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We parted ways in the hallway, and a few minutes later I heard the water running on Jenny’s side of the wall. I sat on the little armchair in my room trying to decide what to do about the attraction I felt for my driver. Nothing is what I should do, I reminded myself. She’s technically my employee. Kind of.

That didn’t keep me from wondering if she felt the same little spark of attraction that I did every time our hands brushed or we caught each other’s eye.

Resolved to stop thinking about my inappropriate crush on Jenny, I took a shower to wash off all the grime from the road, then settled on my bed. The bedspread was scratchy and worn, so I pulled it off and set it on the table that ran along the wall. The sheets weren’t much better, but then again, I was used to high thread count luxury sheets. I understood that wasn’t what the average person used. I wanted to experience the kind of road trip an average person would take, so I guessed that meant I’d be getting used to scratchy sheets that smelled faintly of bleach.

It was a heady feeling, being able to do what I wanted without worrying about my parents or the security team telling me what was safe. Even though I was at a hotel full of people, I felt totally alone for the first time in my life. No one was going to bother me here. I could walk around naked or watch reality TV or eat more of the snacks I’d shoved in my bag.

I didn’t do any of that though. Instead I snuggled down into my bed, turning on the TV and flipping through the channels until I found something that caught my attention, a show about three geniuses who hung out with a pretty dumb blonde. It was funny – and absolutely a show my parents wouldn’t approve of. They hated sitcoms and I’d never watched much television, even as a kid.

It made me wonder which things in life I’d missed because of my wealth and which ones I’d missed because of my parents’ paranoia.

They would have received my email about being on vacation right at five o’clock. I’d scheduled it to go out at the exact time my security team would be expecting me to come out of work. I hadn’t told anyone about our office being closed next week, and my boss had been more than happy to give me today off to extend that time, especially when I never took time off.

I pictured the security team and my parents trying to track my phone and realizing that they couldn’t. The last known location would show as Issaquah. That was close to five hundred miles from here. With all the devices disabled they wouldn’t know where I went from there, and I was glad. They had no right to track me without my consent all these years.

I’d always wondered how the security team found out my location every time I gave them the slip, and now I knew. And if Jenny hadn’t figured it out, they would have bullied me into giving up my road trip before it even started.

I was going to have the best road trip ever, and when I got back, I was moving out. It was well past time for me to stand on my own two feet.

Jenny

“How far do you think we’ll get today?”

Blair was once again drinking a giant sugary coffee drink, although the proportion of the drink that contained caffeine seemed negligible. For someone who’d been raised with a silver spoon in her mouth and a crew of home chefs, she had surprisingly unsophisticated tastes.

I’d expected her to complain about the hotel I’d picked out for us last night. It was a popular budget chain, and both of our rooms appeared to have last been updated at least twenty years ago. Things were clean though, which I appreciated more than appearance, and they’d served a decent breakfast in the lobby, other than the shitty coffee. Fortunately there was a coffee shop nearby.

“I was thinking we’d stop at Gillette, then we’ll get to Mount Rushmore tomorrow with plenty of time to do some sightseeing.”

“That’s Wyoming, right?”

“It is. And if we see something fun along the way, we’ll have plenty of time to stop and check it out.”

“Perfect.”

With a day of traveling under our belts and no one needing to puke on the side of the road, we were both more comfortable with each other. On the surface we were very different, from our ages to our backgrounds to our relationship with our families, but we still found a lot to talk about. We had very similar political views. We both had a dry sense of humor. We shared a love of eighties music, and we both appreciated the rapidly changing landscapes we were driving through. We spent most of the morning talking, although we were both comfortable with silence as well.

“Oh my God, this restaurant has a waterfall! We have to eat there!”

We stopped for lunch at a random restaurant in the middle of nowhere that inexplicably was designed to look like a Swiss chalet. Blair seemed delighted by this turn of events.

“That’s a water mill, not a waterfall,” I corrected. “Although why it’s needed here, I couldn’t say.”

“It’s part of the charm. Let’s take some photos.”

At breakfast this morning Blair had bemoaned the loss of a camera with needing to keep her phone turned off. Somehow that led to me agreeing she could use my phone whenever she wanted to take pictures of the trip, with a promise that I’d send them all to her when the trip was over.

I took a picture of Blair standing in front of the water mill, with plants and the Swiss chalet restaurant behind her. She looked carefree and happy in the shot.

“Do you want me to get one of the both of you?” a woman asked as she walked by with a man I assumed was her husband.

“No, that’s –.”

“Yes, thank you,” Blair interrupted. “Come stand by me, Jenny.”

I stood stiffly at her side.

“You need to move closer and act like you like each other,” the woman teased.