I pushed up and snapped, “I was comfortable.”
“You’re more comfortable now,” he returned, telling the God’s honest truth.
“Am not,” I lied, pushing up on his chest.
“Cora, you are.”
“Am not!”
The hand attached to his arm that was wound around me slid up to the back of my neck and he pulled me inexorably forward until I was close to his face.
“You promised, we watch this TV, you’d rest,” he reminded me.
“Yes!” I clipped.
“Then… rest,” he commanded.
I glared at him. Then I saw the determined look on his face.
I knew what that meant.
So I informed him, “You’re annoying.”
He chuckled and forced my cheek to his chest.
I kept my body perfectly solid to communicate nonverbally that he was a jerk.
That was, I did this until I fell dead asleep.
Chapter Twenty
Crash into Me
We were on our way to my parents’ house, Tor driving.
Yes, Tor driving.
Earlier that day, when we went out to my car (which had not disappeared but had enough pop cans, chip and candy wrappers in it to water and feed an army – taking them all in, and thinking of all the takeout cartons I tossed out the day before, I was thinking the other Cora was no longer skinnier than me), Tor flatly refused to sit in the passenger seat, demanded a lesson and refused to believe that he’d need more than one lesson and practice (much less an actual license) to drive around in a city. With no choice (he didn’t give me one), I showed him around the console, explained the basics, he started up the car and away we went.
No joke.
He was a natural. He even figured out the road signs and traffic signals and only asked what a few of them meant.
I was not freaked out that I was sitting in a car with a beginner from another world behind the wheel.
No, I was freaked out about the fact that I decided to tell my parents the truth hoping, since they were hippies and had open minds, that they wouldn’t think I’d gone around the bend.
And I was also trying not to think about my day with Tor.
Which had been, even in my gray, dreary, colorless world, what only Tor could give me.
Magic.
* * *
I woke that morning in my bed to a mild headache, a few aches and pains and to hear my shower going.
The shower meant Tor hadn’t been flung back to his world sometime in the night.