Ten Below ZeroTen Below Zero(30)

“Yeah, well don’t get any ideas.”

Everett leaned back into the pillows, resting his hands behind his head again. “Oh, but I have a lot of ideas.” He winked at me.

I stalked away towards my dresser and began pulling things from drawers. When I turned back around, Everett was holding another bra.

“You don’t wear padding,” he commented, his fingers feeling along the lined cup.

“No.”

“I like that.”

My hands stilled. And then I moved them again. “Why?” I didn’t care. Really, I didn’t.

“Lies.”

I turned around. “Lies?”

“I like the truth. In every way.” He seemed lost in thought so I turned back around and packed my things.

“Am I really doing this?” I asked myself.

“Yes, you are.”

I turned around again. “Why?”

It wasn’t a question he should know the answer to. But he did. “Because you hate and you love the way I make you feel.”

I was naked under his gaze. Skin was just that: skin. But to see your soul stripped, laid bare for the eyes of someone you barely knew – that was terrifying. I’d walk down the street naked a hundred times before I would let someone see what lay underneath.

I’d spent my life alone. Bounced from foster home to foster home. When my tastes outgrew my age as a teenager, I traded boys for men and found myself still alone. I reveled in the loneliness. No one could hurt me but me, and did I really care if I hurt me? Did I care? If I found pleasure in anything, it was my lack of feeling.

And that’s how I knew, when Everett told me not to fall in love with him, that I wouldn’t. I didn’t love myself. And wasn’t loving someone also loving yourself, the parts that saw the beauty in other people? I didn’t have that part. And I didn’t want it.

“I don’t love anything,” I said.

“I know.” His eyes were unsmiling.



Everett picked me up the following morning at seven. And then we were on the road without any fanfare, logging the miles to our first destination, a destination that Everett kept quiet on.

Silence existed in the space between the driver’s seat and mine and it didn’t bother me. Small talk was useless. There was enough talk in my head to keep up on.

Everett turned on the music at some point. I didn’t know who was singing, not that that was surprising. I didn’t keep up on bands, ever. My world was a quiet place.

A few hours into the drive, Everett turned the Jeep off the interstate. There was a large monument just off the interstate and that’s where the vehicle ended up, parked right off the road in a small parking lot directly in front of the monument.

I climbed out and stared up at it against the sun. And then I looked at Everett.

“World’s Tallest Thermometer,” he said, answering my question. I looked back at the monument. “It won’t register your temperature.”

I looked at him again. “What are you talking about?”

“Ten below zero,” he said, hands tucked in the pocket of his black jeans.

“You’re an a*shole.” I gritted my teeth. And then I gestured wildly at him. “Well it will probably register yours. Aren’t you hot, wearing all black all the time, in California of all places?”

Everett walked up next to me. “I don’t know, am I?”

I rolled my eyes. Nine in the morning and I was already annoyed. “We came all the way here to look at this?”

“Well, it’s on the way, and I need to fuel up.” Everett turned around and walked back to the car. I stared at the monument again before climbing into the vehicle.

“If this is how the rest of the trip is going to be, you can bring me back home now.”

“There’s only one World’s Tallest Thermometer, Parker,” he said blandly, driving down the street to the nearby gas station.

“What’s next, World’s Tallest Toothpick?”

“I don’t know where that is,” he replied, putting the car in park.

I sat back in the seat, fuming. “Well I don’t need to travel to meet the world’s biggest a*shole.”

“I knew you were obsessively practical in your thinking. That saves us a stop!” Everett grinned, climbing out of the car. He slung an arm over my shoulder when I left the car. “Thanks for looking out for this trip, Parker.”

I shrugged him off with a grunt and looked over my shoulder. Just down the road stood the thermometer, still in sight. It made me think of Everett’s words to me again. I knew I was cold. But no one had ever cared enough to point it out.

Not that Everett cared. He didn’t. He couldn’t. I was a shell. Hard on the outside, empty on the inside.



We ate at a small diner further down the road before continuing on. I was still angry, so angry from what Everett had said. But I didn’t eat my hate this time, not like I had eaten the pizza. I ate calmly. Slowly. Just to annoy him. I ordered three waters with limes and ate the flesh from each lime leisurely. But Everett saw through it, saw through my attempts to annoy him. And he just ignored me, writing in his notebook the entire time, before I gave up and we got back on the road.

An hour later, our stop for the day came into view. “Las Vegas?” I asked, unimpressed.