“Remember: you made me tell you!”
“That is your mother’s big issue with me? That’s so stupid! I’m so nice! I’m nice to everyone!” Even as I’m professing my innocence, I’m asking myself, Am I nice to everyone?
“That’s not what I mean.” He looks at me hard now, his eyes still sorry, but communicating something else.
I catch on at last. Wow. Clay’s mother thinks I’m a whore.
Now it’s my turn to slump down in my seat. She thinks I’m impure. She wants a girl for Clay whose first time will be her wedding night. Well, there’s nothin’ I can do about that. I am not that girl.
“For what it’s worth, I think she’s an old-fashioned harpy,” Clay offers.
I don’t say anything.
“This is why I didn’t wanna tell you.”
“It’s better that I know.”
“How?”
I fiddle with the door handle, ignoring his question.
“I also kinda made the mistake a tellin’ her when I go… I’m takin’ you with me,” he says.
Hmm. This is news to me. We’ve never discussed our future plans at all. I’m of two minds about it—being two-headed, this is not uncommon. On one hand, I don’t like him assuming I’ll just do anything he tells me to without asking me first. But on the other, I’m elated that he wants me to stay in his world. I can’t even imagine mine without him now.
“She’s all up in arms over it, and it don’t matter that I told her it ain’t happenin’ for a while yet. She’s too attached to me anyways. We gotta cut the umbilical cord eventually,” Clay mutters. I know I need to say somethin’, but I can’t think of what that is. This is a lot to digest.
“But? I never asked you what you want. You might not wanna do that,” he says finally.
“I just hadn’t thought about it before,” I say.
“Oh.” He goes back to playin’ with the grooves on the steering wheel.
Shit. I think I just hurt his feelings.
“To be honest? I don’t think about our future cuz it scares me,” I admit. “I just like thinkin’ about now cuz we’re together and happy.”
“You don’t think we can be together and happy in the future?”
“No, I do. I mean. I hope so.”
Clay slides his arm around me and pulls me into him. I rest my head near his chest.
“I have a question for ya,” he says, and his voice vibrates through my skull.
“Then ask.”
“Would you like to move to Chica—?”
“Yes.”
“Just like that?”
I raise my head up to look at him.
“I’m assumin’ you don’t mean tomorrow?”
He chuckles. “No. I don’t mean tomorrow.”
“Okay then. In the future, I will move to Chicago with you. Or anywhere else,” I say.
He kisses me again, and I don’t push him away this time. And we kiss and kiss until I become aware that we’re on a public road.
“Um, Clay?”
“Huh?” he says breathless in my ear before givin’ it a lick.
“We can’t do this here.”
Instantly he stops. Pulls himself off me and back into the driver’s seat. I straighten out my skirt and blouse and sit upright.
“You are right. Good to know one of us has some brains.”
I snicker as he starts the engine. I accidentally notice the difficulty he’s havin’ over there adjusting his pants so he can comfortably drive. I know I shouldn’t be starin’, but…
“Quit lookin’ at it, Evvie,” he says, and I can’t help but crack up. He isn’t laughin’, but he’s got a big smile on his face.
“I’m kiddin’. Keep lookin’ at it.”
Now he’s got me laughin’ so hard I’m scared I might piss myself! I can’t imagine talkin’ like this with anybody else but him. If things with the trumpet don’t pan out, he could certainly go into comedy.
We pull back out onto the road, and as my laughter subsides, I remember how this whole thing got started.
“None a this will get your mother to like me any better.”
“Please don’t worry about her. She’ll come around.”
“How d’ya know?”
“If she ever wants her son to come home to visit, she will learn to love his lady,” Clay informs me.
I grin, and I’m glad it’s dark enough that he can’t see me blushin’ like a cartoon character. Not totally dark, though. Lights. Behind us.
“Did you see that car before?” I ask him.
He checks the rearview mirror. A black Chevy pickup is right on our tail, and I think it’s been there since we started movin’ again.
“No,” he says. “I’m gonna do somethin’.”
At the next traffic light, he takes a sharp right. The truck stays behind us. We pick up speed and then take a sudden left. I grab on to the dashboard to hold myself steady as we take an immediate right. And then another left. All the while, the truck stays with us, and, of course, I know who it is. I knew who it was the second I saw the truck.
Without realizing it, Clay’s taken us in a circle, and we still end up on my street, but he speeds by my house.
“It don’t matter, Clay. He knows where I live.”
Clay turns to me now. “You still don’t know who this psycho is?”
I sigh. He remembers Virgil from the night at the lookout and knows he’s become a nuisance, but I haven’t been entirely honest with Clay.
“I do know now,” I say. “Virgil Hampton. He… um… hurt me a long time ago.” I can’t say more. I bite my lip and hold back my tears. Just thinkin’ about it fills me with shame, and I didn’t do anything wrong.
And even without tellin’ him every detail, he’s red with rage, and my pulse starts racing.
Clay hits the brakes in the middle of the street, and they screech in my ears. The truck does the same, but as it wasn’t prepared, it does hit Clay’s bumper before backing up. It’s not enough to cause real damage, but enough to scare us. Me anyway. Clay, on the other hand, swings the door open.
“Clay! No!”
He gets out and slams it
