, but I appreciated the gesture nonetheless. He stepped easily into his side and pulled out onto the main road. There was a calm quiet between us, uninterrupted by any radio noise, and it occurred to me that we had never really spent any time alone. The silence was not uncomfortable, though, and I leaned my head back, enjoying being in the car, on the road, with someone I felt comfortable around.

"Am I driving too fast?" Ethan asked after a couple minutes. I smiled, my eyes shut, and murmured something in the negative. I could fall asleep like this. He stopped at a red light and I opened my eyes.

"Where are we going?" I asked after a moment, realizing I had no idea.

Ethan turned to me, his eyes wide. "I don't know! I wasn't thinking. I've been driving without thinking!"

I laughed. "I think that should make me nervous, but I'm actually okay with that." He laughed, too.

"So where should we go?" he asked me, following the road we were on in spite of our acknowledged lack of direction.

"Let's just drive forever," I answered, still in a haze of comfort and satisfaction. Sitting in his truck, my brain was shutting up for once, and I was reveling in the lack of its usual overthinking.

"I think we'll run out of gas before then," he smirked. "But how about we just drive until one of us sees something we want to go into?"

"Deal," I responded, and settled in further to the back of my seat, drawing my feet up beneath me. That probably won't be a possible position for much longer, my body filling up almost too much space to let my feet fit onto the seat already.

After another 15 minutes or so—I lost track of time, my head leaning against the window and watching stores zip by—I spotted an antique store with some wooden chairs out front and wind chimes lining the awning. I'd never been inside one of those stores, but always felt like I could be the type of person to enjoy exploring one.

"Let's go in there," I said, and pointed it out to Ethan. He slowed and pulled into the driveway, parking the truck in the grass alongside the somewhat ramshackle building.

I fumbled to lower myself to the ground, and Ethan once again appeared at my side to help me down. This is why people shouldn't have trucks. Or maybe it's why men have trucks, to show off their chivalry to their lady friends.

I made it to the shop's door first, holding it open to prove that chivalry goes both ways. He bowed deeply. I curtsied back.

We picked our way through the aisles, stopping to poke at various items cluttering the shelves. It was better than a museum, stuffed with furry hats and old posters, an old ham radio squawking from along a wall. A plump older woman waved to us from behind the desk, and told us to look around. "I'm here if you need anything," she shouted, then dove under a stack of paper to punch numbers into an old-fashioned calculator.