Page 7 of This Might Hurt

“Wait here a minute.” I watch in bewildered irritation as he climbs out, then sticks his tousled head back in the door. “Promise me you won’t leave until I get back.”

Oh, good. I’ve been wondering how I would leave him. Him leaving me is so much easier. I nod, relieved. “I promise.”

His backpack bangs his shoulder as he lopes easily across the parking lot into the rustic little grocery store. As soon as the automatic doors swish shut behind him, I put the car in drive and pull away from the curb.

The river was to the west of town, I remind myself as I check the cardinal directions on the navigation screen.

The tops of the trees thrash eerily in a sharp, wet breeze that whistles around the car.

I slide a hand behind the passenger seat as I come to a four-way stop and grope out the shape of my duffel bag tucked safely away.

It’s all good, it’s all okay. I messed up badly going into that service station to buy water, but now I’ve brought everything back to exactly the way it was before.

Except for the rain. I didn’t want to do this in the rain, but I have no choice now.

It’s my turn to cross the intersection, no cars waiting in any direction. The streets look abandoned, like everyone hurried home to wait out the storm. I sit there, staring in the rearview mirror at the strip of sidewalk outside the store.

My mother went through this spiritual phase, fueled mostly by questionable interpretations of shitty self-help books, where she insisted that putting bad energy out into the universe would taint your soul until you became unworthy.

Of what, I don’t know. She lost interest before she made it that far in the book.

There’s barely anything left of me, but I’d like to think my soul is relatively clean.

I want to keep it that way until the end.

Muttering fuck you, I pull a U-turn and speed back down the road. A second U-turn points me in the right direction and aligns my bumper with the same half-dead aspen tree barely held up between two poles.

Two seconds after I put the car in park, the doors slide open again.

My heart sinks at the sight of him, lanky and tan and strangely overwhelming, his dirty blond hair pale in the overcast light.

A shiver of need stirs somewhere inside me, a knowledge that if I fail, he’s going to be the reason. I need to leave.

When I roll down my window, letting a gust of wind slap me in the face, I realize he’s cradling a cardboard tray in each hand.

He holds one out to me and the smell of cheap meat turns my stomach.

He’s drizzled the hot dog very neatly with ketchup and mustard.

The one in his other hand is drowned under more pickle relish than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life.

“In case you get stranded,” he explains patiently, squinting against the dust in the air.

“Your stomach’s been growling for like an hour. ”

I wish I hadn’t come back. A tainted soul wouldn’t have hurt this much. The man saw me. He realized I was hungry. He fixed it. If anyone had ever been that good to me before, maybe I would have made different choices today. I should just take it and drive away, but instead I say, “I’m vegan.”

“Oh.” He straightens up and takes a mournful bite of my hot dog. “Fuck me. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait.” I dive out the open window and grab his arm much harder than I meant to, my fingers pressing deep into his warm skin. He almost drops one of the trays. “Stop. I’m fine.”

He frowns at me, then stacks one tray on top of the other and uses his free hand to dig a bottle of water out of his baggy shorts pocket. “This is vegan, right?” People have asked me that before to make fun of me, but as he turns it around looking for a label, I realize he’s completely serious.

“As long as they don’t milk it from a water buffalo.” I’m so distraught that my filter breaks and this nonsense comes out.

“Oh damn, what?” Scrunching his nose, he redoubles his efforts to read the tiny text on the back.

Laughter starts bubbling out of me, fragmented and slightly hysterical, as I hide my face in my arm.

“Alright, that was mean.” He cocks his head at me, his smile caught between sheepish and concerned. “Here.” It flies past my head, bounces off the passenger seat, and rolls somewhere on the floor. “Take that, then.”

I realize I’ve been holding onto him this entire time, so tight I’m probably leaving marks. Pulling away, I wipe my eyes and adjust the navigation screen. I catch him craning his neck, trying to see my destination. “Go away.” He has to be the one who leaves. My body won’t let me.

He holds up both hands in surrender, one of them still balancing a tower of hot dogs.

“Fine. If you wanna see me again, keep trying gas stations and I’ll find you eventually.

” His grin flashes crooked and careless as he makes a gun with his fingers.

And maybe it’s because I'm so scared now that my brain is starting to malfunction, but some part of me believes that if I went into a random service station someday and waited, he would know, and he would come for me.

JUDE

Some people believe life is a straight line, everything set in stone from your birth to your death.

