Page 80 of A Real Goode Time

That scared me shitless, absolutely shitless.

We passed by Chicago, hitting a brief slowdown in traffic right outside the city, and Torie kept sleeping.

And I kept waffling.

How can I leave her?

What right did I have to take her virginity, and then just casually go back to my life in Connecticut? She said she didn’t want her first experience of sexual intercourse to be casual, one-time. And maybe if we did have sex, it wouldn’t be casual, and definitely not just once, because I knew once I got inside her, I’d need her as many times as I could get her. But still, it was not what she wanted.

Which begged the question, whatdidshe want? She said she didn’t expect it to be love, but what was there that was less than love and more than casual?

It made me think maybe she was avoiding what she really did want, whichwaslove, and she was just scared of actually allowing herself to want it.

And if that was the case, sleeping with her would be a massive mistake for both of us. I probably shouldn’t have let anything happen at all. But it was done and I had no regrets. But shit, I wanted more. So much more.

And if I let it happen, I risked breaking her heart.

And mine.

Yeah, mine too.

“Deep in thought, there, are you?” Torie’s voice was sleepy and amused, startling me.

I jumped, laughing. “Holy shit, you scared me.”

“I’ve been awake and watching you for like, ten or fifteen minutes. I think you’re driving on autopilot.”

I chuckled, rubbed the back of my neck. “Yeah, I guess. Just thinking.”

She sat up, rubbed her eyes. Stretched—and damn, the sight of her stretching was distracting enough that I had to force my eyes away or risk a wreck. “Feel like talking about it?”

I shrugged, sighed. “I dunno. You?”

She glanced away. “Honestly? No, not yet.”

I laughed and sighed. “Good, me either.”

Torie was looking out the window and she said, “Where are we?”

“Just outside Chicago.”

She looked back at me. “You want to switch?”

I nodded. “Yeah, actually.”

We ended up driving to the next exit with food. This time we went in—another fast food joint with burgers and milkshakes. With the topic at hand weighing heavily, we were pretty quiet, suppressing any idle chitchat.

We finished our lunch, used the restrooms, gassed up and rolled back onto the freeway, and I let myself doze off.

Dozing turned to actually sleeping, and when I woke up I realized I’d missed most of Wisconsin. We pulled onto the shoulder and put the top up since it was actually getting hot, and then continued on. I put on some classic rock, which was what I’d been raised on, and which Torie had said she and her dad listened to in their garage.

She shot me a look when “Paint it Black” was the first song on queue. “Are you playing classic rock for me?”

I laughed. “Yes I am. Growing up, it was what pretty much everyone listened to. Zeppelin, the Stones, ZZ Top, Pink Floyd, The Who. The only local radio station we got was a classic rock station, so my truck was just tuned it all the time, and so was everyone else’s.”

She grinned, drumming a beat on the steering wheel. “Jillie and Leighton make fun of me for liking classic rock. Like, could you be any more of a typical stoner? But it’s just…comfortable. Familiar for me. Dad loved it and he used to be in a classic rock band, back in the day.”

The taut, weighty silence was broken and our natural conversational flow returned, a wide-ranging discussion of classic rock bands, rating them, talking about individual players, guitar styles, and that conversation took us into Minnesota. We stopped in Minneapolis for dinner, and the conversation wandered into random rabbit trails of endless, easy talk.