what it is. You’ve got your life here, and mine is…I don’t even know. Leighton and Jillie don’t think I’m coming back. And part of me thinks they’re right. So, I…I want things, but I’m scared. And…there’s other stuff that I…that I can’t really talk about.”
I had a dozen different responses to that, and no idea which to say. “Torie, I…”
“You don’t have to say anything, Rhys. It’s just safest for my heart if I don’t let anything start. But don’t think I don’t want to. That I don’t feel…this.”
“Is this road trip a bad idea?” I asked, keeping my voice low, because if I was too loud, she might hear things I was feeling that I didn’t want her hear.
“Probably,” she laughed. “But smoking pot is the only interesting thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket. Never gone anywhere. Never had a boyfriend. A lot of nevers—my whole fucking life is a list of ‘I’ve never.’ So…a bad idea, yeah, but I want to go on a road trip with a guy I just met. I guy I like—a superhot guy who’s attracted to me, who’s seen me half-naked, who wants to do things to me that I’m probably better off not knowing about. A guy who, in the interests of self-preservation, I shouldn’t let anything happen with. A guy I like more than I’ve ever liked anyone. It’s crazy, and maybe irresponsible. But I want to do it, just to say I’ve done at least one crazy, possibly irresponsible thing in my life.”
“You got a bucket list, Torie?” I asked.
“A bucket list?” she repeated.
“Yeah, like a list of things you haven’t ever done that you really want to do before you die.”
She mused thoughtfully. “I mean, yeah. Sure. A lot of stuff.”
“Like what?”
She laughed. “Some of them are embarrassing.”
“So?”
She eyed me. “You can’t laugh at me.”
I laughed anyway. “How about I promise if I do laugh, it won’t be out of meanness, and I won’t make fun of you.”
“Fair enough.” She took a deep breath; held it, let it out; her words coming out in a rush, toppling over each other. “I want to go skinny-dipping. I want to drive a car more than a hundred miles per hour. I want to be kissed in the rain like Noah and Ally from The Notebook.” She hesitated. “I want…I want to have sex in the bed of a pickup truck under the stars. I want to give a man a blowjob for no reason at all, surprise him with it. Maybe in a car while he’s driving, I haven’t decided. I want a guy to…to go down on me for no reason, and want nothing in return. I want to get a mani-pedi and a massage and a facial all in the same day. I want to go to a fancy steakhouse and order the most expensive thing on the menu. I want to stay in bed all day, watching movies and having crazy hot monkey sex and smoking copious amounts of marijuana. I want…I want to fall in love and have the man I love tell me I’m his everything. Because I’ve never felt like anyone’s everything and I want to know what that feels like.” She exhaled sharply, glanced at me. “There. The list, which no one else on the planet, even Jillie and Leighton, has ever heard. Now you tell me yours.”
I hesitated. “I gotta be honest, then, since you were.” I spent a moment in silence, considering. “I want to restore a classic pickup, one of the really valuable ones, like a ’48 Dodge Power Wagon, and do it without sparing any expense, and I want to sell it at Mecum. I want to make a million dollars before I’m forty. I want a big family, someday. Like, way in the future someday, but I do. I was lonely as a kid, and I just…yeah. I want a big family. I want…I want to be with someone, someday, who I can wake up with and have lazy morning sex with. I want to sell a car I’ve restored to someone famous. Stupid, I know, but whatever. I want to be woken up by a blowjob. I want to see the Grand Canyon. I want to fly an airplane. I want to see a whale. Stupidest one yet, but I want a big surprise birthday party. I’ve never had a birthday party. Folks were too poor. Mom’d make me a