Side Trip(77)

Time to get moving. He had two nights of gigs in Chicago that he’d pushed back because of the storm, and he should call Rick. Hopefully he hadn’t screwed himself over. Chase would be pissed.

He rolled out of bed, pulled on his shorts, and packed. He tossed their food scraps from his late lunch run to the grocery store yesterday afternoon and straightened the room. He then tried to call Rick from the motel phone. Again, no answer. “Fuck.” He was screwed.

Dylan slammed down the receiver and turned on the news. All clear, according to the meteorologist. Crystal-blue skies as far as the eye could see. The shower still ran. Probably to cover up her conversation with Mark. Dylan slowly shook his head, lips pressed tight. This didn’t bode well for them.

He channel surfed. After an hour passed and the shower stopped, he knocked on the bathroom door.

“You all right?” he asked, his voice thick with concern.

The door swung open. Joy stood in a cloud of steam, dressed and ready for the road. He took in her high ponytail, pink blouse, and ankle-length lavender skirt. She gripped the luggage handle in one hand and Judy’s bucket list in the other. His heart sank and his gaze lifted to her face. Gone was his Cali girl.

“Hey,” he said gently, noticing her red-rimmed eyes and swollen cheeks. He skimmed the back of his hand along her cheekbone. She averted her face and he let his arm fall to his side.

“Bathroom is all yours. You should shower. We need to leave.” She walked past him, her demeanor stiff and formal.

“What did Mark say to you?”

“Nothing of import.” She folded her damp clothes from yesterday.

Dylan frowned. “I don’t believe you.”

She paused midfold. “Please.” Her gaze darted to the bathroom doorway. “We need to go.”

“Can we talk first?”

She shook her head. A ribbon of tears unwound over her cheek.

“Joy.” He approached her. She held up her hand. He stopped.

“Please, don’t.” Her voice broke.

She was breaking his heart. He could lock the door, beg her to turn off her phone. They’d shut the world out. “Let me help you.” He watched her for a minute, hoping she’d let him in.

She turned away from him.

Dylan sighed heavily at a loss of what to do. Relationships weren’t his forte. He grabbed his stuff and went into the bathroom. He showered and skipped shaving, afraid she’d leave him while he was in here. He dragged on jeans and a black tee and ran a comb through his damp hair. Joy was waiting for him by the car when he’d finished. She’d picked up coffees and doughnuts from the market across the street. For some reason, that hurt more than her shutting him out.

He’d wanted more time with her without the outside world interfering. He’d wanted to sit down with her for breakfast. They’d worked up monstrous appetites and deserved a huge meal of bacon and eggs and pancakes drenched in fake syrup. His mouth watered.

He dumped his duffel and Gibson in the back seat. “I need to check us out.” He did, and when he returned, Joy was sitting in the driver’s seat with the motor running. He sank into the passenger seat and closed the door. He turned to her.

“Joy,” he started, reaching to caress her cheek. He’d been aching to touch her since they woke.

She leaned away and his fingers skimmed air. “Seat belt,” she said curtly.

“Damn it, look at me,” he urged.

She closed her eyes. “Please.”

Dylan sighed. He dragged the belt across his body and clicked the latch.

“Thank you.” She exited the hotel’s parking lot and stayed legit to their course, sticking to the frontage road, the original Route 66, that paralleled the state highway.

Dylan stared through the windshield. Storm debris littered the road: leaves, small tree branches, trash from toppled bins. His heart. Sunlight glared off the wet asphalt, searing his vision. He didn’t put on his sunglasses. They’d be one more barrier between the wall Joy was rapidly erecting.

He looked back at her. She held her chin high and shoulders rigid. Her lower lip trembled, a small tell that got to him right behind his rib cage.

“We have to talk,” he said.

“No, we don’t.”

“Why are you being this way?” When she didn’t answer, he tried another approach. “I had a great time with you last night.”

“Last night never should have happened. I’ll drop you off in Chicago, but we’re going separate ways from there.”

He flinched. “We have a deal,” he reminded her, his voice hard.

“Deal’s over.” She swiped a finger under her eye.

He bounced a fist on his knee. He didn’t want to rent a car. He didn’t want to say goodbye. “I want to know why you changed your mind.”

“About the deal?”

“No. Us.”

“There is no us.”

“For twenty-four hours there was nothing but an us. Unless I’m mistaken, you were just as into us as I was.”

“You thought wrong. I wasn’t—”

“‘You.’ You said, ‘I choose you.’”

“And you said you’d never marry. ‘Relationships are a complicated mess.’ Ring a bell? You told me that the first day we met.”