Rules of Protection(45)

Ouch. That stung. I wanted to ask him why he wasn’t jealous, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Valuable lesson of the day: don’t ask questions you might not like the answers to.

Jake turned down an unpopulated county road, and I spied something ahead. It had already gotten too dark to tell what it was from a distance, but when we got closer, I saw four large skeletal remains hanging from the barbed wire’s wooden posts. Jake didn’t bat an eye as we drove past, but I remembered the men who crept out of the woods the night we arrived.

“Oh, my God. What the hell were those…things?”

He glanced in his rearview mirror. “Alligator gars.”

“What?”

“Alligator gars. They’re a type of fish.”

“There’s no way. Those things were too big to be fish. They were longer than me.”

Jake smirked. “Trust me, they’re fish. Gars can get up to ten feet long.”

“Why are their skeletons hung up on the fence? That’s creepy.”

“You don’t want to know.”

I gave him an impatient look. “Tell me.”

“All right. Well, some people around here believe in voodoo.”

Just what I need. Something else that gives me nightmares. “Never mind. You’re right. I don’t want to know.”

We drove silently while I tried to erase the disgusting skeletal creatures from my mind. Darkness crept forward and encompassed everything around us. I had no idea where we were until Jake pulled out onto the highway. Junior’s Diner was on this same highway, so chances were good that Jake was taking me to dinner. Junior would love that since I made such a lovely scene in the bathroom the last time I visited his place.

Jake slowed and turned his blinker on, but he passed the diner, pulled into the Dairy Queen parking lot, and got in line at the drive-through. I didn’t understand what he was doing, so I held off on reacting. Something must’ve got lost in translation. I was still trying to connect the dots when we arrived at the microphone.

Jake leaned out his window. “Two small vanilla cones,” he said into the speaker.

Too stumped for words, my lips couldn’t form any clear communication. My face began to feel hot. I rolled down the passenger window to let the cool night air in and closed my eyes. This couldn’t be real. Somehow, I had convinced myself Jake was taking me on a romantic outing, but all he had planned was ice cream at the Dairy Queen drive-through. Talk about an insulting buzzkill.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, he didn’t even ask me which flavor I wanted. He assumed I’d take whatever he’d give me and be happy with it. Don’t know why I was surprised. He’d been doing it since I met him.

Jake pulled around to the other side of the building where the window was. The car in front must’ve gotten ice cream as well because they’d already pulled away. The freckle-faced teenage girl at the window smiled flirtatiously at Jake as he handed her a ten-dollar bill. She handed him his change and some extra napkins. A plump, older woman walked over with two vanilla cones and handed them to the teen.

She passed the first ice cream cone out the window to Jake. Then Jake passed it to me. And, with no hesitation, I passed it right out my passenger window. It splattered on the pavement, cone and all.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jake asked.

“Maybe I preferred chocolate, you prick!”

“If you wanted chocolate, all you had to do was say something.”

“I didn’t want…never mind. Just forget it.” With that, I opened my door and got out of the Explorer, noticing two other vehicles had pulled up in line behind us.

Jake was genuinely confused. “What’s your problem?”

“This is where you chose to take me? Seriously?”

“What’s wrong with Dairy Queen?”

“Nothing!” I marched toward Junior’s Diner with my feathers more ruffled than before.

I could hear the people in the other cars laughing as Jake pulled out of the drive-through line, parked, and got out. “What are you whining about now?” he asked.

“Whining about?” I said, spinning on my heels and pacing back in his direction. “Are you kidding me?”

“Emily, you’re making a scene.”

“Well, you might be in for one hell of a shock, but I don’t f*cking care!”

“I don’t get it. You didn’t throw a tantrum last night.”

“Because I didn’t know where you were taking me last night!”

“I didn’t, either,” Jake said. “Is that why you’re so pissed?”

“God. All you men are liars!”

A trashy-looking woman from one of the drive-through cars hung out her window and shouted, “You tell him, girl!”

“Hey, women lie, too, and not always on their backs,” a young man yelled from the other car in the drive-through, then followed it with animated laugh.

Jake’s steely gaze bore into mine. “Are you done being hysterical yet?” he asked in a low, rough voice.

“Not. Even. Close.” I squeezed past him and walked between two parked cars.

Jake followed, not allowing me to escape his field of vision. He was thoroughly pissed off. “You know, I wondered when the next storm would hit,” he said angrily. “We should have named you Hurricane Emily. It’s more fitting.”