“Just ask him!” Cosy demands.
“Is your sister’s name Amalie?”
“Uh, yeah. How would you know that?” His fingers inch along the armrest, as if he’s prepared to do a tuck and roll out of the car.
“My sister, Cosy, is married to Griffin Mills, Lex’s older brother,” I tell him. “I think that makes your sister and my sister sisters-in-law?” It’s more of a question than an actual statement, because I’m mentally trying to figure out if this is true, and how wild it is that I managed to find him in the middle of a freaking desert.
Lawson’s eyes flare. “No shit. I thought you looked familiar!”
“Same. We must’ve been at the same event at some point in the past couple of years.” It explains why it felt like I knew him. It also makes me feel a little better about having some not-so-random hot dude in my car.
I end the call with my sister, who is no longer worried about me ending up dismembered, since apparently Lawson and I know each other, however indirectly.
“How crazy is this! I can’t believe our sisters are in-laws.”
“Me neither, to be honest. I mean, what are the chances?” Lawson rubs his scruffy chin.
“Slim to freaking none, I would think.”
We pull into the garage and I’m greeted with enthusiasm and a bone-crushing hug from Bear, who I haven’t seen in more than a year. I introduce him to Lawson, and explain that we actually know each other, which seems to put Kenny at ease. Sort of. He’s still mumbling about the pretty boy and how I love picking up strays. He’s not wrong about Lawson being pretty.
Bear and Kenny get the car up on one of the lifts and it takes about thirty seconds to come to the conclusion that as nice as the car looks, it’s not drivable. Turns out, I was right about the oil leak and the radiator.
“So how long before I can get back on the road?” Lawson asks.
“Probably a few weeks, depending on how long it takes to order in the parts since it’s a classic and all,” Bear says.
Lawson laces his hands behind his head. “Well, shit. I’m supposed to be in Colorado tomorrow night.”
I slap the side of his car, realization finally dawning. “Hold on, are you going to Cosy’s party?”
“The Mills birthday bash thing?”
“Yeah.”
“That was my plan until my car broke down.”
“I’m heading there now, so you might as well ride with me. Road trips are way more fun with a sidekick, anyway.”
Lawson nods his agreement. “Definitely way more fun.”
Looks like my trip to Colorado just got a whole lot more interesting.
Another Detour
Lawson
“I CANNOT BELIEVE I blew a tire. What the hell was that random piece of wood doing in the middle of the freaking road?” Nevah throws her hands in the air and kicks the deflated rubber. “I’m gonna have to put the spare on.”
“Can you drive all the way to Colorado Springs on a spare?” I have no idea, so it’s an honest question.
“Depends on the car. Most of the time you can go a hundred miles or so on a spare, but we’re a lot farther out than that, and I don’t really want to risk bending the frame on this baby.” She pats her car affectionately. “We’ll get the spare on and see how far we can go before we hit a garage.”
We’ve made it most of the way through Utah. Over the past several hours, I’ve learned a lot about Nevah.
As it turns out, we’ve attended more than one social gathering together. In fact, I’m fairly certain I had plans to hit on her while I was drunk, but my sister intervened before I could make a complete ass out of myself.
Truth be told, I’m not very good at the whole relationship thing. Or talking to women in general. I’m awesome at social media and creating a brand and flirting on line. I’m also adept at picking up women at bars because there isn’t a whole lot of talking involved. It’s not that I don’t want to have conversations with women; it’s more that my job is weird, my family is well known, and I’m slightly socially awkward—see the En Vogue comment for reference.
I now know that Nevah took public relations, business, and plumbing in college and decided none of them were the right fit. She’s always been fascinated with cars. While other girls were playing with Barbies, she was playing with Barbie’s corvette and spray-painting it black to make it cooler.
She learned how to jump-start a car when she was sixteen while hanging out with some less than savory characters, one of which happened to be Barry, aka Bear. She’s narrowly escaped a criminal record more than once, and has a long history of dating jerks. She didn’t go into much detail about that, other than to say most of the time she liked their cars better than she liked the guys who were driving them.
She pops the trunk and I move my suitcase out of the way. One of the dolls rolls out from under my shirt. It’s a brown-haired Amalie doll with a pretty sweet tan, wearing a two-piece halter tank that somewhat matches my current shirt.
She glances from me to the doll and back again.
“It’s not what you think,” I blurt, which obviously makes it sound like exactly what she thinks, even though I can’t be sure what exactly that is.
Grown men who tote around kids’ dolls incite a lot of questions.
She cocks a brow. “So you don’t have a doll with a bathing suit that matches your shirt in my trunk?”
“It’s the family business. Amalie dolls. I was in California working with a company that uses
