I pocket the keys, then shrug out of my flannel to hand it to Daphne. “Put this on and get in the car.”
“It’s too freaking hot for—what are you wearing?” Her gaze dips to my chest and my arms, and she makes a face that I don’t want to interpret. It comes with bulging eyeballs and parted lips and then a head shake. “Oh my god. Do you still have feeling in your fingertips?”
I look down at the white T-shirt I shimmied myself into this morning.
It’s brand-new.
And it’s the smallest freaking size large T-shirt I’ve ever worn.
Order clothes online, I told myself.Have them delivered to the Pennsylvania house.Enough to get you deep enough into the countryside that no one will look twice as you get a new wardrobe.
Except most of the packages didn’t arrive. All that was waiting for me at the cabin last night is what I’m wearing today.
So here I am, in a T-shirt so tight that my nipples are caving in and the smallest slice of my stomach is showing over my waistband.
“Get in the car,” I repeat to Daphne.
“I know you come from a long line of people who’d take candy from a baby, but I didn’t think you’d take their shirts too. Who did your shopping? There’s no way that’s an adult-size shirt.”
“Get in the car,” I repeat.
She rolls her eyes and circles the car to open the back door. “Tell them you need to put thirty dollars’ worth in the car at pump seven.”
As if I can’t calculate for myself how much gas I need. Even if I’ve never had to pump it myself, I work in the industry.
But the brain cells that aren’t already on vacation are fizzing and popping and burning from the stress of my unexpected companion.
I’d handle this fine if she weren’t here.
Probably.
A sigh leaks out of me.
Or possibly not. I’m not sure I’ve handled anything fine in the past four years.
When I walk in the building, the woman behind the counter’s wearing a nametag that readsCarolon her red vest with Cupholder and MILES2GO printed across the front. She eyes me. “Pump seven?”
“Thirty dollars’ worth,” I say, shoving a hundred-dollar bill across the plexiglass countertop that’s showing off small postcards with dollar, two-dollar, and five-dollar price tags on the top of each.
She looks at me.
Then down at my pants.
Then at the currency on the counter between us.
Lottery tickets.
Those are lottery tickets.
Not postcards.
“Keep the change,” I add.
Maybe she’ll buy lottery tickets.
Maybe she won’t.
She snorts softly. “Right.The change.” She pulls a marker out of a drawer and swipes it across the hundred-dollar bill, then eyes me.
