A Little Like Fate (Robin and Tyler 1)

“They are some nice people.” She takes the card from me and places it back in the file. “So, what are you two girls going to do for the remainder of your stay?”

“I haven’t really thought about it,” I admit, glancing around the foyer for a brochure shelf or something advertising tourist info and local entertainment. There’s no public transportation system here either. “What is there to do in Salt Gap?”

“Well…” Sherry says, glancing to the ceiling as she thinks.”

“Oh ya know,” Miranda says. “Skeet shootin’, porch sittin’, wrastlin gators.”

I give her a look and turn back to Sherry, awaiting her real reply. There’s no way she’s going to suggest those things.

Sherry brightens at the mere thought of what she’s about to say. “Ah! Of course. You’re here just in time for the Cockroach Festival!”

Chapter 9

“Cockroaches?” Miranda rips open a garbage bag I pilfered from my smashed vehicle and pulls out a few shirts. She holds each one up to her chest, glances down in disgust and tosses it on the bed, wherein I then grab it and start pointing out nice things about it. She shakes her head at my latest offering and I toss it into her rejected pile. “What kind of inbred rednecks dedicate a town festival to cockroaches?” she asks.

“Why do you keep calling them inbred rednecks? That’s so insulting.”

She shrugs and tosses a burnt orange halter at me. “I don’t know, I guess I’m just being stereotypical. We’re from the city so they probably think we’re all gay, pierced and tattooed.”

“Well I am pierced and tattooed,” I point out, wiggling my inked left foot.

“And I made out with a girl last summer.” Miranda shrugs. “See, maybe stereotypes were made for a reason. For all we know, Sherry could be married to her cousin.”

“There aren’t many options for lovers in a town this small,” I agree with a laugh. She pulls a purple top from the bag and holds it up to her shoulders. It’s a V-neck long sleeve top with sequins along the neckline and it hugs my curves exactly right. “This will do,” she says, turning the shirt toward her face and basking in its softness.

I check my cell phone, which I discovered will get exactly one bar out of five potential bars of signal if it’s placed exactly on the far left of the bay window in our room. It hasn’t rang all day, and there are no new messages. I used to wonder what my funeral would be like, how many people would come and cry about how much they miss me. But now I’ve disappeared out from under them and no one cares. At least not yet.

The Cockroach Festival starts at six o’clock in the town square, which I’m assuming is that popular stretch of road that we drove through when we first got to town. There was a modest chamber of commerce building and a small park with a gazebo next to it. Apparently the park turns into quite the shindig once a year for this festival and there’s even something called a cockroach spitting contest, but I hope to God I heard her wrong. Sherry had told us to dress warm, wear loose pants for all the food we’d be eating, and not to show up late because then we’d miss the crowning of this year’s Cockroach Queen.

Yeah, like anyone would want to miss that.

Miranda takes a long time to get ready, bitching and moaning about my shoe selection the whole time. Her ass is way smaller than mine, but luckily the only useful thing she did throw in her backpack from home is a pair of jeans. As for me, I throw on the orange halter she rejected and pair it with a jacket, some dark wash boot cut jeans that make me look ten pounds lighter and a pair of patent leather boots that make me four inches higher. Or, you know, regular woman height since I’m kind of embarrassingly short.

Marcus drives us there, and the awkwardness of our acquaintanceship fills the air like a giant helium elephant-shaped balloon. In the daylight, he’s way less hoodlum-looking, almost cute in a way. If I were still into eighteen year old boys, I’d think he was hot. It’s a shame he’s a total delinquent. “What’d your dad say when he found out what you did?”

“He laughed.” My eyebrows hit the roof of the truck. He laughs. “No, well he laughed at first because he thought it was that asshole’s car. But then I told him it was really some girl’s car and I had fucked up bad. Then he grounded me for eternity and is making me work off the cost of the damage at his shop.”

“Eternity might be a little harsh,” I say. “If you’re grounded, why are you allowed to go to the festival?”

His fingers tap the steering wheel. “I’m not. But I am supposed to drive you anywhere you need to go.” He flashes us an embarrassed smile.

Booths and people fill up every square inch of the small park. A long banner welcomes us at the entrance and live country music livens the atmosphere. As a business woman, I don’t listen to country music. But as a Texan, there will always be a special place in my heart for it.

The festival’s great feat is how they manage to fit a few rides into the small park grounds. Some of them I remember from childhood trips to the county fair. The Zipper, the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Gravatron line the back of the park and have incredibly long lines of children anxiously awaiting their turn to ride.

Miss Cockroach and Miss Congeniality pose for photographs in the gazebo, complete with white sashes draped over their shoulders. I shudder when I see that the O in the word cockroach is a plastic cockroach. How could anyone want to win an award like that? What is wrong with these people?

Sherry was right though. The food is amazing. Miranda and I split a funnel cake and then promptly order another one because this sort of deliciousness only comes once in a lifetime and you do not need to waste your life by only eating half of it. We sit on a picnic table licking powdered sugar remnants off the paper plates where our funnel cakes used to be. Ah, those were better times.

“Are you having fun?” Miranda asks.

“I don’t know, I guess,” I answer with a shrug. How much fun can one have at a thing like this if you’re over the age of ten?

“You know, I was thinking,” Miranda begins. I’ve only been around the girl two days but I can tell when she’s about to drop a crazy idea on me. “Since you refuse to let us live here, we’ll never see these people again. We should just let loose and do whatever the hell we want.”

“Okay….” I lick my finger and run it along the plate, sucking up any remaining bits of sugary goodness. A teenager takes the stage and starts singing a Reba Macintyre song. “Got any ideas?”

“I want to spit a cockroach.” Miranda’s gaze pierces into mine, as serious as a fucking heart attack.