Side Trip(37)

“What about dinner? Or your back rub?”

“Fuck food. Dinner, back rub, everything can wait. We have a baby to make.”





CHAPTER 14





BEFORE


Dylan

Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Adrian, Texas

“Side trip!”

Dylan jolted awake, sitting upright, only to slam back into his seat when the seat belt locked. He grunted.

Joy braked, veering onto the highway’s shoulder.

“What the fuck?” Dylan rubbed both hands down his face. He fumbled for his Dodgers cap, put it back on his head.

“We’re in Adrian, the geomathematical midpoint of Route 66,” Joy cheerily announced. She pointed at the welcome sign outside the windshield. Sure enough, they were halfway to Chicago. Only 1,139 miles to go.

Only 1,139 miles left of performing in public hell. Kill him now.

Joy yanked the aux cord from the base of her phone. “Photo op! Come on.” She opened her door.

What happened to their deal?

“I didn’t agree to this side trip.”

Joy stilled, halfway out of the car, and gawked at him. “We can’t not stop here. This is a big deal. And look.” She thrust an arm out the door, palm flat and up, fingers splayed. “There’s a café across the street. Let’s grab dinner. I’m starved.”

Dylan groaned and put on his shoes. He pushed open his door with his foot and did a slow roll from the car. Joy skipped to the sign.

“Are you always this chipper?” He fired the shot.

“Are you always a grump?” Shot returned. She didn’t even blink.

Dick was more like it. After the street gig he had to play earlier today he was feeling salty. Perfectly content to wallow in his vat of sodium chloride. Sting, baby, sting. Rub those coarse granules deep into his festering wound of self-pity.

He hated being startled awake. Jack always did that. He’d body flop on Dylan when he was in a dead sleep and tickle him until he felt like he was going to puke. “Guitars awaitin’,” Jack would growl into his ear, his dad’s breath stale and body ripe from the previous night’s bender. “They won’t tune themselves.”

Dylan raised his arms, hands clasped, and stretched. His back ached from standing on his feet for several hours with his Gibson hanging from his neck.

Joy gave him her phone and stood beside the sign. “Pics or it didn’t happen. Just one, please.”

She had him take five. He gave back her phone and she scrolled through her camera roll. “Perfect.” She flashed him the photo, her face in profile, her smile bright, her hip cocked, and her legs long and tan. The setting sun cast her in the perfect light. She was golden in the golden hour, and she looked freaking phenomenal. He almost asked her to text him the photo.

Joy tapped the screen, smiling. Dylan heard the text send off.

“Mark?” he couldn’t resist asking.

She looked up from the phone, perplexed. He’d kind of spat her fiancé’s name.

“Yes, why?”

Dylan just shook his head and got back into the car before he said something stupid. He didn’t know what muscle he’d tweaked, but Mark was the knot that suddenly showed up under the shoulder blade and gave a sharp pinch of a reminder it was there whenever he lifted his arm or twisted his torso a certain way. Weird. Dylan didn’t even know the guy. And he didn’t do jealousy, so that couldn’t be it.

Joy scooted the Bug across the highway to the Midpoint Café and Dylan followed her inside. Cooking grease, burned ground beef, and sour milk elbow-struck his olfactory nerve. His stomach recoiled. Takedown. Appetite gone. Not that it had made an appearance today in the first place.

Dylan scanned the joint, because that’s exactly what it was. A time warp of vinyl chairs, chrome, and Formica tables. Route 66 paraphernalia pocked the walls. Elvis Presley crooned from a jukebox in the corner.

“Wow! This place is off the hook,” Joy exclaimed.

More like a Twilight Zone nightmare. He’d fallen asleep only to wake up in a Happy Days episode. Smack him. He wanted to go back to sleep. He yawned and pinched the sleepers from his eyes.

“Judy would have loved this.” Joy sounded wistful. He also caught a shadow of something he didn’t expect to see in her eyes. Regret? Remorse? She turned away to answer the hostess before he could pinpoint what, or ask.

“Two for dinner,” Joy said.

The hostess seated them at a small table in the middle of the dining room and gave them plastic menus. Joy devoured the selection. She cooed over each item. They all sounded delicious.

Dylan put his menu aside. He’d skipped lunch, but the thought of another burger and shake turned over his sour stomach.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Joy asked.

He shook his head. Whatever he dumped into his gut would only come back up. He had another gig in a few hours in Amarillo.

Joy’s bottom lip turned out. “Hmm.” She returned her attention to the menu. Dylan’s, though, remained on Joy.

His gaze traveled over her. A strand of pearls adorned her neck. Where had those come from? He hadn’t noticed them this morning. She’d also polished her nails, a pale pink. He didn’t like it. He preferred them natural.

His eyes tracked up her hand, past the gaudy engagement ring to something shiny on her wrist. A sterling silver wire bracelet with a single turquoise stone. That was new, and it totally suited her, or the woman he visualized living under the shellacked exterior she projected. He dug that bracelet. He hated her getup.