The Reckless Oath We Made(80)

Sure, I said. How do you feel about leaving in the morning?



* * *



—

EDRARD PICKED ME UP at dawn. He had his truck loaded down with way more equipment than we could possibly need. It wasn’t like we were actually going into battle, but he seemed to be having fun, so I didn’t burst his bubble. Rosalinda called him twice as we were leaving town, and the second time he put it on speakerphone, so I got to enjoy the sound of her seething with rage.

“I’ll be back Sunday night,” Edrard said. “Why don’t you go visit your folks?”

“I don’t want to go see my folks,” she snapped.

I didn’t blame her, because Rosalinda’s family were long-denim-skirt-wearing Evangelicals. Her younger sister was the only member of her family who came out for Rosalinda and Edrard’s handfasting, and she acted like I was trying to seduce her because I flirted with her. So I parked her next to Gentry, who’d sat there being chivalrous and nonseductive for the whole day.

I reached over and muted Edrard’s phone for a second.

“Just ask her if she wants to go,” I said. Edrard gave me a look of horror. “Just invite her.”

I unmuted the phone and after a second, Edrard said, “Sweetie, do you want to go?”

“No! I don’t want to go to Missouri and look for Zee’s stupid sister.” She delivered that in a snarl, but it was the answer I’d expected. Rosalinda was a homebody, and there was no way she wanted to go watch her backup knight in shining armor serve that red-haired minx.

End result, Rosalinda stopped calling, and two-thirds of the Three Musketeers hit the road for southern Missouri, where we made a few dueling banjo jokes the further we got off the main highway. Gentry had texted us the motel information, so when we got into town around noon, we went straight there.

It looked like one of those by-the-hour motels on Broadway in Wichita and, when Gentry let us in, the room was all paneled walls and cheap furniture, with a funky smell.

“Damn. This place smells like a whorehouse,” I said, while Gentry and Edrard shook hands.

“That’s really flattering,” Zee said. She stepped out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a T-shirt and panties. I stared at her, because she had this enormous tattoo that covered her whole thigh. Honestly, it wasn’t attractive, but it was pretty compelling. Shocking, too. Was that the goal? To surprise you? To make you stare?

She walked across that nasty motel carpet in her bare feet, and picked up a pair of blue jeans off the foot of the bed. Instead of going back into the bathroom to get dressed, she pulled them on with the three of us there in the room. Hiked up her T-shirt and fastened them.

“Why don’t we go get some lunch?” I said.

“You all can go,” Zee said. “But I need to stay here in case they show up.”

“They?”

“My uncle and a friend of his might be coming.”

“I shall stay with thee,” Gentry said.

“I can stay with you while they go get lunch,” I said, but Zee ignored me.

“Well, hey, why don’t I just go get us some lunch?” Edrard said.

“’Twould be well met.”

Gentry reached for his wallet—he always paid Edrard’s way—but Zee waved him off. She got up and went to a backpack on the dresser and unzipped it. Took out a fifty-dollar bill and handed it to Edrard. We decided on pizza, since we’d passed a place on the way into town. Edrard left to get it, giving me a look like I should come with him, but not when things were getting interesting.

Zee was sitting on the bed further from the door, so I sat down across from her. She was messing with her phone and didn’t look up.

“Sorry about barging in while you were getting dressed,” I said. “We didn’t know you were sharing a room.”

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

It was a room with two beds, though, and they both looked slept in. Plus, the way Gentry acted when he sat next to her on the bed, a good foot apart, with his hands on his knees, I didn’t think there was any way he’d summited Mount Zee.

The whole situation had me thinking about awkward love triangles, because whatever her operating system was, she had me intrigued. I couldn’t figure out why Gentry had latched onto her, because she did not fit into his chivalrous little world. She had a mouth like a sailor and a body that was more Rubens’ Venus than The Lady and the Unicorn. Still, for whatever reason, Gentry was really into her, and I didn’t want to be the person who made a mess of his romantic delusions.

The two of them sat there, messing with their phones, until Zee turned her head and looked at Gentry, then back at her phone.

“Are you two texting each other right here in front of me?” I said.

Zee snorted, finished typing something, and put her phone away. Then she got the backpack off the dresser and carried it into the bathroom.

“So, how are things going with her?” I asked. “Sir Percival still a virgin?”

Without answering, Gentry followed Zee to the bathroom. Nothing weird about that.

They’d been in there for maybe five minutes when someone knocked on the door. It was way too soon to be Edrard back with the pizza, so I got up to see who it was. Zee came out of the bathroom and shook her head at me.

“Will you do me a favor?” she said.