Page 17 of Truth or More Truth
“Why do you say that?”
“At work, you’re all prim and proper in your skirt suits and will barely even look at or speak to me when I’m there. And here you are, eating Cheetos on a trucker motel bed in your Columbia University sweatshirt and happy-face socks with no makeup, teasing me like I’m your brother or something. The two don’t exactly jive.”
“Wow. There’s a lot to unpack there, Sport.”
“Sport?”
“Seemed appropriate, considering your job.”
“Don’t call me Sport.” The nickname makes me sound like I’m six.
“Okay … Sport. You know I’m switching from Bobby Joe to that now, right?”
“See? This is what I’m talking about.” I stalk to the bathroom with my clothes and close the door none too softly behind me.
“What’s what you’re talking about?” she calls out.
I ignore her as I quickly change my clothes. When I emerge from the bathroom, she stares at me. I stop and look down at myself. “What? What are you looking at? Is there a stain on my clothes or something?”
She shakes her head. “No. It’s nothing. I was just thinking about something unrelated to the non-stains on your clothes.”
She’s lying, but I drop it.
“Want to watch TV?” she asks.
“Sure. Nothing else to do.” I turn it on and twirl the knob and adjust the antenna on the ancient set until I land on a channel that actually comes in. It’s an old western movie, and Melissa seems inordinately excited about watching it.
“Want some Cheetos?” She holds the bag across the small gap between our beds.
“No, thanks.” As she would say, I don’t want her Cheeto cooties. “What else do you have in your bag of snacks over there?”
She flings it over to my bed. “See for yourself. Don’t go too crazy.”
After John Wayne beats the bad guys, yet another western comes on. I get up to try and find another channel, to no avail.
“Want to play cards?” Melissa asks.
“You brought cards?”
“Yep. You never know when you might have an entertainment emergency and need a deck of cards.”
“Have a lot of entertainment emergencies, do you?”
“More than you’d think. Hey, is it still snowing?”
I peek through the gap in the curtains. “Yep. Looks like maybe seven or eight inches out there.”
“Yikes.” She jumps off her bed to join me at the window. “I hope we’re able to get out of here tomorrow.”
She places a hand on my arm, and I stare down at it, wondering if she realizes she’s touching me.
“You think they’re worried about us? Leslie and Ash?” she asks. “I wish we could call them.”
“They’re probably not worried yet, because we weren’t supposed to arrive until late tonight.”
“But when we don’t show up …”
“I don’t think they’ll be worried then, either. They’ll just assume we didn’t want to bother them and are all tucked up in our hotel beds.”
