Page 25 of Hero on the Road
“Ourbodies, Olivia,” he retorted.
That didn’t make it much better.
“So you’re thinking we’ll be dead and laying in back and someone else will be driving?”
His hand shot out and he jammed his finger right into my ribs, then started tickling. “That’s not what I meant and you know it!”
I screeched and scurried away from his fingers. “Don’t tickle! You said our bodies like we’d be dead! Tickling is not an appropriate response to me calling you on it!”
He stuck his tongue out at me. “Tickling is an appropriate response to anything. Okay, we need clothes. Unless you have more stuffed in your backpack than I realized.”
“Even if I did, it wouldn’t include clothes for you.”
We strolled slowly toward the clothing section, making a list of the things we were definitely going to need and how often we thought we’d be able to stop and do laundry while we were on the road. By the time we got to the women’s section, we’d decided on three pairs of jeans each, several tops, and one pair of shoes. Maybe a dress for me. Maybe some cowboy boots if we could find them.
And I was trying not to think about how much money we were spending. I’d had cash stuffed into my backpack and Connor had his debit card, but we were officially on a fixed income until someone could deposit money in Connor’s account, and that made me nervous. I’d grown up in a home where there was always enough money, and the thought of not having it made me feel untethered in a way I didn’t completely understand.
Still. It wasn’t as if we could go out on the road without clothes.
“Oh my God, you have to get this,” Connor said, breaking me out of my thoughts.
I turned to see him holding up something that might have been a dress but might also have been a burlap sack. If burlap sacks came in bright pink.
“Connor, pink is not my color,” I said politely. “Redheads should never wear pink.”
He scoffed. “Olivia, you’d look beautiful in anything you wore.”
I eyed the piece he was holding up. “Not that.”
“Anything,” he said softly, looking at me with something in his eyes that I didn’t want to think about.
I turned, avoiding that look, and laid eyes on the ugliest shirt I’d ever seen. No, it wasn’t a men’s shirt but I was sure it came in XL.
And it was the perfect distraction from the way Connor had been looking at me.
I walked over, grabbed the shirt, and turned, grinning. “Fair’s fair, Connor. I’ll try that on if you try this on.”
His mouth dropped open to deny me, but I shook the shirt and nodded.
“Yep. You put this on and model it for me with....” I looked over to the men’s section, eyes flitting across the selection, and ran over for a pair of honest-to-God checkered pants. “These!” I whirled and saw him turning a shade of red I’d never imagined possible, and laughed aloud. “Put these on and let me see them and I’ll try on the pink sack.”
He narrowed his eyes and considered, then grabbed several other things off the rack. A bright yellow shirt that would definitely clash with my hair, a plaid skirt, and shorts that didn’t look like they would cover anything. I retaliated by grabbing more of the worst clothes I could find, and he retaliated again.
By the time we headed for the dressing rooms, we were both holding armfuls of clothes we’d never buy but had agreed to put on just so the other would have to wear one of the things we’d chosen. And we were laughing like children, our whoops echoing through the mostly deserted store.
What was more, I was having fun. There was no reason for that to be true. We were stuck in Great Falls with a van that looked like it may or may not have a time portal hidden in the back. We had no money and no one coming to rescue us. We didn’t know if we’d make it to our next stop, and even if we did, we didn’t have much in the way of equipment.
Our label had hung us out to dry and I had a bad feeling they’d somehow arranged it that way. They’d also made it clear that we had to stay on tour if we wanted to win those contracts they were dangling in front of us. I didn’t know how we were going to do that. We had what passed for a plan, but it wasn’t good.
This was a nightmare come to life.
And if I had to experience it, at least Connor was here with me, making me laugh through the whole thing.
CHAPTER14
Connor
Iwoke up the next morning facing the wall of the van, and remembered that I’d faced this way on purpose. Olivia and I had stayed in Walmart until security started asking us whether there was anything else we needed and had then headed toward the exit with our sleeping bags, pillows, and clothes that we might actually wear. Olivia had washed her face in the bathroom next to the exit and we’d both brushed our teeth.
