“Jesus.” I ran a hand over my face. “The gas gauge is at less than a quarter tank, you know. There’s a rest stop in five miles, and—”
“Yeah, yeah. We’ll stop. But first… Who’s the lead singer of Nickelback again? ’Cause you always claimed you didn’t like them, but I wonder now if you were protesting too—”
“Chad Kroeger is not my fantasy fuck!” I scowled. “And you need to stop with this. Trust me.”
Jay laughed again, and it was exquisitely terrible because I was conditioned to love that laughter, to glory in it, but meanwhile, I was flailing.
Lie. Just lie! You called him Johnny Cash. You called him Kurt Cobain. You called him Meat Loaf. Anything!
But I couldn’t make my mouth move, and anyway, something about this moment felt inevitable, like we weren’t just hurtling down the highway, we were hurtling toward a reckoning.
“Okay, so not Chad. And I’m guessing it’s not Jared, ’cause that would be too easy. And your precious Ari didn’t even have an album out then. So who did you listen to who had messy hair and got all emote-y when he sang? I don’t remember you being a huge fan of anyone else back then, except m—”
In my peripheral vision, he ran a hand through his own thick, overlong hair and froze.
“I mean…” He laughed again, shakily this time, and his hand flexed on the steering wheel. His eyes darted to my face, but I couldn’t make myself turn my head. “I mean…”
“Gas station,” I croaked, pointing out the exit. “Eyes on the road,please.”
“Yeah.” Jay’s voice was thin. Thready. “Yeah, okay.”
8
Jay
I leaned against the side of the van while the gas pump worked its magic and watched as the wind blew a crushed can across the ground all the way from the pumps to the parking lot.
I felt a lot of kinship with that can.
Every cell in my body was on high alert, like the pre-storm electricity that charged the air around me was inside me, too, stirring things up. It felt like something monumental—possibly monumentallyunpleasant, given my track record— was about to happen, but like that freakin’ can, I had no control over any of it.
Rafe had called some guy by my name while fucking.
Fact.
I mean, okay, not a fact-fact, since he hadn’t totally admitted it. But considering the way he’d frozen solid and refused to look at me while anxiety poured off him thick enough to drown out even the perfume smell in the van, the truth was apparent.
And almost just as shocking was the fact that he hadn’t denied it.
I mean, if I were in Rafe’s wrong-name-shouting shoes, I’d have lied my ass off about it. “Oh, Jay, the only reason I did that was because you and Monster Truck Vinnie wore the same stupid cologne and have the same weird, long skeleton fingers! Otherwise, I’dneverhave thought of my best friend during sexytimes!”
But Rafe hadn’t said anything like that, and I couldn’t think why… unless he’d had the same more-than-friendly feelings toward me that I’d had toward him.
My dick didn’t give a shit about the whys. It had very positive, very proprietary feelings about Rafe railing some guy and yelling my name, period, and urged me to kiss the shit out of Rafe and damn the consequences.
My brain, on the other hand, was skip-skip-skipping like a record player, pondering what might have happened if I’d come out as a teenager, and whether Rafe might still find me attractive after all this time… and what I’d do if he did.
Suffice it to say, thanks to this mental traffic jam, I hadn’t been able to think of a single word to say to Rafe, and I still couldn’t. We’d driven into the rest area like we were sitting on a grenade, afraid to make any sudden movements or even breathe too deeply, and when Rafe had disappeared into the building muttering something about “restroom” and “snack” and “Gage” and “food trucks,” I’d been glad.
“Nice whip,” a voice beside me said.
“Huh?” I whirled around to find a man wearing a black beanie and a hair metal T-shirt pulled snugly over his beer gut patting the hood of the van appreciatively.
“This here’s a 3500 model, isn’t it? Looks real sturdy.” He leaned down to peer at the tires, and his long sandy hair nearly touched the ground before he peered up at me. “Triple treads?”
I opened my mouth to say something dismissive so the guy would go away before he recognized me, but then I heard Rafe’s voice in my head, reminding me that I used to be more open with people and that not everyone was gonna sell me out.
And while my first instinct was to roll my eyes atanythingRafe said, especially when he talked in that tone of voice, maybe he had a tiny point about me thinking the worst of people.
