Snow Angel (10 page)

With the car engines off, a light, frisky breeze cleared the industrial smell of exhaust away, leaving only the sharp, clean scent of fresh air, dry dirt, and desert sagebrush behind.

Word spread that clearing the accident was taking longer than expected. The backup now extended behind them, through Primm at the Nevada state line, and well back into California.

Melinda and Jacob slouched along the sandy shoulder of the highway for the third time, passing a car full of college-aged girls Rick, Christian, and Wendell were doing their best to impress with their manliness. Eddie had engaged a group of kids in an impromptu game of Capture the Flag, using the cars as obstacles, and looked to be having a great time.

Eddie had never been into the party scene, or the empty-headed arm-ornaments her cousins had favored when they were younger. He’d always been more serious-minded. He did date once in a while, but mostly he preferred to hang out with their group of friends or work on his parents’ ranch, and he volunteered a lot. Melinda admired his work ethic and his convictions, but she wished he’d find someone. He deserved a girl who would recognize and appreciate the warrior’s heart beating beneath his unassuming exterior.

Her cousin, Rick, by contrast, was a total ham, and always the center of attention with his movie-star looks and larger-than-life persona. Girls fell over themselves to get to his side.

Yet despite their surface differences, he and Eddie were inseparable, deeply committed to their mutual causes, and bound by their even deeper friendship.

Melinda and Jacob waved to the guys as they walked on by.

Now in the third hour of the standstill, they exchanged increasingly desultory greetings with their fellow stranded travelers. The initial air of camaraderie had finally begun to wear thin under mounting impatience.

Up ahead, a line made up mostly of women and girls snaked away from a motor-home parked in the fast lane.

“Look at that,” Jacob said, jerking his chin at the motor-home as they passed it.

A sign in the window read ‘Bathroom - $2.00’ in big block print.

Melinda shook her head. “That’s mercenary,” she said with a small laugh. “Brilliant, but mercenary.”

“And sexist,” Jacob added. “Guys can go wherever.”

He waved a hand over the expanse of desert to their right where, sure enough, in the distance a trail of men could be seen making their way to or from a low stand of weedy shrubs.

“Aww, Jakey,” Melinda said, nudging him playfully with her shoulder, “look at you, all enlightened and everything. Who said that women’s studies class wouldn’t pay off?”

“Har-har,” he said, nudging her back.

They continued in comfortable silence until they reached the big rig with the In-N-Out trailer that marked their turning point, more than a mile from where their own vehicles were parked, pivoted in unison, and headed back.

“Did you get the classes you wanted for next term?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah, except I had to take astronomy at eight in the freaking morning. You?”

“Yep, all of them. I told you not to wait on your gen-ed stuff. Those classes always fill up.”

“I know, I know,” she said, kicking at a rock. “I thought, being an upperclassman—”

Jacob scoffed. “Who do you think’s filling them up? Everyone who waited.”

With that, he was off on a tangent about internships, the classes he had left to take before graduation, and all of his grand future plans, which most emphatically did not include settling down in a small town like Pasodoro.

As they came back in sight of the bathroom-privilege-charging motor-home, a more immediate concern occupied Melinda’s thoughts.

“Do you have any money?” she asked, interrupting him mid-sentence. She’d left her purse in the car.

Breaking off in confusion, Jacob looked her way. “What? Why?”

Slightly embarrassed, she gestured toward the motor-home and its long line. The heat climbed her cheeks in a wave when Jacob threw his head back and laughed. Still chortling, he nodded and took her elbow, gallantly escorting her toward the other women.

She’d grown up in the desert and had partied out in it plenty of times all through her high school years. In the high desert, if you wanted to get wasted with ten or twelve of your closest underage friends, driving off into the middle of nowhere was the safest way to do it without getting caught by the cops—or worse, someone’s parents. She’d peed out there plenty of times, too. There wasn’t a lot of choice that far out of town for a group of people drinking their weight in illegal alcohol.

And yet...

Somehow there seemed a vast difference between peeing beside two or three other drunken eighteen-year-old girls in the dark of night, with only the random jackrabbit for an audience, and trying it in broad daylight near the side of a road crammed full of cars and people as a twenty-one-year-old woman.

It occurred to her how nice it was to be beyond that party-girl phase. She’d never really enjoyed it, anyway, but there was something to be said for having a legal drink in a real bar with actual bathroom facilities on site.

Soon after they joined the line, the motor-home’s door opened and Aunt Pat stepped down, nodding regal thanks like a Viking queen to an unseen occupant inside. She waved to Melinda and Jacob as she shuffle-jogged her way past, her blond hair streaming.

Jacob chuckled, but he gave Melinda the two dollars and waited patiently with her. Once she’d had her turn, they fell back into step, making their way slowly toward their cars.

Melinda gradually became aware of a ripple of sound growing behind them as they walked.

“Hey,” Jacob said just as she opened her mouth to speak. “Do you hear that?” They stopped and looked back the way they’d come. “People are starting their cars.”

“Finally!” Melinda said.

They grinned at each other. A couple of guys leaning against the car next to them gave them both double high-fives and a loud
whoo-hoo!
before climbing back into their vehicle and turning its engine over.

Jacob and Melinda moved on, faster now, while all around them, engines began to rev and cars slowly crept forward. They shifted off the pavement to the side of the road, out of the way.

Everywhere they looked, people were diving back into their cars, celebratory whoops going up like it was the Fourth of July.

They were still a fair distance from their vehicles when Melinda spied Danny standing on the driver’s side running board of the SUV and hailing them with his arms raised over his head, urging them to hurry up.

“Come on,” Jacob said, and grabbed her hand.

