Random on Tour: Los Angeles (Random Series #7) (12 page)

Salty spit formed where my throat pounded.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was tears.

Except I didn’t cry.

Here’s the thing: I was one hundred percent dependent on that woman who just shot off like a rainbow running a marathon into the woods, fleeing
me
.

I had no control here. I had three hundred and fifty bucks and a borrowed acoustic guitar. A shirt. A pair of jeans. Two socks and two shoes. That is it. That’s all I was.

That’s
who
I was.

Tyler the Fuckup.

And now I was sitting in a car I couldn’t drive wondering how to ask the impossible from a chick who I’d just opened up and lit into like I’d never done before.

I hadn’t screamed at someone like that since the day I told my dad his friend did what he did to me and Dad said it was my fault.

So why the fuck would I scream at
Maggie
? The spunky chick with Day-Glo blue eyes and a smile that made me feel like it was okay to be myself. Whatever that meant. 

Thank God she screamed back. She should have. The salty taste in my throat backed up and fuck—now it was in my eye. I got out of the car and took as many breaths as it took to calm down. To think. To stop this fucking assault of feelings.

Twenty minutes later it didn’t go away. Someone put a metal band around my chest, around my head, and they were tightening the screws.

She came around the corner, a flash of color, and disappeared into the bathroom. My chest tightened at the sight of her body, tall and curvy, tense and focused. I’d made her so angry she’d screamed back and now I wished I’d never appeared on her porch this morning. Never tried to make any of this work. Never gotten to the library and emailed Darla and pieced together this insane series of events that left me with a pain in my chest, a salty taste in my throat and a feeling like I’d just fucked up the one chance I had at having a friend. More than a friend.  

Someone
real
. 

I had nothing to offer. Not one damn thing. She had more money than me. The car. A family who supported her. There wasn’t a single thing I could give her. Why was she here? Why was she helping me? I was the jerk who turned her down the one time she did ask for something from me. 

The one time I had something to offer.

I owed her everything. She was the only connection I had between total failure and a thin shot at making it. Everything I was—relied on her. 

I really hated her for that.

And I really, really didn’t want to hate her.

The whole shitting our brains out thing didn’t help, either.

Maggie

I stayed at the edge of the woods until the gummy bears made me go back. They excavated my upper intestines and gurgled so badly it was like a volcano was erupting inside me.

A shit volcano.

An apt metaphor for this road trip.

As I scurried to the bathroom and took care of business, I realized that this was truly doomed. I needed, somehow, to get out of this mess. Could I drop Tyler off at a truck stop with a fist full of money and my cell phone? He might get to L.A. faster that way. As I thought more about it and tried to fight the growing sense of hysteria that bloomed in me like a Venus Flytrap plant, the idea both sickened me and made me feel better.

It was, if nothing else, an alternative.

Having an option meant that if I didn’t choose it, at least I’d made a choice. I had some control. I wasn’t unmoored and at the mercy of forces I couldn’t see, like a pawn in a giant game of magical chess between the gods.

The illusion of control is better than the lack of an illusion. It’s something, and when you feel like everything’s a threat and you’re not safe, then pretending becomes your only anchor. 

Except.

Except, right now, it wasn’t Tyler who was making me feel unsafe.

It was me.

I’ve stood up for myself before. Taken self-defense lessons and finished more workshops on how to be assertive than anyone can teach. I’d dog-eared Brene Brown’s books on overcoming shame and I’d worked my way through The Secret and every self-help book Oprah has ever recommended.

That’s a lot.

My body started to shake, and not from the fact that my colon was tapping out a funk beat that rivaled any Bruno Mars song.

I was shaking because I had to face my own reality.

Which meant I had to go out there and face Tyler.

As I walked to the car, head held high, I saw him sitting on a park bench, hands splayed on his knees, staring toward the woods.

I halted, uncertain what to do next.

He looked up and immediately said, “I’m really sorry I screamed at you like that.”

