Coast to Coast

Coast to Coast part 3

I watched as Riley’s face morphed into stone. I had seen this look a thousand times. It was like watching thunder clouds roll across her face. When every Riley started to feel something she shut down. I was sick of running into a brick wall. The waitress breezed by, dropping my cigarettes onto the counter in front of me. I rose heavily from my stool, grabbed the pack, and headed out the door. I pressed my back into the building and extracted a cigarette from the pack. As I stared down at the thin paper tube between my fingers I started to think about how much Riley had always hated it that I smoked.

I had started the day I turned 18. I thought of it as celebrating my newly granted freedom. Not smoking was like being in Orlando and not going to Disney World. Plus I worked in a restaurant. I always saw smokers sitting on the back steps of the restaurant talking and laughing and smoking while I had to stay in the kitchen and continue working. It gave me nasty flashbacks of being the only kid who didn’t have those cools shoes that light up when you walked in elementary school.

The first time I lit a cigarette in front of Riley she yanked it out of my mouth and crushed it beneath her Chuck Taylor clad foot. I stood staring at my fallen comrade while she spouted statistics about lung cancer and all the nasty stuff in cigarettes. You would think that I would have listened to her and kicked the nasty habit because I loved her but to be honest I was sick of feeling whipped. I decided that it was time to put on my big boy pants and do what I wanted, and that what the beginning of the end.

I dropped the runt that was now my cigarette onto the pavement and twisted it under my heel exerting a little more force than necessary in an attempt to forget the sting of pride. I slowly made my way back to the stool next to Riley. She didn’t look at me as I sat down. I stared at the plate in front of me in disbelief. In the space that had been left for a pool of ketchup there was a face staring up at me, a very small face made out of ketchup. It was all I could do not to laugh. Damn her she could always make me laugh.

“The ketchup wants to be your friend” she said as she stared up at me with widened doe like eyes.

I knew that she wasn’t being serious but those eyes. They were so beautiful. They were in just the right light so that closest to her pupil they were a sage green and the center was warm and shimmering like honey the outer edge was a deep espresso brown. I felt myself melt. She had this insane way of sucking all the bitterness out of me with one look, one touch, or one intonation of her voice. It was so hard to stay mad at her when she could turn me into marshmallow fluff. I put on a serious face and tried not to think about her eyes let alone the way her soft full lips were pouting ever so slightly.

“Ketchup is evil and should be burned rather than spread on sandwiches or paired with lovely crispy fluffy fries.” I said turning my plate so the ketchup man was as far away from me as possible.

“Well fine Professor ketchup didn’t want to be friends with you any way.” She said tersely.

“You just stay over there with your biscuits and gravy and leave the condiment choosing to those of us who eat food at the proper time of day” I said brandishing a French fry at her plate of food.

She scooped up a big fork full of food and chewed making yummy food noises the whole time.

“You’re just jealous because I am enough of a rebel to eat breakfast all day and drink coffee all night.” She said crossing her legs in a very prim fashion and taking a curt sip of her coffee with her pinkie in the air.

“Yeah we’ll just go with that.” I said  

We finished our food in silence and when the plates were cleaned our waitress whisked them away and plopped a check between us. It was like she had tossed us a hand grenade. I glanced at the check to confirm. Yep both meals were listed one grand total. Another quick scan was conducted to determine if there was some kind of register we were supposed to pay at. Nope no such luck. Before my head could catch up my hand was shooting out and slapping its self down on top of the tissue paper thin check, a millisecond later Riley’s hand came crashing down on mine. Our eyes met for a split second and my stomach lurched again.

“Hey quit all this Egyptian war stuff. I’m picking up the check.” I said trying to peal her fingers off of my hand.

“Sure you can pick it up” She said I sighed and continued trying to pick up her hand. “You can pick it up and carry it to our waitress along with my money.”

“Look I’m trying to do something nice. Just let me do this” I commanded narrowing my eyes at her.

“No. why can’t you just let me do it.” She said pinching the top of my hand.

“I’m being a gentle man.” I shouted

“Well stop it. I don’t need your chivalry. I can take care of myself you pompous idiot.” She shouted back

“You’re always like this. You can never just accept kindness.” I complained “You always have to be little miss I can do it myself. Why can’t you ever just let me help you? I want to help you!” I shouted turning my hand over so that I was touching her palm. I looked her dead in the face and locked my fingers with hers. “Please?”

Her eyes were no longer doe like. The honey and sage had been replaced with ice and stone. She ripped her hand out of mine and began to storm away. She paused after a few steps and turned on her heal. Before I knew what was happening she has inches away from my face.

“You know what” she hissed “Instead of helping me why don’t you help yourself…right into a grave.”

Just as quickly as she had approached she retreated. The bell above the door was left clanging while my brain tried to catch up to what my eyes were seeing. I pulled a few crumpled bills from my wallet, scooped up my cigarettes and headed out the door behind her trying to ignore all the staring eyes in the diner. I sighed as my feet crunched across the gravel. Riley had always had a flare for the dramatic.

She was always preforming just like she did with our waitress. I think in her head she was the star of her own movie. Unfortunately like any diva she could be just as sour as she was sweet. It seemed like I had been getting the lemons way more often than the lemonade for most of our relationship. At this point in the game I was really just tiered of trying to say the right thing or do the right thing to make her stay sweet. I decided that I would just let her be her bitter old self and let her deal with the consequences.

When I climbed back in the car I glanced in my rear view mirror and found her stretched out with her back to me on the worn out back seat that I had covered with a Navajo blanket to cover up the ripping seats. I could see the white cord of her headphones mixing with the golden waves of her hair. She was humming softly to herself and running her hands back and forth over the scratchy blue and gray geometric pattern.

I tore my eyes away from her and started the engine. The stereo was silent and all I could hear were the tires on the pavement and the soft sound of her voice as she began to sing. A few miles down the road she grew silent and shortly after I heard her breathing grow deep and relaxed as she drifted off to sleep.