Page 7 of Obey

Mercifully, Bessie doesn’t need any foreplay to get her going. She starts first time, and we inch our way out of the airport.

“You good with Wendy’s?”

The woman has finally fallen silent. She’s not asleep, but her eyes are glazed over as she stares out the window at the growing sheet of white coating everything in sight.

When I touch her arm to get her attention, she flails, catching my face with the back of her tiny hand. If she was bigger than a fairy, that could have done some damage.

“OhmygoodnessohmygoodnessohmygoodnessI’msosorryIdidn’tmeantohityou.” She doesn’t take a breath, I’m not quite sure what she said, but her hand now rests on my forearm, and I hate that I don’t hate it. Especially since she’s leaving my jaw alone. That actually kinda stung.

“Wendy’s?”

She purses her lips like she’s giving it real consideration. “Chili cheese baked potato, twenty spicy nuggets, and a largechocolate Frosty.” That crimson color seeps back into her cheeks.

Given the state of the roads, she’ll get what she gets.

“Please.” Her voice is quieter, and her eyes are focused on something that isn’t me.

If I wasn’t driving I might be tempted to hook my knuckle under her chin and make her look at me. “You sure that’s what you want? I’m getting a burger. If you want a burger, get your own. I don’t share food.”

Her head snaps back to me, eyebrows arched. “I don’t either. Get your own spicy nuggets.” She folds her arms, a challenging glint flickering in her eye like she’s daring me to comment on the amount of food she wants me to get for her. What she wants to put in her body isn’t any of my business. Unless what she wants to put in her body is attached to me.

Her face falls when I don’t say anything back to her. I want to laugh, but I don’t want her to take that as a sign I’m warming to her. I’m not.

It takes an extraordinarily long time to get to Wendy’s. I’m not sure if it’s because her car sucks, the weather’s bad, or everyone’s driving like it’s their first time behind the wheel. Might be a combination of all three.

By the time I hand her the bag of food at the drive thru, her stomach is growling even louder than mine. I’ve never seen someone so gleefully happy to be given food before. Her smile is so bright I might go blind. I have to force myself to look away.

She wastes no time before diving in. Instead of tearing into her nuggets, she carefully, half unwraps my burger and folds the excess paper around it before handing it to me. She pauses before I can accept. “Do you eat fries first?”

I can’t give her the look I want to because we’d end up in a snow bank. “I eat it how it comes.” I’m not fussy. In fact, if I hadmore hands and space, I’d toss my fries into my burger. But I’m not asking her to do that for me. She’s not my personal servant.

Though the thought sends a brief shudder through my spine.

She hands me the burger. “Let me know when you’re ready for your fries, ‘kay?”

What do I do with that? Usually, my co-pilots take their food, drop the bag with my shit on my lap, and I’ve got to figure it out for myself.

When one of the condiments on my burger trickles down my chin, I shove my hand in the door pocket for napkins. Except this rust bucket isn’t my car, and there’s something sticky inside.

Now I have a burger in one hand, something sticky on the other, something running down my chin, and a car to keep on the road with limited visibility and using my knees to steer through snow.

This wasn’t my smartest plan.

A hand clutching a napkin shoots out and catches the liquid before it drops onto my shirt. She mops my face like a mother hen, pats it a couple times, then takes my burger away.

She digs into the bag at her feet and produces hand sanitizer. “Hands out.” She drops a blob onto my palms, and I scrub away the gluey crap on my fingers, dry my hands on my jeans, and rescue my burger from her.

After I take a giant bite, she clicks her tongue. “You’re welcome.”

I can’t help but laugh at her passive aggression, or rather, straight up southern aggression, which forces the food I swallowed to get lodged in my chest, making me cough-snort. Pretty sure I have lettuce in my nostrils.

This woman.

It takes a long moment to swallow down the stuck hunk of beef and wash it down with a gulp of pop. “Thank you.”

Her lips twitch. “You’re welcome.”

We eat in silence, and to her credit, she clears every morsel of everything she ordered. I’m starting to think she’s a sociopath though. Who gets a Frosty without getting fries to dip into it?

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