“You’re just gonna walk away?” Brant calls at my back. “Leave us? Leave her?”
I scoff. “You’re saying you just want to stay here in Looneyville?”
“I’m saying we should talk about our options and include Remi in those talks. You can’t just walk away.”
“Watch me.”
Theo and Brant both call after me, but I ignore them as I stalk towards my truck. My temper is flaring so bright that all I can see is red. I hate being left in the dark, and I hate being caught off-guard. I’m so pissed that when I open the door to my truck and climb in, I don’t even notice the woman sitting in the passenger seat until she speaks.
“Your pants are too tight,” she says, making me jump in surprise.
With my hands gripping the steering wheel, I turn my head to look at her and sigh through my clenched teeth. “Dharla, get out of my truck.”
She ignores my comment completely. “Men shouldn’t be wearing pants that tight. It cuts off the circulation to your Peter Piper,” she says matter-of-factly, as she continues to comb her gray hair with a plastic spork. “My Willy never wore pants that tight, and his little willy always worked. Right up until the day the bastard died,” she tells me.
I rub my eyes, feeling the pulsing headache spread to my temples. She’s still wearing her pink and yellow moo-moo dress, so at least there’s that. “My Peter Piper is just fine,” I tell her.
She reaches into the pocket of her dress and pulls out a bag of sugar snap peas and starts chowing down on them. “You boys must have more than fine willies, else that April girl wouldn’t be sticking around with you. She’s too smart to get blinded by the thing kept locked inside your too-tight pants. She’s a good girl, you know. Doesn’t toss her loyalty in the ring for many, but once she does, she’ll stick by ‘em,” Dharla says seriously around a mouthful of pea stocks.
She holds up the bag to me in offering. “Fuck it,” I say, and grab one before tossing it in my mouth. It’s surprisingly better than I expected.
“You know, my Willy brought me here to Endstone when he retired. He loved this town. Won the annual scenario games two years in a row,” she says.
“I’m sure you’re very proud,” I say dryly.
To my surprise, she cackles. “Me? Shit, no. I think this place is filled with crackpots,” she says, and the fact that this isDharlasaying that only adds to the hilarity. “But…” she goes on. “It’s harmless, and some people...they go feeling like they have no control of their lives, or even their deaths. Life hits them with one crazy curved dick after another, until they finally split. Endstone lets them feel like they can prepare for what life might throw at them,” she says, her words eerily wise. “Plus, these people just really like playing pretend and winning shit,” she says, before pulling out her dentures and picking off the pieces of snap pea that got stuck.
I wrinkle my nose as she puts her teeth back in and flicks green pieces onto the floor of my truck. Fucking fantastic. I’ll have to get the whole interior detailed now.
“What’s your point, Dharla?” I ask.
“My point is, your pants are too fucking small,” she answers, glowering at me.
She shoves open the door and gets out, flashing me in the process. I slam my eyes closed. “Ugh! Dharla! Where’s your fucking underwear?”
She cackles. “Left ‘em for you. You’ll have to find them,” she says with a wink, before she starts walking away, singing her own cover song of,Ninety-nine Crooked Dicks in the Pants as she goes.
When she disappears from view, all of the tension rushes out of me with one long sigh. I press my forehead against the steering wheel and close my eyes, trying to let my brain catch up as my temper fizzles out.
When there’s a tap on the driver’s side window, I fully expect Dharla Fucking Cornburner to be standing there again, ready to accost me or some shit, but instead, Remington is standing there. We look at each other for a minute through the window, me not moving, and her not pushing me to.
But as soon as I open my door, Remi climbs in right on top of me, straddling my waist. My hands go to her hips and I yank her closer, so that her back doesn’t dig into the steering wheel.
“What did you decide, soldier?” she asks me, her blue eyes running over my face.
It’s amazing to me how much she gets me, even though we’ve only known each other for a short amount of time. She’s not asking me how I’m doing, or pretending that everything is okay. She’s just…putting the ball in my court.
“I...I don’t know yet,” I tell her honestly.
She nods like she completely understands, and threads her hands behind my neck. “I ran away from this place when I was fifteen,” she suddenly says. “It was right after my mom died, and I was....well, angry at the world, but taking it out on my dad. It was right in the middle of Endstone’s annual doom scenario. Bird flu,” she says with a scoff. “I was so mad that I hitched a ride with a lumber truck out of town. My dad had to drive twelve hours out of Endstone to come pick me up at a gas station.”
I shake my head at her. “That was dangerous.”
“I know,” she nods, her hands toying with the hair at the back of my neck. “That’s why when I turned eighteen and we got into our huge fight, I was smarter. I got a job for this wilderness tour group in Alaska. I saved all my money, and when I left that time, I had no intention of coming back.”
“Until us,” I finish.
She nods again. “Until you.”
