Southbound Surrender (8 page)

There are two key things that I don’t know during this haze of rage:

1. I don’t know that I’ll read her letter exactly one-thousand-four-hundred-thirty-two times before I see her again.

2. I don’t know that my lips won’t find Piper’s for more than two-thousand long and agonizing days.

Shatter away, Piper Sullivan. Shatter away.

Chapter 6

Spring 2013

I know you’re wondering if you read the date right. You’re wondering how I could have possibly let five years pass. Believe me, I know. You’re thinking,
Cash Rowland, get on that dirt bike and go find her. She’s the love of your life. You can’t let her get away
. Believe me, I
know
.

It wasn’t like I didn’t try. God, did I try to finagle Piper Sullivan back into my life. Countless Internet searches, endless fake phone calls to Dr. Sullivan’s office to pry information from the receptionist, and even random mailbox checks at Dr. Sullivan’s McMansion. One spring day during my senior year I even showed up at Dr. Sullivan’s office and demanded that he tell me where Piper went.

You can imagine how that went over.

I was a wreck over Piper my senior year, but old Hudson waded me through the madness, and I managed to graduate at the top of our class by some act of the universe, or maybe it was the tortured Jesuses. I was waitlisted at Princeton and when the acceptance letter came late mid-summer, I dropped my plans to attend the local community college with Hudson and enrolled at Princeton.

Big Dave and Hudson reluctantly drove me the seventeen hours to New Jersey and dropped me off with two milk crates of belongings, the half-smoked cigar, and twenty-thousand dollars in loans, for the
first year
. I managed to secure ten grand in scholarships and Big Dave came through with another ten grand, again, reluctantly. He had been saving, even though he hadn’t ever wanted to actually use the savings for college.

I scoured the campus for weeks, checking every dorm and hanging out at every social gathering I could find. I always looked for the same things: pink clothes, blonde hair, and peach lips. And my search always came up empty. Piper wasn’t at Princeton.

It was at the end of that year that I
almost
smoked the cigar and
almost
burned the note Piper had left in the fence that night.
Almost.

I returned to Wisconsin that summer for good with only ten college credits earned. I failed half of my classes at Princeton not because I couldn’t hack it at an Ivy League school, but well, you could say that I was a little preoccupied. I was also twenty grand poorer. Hudson and Big Dave welcomed me back with open arms.

The original plan was put back in place, and I moved back home with my tail between my legs much to Big Dave’s relief. Most nights, I lay in my bed thinking of her, dreaming of her, and one night in particular, I swore I could smell the faint hint of peach that was Piper. But I shook it off, knowing that it was just my crazy obsession that couldn’t be quelled.

I attended community college in preparation for medical school before a brilliant idea washed over me while daydreaming during class. I was trapped in a concrete cage with little visibility to the outside world, just like I would be for the next eight years pursuing a doctorate. Then there’d be a residency, then finally a job in a concrete cage that I would work for the next forty years of my life. The feeling suffocated me as I watched a semi roll past the classroom window that provided the tiniest glimpse of the outside world. The wheels turned in my head and an idea that would only make Big Dave glow with pride formed in my mind. I had the rest of my life to be trapped inside a concrete cage. The open road called to me. For the record, Big Dave thought my plan was ingenious.

I’m twenty-two now, and I’m a truck driver. Yep, you heard that right, I drive an eighteen-wheeler Hudson ceremoniously named Cash Money. I like the name, and better yet, I love the smell of the diesel and the open road and the blue skies and the freedom. Plus, I get to see every shithole that America has to offer.

Most people think that truck drivers get to “travel” across the country and see what this great nation called America has become over the last two hundred some years. But they’re wrong. I deliver toothbrushes, TVs, toilet paper, and condoms to the shitholes of America. You know on the movies where people are being killed in some back alley? That’s where I’m going. See you have highways, then you have the cities filled with businesses, then there’s the industrial park and
then
there’s the warehouse. In the way, way back of the dirtiest corners of every city, that’s where you find truck drivers. That’s where you’ll find me, Cash Rowland.

Or you’ll find me here, with my fully functioning Shovelhead parked out front of a bar called Speakeasy in Appleton, standing next to Hudson who earned a two-year business degree the same year I brought home my commercial driver’s license. Hudson is taking over his dad’s carpentry business, so you don’t have to worry that he’ll ever lose his piney-fresh, lemon smell. It’s in his blood.