I’m glad they’re wrong. I’m glad life is a web, where every moment tugs on a thousand possible futures.

Because if it was a line, I would have walked away down the sidewalk.

I wouldn’t have heard him roll down his window, or call after me over the howl of the wind.

And I would have spent the rest of my life with the sinking feeling that I let something absolutely terrible happen.

“Hey, wait.”

I turn around, chewing the last bite of his hot dog.

He scrambles out of the car on stiff legs, like he’s been driving all day, and I’m reminded how hot he looks with that perfectly fitted t-shirt draped over such wide shoulders.

His skin seems paler in the overcast light, his hair a darker auburn, his eyes the exact same color as the clouds.

“What?” I adjust the strap of my backpack, wishing he’d just leave, because letting him out of my sight is getting more and more painful each time.

Clenching his jaw in concentration, he struggles to unclasp the heavy gold links of his watch.

When he holds it out, draped over his palm, I move close enough to study the dark blue face spangled with gold detailing, like stars in the night sky.

I’m a total hick, but even I know that the words Patek Philippe engraved under the hands mean it’s a really big deal.

Andrew speaks up proudly, like he’s been working this out in his head. “Even if you can only get thirty percent of the value secondhand, that’s still twenty thousand dollars.” He presents it to me like it’s the answer to all my problems, his stormy eyes expectant.

“What the fuck?” I take a step back, but he tips it out of his hand so that I have to grab it to keep it from smashing into the pavement. It’s so fucking heavy, warm from resting against his skin. “I can’t—Don’t give me this.”

He glances up at the clouds and fidgets impatiently. “I don’t need it. Help that girl or buy yourself a hundred TVs, I don’t care.”

“What do you mean you don’t need it?” I dangle it between us like a guy posing for a photo with a fish he caught. “How do you even sell one of these things?”

“Don’t be lazy, figure it out.” That edge creeps back into his voice.

I’m starting to suspect he gets nasty when he’s scared, which I think is kind of sweet.

But for all that I’m not so bright sometimes, I really don’t like where this is going.

The fact that he’s so afraid, that he’s giving me important shit for no reason, that he has at least three different people blowing up his phone asking him where he went.

Not all escape plans have happy endings.

“I don’t need your charity to pay for ‘that girl’s’ shit.” The watch makes soft metallic sounds as I flip it over. I’ve been wondering about his name for two hours, obsessing over it, and there it is, engraved over the back of the casing. Andrew Innes. And underneath, smaller, Remember who you are.

It’s a great name, in my opinion. Two strong syllables, but when you put them together, they become gentle. But I don’t know how the genius expects me to sell this with his name written on it.

When I look up to ask him, I realize he’s getting back in the car.

I’ve been dismissed, I guess. I almost chase him, almost call out.

But a giant, cold drop of rain hits the top of my head, making me flinch.

The car door slams and he bends over the map screen to search for a destination, clearly assuming I’ll crawl away to trade his absurd watch for lottery tickets or something.

The key to bluffing is to believe your own bluffs, and the key to taking risks is to take them before you have time to think it through.

So when the idea hits me, I don’t hesitate to wonder if it’s good or smart or anything else.

I drop the other hot dog in the unmowed grass, walk around to the back of the car where he can’t see me, and open the trunk as quietly as I can.

There’s nothing in the compartment, but it’s a hell of a lot smaller than I expected.

Unfortunately for my claustrophobia, I don’t really care.

Since he somehow hasn’t noticed me, I dive headfirst into the dark, stuffy compartment, eyeball the safety release, and close the lid on top of myself without slamming it.

Well. I already regret this. I’m supposed to be hitchhiking to my friend Ramona’s house right now to eat four slices of her spiced pear cake while we chat around her cozy dining table.

But I chose my path, and I’m going to follow it as far as it takes me.

Not to mention the car already started moving.

When Lena was a kid, I always captured the spiders in her room for her, even though I was secretly terrified of them.

When she needed me, I could push through anything.

I thought there was no one else in the world like my sister, but everything this guy does makes me think of her.

Intense and stubborn and a little clueless, reckless enough to get themselves hurt and silent enough to suffer a long time alone.

And underneath, these gentle, untethered souls like soap bubbles, delicate in the sun, that I have to protect because they’re the best things in a shitty world.

I can feel a breathless tension in the air, like this man is about to break, and I can’t stop thinking how sad it would be if no one was there to catch the pieces if he shatters.