Ride with Me

Very mature. All that would do was postpone the inevitable breakup until it wasn’t possible to postpone it anymore. No, they were going to stick to the agreement. They’d rip off the Band-Aid in Yorktown, get it over with.

She sighed and sipped her rapidly cooling coffee. It tasted like her mood—burned and muddy. All wrong. The rain was starting to ease up. Across the table, Tom was encouraging Jason to buy a decent bike and go somewhere, start seeing the world. Lexie wanted to tell the kid to stay home where it was safe. Adventure wasn’t for twenty-year-olds with motorcycle boots and puppy-dog eyes. Adventure would chew this kid up and spit him back out. Adventure really sucked.

After the rain stopped, the day heated up so fast she could actually see the moisture baking off the road. Between the heat and the humidity and the hopeless resignation that now accompanied her wherever she went, Lexie was not really in the mood for another of Tom’s lessons in spontaneity.

Unfortunately, he didn’t ask her permission. He spotted a brown-and-white sign reading BIG TREE—2 MI. and turned off the route with nothing more than a wink and a sly smile in her direction.

Ten minutes later, they crested a steep hill and began a fast, winding descent. Tom looked over his shoulder to check on her, unintentionally drifting out into traffic in the process. She’d asked him before to knock that off. She could take care of herself, and it drove her crazy to see him casually endangering himself to make sure she was safe. As they bottomed out and started up another hill, she put on a burst of speed to catch up with him.

“If you won’t quit checking on me, let me go first.” Her voice sounded whiny even to her own ears. She couldn’t seem to help it.

“All right, if you want to.” He slowed down so she could pass. “Did I do something wrong?”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“I meant other than that. Do you not want to go see the Big Tree, Marshall? Because in my experience, going to see the Big Tree is always worth it.” He smiled, trying to charm her into a better mood, but she couldn’t bring herself to smile back.

They crested the hill, and there it was: a big tree. It sat on a small patch of grass with a fence around it. Next to it was an empty gravel lot big enough for two or three cars. A sign informed them they were looking at the largest pin oak in Illinois, seventy-five feet tall and twenty feet around.

Tom got off his bike and crossed his arms over his chest, appraising the tree. He gave it an appreciative whistle. “That’s a big tree.”

“It’s dead,” she replied. It was, mostly. Only about a quarter of the branches had leafed out.

“Nah. But it’s seen better days, I’ll give you that. Maybe it’ll rally.”

Tom walked over to the fence and sat in the grass with his back against it. “Give me a drink, will you?” he asked. “I ran out of water half an hour ago.”

In the humid heat of the Midwest, Tom was always running out of water. You’d think he had no sense, but this was a guy who’d carried his own filtration system and special ten-gallon water bags across the deserts of Western Australia. He didn’t bother to worry about water in Illinois, because what was the big deal? You run out, you’re thirsty for a little while, you get some more water. It wasn’t like it was dangerous. Losing forty pounds in a month while crossing one of the most remote places on earth—that was dangerous. That was the act of a reckless man. The idiot.

She sat down beside him. “Maybe you should get another bottle,” she said, handing him the tube to her water bag.

“Who needs another bottle when I have you?”

She frowned. She didn’t like it when he didn’t take the ride seriously. It felt like he wasn’t taking her seriously. He was leaning his head against the fence now, eyes closed, soaking up the sun, so he couldn’t have seen her expression, but he must have sensed her mood, because his smile faded and he looked over at her.

“Are you ever going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Which was to say, no, she wasn’t ever going to tell him.

“Something’s wrong. You look like you want to bite my head off.”

“It’s hot, and I’m crabby, okay?” She silently willed him to drop it. She didn’t have the energy to convince him everything was peachy-keen right now, not in this heat. Not when it wasn’t.

He shook his head. “You think I don’t know you better than that? You’ve been unhappy for a week. I wish you’d tell me why.”

“You don’t want to know.”

He sighed. “I do. That’s why I’m asking you.”

Lexie picked up a stick—no doubt a cast-off limb of the beleaguered Big Tree—and poked at a bare patch of ground with it. The earth was still soft from the rain, and she pushed the tip of the stick in as far as she could and then levered it out, flinging a divot of turf into the air. A senseless act of destruction. It didn’t make her feel better, but she kept doing it anyway.

“I thought we were partners, Marshall,” Tom said quietly.

Partners. Christ. Why not just rip her heart out and stomp on it, already? “Maybe I don’t want to be your partner anymore, Geiger,” she said, sending another clod of dirt into the air with the stick. “What are you doing riding through Illinois with me anyway? Why aren’t you risking your neck crossing Mongolia or Siberia or something?”

He reached out quickly and tugged the stick out of her hand, tossing it over the fence toward the tree. Then he captured her chin in his hand and made her look him in the eye. “Why are you mad at me?”

Because I love you. Because you won’t tell me anything important. Because you’re going to leave me. Take your pick.