And the stars.
I’m back up in my hotel room an hour later. Glorious sleeps on the bed where he always does, freshly tuned, and I’ve taken some blankets and pillows to the floor, for some reason finding it more satisfying to sleep on than the cushy bed. I’m spread-eagle staring up at a spot on the ceiling, and all I can think about is …
A guy whose name I don’t know.
And his cute … young … sassy … shattered eyes.
I sit up with my notebook, lean back against the foot of the bed, and look over the lyrics from that song I threw together.
I mark out some of the words. Add new ones in the heat of the moment. The room’s perfectly dim with just one lamp on, not too close. I can barely see the page, just like I like it.
Then I realize the line I just wrote is:What the fuck about mine?
And:Does it make me a terrible person for wishing someone felt as bad as I do right now?
And:In the ever-loving quicksand that is my hometown of Spruce…
Is that what I’ve lost? Someone else’s perspective? What the real country feels like? Am I forgetting what the hell it’s like to be a normal-ass human being? Suffocating, like he is?
Another fucking guy singing about his feelings…
Goddamn, why didn’t I say something back to him?
What the fuck about mine?
And why didn’t you stay for the damned show? Was the idea of listening to a guy and his guitar so beneath you that you would rather gut him with a few words and run away … rather than give him a chance to comfort you with his music?
Me and my hero complex. Or my ego, if there’s a difference.
Next second, I’m at the window of my room, phone out.
Fifty-two milesthatway. That’s where it is, the quicksand I’ve apparently thrown him back into, too slow on the uptake to offer my hand.
Whatever it is I’ve lost, I’m pretty fucking sure that guy’s the one who found it, whether he knows it or not.
The car rental store stares at me from across the street.
And it opens at seven in the morning.
Chapter 5.
Timothy
Every time I come down to T&S’s, it’s a rebellion.
It shouldn’t be. But it is.
My mom smiles at me before I leave the house, and I know all the truth hidden behind that smile, same as I have truth walled up behind my “everything’s-totally-fine” eyes. She can’t fool me. And I can’t fool her. But we pretend to anyway, and then I’m out the door driving into town, feeling like the worst son ever.
I did tell her the office was nice.
She relayed the message to Dad immediately, looking like she just won a prize at the fair.
Sometimes I’m too honest.
But also never honest enough.
“You alright?” asks Billy at the Shoppe.