Together, they sprinted toward the car, flashing past the many vehicles.

Laughing, Melinda gave his hand a squeeze, then disengaged and poured on the speed.

“Hey, slowpoke,” she called, “last one there’s a—ow!”

Her left foot landed in a hole, and she went down hard, scraping her hands and knees on the rough desert sand.

“Mel!” Jacob dropped to his knee beside her, one hand on her back as he peered at her face, tucking back the curtain of her hair. “Are you okay?”

Nodding, Melinda swiped the instant and instinctive rush of tears from her eyes. Stupid, girly reaction! She was more embarrassed than hurt, though her foot throbbed.

“Yeah,” she said. “Just, you know—” She gestured with a wave of her hand to encompass herself, sprawled in the dirt.

She hoped he didn’t hear the slight catch in her frustrated sigh. She was not going to cry over a few scrapes. At least she hadn’t torn a hole in the knees of her favorite jeans.

“Can you stand up?” he asked.

Without waiting for her response, Jacob grabbed her beneath her arms and hauled her up in one quick motion. When he set her back on her feet, she gasped in pain and lifted the left one up again.

“Damn it!” she said. It had better not be sprained and ruin what was already a half-ruined ski trip!

“Here, hop on,” Jacob said, dropping down again with his back to her. He put his hands backward over his shoulders, reaching for hers so he could haul her up on his back. “We’ve got to get moving.”

As if to underscore his statement, the car beside them rolled forward several feet.

Melinda grasped his hands and swung up, then wrapped her arms around his shoulders. His hands clamped her thighs securely as he took off at a jog for the SUV and the rest of their party.

“Is she all right?” Stan called across Karen through the open passenger window of their car as Jacob ran past with Melinda.

“I’m fine!” Melinda yelled back.

When they got to the SUV, Gabe held the passenger door open for Jacob to deposit her on the front seat, then the guys swung into the vehicle and Danny put it in drive, moving forward before she’d even buckled her seatbelt.

All around them, cars picked up speed, their drivers eager to move forward after their long wait.

Leaning over from the third row to pat her on the thigh, Christian asked, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she said again, though embarrassed heat burned the tops of her cheekbones and the tips of her ears.

“You’re lucky I’d just put my phone away,” Danny said while Wendell snickered, “or that sucker’d already be on YouTube. You went down like a brick.”

“Shut up, moron,” Melinda said. Silently, she gave thanks the phone and its handy little video camera had indeed been put away.

“Yeah, don’t they teach you kids etiquette anymore?” Gabe asked from his spot behind Danny, thwacking his friend on the top of his right ear. “You’re supposed to say she went down like a
graceful
brick.”

“Here, Mel,” Jacob said, batting Gabe in the back of the head with one hand and giving her the first aid kit with the other, while the rest of the guys snorted laughter.

Melinda dug out the alcohol pads and swiped them over her stinging palms. The corners of her eyes still prickled, but she sniffed quietly, embarrassed, not wanting any of the guys to see. Her knees would probably be bruised tomorrow. Other than that, they seemed fine.

It was her left foot she was worried about, and she bit her lip as she tried rotating it. It hurt for sure, but she didn’t think it was actually sprained.

Still, she dug back into the first aid kit for some anti-inflammatory medication to head off any swelling.

Just in case.

“Christian, grab some ice out of the cooler,” Jacob said.

Christian made up a baggie full, frowning down any more comments on her gracelessness in the rearview mirror. Jacob handed the bag over the seat.

“Thanks, Jakey,” she said coyly, batting her lashes to disguise their dampness and smiling teasingly at him over her shoulder. “You’re going to make such a good team doctor.”

“It’s not the ice packs, baby,” Jacob drawled. “It’s the dimples. They have magic powers.”

Next to Jacob, Gabe snorted. “Where’d you hear that bit of totally fallacious fantasy?”

“The cheerleaders told me.”

“Really? I heard it from the football players,” Melinda said, and the rest of the guys howled with laughter.

She flipped open the lighted mirror on the car’s sun visor so she could see Jacob’s reflection. He met her eyes and grinned, flashing his deep dimples.

“It’s true,” he said, mock sadly. “Day and night, they call begging for one little smile. They can’t help themselves.”

“I knew it,” said Gabe. “Jakey McDimplekins, team mascot, that’s you.”

“That’s Dr. Jakey McDimplekins to you, smart guy,” Jacob said.

“Is that what you make the football players say when they call?” Gabe waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“Shut up,” Jacob said, popping him one on the arm.

It was true, though. Jacob would be a great doctor. He had the brains to be brilliant, but more importantly, he had the heart.

Melinda sometimes accompanied him when he volunteered at the local retirement homes or worked at the kids’ summer camps with Rick and Eddie. He’d hang out for an afternoon, playing cards and shooting the breeze with the old timers, holding balls of yarn for the women while they knitted and trash-talked the men. Swimming and shooting hoops with the kids. He simply enjoyed their company, young and old, and had been volunteering since long before he’d decided on medicine for his future.

Jacob had been scouted for baseball in high school. Though he played for the university, he claimed he didn’t have the drive to go pro. He loved intramurals and being in the thick of the action, being part of a team, but his first love was medicine and helping people.

Going into sports medicine and becoming a team doctor seemed like the ideal solution. He had the perfect personality to handle cranky sport-diva patients. He’d earn their trust because he genuinely cared about people, and it showed.

Plus, he wouldn’t take any crap from the multi-millionaire players, so they’d respect him, too.

Whichever pro team he wound up with would be lucky to have him. She had no doubt he’d make it onto one of their medical rosters, though the field was fiercely competitive, but she’d miss him outrageously when he left.