Driving Me Mad (8 page)

“Wow. I never would have
thought that, or how you’re a country music fan either. Although, I
can believe the dancing one for some reason.” She giggles, causing
me to smile. She’s managed to eat three slices of pizza, so I feel
really proud of myself. “Mind if I use your shower?”

“Sure.”

I show her where to find what
she’ll need and then return to the kitchen to clean up the last two
days’ worth of dishes while trying not to think about how she’s
naked and wet in my house. Is she going to want to go somewhere? Or
hang here all day? If it’s the former, where will we go? She knows
this town better than I do. Honestly, I’m hoping we can stay here
and be lazy.

My phone rings, and my
shoulders slump when I see it’s my father. Not telling him about my
depression has certain disadvantages and they are always prevalent
in our conversations. I go ahead and get the sigh out now before I
answer.

“Hey, Dad.”

“I’m surprised you answered,”
he says dryly. “You’ve been ignoring my calls for a month now.”

“Things have been busy.”
That’s true, but I’ve been ignoring his calls because I haven’t had
the energy to talk to him. “I just am settled in here now.”

“It’s not like I wanted to
yap with you for an hour; it was a simple checking-in call that
wouldn’t have taken ten minutes. Anyway, how are things there?”

“Good. Job is going well so
far and I like it here.”

“Great. When are you planning
to visit us since you were too busy over Christmas?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose
and take a deep breath. “I was moving,” I point out.

“That doesn’t answer my
question.”

Dad only remarried three
years ago and ever since, he’s been hounding me to go to Texas and
visit more often than I do. There’s a reason I don’t visit. Hell,
there are a lot of reasons. I pretend to bang my head against the
fridge, trying to think of an answer.

“Trace?” I hear my dad and a
soft, clearly feminine voice say.

I turn to see Brittany with
her wet hair up in a messy bun. She’s squeezing her wrist and looks
worried. It pisses me off that I’ve worried her. “Dad, I need to
go.”

“What? Why? I’m trying to
have a conversation with you and you can’t take a few minutes to
talk to me?”

“No, I have company. I’ll
talk to you later. Love you, bye.” I hang up without waiting for
him to respond.

“Are you okay?” Brittany
asks.

“Yeah. I’m going to shower.”
I walk past her and am down the hallway when she stops me.

“Trace.”

I turn to face her. She wants
to say more; I can tell because her lips are parted. When she
doesn’t say anything after a beat, I continue on my way to the
shower. This day was going so well. I need to recoup while I’m in
the shower because I know if I don’t, Brittany won’t be able to
hold off asking me about it.

Then again, I feel guilty
because I’m supposed to be talking to her about these kinds of
things and here I am trying to make sure she doesn’t make me. My
shower isn’t helping clear my thoughts at all, so I make it a quick
one.

Brittany is sitting in the
middle of the couch, watching TV when I walk in. I sit next to her
and decide to just go for it. “You know how I didn’t really talk to
you my first month here?” She nods. “Well, I didn’t talk to my dad
at all either. He’s pissed I didn’t come home for Christmas and
wants to know when I’ll visit. I don’t like to visit because I’m
not always in the best of shapes and I have to hide it from him.”
Her mouth opens. “Don’t tell me that I could just tell him. Topic
is off limits for a while. So,” I get us back on track, “it
stresses me out to have to talk to him.”

“I’m sorry.” Her frown
deepens. “You spent Christmas alone?”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

She nods, but I can’t tell if
she believes me or not. “What are we going to do?”

“Well, since I was at
someone’s dorm room last night, I missed the new
Dateline
,
but I had it recorded. Want to watch that with me?”

“Sure.”

“Do you want some popcorn? I
usually have a bowl to munch on while I watch.”

Brittany tilts her head.
“Really? Popcorn with
Dateline
? It’s not a movie. It’s a
show where it’s always obvious who did it. Why do you need
popcorn?”

“Because I’m an old man set
in my ways and I eat popcorn when I watch the show. Want a Sun
Drop?”

“Yes, please.” I stand and
head toward the kitchen. “And you’re not old!” she calls after
me.

Her comment makes me smile. I
come back to the living room, two cans of drink in one hand and a
bowl of freshly popped popcorn in the other. This is a decent way
to spend the afternoon.

***

T
race is so
completely invested in
Dateline
; it’s cute. It may also be
the first time, aside from when he’s sleeping, that he looks
relaxed. Trace being relaxed causes me to do the same. For the
first time in months, my anxiety seems to take a break. I rest my
head on Trace’s shoulder, very much enjoying being here with
him.

While he fast-forwards on a
commercial, I ask, “You’re from Texas, right? How did you end up in
North Carolina?”

“We took a vacation here one
year and I fell in love with the state. I came here for college and
never left.”

“What do you love about North
Carolina?” I’ve never lived anywhere else, so it will be
interesting to hear about it from someone who wasn’t born and
raised here.

Trace pauses the show, so he
doesn’t miss what comes next while he answers me. “I love that it
has both the mountains and the beach. I love that you get all four
seasons. I love that Sun Drop exists here. Whenever I do take trips
home, I have to pack some to take with me. And I love that I’ve yet
to visit a place I didn’t like.”

“How often do you go back to
Texas?”

“Every year or so.” Most
likely as a method of preventing me from asking more questions, he
asks, “Do you think you’ll ever move out of the state?”

