“You’re really going to wear that while we drive?” I knew she’d try to find ways to put up a barrier between us, I just didn’t think she’d be this literal about it.
Jenny pulled the sleep mask up and leaned into my face, forehead first. If her evil glare wasn’t scaring me so much, I would have enjoyed it more. She wasn’t usually this intense, but apparently sleep deprivation brought out a different side of her.
“I’m tired,” she rasped. Wow, she was really selling it. “We have a forty minute drive. If you don’t let me sleep, I will put something stinky in your office you’ll never find.”
“My office isn’t in your building anymore.” I was also pretty sure I didn’t have an office, but that was beside the point.
“Even better. No one will suspect me.” She put the mask back over her eyes and leaned into her pillow. I still thought she was bluffing until her breathing evened out and slowed, and five minutes into the drive she was one-hundred-percent asleep. Huh. I wondered what had made her so tired.
“Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” Sadie said, eying me through the rear-view mirror.
“I’m just surprised she’s a sleep mask kind of girl.”
“There’s a kind?”
“Would you wear one?” I asked her.
“Sadie sleeps with one eye open,” Dan said, chuckling to himself. “And with a machete under her pillow.”
“Lies. I sleep like the dead. I don’t need a sleep mask. Or a blanket for that matter.”
“Or a man.” Dan anticipated her smack and tried to dodge out of the way.
“I’m twenty-five. Just because you had two kids at my age doesn’t mean I need to be in any hurry. And men are stupid.”
Dan just laughed at her.
I left the two to their squabbling and fixed the blanket slipping from Jenny’s shoulders. She’d once told me she couldn’t sleep unless her toes were covered and the blanket was pulled up to her chin.
“Check the traffic reports, will you?” Sadie asked Dan. She turned onto the freeway onramp with her usual gusto. Jenny slid towards me before her seat belt kept her in check. She snorted in her sleep and then her head slowly drooped until it rested against her chest. I waited for her to move to a more comfortable position, but she didn’t. My neck hurt just looking at her. Leaning across, I snatched the pillow that had fallen to the floor and attempted to tuck it between Jenny’s head and the window. Sadie and Dan watched me with amusement.
“Shut up, you two.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Dan protested.
“I can feel you judging me.”
Sadie laughed, glancing from Jenny to me through the rearview mirror. “As much as I’ve missed watching the melodrama that is…” she waved her hand back in our direction, “…all of that, try not to screw it up this time.” Her gaze hardened before she went back to watching the road.
I didn’t plan to.
Despite my best efforts, Jenny’s head drooped again, and her pillow slid down. I grabbed the pillow before it could fall to the floor and once again put Jenny’s head back into position. Then I leaned against her to keep her there, hoping her body would relax against the window like a normal person.
She smelled like vanilla cupcakes, but that was not relevant, and I wasn’t thinking about it at all. At least not consciously.
“What are you doing?” In one sudden motion, Jenny shoved her sleep mask up and elbowed me off of her.
Not that I’d beenonher. I’d been… oh, help me now. I’d been all up in her space without her permission. It had seemed perfectly natural in the moment when I thought she was dead asleep. But now, with her staring lasers at me, I just felt like the creeper she thought I was.
“Your pillow slipped. I was trying to… help.”
“Well, I’m awake now.” She pulled the sleep mask all the way off and smoothed her hair. “Pretty sure I’ll never sleep again.”
An awkward silence settled over the back of the car. Up front, Sadie and Dan were trying and failing not to laugh. A dollar changed hands. Of course it did.
Jenny folded up her blanket while studiously avoiding looking at me, and then pulled out a little toiletry bag and began putting on her makeup. Because she had a hard time seeing close up, she kept putting her reading glasses on, checking the progress, and then taking them off so she could continue applying. I was familiar with this routine. It wasn’t the first time she’d waited until the car ride to finish getting ready. Personally, I would have been terrified to put anything near my eyes with Sadie’s driving, but I guess we’re all brave in our own way.
I pulled out my phone so I could look busy, too. There was a welcome email from my boss at the top of my inbox and I opened it, eager to see what he wanted me to do. Except, it wasn’t personalized at all, unless you counted the custom field where he’d added my name. A form email? How many welcomes did Uncharted Treasures send out? Clearly, I was about to be a cog in an endless wheel of employees who came and went.