“Which girl are you looking at?” Hudson yells above the music and follows my gaze to the two girls dancing on the other side of the bar.

“Neither.” I take a swig of my ice cold Miller.

“My guess is the blonde. It’s always the blondes.” He does his usual smirk that replaces what a normal person would consider a smile. I’ve known him for more than a decade, and I’m certain that Hudson is incapable of smiling. He smirks. It drives women wild, or at least that’s what they tell me. Most women like to tell me what they love about Hudson because they think I’m his sidekick, which I am whether I like to admit it or not. They tell me how bad they want him and his skeleton t-shirts and his bulging biceps and rock hard abs and oh, by the way, is he available? I’d love to go on, but a smell twitches my nostrils.

It’s a scent that stops me in my tracks every time. It’s a scent that makes my heart drop. It’s a scent I think about every single time I lean in to kiss a girl. It’s
almost
the scent of
her
.

I turn to my left to watch a bald, middle-aged man with a swelled beer belly so large that it brushes against the bar. A cigar is sticking out of the pocket of his fitted – and not fitted in the pleasant kind of way – work shirt.

“Whatever, Hudson. You’re right. The blonde.” I turn away from the man who is the antithesis of Piper Sullivan. It’s been five years now and every time I smell that glorious twinge of cherry-smoked cigars, my ridiculously adolescent hopes raise, and I think I’ll see the girl that shattered my heart standing before me. Pathetic, I know. At least I’m not as physically pathetic as I was when I first met her. I’ve gained forty pounds and can grow a beard within a few days. And I catch women eyeing me every once in a while, or at least I think they do anyway. Usually, Hudson is the one nudging me with the “potentials.” Those are Hudson’s words, not mine, because you see, none of the girls I meet are even remotely close. There is no potential.

“Ease up, man,” Hudson says. “Get some of that tension out of your neck. I think the blonde might help with that.”

I finish my beer and raise the bottle at Holly, the cute and (according to Hudson) definitely interested bartender, before I set it down. Again, there are no potentials. Even the one girl that I technically dated for more than six months wasn’t a potential. The blonde nursing student was a friend of Hudson’s girlfriend at the time, and I only agreed to a double date on Hudson’s insistence. She was nice and all, but she was the type of girl that you found yourself marrying and then thirty years and four kids later, you found yourself wondering how the hell she managed to make that happen. Plus, she had an annoying habit of chomping her food every single time she ate – chomp, chomp, chomp. She hung around for six months too long.

“How’s the project in Madison? Are you almost done?” I ignore the talk about the blonde who may or may not still be dancing behind us.

“Another week yet,” Hudson replies as he takes a long pull from his bottle.

“Another week? It seems like it’s taking you a bit longer than usual,” I say. “Remind me again why we even have an apartment together. Neither of us is ever there.”

“Tell me about it,” he replies before he slaps his hand on my shoulder. “We have to remind ourselves that it’s all about the potentials.”

“Potential for what?” I ask. The truth is, Hudson and I are still working on that badass thing even five years later. It’s an unspoken goal that we both know we’ll never accomplish. At least I’m a little closer to looking the part like Hudson. Deep down, though, we’re both just nice guys, the suckers that always finish last.

“I saw her,” Hudson says in a voice so raw and unwilling that it almost makes me drop my beer.

“Saw who?” I ask even though I know who he’s talking about. I just want to hear him say her name.

“Cash, you know who I mean,” he replies. “I saw her. I saw Piper Sullivan.”

There it is. You would hear my heart shatter except it’s already in a million pieces. It’s just been a lump of dust for the last few years. Make that five years.

“How did you know it was her?” I try to control my voice, but I know it’s edgy. Hell, my whole body is about to spin out of control.

“I just did,” Hudson replies. “I didn’t want to tell you…”

“When?”

“Two days ago.”

“Two days ago?” I yell and slam the beer on the bar. “TWO days ago? You didn’t tell me for two whole days?”

I feel heads turning toward me, but I don’t care because all I can think about is that Hudson saw her forty-eight hours ago and that he kept that nugget of information tucked inside, just for himself.

