around the front and get in my side. “Just a man who knows his manners.”
She buckles her seatbelt and gives me a smirk. “In America, that’s a gentleman.”
“Nah,” I say with a shake of my head, pulling out onto the busy, slushy street. “I reckon a gentleman is someone with class and education, as well as manners. That just ain’t me. As you’ll find out, I was born a country boy.”
“How many people are in Shambles?” she asks.
“About a thousand.”
Her eyes widen. “Wow. That’s not exactly a place where you can go and hide, is it? I grew up in a suburb and it’s like everyone in your cul-de-sac thought they were entitled to your business.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, it’s kind of like that. You get used to it, but believe me, if you want to fool around with the neighbor’s daughter, you better believe that half the town knows about it the next day.”
“I take it that happened to you?”
“Yeah, but they had a lot of daughters so it was a common occurrence.”
She laughs and runs her fingers down the side of the window. “Well, I have to tell you that as nervous as I am, I’m looking forward to this.”
“You’re nervous?”
She rubs her lips together and nods. “Oh yeah. I mean…” She tilts her head to look at me. “This is sort of insane, you know.”
“I’m aware. But it takes two to do something like this. One to suggest it and the other to go along with it.”
“Ever the diplomat. But I’m serious.” She clears her throat. “Yesterday when we were discussing how long I was going to stay, you said a few days. But don’t you have to stay longer than that?” She cranes her neck to look at the back of the car. “You’ve packed a lot of stuff for just a few days.”
“Right. Well, I think I’m there … until I don’t have to be.” I don’t want to talk about what I really mean and I know she gets it.
“But isn’t it suspicious that I suddenly just leave and I’m never seen again?”
I shrug. “Yeah. But we’ll just say you’re going to America for work for a month or two.”
“Right after we got engaged? That doesn’t seem right. I mean, I was just engaged and never would have done that.”
I glance at her sharply, heat in my chest. “You were just engaged?”
She gives me a wincing smile. “Yeah. He broke it off a week or two ago.”
“A week or two ago?” I repeat, dumbfounded. I’m not sure how this is going to make things more complicated but I have a feeling it will.
“I probably should have told you. I just thought, you know, a one-night stand doesn’t need to be anything more than that, we don’t need to lay it all out. Although this was my first one-night stand, so maybe it’s common to run away with that person to their hometown a few days later.”
“What happened?” I ask. “Is that why you’re here? I thought it was the job.”
“It was both. His name was Cole. Or is. Cuz he’s still alive. I didn’t, like, murder him, don’t worry.” She gives me an endearingly goofy smile. “Anyway, we were together for a year and engaged for six months, and I lived with him and everything. A week before Christmas he said he didn’t want to marry me anymore but he still wanted to be in a relationship. So I grew a pair and told him that if he didn’t want to marry me, I didn’t want to be with him.” She grows quiet at that, as if she’s wrestling with something inside that she’s not sure she wants to share.
I wonder if she regrets it.
“And the job?”
“And then I got laid off a week later, as you know. So I went from living in this wicked apartment in Brooklyn with my fiancé and rocking this dream job, to having no apartment, no fiancé, and no job.”
I mull that over. She’s had a much tougher hand dealt to her recently than I thought. I’m starting to feel bad that I’m roping her into this.
“Look,” I say, “I had no idea it was like that. This makes things a little more … trivial now, doesn’t it? We’re still in the city, I can drop you off—”
“No!” she cries out. “No, no. Please. That’s my past.”
“But the past often rears its ugly head.”
“So let it. I’m tired of running from it, running from everything. I want to move