All the racing lectures, the angry retorts, the ways I was going to get him back died in my throat. I hadn’t been sure I was going to use any of them, but if I had—they were gone now.

His eyes were so beseeching.
Forgive me
, they seemed to say.
I’m sorry
.

But the words—oh, the words meant something, especially coming from him.

“Thank you.” I stood, transfixed, just staring into his soulful eyes.

He ran a hand through his short hair, mussing it in frustration. “I don’t yell at people like that. I think I’ve only ever done it to my little brother, Johnny, and once to my dad. I meant it, Maggie. I just...shit.” He frowned, clearly struggling to convey an idea to me.

I sat next to him, on the other side of a bench that easily seated four adults. I turned and looked at him.

“I get it. It doesn’t make it okay, but I get it.”

“No. Not okay. I don’t make any excuses.” He looked down at his hands, his face a mask now.

“That doesn’t mean you don’t have reasons.”

His head popped up and he gave me a bemused look. “People who give you all their reasons for treating you like shit are just giving excuses. Same thing.”

“It’s not the same thing, Tyler. Not if the apology is heartfelt.”

He made a
hmph
sound. “The apology is real. Not sure I agree with you about excuses versus reasons.”

“We don’t have to agree on everything.”

“Like that would ever happen.”

I laughed lightly and he gave me a loopy, tentative grin. When he smiled, he became a different person. I could see how some kind of burden etched itself in his body, his skin, in the lines of his face and the planes of muscle across his chest and shoulders. The smile took a burden off him for seconds and set him free.

And then he went back to being Frown.

“I just hate,” he said, taking in a shaky breath that made me lean closer, “being in this position.”

“What position?”

He looked up at me and his eyes shone with so much emotion I felt blinded. “Relying on you. Your kindness. I really don’t know why you’re doing this, Maggie. But I’m glad you are. I need the help. I got a shit turn of luck.”

“Um,” I said, clearing my throat.

Panic flashed across his features. “What?”

“Did you really need to use the word ‘shit’? I think we’ve had enough of it for the day.”

He laughed, relieved. I wonder what he was afraid I was about to say?

“Yeah. Not the best word.” His gut rumbled and he closed his eyes.

“This too shall pass.” 

He groaned. “That was bad.”

“I know.”

He blinked, hard, and looked up at the sky. Dusk was just starting to fall and I wasn’t going to make it twenty-nine hours straight. I had a credit card and could pay for a hotel. We couldn’t drive through the night. And Tyler couldn’t drive a stick shift at all.

And yet I was wired. It was like someone had given me ten cups of coffee in one sip.

“Maggie, you asked what happened to me. How this happened.” He spread his arms out.

“I know how this happened. Darla and her damn gummy bears.”

He was serious and didn’t laugh. A prickly feeling began in my forehead. While I was used to Tyler and his serious face, I got the sense that this was going into new territory. 

“You...have been so nice to me. For no reason.”

“Tyler, I’m helping you. It’s what people do when they’re friends.”

“We’re friends?”

“We’d better be. Once you start openly talking about your bowel habits with someone you’re pretty much married.”

He smiled. It lit up the world, a dark and smoky smile this time, one that made me bite my lower lip and laugh because you really shouldn’t look sexy and intriguing when talking about your colon.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Us.”

“I am never, ever eating another gummy bear again.”

“I’m never eating anything Darla hands me again,” I replied.

He nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll give gummy bears another chance, but give me the real sugar next time.” 

Our stomachs made mild earthquake sounds. Tyler twitched and grimaced.

“This is the weirdest way I’ve ever bonded with someone,” I joked.

“We’re bonding?”

I shrugged. What was it about him that made me so acutely aware of every hair on my body, every breeze that blew by, every noise near and far? The rush of cars on the highway and the sweet song of a bird in the background were both equally important. Relevant.
There
.

“I think,” he said slowly, “you bond when you trust someone.” He just narrowed his eyes and let that hang there. 

