“Nothing,” I tell him. “Just drive. You know where we’re going, right?”
“You know the guy’s in love with you, right?”
I look over at him, my eyes wide.
“What?” he asks. “It’s not like it wasn’t obvious the way he was carrying on the other night when he walked in on us kissing.”
“You didn’t seem to have any useful theories on it then.”
“Yeah, I had a little time to think about it, and the more I did, the more I realized that he had the same look on his face when I found my date for senior prom under the bleachers getting felt up by Bill Rodman.”
“I’m moving,” I tell Mike. “That kind of trumps everything else.”
“You’re not into him, then?” he asks.
I don’t answer, but that’s an answer in itself.
“You like him, too,” he says. “J’accuse!”
“J’accuse is back, huh?” I ask.
“Are you going to tell him?” Mike asks.
“Nope,” I answer. “There’s really nothing to tell. I have a new job in a new city—a new state, even. It doesn’t really matter whether I like him or not.”
“So you do like him?”
“Haven’t we established that?”
“I was talking out my ass,” Mike says. “Could you reach in the glove compartment and grab me the map that’s in there?”
I open the glove compartment, but all I find is a small bag of pot and a half-empty bag of corn chips.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s seriously the second decade of the new millennium. People don’t use fucking paper maps anymore. Could you pass me that bag? I think I’ve got half a joint stuffed in there somewhere.”
“I’m not letting you drive me high,” I tell him, and close the glove box.
“Killjoy.”
We’re on the road for another half hour, and Mike seems incapable of talking about anything other than my situation with Dane. I’m really not in the mood.
When we finally take an exit, Mike pulls the phone out of his pocket and hands it to me.
“Pull up the GPS,” he tells me. “I’ve got everything programmed in there.”
I will say this about Mike: he does come prepared. I really wish he hadn’t come prepared with the bag of weed, though.
We follow the automated voice into the first apartment complex, and I have the strangest moment. I’ve been in New York City so long that when I think of an apartment complex, I think of one building with only a few parking spaces out front that are always filled, crammed to the rafters with every brand of crazy person there is.
This place, though. It kind of reminds me of home.
It’s not the nicest place in the world, but the grounds are well-kept and I don’t see any crime scene tape, so I’m already excited.
“And now we wait,” Mike says as he pulls into an open parking spot.
“We wait?” I ask. “Why?”