I know that’s why she’s converting it into credit card gift cards—so that I can give away money online or with cards—but she’s giggling too hard to tell me so herself.
We make one final stop in town to grab a late breakfast—the peaches and cheese from yesterday’s farmer’s stand were delicious, but not enough food—and I practice her method of putting a few small bills on top of the tip I leave on the table after we’re done eating.
She tosses a few coins on too.
And when we’re finally back on the highway, I’m twenty-five thousand dollars lighter.
Still nowhere close to giving away even a million, but we’re making progress.
Together.
And it’s fun. Freeing.
Right.
For the first time in my life, I’m doing what I know I’m supposed to do.
Unexpectedly with exactly the right person too.
26
A LITTLE OF YOUR LIFE, A LITTLE OF MINE
Daphne
I ammy own worst enemy.
And that’s why I’ll have no control over the TV remote at the hotel we stop at somewhere in southeast Missouri the first evening after I failed to give away the entire bag of money in one day.
Not having control over the TV remote is why I end up breaking my own rule and having sex with Oliver again.
Swear it’s only that I need a distraction from his terrible television choices.
The next day, different bet, different states, but same results. We refill the bag of money from the other bags in the trunk, and when I fail to find ways to empty it entirely through giant tips and random donation drop-offs and trading the cash in for gift cards that we can use online or mail to various places, like nursing homes and hospitals and schools for the staff, I lose control of the air conditioner for the last-minute vacation rental that Oliver books somewhere in Iowa.
I teach him to boil water for mac ’n’ cheese—yes, yes, he already knew how to boil water, but he humors my attempt at playing teacher so well that we have sex on the kitchen floor.
Then again in the creepy basement.
No cool lady cave there.
Except mine.
My lady cave gets thoroughly banged into ecstasy by the wonder cock in Oliver’s pants while I sit on the washing machine during the spin cycle.
And I tell myself this was a necessary lesson since he did not, in fact, already know how to operate a washing machine, though he could’ve looked it up on the internet.
Saturday—today—it’s the same thing all over again.
Except this time, I bet him a night of sleeping in a tent if I give away all of the money.
And I do it.
So now we’re setting up camp at a secluded spot in a wooded state park somewhere so far northwest in Iowa that we could probably see both Minnesota and South Dakota if we climbed a tree and peered off into the distance.
“How’s it feel to be down a couple million?” I ask Oliver as he watches me setting up the tent I insisted we get. It’s proving to be smaller than I anticipated a four-person tent would be.
Damn.