“Probably not. I love it
here. Plus, I haven’t really traveled enough to know where I’d want
to go. I would like to do some traveling, though.”

“Me too.”

I stay quiet so he can finish
watching his show. I laugh to myself at the thought of how it’s
sort of like his soap opera. Trace raises an eyebrow at my
chuckling, but I shake my head. As it comes to an end, an antsy
feeling takes over. It’s like I’m suddenly on high alert and can’t
stop thinking about all I need to do. “I should get back,” I
reluctantly start. “Homework and all.”

Trace slouches a little more
into the couch, stretching his legs out underneath the coffee
table, as if he’s getting comfortable and not as if he’s about to
get up and take me to campus. He turns his head against the back
cushion to look at me. “Have a lot to do?”

“More like I have a lot to go
over and perfect.”

He reaches over to take my
hand in his, practically swallowing it whole. “I think you could
use a day off.”

“I had a day off yesterday,”
I remind him.

“That doesn’t count. You
slept for most of it.” When I frown, he smiles slightly and leans
over to place a firm, short kiss against my lips. My first thought
is about how I guess we’re joking about the error of my ways, but
it all fades away with the touch of his mouth until he speaks and
snaps me out of it quickly. “I can’t stop thinking about fried
pickles and I want you to go eat some with me. After that, if you
want to go back to campus, I’ll take you.”

If
I want to go back
to campus? Is that an invitation to stay here again? No, I’m sure
he simply misspoke or meant something else. “Okay,” I say.

“Great. Let’s go.” He stands
and I do too. Trace tries to lead me to the door, but I make sure I
grab my things first. He
is
dropping me off afterward. I
need to go over my homework and I can’t do that if I stay here with
him again.

I tell him where to go for
the best fried pickles in town, and he drives there. A to-do list
begins to form in my head once we’re in the restaurant and sitting
at the bar. There’s so much to do and not enough time to do it in.
There probably would be if I didn’t have to have panic
attack-induced breaks. Trace’s fingers intertwine with mine on the
bar top, causing me to glance over at him.

“I can hear you thinking from
over here,” he says with a wry smile.

“You’re not that far away,” I
point out, making him laugh. His laugh steals my breath away. For
the briefest of moments, all is right in our worlds.

“Tell me where in the world
is your top place to visit.”

I smile. He’s trying to
distract me from whatever I’m thinking. “Las Vegas.”

Trace’s eyebrows might as
well be taking a trip to outer space. “Seriously?”

“I know, right? Seems like it
would be the anxiety epicenter of the world, and I think that’s
part of why I want to go. It’s crowded and crazy. If I could
survive a trip there, I could survive going anywhere else in the
world. Where would you want to go?”

“Italy. My foreign language
classes were Italian. We learned about the culture some, and I’d
love to go there.”

“You speak Italian?” Wow. I
didn’t know that.

Trace chuckles. “I spoke
Italian. It’s been so long since then that I only remember a few of
the basics.”

The waitress drops off our
fried pickles. I push them toward Trace, so he can have one first.
These are seriously the best fried pickles I’ve ever had. He pops
one into his mouth. His eyes close and a low groan comes from his
throat.

“Told ya,” I say before
eating one myself after dipping it in ranch.

“These are amazing.”

“It’s all in the breading, I
think. It definitely makes a difference.” My phone begins to
vibrate in my purse, and I pull it out to see a call from my
mother. “I better answer; she worries when I don’t. I’m going to
step outside.” Trace nods and I hop off the bar stool. “Hey, Mom,”
I answer.

“How’s it going?”

“Fine. I can’t talk too long,
though.” It’s way too cold out here, especially when I have a hot
guy inside waiting for me.

“Oh, sorry, Brittany,” she
says. “Are you busy?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of? What are you
doing?”

“I’m out...with a
friend.”

“A friend?” Oops. Being vague
is
not
the way to go with my mother, it seems. I can just
picture my mom sitting up straighter and waving over my father.
“What kind of friend?” Yep. Totally on speaker phone. Her voice
always sounds a little different.

“A guy friend.”

“Please tell me it isn’t
what’s his name from last year,” Dad says. He only knows about
what’s his name
because I told Mom about him. It barely
lasted a month.

“No, Dad,” I sigh. “You’d
actually like this guy.” Well, he liked him when he was my
therapist.

“Ooh. Do tell,” Mom says with
excitement.

“You’re making me be a bad
date, Mom. I only answered so you wouldn’t worry. Call me tomorrow,
okay?”

“Oh, all right. Enjoy your
date!”

“Thanks,” I laugh. “Bye, love
y’all.” I’m finally able to rush back into the warmth. Trace is
smiling when I sit next to him. “What’s with the smile?” I ask as I
rub my hands together to heat them up.

Trace takes them between his.
God, his hands are like a furnace compared to mine. “You’re cute
when your nose and cheeks are red.”

I roll my eyes. “Because it’s
a freaking freezer out there. Mom wanted to learn about the
friend,” I give him a pointed look, “I’m hanging out with and who
is the reason I can’t talk to her right now.”

His body tenses. I swear, he
even stops breathing for a moment. “Fuck,” he mutters under his
breath, releasing my hands and leaving them to fall limply into my
lap. “You told them?”