Now playing: Him & I - G - Eazy, Halsey
WelandedinWilmingtonthat afternoon, the tires hitting the tarmac with a jolt that rattled my teeth and sent a fresh spike of adrenaline through my veins. My nerves increased with every moment that inched us closer to the reality of what was about to be our new lives. Together.
I hated flying into Wilmington. It was fucking horrible.
Wilmington was a beach town, a tourist town, and flying in during April, right when the weather turned perfect and the snowbirds started flocking down, was a nightmare. The airport was small, chaotic, and smelled faintly of humid air, overpriced coffee, and the distinct, coconut scented sunscreen that every tourist seemed to bathe in before they even left the terminal.
And to top that all off? We still had a forty-five-minute drive to the Reed land, and that was hoping traffic out of this hellhole wasn’t atrocious.
We made our way to the rental car desk, navigating through a sea of families in matching shirts and college kids already drunk at two in the afternoon. I was vibrating, and Cal saw it. He kept brushing his arm against mine as we walked, a grounding tether. I hadn’t panicked, thank fuck, and honestly, I didn’t really feel like apanic attack was coming, yet anyway. Just immense dread. The kind that sits heavy in your gut like you swallowed a stone.
The rental car center was located in a separate garage, the air thick and stifling. We walked up to the counter, where a woman named ‘Brenda’, according to her bedazzled nametag, looked far too cheerful for a Tuesday.
“Welcome to Wilmington! Business or pleasure?” she chirped, typing furiously on her keyboard.
“A little of both,” Cal answered smoothly, leaning against the counter. He flashed that charm smile, the one that usually got him free upgrades.
“ID and credit card,” she said, popping her gum.
I reached for the paperwork she slid across the counter, needing something to do with my hands. If I wasn’t doing something, I was going to start scratching at my skin.
Cal snatched the keys Brenda placed on the counter before I could even touch them.
“Nope. Your ass isn’t in the spot to drive,” he said, walking ahead of me toward the automatic doors leading to the rows of cars.
“The fuck, Cal?” I groaned, jogging to keep up with his long strides, dragging my carry on behind me. The wheels clacked loudly on the concrete. “You don’t even know where the hell you’re going. Give me the damn keys back.” I protested, reaching for his hand, but he held them high above his head like I was a toddler.
“Good thing there’s a GPS and you know how to give directions,” Cal smarted off, not even looking back at me. He walked straight to a black beast of an SUV parked in the third row. He popped the trunk and tossed his bag in with an ease that was annoying.
“I hate driving rentals,” I muttered, hoisting my bag into the back. “They smell like industrial cleaner and other people’s bad decisions.”
“Well, you’re in luck, Prince,” Cal said, slamming the trunk shut. “Because you’re riding shotgun. Get in.”
There was no use in arguing with him. I wouldn’t win this battle, and he knew I wouldn’t. Cal was driving us home.
Wait. Home? Was this home now?
For the first time in my life, it actually kind of felt that way. Not because of the place, I had a complicated relationship with the dirt under my feet here, but because he was going there with me.
We climbed in. The car did, in fact, smell like industrial lemon cleaner. Cal spent five minutes adjusting the mirrors and the seat, muttering about legroom, while I stared out the window at the concrete wall of the parking garage, feeling the walls closing in.
We started the hike towards no man’s land, and of course, the traffic was stupid.
It took us twenty minutes just to get out of the city limits. Bumper to bumper tourists trying to find the beach or the historic downtown. Cal mumbled and bitched the entire time through it, slamming on the brakes every time a minivan cut us off.
“Who taught these people to drive?” Cal growled, gripping the steering wheel. “A blind guy?”
“Welcome to the South,” I said dryly, resting my head against the cool glass. “Lane markers are just suggestions.”
I reveled in his misery a little bit. Payback sucked. But eventually, the strip malls and hotels faded away. The concrete turned to asphalt, and the four lanes narrowed to two. The manicured palm trees were replaced by towering pines and oaks draped in Spanish moss that looked like old, gray beards hanging in the humidity.
We were on the highway now, that long stretch of nothingness that would lead to the Reed land.
The Reed land sat in basically nowhere. We were forty-five minutes from Wilmington, and there was nothing around. No neighbors. No stores for at least thirty minutes. The GPS always said we had a Currie, North Carolina address, but tome, it was always just… nothing. It was the space between the world and the silence.
“Jesus, Silas,” Cal muttered, tapping the dashboard screen aggressively. “My GPS lost signal three miles ago. Where the hell do you even live? Where the fuck am I even going?” Cal finally asked after driving towards nothing for thirty minutes.
I shrugged, looking out at the dense treeline that hugged the road. It was like a green tunnel, suffocating and beautiful all at once. “Technically Currie? I think? It’s just Pender County. And it’s just… here. Unincorporated county land. We don’t really have neighbors.”
