Page 23 of Cruise Control

“Shut up. I mean, I really thought you were gonna kick his ass. One minute you were all smiling and joking, the next all manly and angry – 'I don’t give a flying fuck’,” she over-dramatically lowered her voice to imitate him.

“Okay now, I definitely don’t sound like that.”

“No, but still. It was so cool, Parker. You were justso cool. Very ‘I can kick your ass, but I’m too cool to waste my time’; I thought it was great,” she gushed. He dug his car keys out of his pocket.

“Well, you seemed flustered. I’ve noticed it doesn’t take much to get you angry, but I haven’t really seen you flustered. And I don’t like to see guys harassing girls, makes me mad. I don’t wanna see anyone upset you,” he explained. He didn't want to see anyone upset her? She suddenly felt a warmth spread across her chest, and it made her all giddy.

“Shut up. It was amazing. You’re amazing. Thank you for being my knight in shining armor,” she laughed, and then did the most shocking thing of all.

She hugged him.

~4~

“... stupid, backwoods, okie, country, bitch ...”

Paige had figured thatafter a couple days, maybe a week at the most, of driving around with Parker, she would begin to crave her solitude and break off from him. She warned him constantly that it would happen sooner or later. It’s whatalwayshappened – the longest time she'd ever spent with a person who'd picked her up had been a week, and that was only because the weather had been too ugly to pass up the ride.

So that’s why, a couple weeks later, Paige was shocked she was still in Parker’s car, cruising around. Even more shocking, she wasn’t feeling the least bit like heading out on her own. If anything, she was beginning to have trouble imagining being on her own again. Being with Parker felt right. It felt natural. They made a great team. His laid back attitude calmed her down, and she got the feeling that if he hadn’t picked her up, he would’ve long since driven himself crazy. He didn’t do too well without a person to talk to – Parker liked to talk.A lot.

They hadn’t made it to Texas yet – they'd stayed the night in Tennessee and then they went to the Gateway Arch in Missouri. They spent a week running around St. Louis. Paige was finally able to get some laundry done, and Parker splurged and put them up in a nice hotel where they could get wifi. He'd produced a laptop from his trunk and had stayed out on the balcony with it for a long time. He'd come back inside with such a scowl that Paige hadn’t even tried to figure out what had gone wrong. She had ignored his bad attitude and offered to take him out to dinner at a fun karaoke joint, a foolproof way to make him happy again.

That was another surprising discovery, how much she wanted to make Parker happy. For the most part he was already a cheery guy, but once in a while, especially after he'd been on his phone, he would fall into a funk. Almost like he was depressed. So she would drop her bitch act for a little bit and try to treat him to some of the silliness he usually provided.

She didn’t want to examine why she wanted to make Parker happy, she just told herself it was only because he'd been so nice to her. He drove in whatever direction she pointed in, and more often than not, he paid for their meals and lodging. Of course, usually those lodgings were just about the cheapest motels she’d ever seen or stayed in; Parker insisted staying in fleabag motels was part of the Great American Roadtrip experience. She found that hard to believe, but she didn’t complain – free was free.

It was nice to be taken care of, for once.

But there was a whisper at the back of her mind telling her it was more than that, a whisper reminding her of how he'd looked at her by that pool in Mississippi. She would shudder and push those thoughts away.

There was really no reason for her to assume he'd meant anything more than exactly what he'd said – he still acted like she was just a buddy, another bro. Since that first time in the car together, when he'd stopped her from picking at her thumbnail, he hadn’t touched her. Not once. Not a hand on the shoulder, a guiding hand on the back, a hug,anything. She initiated any and all touching between them, which usually at most was a punch to his shoulder.

She knew that should make her happy, that he didn’t seem romantically interested in her. She'd tried hard to ensure that's exactly how he should react to her – she acted like a guy when she was with him, so she knew she deserved to get treated like a guy. But she found herself thinking about it more and more.

For the week they shared the hotel room in St. Louis, she kept expecting him to slip up, to touch her, or to catch him watching her as she got ready in the morning. But she never did. If she ever woke up in the middle of the night, she would roll over and look at him while he slept, wondering what he really thought about her.

Did he find her attractive? If he did, he never showed it. Did he know she thought he was gorgeous? Had he figured out that just seeing him walk into a room made her heart race, her blood pressure rise? That the idea of continuing on without him, the idea of him driving away without her, was quickly becoming painful to her?

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