And I cave.
I fucking cave.
“If I let you drive, will you drive where I tell you to go?”
“Yep.”
“Without any side trips or stops along the way?”
“If we pass the world’s largest pink eraser or I realize we’re within five miles of any world-famous attraction involving cows, we’re stopping. You’re not really on a road trip if you don’t.”
I can’t believe that’s a comforting answer, but it is.
She’ll go where I tell her in the hopes she can see some stupid?—
I shake my head.
In the hopes that she can see somethingunique.
Something that a community somewhere is proud of.
Or even a single person.
Something out of the ordinary that a single person cares about enough to try to draw visitors to it.
I pop open my door. “If you double-cross me?—”
“Oliver.”
“What?”
She stares at me with an intensity that’s unnerving coming from her. “Our families suck, and the world they exist in sucks worse. That doesn’t mean it’s not hard to break away and set your own course. I still don’t like you, but I respect you for what you’re doing right now.”
Also unnerving?
How much I relate to that last sentence.
I don’t like her either, but I appreciate that she has exactly the experience I apparently need.
Travel logistics were easy to plan. A driving route to explore as much of the country as possible in two weeks, and lodging booked with prepaid credit cards and a fake name on hotel and vacation rental accounts that match my fake ID.
Check that.
Noteasy, but at least logical.
Spontaneously finding ways to give away as much of my money as I can along the way—I can already tell that will be far more difficult. I’m seven hours in, and I’ve rid myself of less than five grand of the literal millions in my trunk.
Less than what Daphne won on that stupid scratch-off that’s sitting in the cupholder between the seats.
I point at the wooden structure at the other end of the parking lot. “Go wash your hands. You’re not getting that shit on my steering wheel.”
She doesn’t tell me not to leave her while she’s in the bathroom.
I want to think that’s weird, but I get a glimpse of myself in the side mirror, and I grimace.
There are dead people who look more alive than I do right now.
I’m so exhausted that I don’t even stretch before lumbering around the car and shoving myself into the passenger seat. I’d be asleep when Daphne returns, except my knees are shoved upagainst the dashboard and I can’t find the button to push the seat back.
