He Started It

Bet he wouldn’t think I was so cute if he knew I was pregnant.

Montana is called Big Sky Country, and that’s a true statement. Big sky, open land, and long, long drives. It’s also called the Treasure State, but I don’t know anything about that. We’ve only driven through Montana, never stopped to look for treasure. Our destination is the strip of Idaho between Washington and Montana. Yes, that’s right. Our goal is Idaho.

Last time, we had a moment in Idaho. A real, lasting moment that altered the course of our trip.

I’m hoping this visit is a lot less exciting. The drive there certainly is. I’ve already thought about all the things worth thinking about, so unless I start obsessing about one of them, there’s no place for my mind to go. If I didn’t have to look over my shoulder every five minutes to make sure someone wasn’t stabbing me in the back, I would’ve fallen asleep.

Portia is the one who keeps it interesting. She combines her alcoholic beverages with Hostess cupcakes, so she gets buzzed pretty quick. Not a normal buzz, either. She’s also wired from all the sugar.

She starts telling a story about her last boyfriend, a guy named Jagger. They met ‘at work’.

‘Where do you work again?’ Felix says.

‘A bar. It’s called Young Guns.’

Lie. It’s called Young Buns.

Jagger worked at the same bar, but after they started getting serious he switched shifts so they didn’t have to deal with any weird shit. Her words.

They had lockers at work for their bags and wallets, and that’s where the relationship began.

‘I started finding little gifts at my locker,’ she says. ‘A flower, a little note telling me how beautiful I looked. I knew it was someone who worked there because of what he left. Like, one day I talked about how much I loved tangerines and the next day that’s what I’d find. A tangerine.’

‘Wait,’ Felix says. ‘You didn’t think that was creepy?’

Portia rolls her eyes while taking another swig of her drink. In the car, she uses a sippy cup. ‘Of course it was creepy. At the time, I mean. But I already told you this guy became my boyfriend, so obviously it didn’t turn out creepy.’

Felix nodded, eyes wide. ‘Got it.’

‘Good,’ she says. ‘Moving on. This continued for a couple of weeks. I started looking forward to seeing what would come next, because the gifts started getting more elaborate. Like, one flower became half a dozen, or a one-line note became a whole poem.’

She stops. I’m sitting sideways in the middle row, back against the door, so I can see both Felix in the front and her in the back. She’s smiling.

‘What?’ I say.

‘I was just thinking of the last gift. The one where he finally signed his name.’

The whole time she is talking, I keep thinking the story sounds a little familiar. Like something out of a CW show or a Netflix series, the kind of thing I’d watch unintentionally. I assume she’s lying, and that there never was any Jagger.

‘Bluebells,’ she says. ‘He left me a whole bouquet of bluebells.’ Another smile, followed by a wistful glance out the window.

She is lying. I just had the source wrong. This story doesn’t come from a TV show. ‘Your favorite flower,’ I say.

‘Exactly.’

This is Nikki’s story. Close to it, anyway. This is how she met Cooper.

He left gifts at her locker, and the bluebell was her favorite flower. We heard it all, multiple times, because Nikki loved to talk about it. Portia stole parts of Nikki’s story, made up the rest, and came up with her own version. Maybe she’s too drunk to realize the story isn’t hers.

Eddie laughs. ‘You’re lying.’

‘Excuse me?’ Portia says.

‘There’s no way that could happen. First, how many people work at this bar? How difficult would it be to figure out who was leaving all these presents?’

‘It’s a pretty big bar …’

‘So if it’s that big of a bar, how are there not cameras? In New Orleans? And why wasn’t anyone worried that an employee was receiving all these gifts? Jesus, I think this guy broke a few stalker laws.’

‘I’m not lying,’ Portia says. I can’t blame her for digging in and defending her lie. When you get caught, sometimes you have to.

Eddie snorts.

Snorts.

‘Oh, okay. If you say so,’ he says.

Portia leans forward on the back of my seat, getting as close to Eddie as she can without climbing over. ‘This is my story, not your story. I think I know what’s true and what’s not.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘What do you even care? Like it matters who I date or how I got a boyfriend?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Eddie says. ‘I’m just not going to sit here and listen to such an obvious lie without saying something.’

‘Oh sorry, I didn’t realize you had joined the truth police.’

‘I can’t help if you’re a terrible liar.’

‘You also can’t help being an asshole.’

Eddie shrugs in that nonchalant yet infuriating way. Portia lies back down on her seat. Felix stares at his phone. I can’t tell if what I just heard was an act or a real argument, because they’re both right. Eddie pointed out the obvious holes in Portia’s story, yet at the same time, why the hell should he care?

‘Check the GPS, will you? See how much longer.’

Now Eddie is talking to Felix. Rather, he’s ordering Felix around.

‘Sure,’ Felix says, reaching over to the touchscreen in the middle of the dash. The same touchscreen Eddie has been using the whole trip.

‘Is your hand broken?’ I say to Eddie.

‘Three hours,’ Felix says.

‘Thanks.’

Eddie does not answer me. Instead, he says, ‘We’ll stop once more before we get there, so figure out now what you need to pick up.’

Portia pokes her head up to give him a dirty look. She lies back down without saying a word.

In the rearview mirror, I see Eddie smile. He switches the music to an annoying song from the eighties. We’ve listened to this before and we’ve complained about it. Now he not only turns it back on, he turns it up.

All of a sudden, I realize what he’s doing. He’s done it before.

What do you most fear?

Nothing. Most of the time, anyway. I really don’t have time for deep introspection right now, I’m a little busy.

But I’m a little tired of that guy following us. I don’t know if I’m scared, but I’m definitely annoyed. What I’d really like to do is pull over and ask him who the hell he is and what he wants, but I won’t. Not with Portia and all the others around. If I was alone, I’d do it, though. I swear I would.

Nobody ever gives me credit for that – being brave, I mean. They always say I act without thinking and I’m impulsive and blah, blah, blah. How about brave? Why can’t I ever be that?

On the first trip, I sat up front with Nikki on the second half of the drive through Montana. She needed a navigator she could trust, and Portia was too small. Eddie slept too much.

Nikki and I talked a lot during that long drive, and listening to her was my favorite thing. She was talking to me again, just like when we were younger. After a while, whatever thrill she got from taking over the trip started to fade. I was the one she told.