Page 75 of Ride With Me

“I’m good with taking you to South Carolina.” I looked at the GPS. “Assuming you’re okay with the fact that I was planning ongrabbing a hotel tonight. No way can I do seventeen hours in one stretch.”

I was thinking about either Kentucky or Tennessee. I’d learned my lesson about getting a hotel in Illinois, which I’d done on the way to Missouri. The motel I’d stayed in looked like it hadn’t been updated in years, and the front desk clerk had seemed shocked to see someone checking in late at night and alone. Judging by the sounds I heard through the paper thin walls, he probably was. The whole place gave me the vibe of a place that charged by the hour. On my way to the ice machine, I’d seen some really suspicious guys hanging by a car. I kept my head down, got my ice, and practically ran back to my room.

No way was I repeating that experience again.

“If we’re going to be sharing a room, I might be more comfortable if I had your name,” the stranger in my passenger seat commented. “Plus it might make this whole trip a lot less uncomfortable.”

So it was weird for him too? That was a relief. Somehow, hearing him say that relaxed me a bit. “Jasper,” I told him. “My name’s Jasper. What’s yours?”

“Callum.”

“Where are you from, Callum?”

“California. I was doing the whole drive across the country thing, until my car decided to take a shit on me. I got it to a mechanic, but from how they were talking, the repairs would cost more than it was worth. So I figured I’d cut my losses. He offered me some cash for the car, and well, here I am.”

“What’s bringing you to South Carolina?”

“I’ve got some friends out there. Figured I’d pay them a visit.” He said it like it was just a normal whim to follow. “Not like I had a lot else going on.” I raised an eyebrow toward him as we inched forward. “Lost my job a few weeks ago. My friend, he works forsome big tech company, and he suggested I come check out the town. See if I liked it. So I might be moving out east.”

“And you thought driving there was the best idea?”

“I don’t like planes,” he admitted, shifting in his seat. “Being closed up like that with a bunch of strangers in a death machine? No thank you. What brought you out… here? I’m not actually sure where you started.”

“Kansas City,” I supplied. “I had to go to a convention for work. My boss told me to fly there, but I figured a quick road trip might be nice. See some places I’d never seen before.” I paused. I could feel the smile playing at my lips. “Unfortunately, no one warned me that the area between those places? Boring as hell.”

“Where were you wanting to see?”

“Nashville and St. Louis, honestly. I wanted to see the arch, and there’s just a lot of music history in Nashville. Ended up staying there a bit longer than I planned, so I didn’t make it quite as far into Illinois as planned before I needed to pass out for the night.”

“What all did you see in Nashville?”

I started talking about the few hours I’d spent in Nashville. I told him about the Parthenon there, and he asked if I liked Greek mythology and my favorite stories. When I mentioned visiting the Musician’s Hall of Fame, he asked questions about my music taste and shared a bit of his with me. It turned out, we had similar tastes in music. Which took away the nerves that maybe I should have been sharing the aux cords. As we drove deeper into Illinois, Callum felt like less of a stranger. He was a great conversationalist, and I was beginning to feel at ease around him.

“Did you see anything cool driving over from California?”

He started talking about a few things he’d seen. He’d been on the road for almost a week already, taking his time and exploring things that caught his interest. He pulled out his phone andstarted to show me a picture of him at some cheesy ghost town he’d visited before I reminded him that I was driving. Listening to him talk, I no longer minded the fact that we were driving through another boring stretch of road.

Because Illinois was just as boring as Missouri.

After an hour of conversation, he started putting some of his favorite songs into the queue. There were a few I’d never heard, and the ones I liked, I asked him to like for me so I could listen to them again later. There were some that were already on my favorites list, and that lead to other avenues of conversation. We discovered that we were both big Fall Out Boy fans, and he told me about all the times he’d seen them live in concert.

I was hanging on his every word, especially when he began transitioning into other concerts he’d seen and music festivals he’d attended.

“You’ve gone to a lot of shows,” I muttered as he finished talking about a festival he’d gone to in Palm Desert.

“I take it you haven’t?”

“I’ve been to a few, but nowhere near as many as you’ve been to.”

Which got us talking about my favorite concert I’d ever been to. It was at a small bar in King’s Bay, The Rusty Nail, and my ex-boyfriend had been the drummer for this local band. We’d still been together at the time, and while there’d been only about fifty people there, the energy had been great. I’d loved watching him on that stage, chasing his dreams.

“Wait, boyfriend?” Callum’s words came just as I finished the story and set off the first alarm bell I’d had since I’d picked him up.

“Yes.” I tried to keep my voice from being too firm. Just because he questioned the boyfriend thing didn’t mean that he had some kind of negative thoughts about a guy having a boyfriend.

I still felt like I was holding my breath until he answered. “Cool. My ex-boyfriend wasn’t anywhere near as cool.”

I exhaled. Okay, I wasn’t about to be hate crimed in my own car, but I did notice that the feeling of him looking at me lingered a bit more as we drove.

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