Page 70 of Autumn on My Mind

“Put me down—no, don’t drop me!” I say quickly, and he scoffs.

“When have I ever dropped you?”

We both still at this, an awkward pause curdling the space between us.

He recovers first, lurching out of the store room and down one of the aisles. He pushes the door open with his foot and launches the both of us out into the downpour, his head ducked against the rain, and pushes through the wind, around the building, and to his truck.

“Well?” he says loudly when we reach the Ford. “Get in.” He starts to put me down, but I cling tighter to him.

“No,” I yell so I can be heard. “You cannot just pick me up and force me out of my living quarters⁠—”

I break off with a yelp as he resumes his grip and lifts me again, his expression somewhere between annoyed and businesslike.

Then he proceeds to drop me into the bed of his truck.

“The bed?” I screech as he rounds the front with my bag and gets into the driver’s seat, tossing the duffle over to the passenger side. I scramble forward and bang on the cab window. “This is illegal⁠—”

“Don’t fall out!” he yells back, words I barely hear.

I call him a name I’m not proud of.

He whips around to look at me through the little window, but he’s clearly not offended; he just gives me a tsk, tsk as he shakes his head.

“Dominic! Dom!” It’s no good; my words are drowned out in the roar of the engine and the deluge of rain. “My sleeping bag! What about my sleeping bag?” But I yelp when the truck lurches forward⁠—

And off into the night we go.

I have never had so many unflattering things to say about this man, but it occurs to me now that the back of his head looks stupid, and his hands look dumb on the steering wheel of his truck, and he’s mean.

“You’re mean!” I shout over the rain and the wind, thumping my hand against the cab window again. “You are a mean person!”

My would-be tirade dies when my wet hair gets blown into my mouth, and I swipe at my face, spitting and blowing raspberries like a very bad beatboxer. The only saving grace of the moment is that no one is there to witness it.

The truck rumbles down First and then turns onto a residential road, one with gorgeous trees and small homes; it’s the kind of neighborhood you’d see in a movie from the nineties. Nostalgic and reminiscent, even in the dark and the pouring rain.

Because of my current predicament and mood, I refuse to be charmed. I am dressed in silky pajamas, my hair plastered to my head and face, and I am cold. The man driving this vehicle clearly never loved me. In fact, I think he might be a sociopath.

“You’re psycho!” I shout at him. I curl into a ball, my arms around my knees to block as much of the wind as possible. I’m pretty sure he can’t hear anything I’m saying, but I keep yelling anyway. “I’m psycho too, for loving you back then! This is cruel and unusual and I will put your face on a dartboard⁠—”

But I break off when the truck begins to slow in front of a small house, eventually rolling to a stop. It’s a cute place, from what I can see through my half-closed, rain-splattered eyes. If the situation were vastly different, I’d be interested in taking a closer look.

When Dom opens the driver’s door, a light in the cab blinks on, and he gets out of the truck. Then he saunters—yes, SAUNTERS—to the side and looks down at where I’m still curled up in the bed.

“I know for a fact you’re terrible at darts,” he yells over the storm.

My jaw drops. It snaps shut again when rain starts to blow into my mouth.

He smirks and then makes his way to the back of the truck, unlatching the door and beckoning for me to get out.

My annoyance and stubbornness urge me to stay exactly where I am, but survival instincts say otherwise. I scurry toward him, preparing myself mentally to unfold my body and walk barefoot when I hop down⁠—

But that moment never comes. The ridges of the metal bed dig painfully into my knees as I crawl, and then suddenly he’s holding me, hoisting me up.

It is worth noting, by the way, that this process is neither gentle nor romantic. There’s a good deal of airborne manhandling that occurs, and I may as well be a bag of flour cradled in his arms.

I will never admit that I prefer this to walking myself, simply because I am so, so cold.

He ducks his head closer so I can hear him. “Still worried I’m going to drop you?” he breathes down to me as he strides around the truck and then up the driveway.