“I get nervous,” I admitted. “When one of the kids acts up in class and I have to be stern, my heart beats really hard because I’m not good at dealing with it. I got the same way when you were having your breakdown on the floor of WoodsmenStadium, and I had to tell you that you couldn’t go out and interact with impressionable children.”
He had stepped back as I’d said that and the doors rolled open again, bringing in more snow. “Damn! Where’s the sensor on these? Where am I supposed to stand?”
“You can come forward about eighteen inches. I’m trying to keep you out of camera range,” I said, tilting my head to indicate the device on the wall. It was an old one and its constant whirring sound was very soothing, a problem for people who were trying to stay awake at the reception desk.
“Are you going to get your sister?” he asked.
“Yes, soon.” I checked the clock again, and the hands had moved a little. Sometimes when I was here, it seemed like they were frozen in place.
“Did you say that she’s an hour away?”
I nodded in answer, and he nodded back. “Do you want company?”
“I’m not sure who I would ask,” I told him. “Jannie has to close down the bar, and most of my old friends—”
“I meant me,” Everett said. “I’m saying that I would go with you as company.”
“You? But don’t you have better things to do?” Maybe not, since he was still standing a few inches out of the view of the camera to talk to me, rather than going home or going out to have fun. “I mean, won’t you have things to do tomorrow? You guys have agame in two days. Should you be out so late? Are you sure about this?”
“We have practice tomorrow but it doesn’t matter. I’ll wait for you in my truck and we can take that to go and get her. It’s good in the snow.”
“Are you sure about this?” I asked again, and he nodded and purposefully made the doors open so that he could leave. The camera outside that was supposed to show the parking lot didn’t work but I peered as hard as I could through the darkness to try to see if he was actually out there.
I saw him again when I buttoned up the front desk for the night and put out the sign saying that reception was closed until six the next morning, which was not my shift. He flashed his lights when I emerged from the building but it wouldn’t have been hard to find him, even with the heavy snow falling. There were only three vehicles in the lot: one belonged to the woman in room 103, another was my little car, and the third was obviously Everett’s. It was very lucky that he had waited for me, because his tires seemed more than capable of handling this weather, whereas mine had smoothed out after a lot of miles and were just not as good at things like stopping in the snow and ice. His truck looked brand-new and was not the one that I’d seen overturned in a ditch a few months ago, on the day of the field trip (and the vomit, et cetera).
“Are you really sure about this?” I asked for a third time, even more doubtful, after I had crunched my way over and opened the passenger door.
“Yeah, I’m not doing much else tonight.”
Ok. I got in and gave him my sister’s exact location, but then I asked if he wanted gas money. It was a bit of a distance, after all, but he shook his head in answer and pulled out of the lot.
“Like I said, I haven’t been drinking, and I also haven’t taken anything. Not anything illegal and no prescriptions, either. There are no problems with me,” he announced.
“When people say things like that, it usually means that there definitely is a problem. Like when your agent told me, ‘There’s no reason for concern,’ and there was a big reason. You were on the carpet—”
“That’s exactly why I’m letting you know that you don’t have to worry,” he interrupted me. “The first time we met, everyone should have been concerned but not now, not anymore.”
“Is that why you wanted to drive me tonight? To prove something?”
He was following the directions that led us out of town and we went a little way before he answered. “It’s galling when you keep bringing it up. That was, by far, the shittiest day of my life.”
“I don’t mean to keep talking about it. I guess it was memorable, meeting a celebrity—”
He snorted and I kept going.
“Then getting a new shirt because…you know why, and then seeing your car accident.”
“That accident wasn’t my fault. A deer ran out into the road and I rolled the damn car when I tried to avoid hitting it,” Everett told me.
“I won’t bring it up again, not any of it,” I promised, but then I kind of did exactly that. “Was it really your shittiest day ever?”
“Everything went wrong. What else could have happened?”
Any number of things, and I named a few of those. “You threw up, but only on me and not on your boss. You didn’t get in front of the kids and say horrible things. You weren’t hurt when the deer caused the accident. You didn’t get arrested or even detained, and you didn’t do anything crazy after you left Jannie’s bar that night. A lot went wrong, but things could have been so much worse.”
“You’re an optimist.”
I wasn’t. I was just aware of the extent to which a normal life could suddenly morph into something that you had trouble recognizing. “Also, you still have your health,” I commented. “That’s an optimistic thing to say.”
