Page 115 of Wayfarers

I turn back and, with a little grin, say, “I’m not easy to find. You’ll need to be a better detective than you are a dentist.”

As I walk away, Bandanna man howls at my back, “You already looked me up, you psycho loser?!”

A LITTLE LATER

“I got them to delete the video,” I crow as I approach Sylvie who’s packed up the lunch stuff and is behind the wheel of the van, the engine running.

“Great,” Sylvie says in a flat voice that instantly deflates my sense of triumph. She pulls out of the rest area. The two men are nowhere to be seen.

“Uh . . . you cool?”

“As ice.” Her voice is indeed icy.

“You sound mad. I thought you’d be excited.”

“I tried twice to get you to drop it and you just ignored me.”

Hearing that knocks the wind out of me. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Like, the two biker dentist creeps at least didn’t disregard me asking them not to film me, because I didn’t ask.”

“Wait, so I’m worse than the biker dentist creeps?”

“No. Yes, in a way. I’m just saying—what if that hadn’t gone as well as it did? And by that, I mean you returning to the van still with just one broken arm. What if? What if they’d hulked out on you. Then what? Another ER? More casts? You in a coma? What if they’d pulled a gun and decided to ‘stand their ground’ and shot you dead? I really can’t go through watching—” Sylvie stops abruptly.

I wait for her to finish the sentence but she doesn’t.

“I knew they weren’t gonna do anything. I’ve run into a lot of dudes like that in my life.”

“Yeah, but that isn’t really the point, is it.”

“I said I was sorry. I really am. Can I tell you where I’m coming from on this?”

“Okay.”

“Before we met—like, right before—I was in this situation where I knew about a dude being an exploitative sleazebag. I’d seen him act that way. And I took action to protect myself, but I didn’t take action to protect anyone else. And that’s been eating at me.”

“That sucks.”

“I know, I should have done something.”

“No, I meant it sucks you were in that situation. It sounds like you didn’t choose to be.”

“Yeah, no, not at all. So that’s where I’m coming from. And I really hope you’ll accept my apology because I am sorry.”

Sylvie’s face softens ever so little. “Let’s make a deal.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I’ll be the sole judge of when I need someone to step in and protect me and if I say I don’t need it, that’s the final word.”

“Okay.”

“And you will forgive yourself for whatever you’ve done or not done because it’s really obvious you’re a good person who’s trying to move through this world in the right way. Deal?”

“Deal.”

We drive for a bit in a more comfortable silence. Sylvie says, “I probably just shouldn’t have said anything at all; it’s not like those dudes were upskirting me or something.”