Page 6 of Sweet Chaos
“Which charity?”
“A homeless shelter for women and children.” My dad’s view on the homeless: They’re lazy. They’re drug addicts. They would rather beg for money than get a job.
“What made you do that?”
“I just… it’s stupid, I guess. But when I was a kid, I used to collect all those brochures that come in the mail, asking for donations, you know?” He nodded. “The pictures of those kids used to make me cry and I was always begging my dad to donate money because we had so much, and these kids had nothing. But he never would. He told me it was all a hoax to get money out of bleeding hearts like me and I needed to toughen up. He said it was survival of the fittest and if you wanted to stay at the top of the food chain, you couldn’t let your heart rule your head.”
Dylan glanced at me, and I thought he would comment on that, but he focused on the road again and said nothing.
“So that’s the sorry tale of how Scarlett Woods became a poor little rich girl. It was liberating though. It freed me from his expectations. He can’t hold the money over my head anymore. For better or worse, I can make my own choices in life. But in my father’s eyes, I’m a failure and a disappointment.”
“Fuck him. You’re living your own life. Calling the shots. He doesn’t get to play puppeteer pulling all the strings.” I heard something that sounded like respect in his voice.
“You hungry?” he asked a few seconds later as we were cruising down El Camino Avenue, past the designer outlet mall, the hills and towering palm trees behind it.
“What?” I asked, not sure I’d heard him right.
“I’m hungry.” Without waiting for my reply, he whipped the car around and did an illegal U-turn. I checked my side mirror, expecting to see a cop car with flashing red and blue lights chasing after us. Five minutes later, he got off the next exit and a few minutes after that, he pulled into the In-N-Out and got in line for the drive-thru.
“I love In-N-Out burgers.”
“I know.”
I wondered if that’s why he brought me here. But then I dismissed the notion.
“Wouldn’t it be easier and quicker to go inside?” I asked, noticing that the line inside was shorter even though I didn’t really want to leave the comfort and intimacy of his car.
“Then I’d have to deal with all those people. This way I only have to deal with you and the person who takes my order.”
“Sounds like you’ve given this a lot of thought. Guess it’s not easy being a misanthrope.”
“Takes work,” he deadpanned.
I couldn’t help but laugh as I settled back in my heated leather seat and focused on the red brake lights ahead of me. The line moved at sloth speed and I was practically salivating, thinking about the food Dylan had just ordered.
We ate in the back of his G-Wagen, sitting on the tailgate with a view of the hills and the canyon, dotted with lights from the houses. We were sitting close enough that I could feel the heat of his body and inhale his heady scent as I stuffed my face with a cheeseburger and fries that he’d refused to accept money for.
“Donate it to charity, Mother Teresa.”
Dylan checked that I was done eating before he lit a cigarette. “You go to the gym and you obviously work hard for that body…” That was a fact, no use pretending I hadn’t noticed. You didn’t get a body like Dylan’s by sitting around on your ass. “But you still smoke?”
“It’s all about balance.”
I laughed.
He took a drag of his cigarette, his eyes narrowed, the little lines around his eyes crinkling. He could even make smoking look sexy. But then, Dylan could make anything look sexy. Feeling bold, I plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and claimed it as my own.
He scowled. “You’re not a smoker.”
I took a drag and tipped back my head, blowing the smoke into the cold night air. “I know. But I know how to do it now without coughing up a lung.”
“That’s a shame,” he said, extracting a cigarette for himself. Cupping his tattooed hand over the tip, he flicked his Zippo and took a drag. The cherry glow burned brighter as he inhaled and we sat side by side smoking our cigarettes.
The undercurrent of electricity I’d always felt was still there. I knew it was just a chemical reaction, a trick my body played on me whenever he was near, but I wished my brain would send a signal to make it stop.
“You don’t talk as much as you used to,” he observed after moments of silence ticked by.
“I thought you’d appreciate the peace and quiet.”