“You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t trust anyone, Maggie,” he said with a rueful smile. It didn’t light up his face. That smile made me want to cry for whatever it was that happened in his life to make it appear.

“Then you’re not really alive, Tyler.”

“Pithy.” 

“
You
were the one quoting Thoreau from coffee mugs earlier today.” 

He tilted his head as if to concede. “Not one to talk, then,” he said sadly. 

“Tell me what happened to you this morning,” I asked. Pleaded, really. “Who stole from you? Why did they take everything?”

His long inhale held entire worlds in it. As he blew out, he shook his head. “That was just this morning, wasn’t it?” The pale grey sky met the fading sun, leaving a streak of pink in the sky. We were still, even after after five hours on the road, not even in Junction City, Kansas. We had a long stretch of absolutely nothing ahead of us, and I was the driver. 

“Quit changing the subject.”

“Tell me the real reason why you wanted me to fuck you two months ago.”

A knife sliced through my heart.

I couldn’t.

“I’ll tell you, then, Maggie. I’ll tell you.”

“You know me better than I know myself?”

“No. It’s just always easier to see someone else’s fear than it is to see your own.”

“So what’s my fear?”

“That there’s some parallel Maggie out there who was supposed to be you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” And yet my body began to shake inside. He couldn’t see that. What he said felt true, though. In my marrow. 

“Sure it does. There’s this part of you that believes your better self got taken from you that night. Worse than anything else those guys did. They took your undamaged self, and—”

“I’m not damaged goods!” I shrieked, the words high and loud, out before I could even think.

“I never said you were.”

“You just did!” 

“No, I didn’t.”

“Quit gaslighting me, Tyler.”

“I haven’t passed gas in several—”

“Gaslighting! Quit trying to tell me I’m not experiencing what I am experiencing!”

“What are you talking about?” He seemed completely perplexed. My fight-or-flight response was kicking in and I worked to tamp down my massive flashpoint within.

“You called me damaged. You did. Then you tried to claim you didn’t. Gaslighting is when you—”

“Maggie.” He reached out and grabbed my hand. His touch was like a tight sigh in my bones. “I didn’t say you were damaged. I said those guys took your undamaged self and—”

“And what?”

“—broke it. There’s a difference.”

“I’m not broken!”

“Would you take a minute,” he said, gently squeezing my hand, “and just listen before you argue? I’m not good with words. I don’t explain things right. When I try, it’s like the hardest thing in the world. I’m not trying to be mean or say the wrong thing. I’m not playing mind games. I’m not putting you down on purpose. I’m trying to say something true and whole. I am fucking it up royally, but I’m going to say this.”

I squeezed back. “Okay.”

“I think you came to me that night because you needed someone damaged to be undamaged with.” 

I closed my eyes, my breath coming out hard.

He made me less afraid because he named my fear.

And once you name something, you can fight it.

I wasn’t afraid of being hurt.

I was afraid of never really living. Never really loving. Never really being loved. Real love comes with pain, my mom always said. She and Dad had been married for thirty-one years.

Real love, Maggie, means going past the fear of being hurt and rejected and realizing that you only become more real when you test yourself. When you trust and love beyond your wildest fears—in spite of those fears. The real risk isn’t in being hurt. It’s in never putting yourself in a position to be hurt.

Tyler made me want to try.

And I kind of hated him for that.

“But I—”

I held my breath. Whatever came next out of his mouth was like a ripple in time. Like some kind of separation between seven years ago and now was being breeched. Shaken. Smoothed out.

He sighed through his nose, lips pursed, and let go of my hand. “You know what? Let me talk while you drive. It’ll keep you awake. I’ll tell you what happened.”

My belly button made an ominous sound.

“After one last bathroom stop,” he sagely suggested.

We dispatched with the necessaries quickly and resumed our drive, the relationship between us forever altered.

Not that I knew what this relationship even was, but it was something.

And I felt like we were about to find out what
something
was.

Chapter Eight

Tyler