He took the exit and we pulled into the parking lot. I could tell he was debating on whether to go in or not. He was looking up at the clouds before looking over in the distance, and I took it as an opportune time to test out our boundaries.
I reached over and put my hand on his forearm to get his attention.
“We can just go through the drive through. There’s no need to go in. I’ll give you my card for the window,” I said.
His eyes looked down at my hand, studying our connection for quite some time. He looked at it for so long that I figured he was getting uncomfortable, so I quickly pulled my hand back. His body underneath his coat was just as muscular as I remembered it, and suddenly my mind was filled with flashes of his naked body pounding into mine. Flashes of his warmth against my neck and his face between my legs. Sounds of a headboard knocking against a wall and the fireplace warming our bodies. I could feel his hand bracing my neck while our tongues danced like the licks of fire crackling beside us, and I had to turn my head out the window to hide the flush growing in my cheeks.
If my touch affected him the way it had affected me, he made no mention of it as we sat there.
“Drive through it is,” he said.
He drove around as I dug through my purse. I handed him my card and we both ordered, shouting at the speaker time and time again to try and get the woman to hear us. We finally had to just pull around and give her our order so she could understand what we were saying, and by the time we got back out onto the highway I was glad we stopped to get food.
In all the excitement of seeing Colin again, I’d forgotten I hadn’t eaten anything all day.
Things quickly turned awkward. The polite and superficial conversation quickly dwindled back into the uncomfortable silence that characterized our first adventure. My chicken Caesar wrap seemed bland as the mood of the car fell, and soon Colin was back to white-knuckling his steering wheel. I could see his anxiety and that uncomfortable nature of his slowly creeping back into his body, straightening his posture right off the back of his seat. His eyes were transfixed on the road in front of us just as we crossed into Iowa, and I sighed as I turned to look back out the window.
I put the rest of my wrap in the to-go bag before I grabbed my drink, then I slouched down into my seat and tossed my feet up onto the dashboard. The air in the car quickly turned from comfortable to tense and the electricity was no longer surging between us. The playful grin on his cheeks slowly slid into the form that was painted on the lips of the Grinch I’d ridden with two months ago. The sparkle in his eye slowly set itself into stone, his eyes now transfixed on the road ahead as he robotically took sips of his soda. I shouldn’t have touched him. I should’ve fucking kept my hands to myself. I shouldn’t have let my thoughts ruin something that had been going so wonderfully.
Why was I always such a screw up? How in the world could I have messed up something like this?
I mindlessly drank my lemonade until I was sucking up the last of the sugar mixture from the bottom of the plastic cup. I placed it in the cup holder between us before I sighed, my head turning back out the window to take in the passing state of Iowa. Already, the clouds over our heads were beginning to darken. Already, the tone of the outside world was shifting with the tone of the car. The once sunny state of Minnesota had kept us bright and smiling, and then the doom and gloom of the Iowa sky had quickly sunken our moods.
If only it was the weather that caused Colin to pull away from me.
I didn’t expect the man to grab me and kiss me. Hell, we hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in two solid months! But this kind of visceral reaction was a slap in the face. A punch in the gut. Any other imagined physical assault I could conjure. It was like the touch of my hand against anything he owned had magically turned everything dark. Like the touch of Midas, except everything I touched withered away and died.
Like my ex, or my former job, or my former best friend, or my former home.
Like the little slice of happiness Colin had finally found for himself, or even the happiness I had experienced upon seeing him on that airplane.
If only there was a river I could bathe in to wash this curse from my body. If only the water threatening to pour from the sky could cleanse me and bring back the polite and superficial Colin I had before I made that stupid move to touch his fucking arm.
I figured the situation couldn’t get any worse at this point. The worst that could happen was that we traveled in silence to the conference and then didn’t see each other again for another two months. And things hadn’t gone completely sour. The music on the radio was still playing, and if I kept my mouth shut and didn’t sink, maybe it would breathe new life back into the rental car the two of us were sharing.
Then in perfect Colin fashion, the music on the radio ceased to exist, and we were both right back to square one.
Damn it.
Chapter 3
Colin
The chicken and tomato basil wrap I had ordered