“Cash, keep it down,” he says. “Can you handle this conversation or not? If we need to go somewhere else…”

“No, I’m fine,” I reply, taking a few short breaths in and out. It’s
entirely
too coincidental. Big Dave would call this a sign, a big flashing one with a red arrow that says,
This way, idiot. Do not pass go, do not collect a hundred dollars. Just follow the sign!

“Where is she?” I ask, nervous to hear the answer. “Two days ago you were in -”

“Madison.”

“Yeah, Madison,” I repeat.

“I was there all week.” Hudson’s eyes widen as he studies me. Those are the eyes that saw her.

I look down to see my clenched fists, and I immediately spring them back open because believe it or not, I’m definitely not the crazy type. It’s just that this is all …

“Too coincidental,” Hudson says. “It’s like fate or something.”

“What’s too coincidental?”

“Well, I met this girl in Madison,” he starts.

“Here we go,” I say. Hudson meets a lot of girls, most he thinks are definitely bring home to ‘meet your parents’ kind of material, but he’s always wrong. Usually completely and unquestionably wrong.

“Let me finish,” he replies. “There’s this girl, Jen, who lives in the house next to the one I’m finishing. She’s a senior at UW Madison and pretty hot. Well, really hot actually…”

“Get on with it.”

“Anyway, she had a friend over to study with two days ago, and they stopped in to say hi. Lo and behold, Piper Sullivan was staring at me.”

“What did she say?”

“Well, she was surprised to see me,” Hudson says. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a ‘I’m surprised and incredibly happy to see you’ type of thing. I think it was more of a ‘Holy crap, am I really seeing this right' type of thing.”

“How’d she look?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“She looks like she did five years ago except a little older, a little hotter, a little more sophisticated, a little smarter…”

“Got it.”

Hudson smirks before he continues, “She looks great and seems really happy, Cash. She’s going to school in Madison. She asked how you were doing.”

“And? What did you say?” I reply and cross my arms across my chest. “You better have said that I’m doing great. I look great, I have a great job, and a great life. That I’m a goddamn superstar.”

“Sure, all of that, buddy.” He claps my shoulder.

“That’s it? Did she say anything else? Did she give you her number? Address? Twitter name? Anything?”

“Not exactly. She gave me a smile and asked me not to tell you that I saw her.”

There it is. I feel a cool breeze brush against me. If you’re wondering what that swirl of dust was that flew past your head, it was a piece of my heart.

“Why?” I demand. This couldn’t possibly be happening. Not after what I found in Big Dave’s basement last night. All I can think about is the sweet voice that sung in my ears. The voice of a woman I loved but never knew I missed until yesterday. I heard my mother’s voice for the very first time in my memory. The box with a crayon-drawn heart was sitting on a shelf by itself, begging to be opened. I didn’t have a recollection of the box although its heart was clearly drawn by a child I could only presume to be me. Curiosity called, and I answered for two hours. See, that’s the thing about curiosity, it’s insatiable.

“Why doesn’t she want to see me?” I repeat.

“She has a boyfriend.”

The words bite harder than I want them to.

“How serious?”

“I don’t know, Cash,” Hudson replies. “Piper just said a serious one.”

“I’m sure it’s just Piper being Piper. She exaggerates, you know.” I take several gulps of beer. I can’t stomach the thought of Piper with another guy, especially now that I know she’s so close.

“I thought you said she lies.”

“Exaggerates,” I correct.

“What’s the deal, man? You barely knew the girl. You shared a cigar once. You kissed once. That’s it. You’ve been in the Sullivan Slump for the last five years. I’ve never met someone so adamant about a girl that he only knew for a few days. I’ve always been pretty nice about it and all, doing some searches for you and listening to you whine and moan and bitch about it all the time…”

“It’s not all the time.”

“More than any self-respecting guy should.”

I’m silent because he’s probably right. I thrive in a logical world filled with rationality and reason, but everything about Piper defies it. No one has made me feel like she did. There was a pull to her the second I saw her, and I knew all the ups, downs, and everything in between with Piper would make life worth living. She was the once in a lifetime kind of girl. She was the ying to my yang. My white on rice. She was it. I could feel it more than anything else I have felt in my life, and the universe, the goddamn universe, took Piper Sullivan away from me.