He was silent a moment while he finished the rest of the cupcake. “I grew up on my granny’s farm, which we’re going to right now.”
Farm boy. That made total sense.
“Did you go to college around here too?” Yes, that was my vague way of wondering how educated he was.
He side-eyed me and snatched the second cupcake, shoving it into his mouth. “Tennessee State University. Majored in finance, minored in business. Imma smart boy.” He said the last sentence with a thick Tennessee drawl.
My eyes bugged out of my head. “You got a degree in finance? And your bar is failing?”
I could feel him glaring at me as I watched the road. “Last question, Princess.”
Damn. I needed this to be a good one. “Ever been married?”
I braced myself for something dark to cross his features, something to indicate he’d lost someone as I had. But it never came.
He just waved me off. “Nah. Not my thing.”
I could see that. Coming home to the same woman day after day would probably drive him crazy. I reached out to turn the radio back on, when he spoke.
“You from New York?”
My hand fell to my lap. Okay, he was being a decent human being and wanted to know about me. “Connecticut. Moved to the city for culinary school, then spent a semester in Paris.”
He nodded. “Fancy.”
“Something like that.” Colin had followed me out there, we had the best three months of our life in France. Backpacking through small villages, eating at bed and breakfasts, they were some of my favorite memories of him.
“I’m surprised you’re not married,” he observed. “House. Two point five kids and all that. You seem like the type.”
My whole body flinched. He was right, I was the type. But life hadn’t worked out like that. Maybe this was the time to tell him, the perfect time, or at least to give him a sliver of the truth.
“I was. I’m … a widow actually,” I said and braced myself for twenty more questions as my fingers went to play with the chain at my neck.
He was completely silent. A full minute stretched by and he just nodded. “I’m … sorry to hear that.”
Then he reached out to turn on the rock station.
Ashton
A widow. She said widow. Holy shit. She was twenty-seven and she was a widow? That was tragic as fuck. This whole time I’d thought she was someone untouched by misfortune and now we shared something. We’d both lost someone close. It made us alike in a way. I wasn’t going to tell her that, but it was an unsaid thing. When you lost someone close to you, then you were in a club. A certain depressing club but a club nonetheless.
Millie was not the woman I had originally judged her to be.
I was in dangerous waters here. She was beautiful, she worked for me, and she’d just shared something deep. I could ask her more questions and it would bond us in a way I wasn’t ready for … or I could let it go.
“I’m … sorry to hear that.” I reached out and turned on the radio, switching it to the rock station for her.
I’d fucked a few girls since Jenna died, but I hadn’t told any of them about her or the accident. If they asked about the scar, I usually told them I was born with a heart defect. If they asked about Jenna’s picture, I just said it was my twin sister who lived across the country. We looked enough alike that they knew she wasn’t my girlfriend. I never let anyone in; it was safer that way and I intended to keep it like that.
We drove in companionable silence for a good thirty minutes when it started to get really hot inside the truck. We’d just passed Gaitlin, basically the boonies between Nashville and Lafayette.
“Where are we? I don’t see signs of life.” She rolled down her window as we sped through Bethpage, population 288. Panting, she tied up her hair into a ball on top of her head and hung her face out the window like a dog.
I chuckled. “Halfway there.”
It was green trees and rivers and farms for as far as the eye could see. The most peaceful drive in the country if you asked me.
I was about to make small talk when a bang shot out from somewhere under the hood of the truck and suddenly we jerked to a slow crawl. Smoke streamed out from beneath the hood and I let loose a torrent of cuss words. Better not be that dammed carburetor again. I let the car slowly careen off the road into a patch of wild grass and then lay my forehead on the wheel. This fucking car was a piece of shit, my bar was a piece of shit, my dad was a piece of shit, my life was—
“What was that?” Millie hedged, her voice full of nerves. It suddenly got twenty degrees hotter with no breeze coming through the open windows.
I pulled my head up and looked over at her. “That, sweetheart, was the sound of life shitting on me for the hundredth time this year.”
I cracked open the door and stepped out to pop the hood. Millie got out and stood behind me as gray acrid smoke flew from the open truck.
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
It looked and smelled expensive.
Millie pulled out her cellphone. “I’m calling a tow truck,” she informed me.
“Let me see if I can fix it first!” I pulled off my shirt, and used it as a rag to loosen the bolt on the filter. As I pulled the air filter off, my eyes fell to the giant metal piece of shit carburetor.
It was completely shot.
Millie peered over my shoulder, took one look at the broken smoking pile of metal and put the phone to her ear. “Hi, we need a tow
