“Guess Finn knew what he was doing, telling you no,” I said. “We all knew what you were doing with Melanie Sloan that night.”
Rusty shook his head, smiling. “Melanie Sloan. She smelled like cigarettes and Sour Apple Pucker.”
“Nasty.”
“Yeah,” Rusty mused, “but in a good kind of way.”
“Oh my god. You . . .”
He just grinned at me, and we were right back there, in high school, when he was Finn’s best friend who alternately intrigued and repelled me. We sat for who knows how long like this, kids camped out, waiting for the rain to let up, swapping stories about Finn and eating through my candy supply while the rain streaked the sky gray outside. There, in our own little world, with Finn as the link between us, we let our guards down, enough to really laugh together.
So when the sun finally did come out, I was more than a little disappointed it had to end. Rusty was the first one to swing open the door and bring us back to reality. He stood stretching in the moisture-thick air, arms high above his head, and I caught myself looking a few seconds too long at the thin line of stomach that showed between his raised shirt and low-slung jeans.
The little jolt it sent through my stomach startled me, and I got out quickly, glancing around for something else to focus my attention on. From the looks of it, we’d zigzagged off the road and skidded through the mud until a cactus, one of those tall, prongy, two-armed ones, stopped us. I shook my hair off my face, and hopefully the blush out of my cheeks, and walked over to examine the cactus. It leaned to the side, like a person who’d had one too many drinks, and I felt a little bad about the scar the Pala’s bumper was sure to leave.
Except for the sound of a pickup drifting by on the highway, the rainwashed desert was as still and quiet as could be. Rusty popped the hood with a dull thunk, and we both walked over to survey the engine. What we’d be looking for I had no idea, but I figured he would. And I was right. He went straight for the radiator cap, testing it for heat first out of instinct, though it’d long since cooled. As soon as he opened it up, I knew we were in for it.
“Damn,” he said, taking a closer look. “It’s bone dry in there.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Means all that steam was the water getting out somewhere.” He leaned over the radiator, inspecting it. “Could be a crack. A hose. A slow leak. This been running low on water before now?”
I hesitated, reluctant to admit I hadn’t really kept up so well on all those little details in the last few months. “I don’t think so. Nothing I noticed.”
Rusty rested a forearm on the raised hood, considering the engine. “We’re gonna need that water you got.”
I went back to the cab and grabbed the almost-full jug, silently thanking the old minimart guy yet again. “You think this’ll last us?” I asked, handing it over.
“We’ll see.” He tipped it in and let half the water glug into the radiator before capping it. “Like I said, worse comes to worse, we stop off at my mom’s.” Before I could reply or ask a question, he brought the hood down firmly and headed to the driver’s side, dangling the half-empty water jug in his hand. All cool and aloof again, in a way that made me kind of wanna get his attention back. I didn’t move from the hood. Just stood there trying to figure out how we’d gone from so easy and comfortable in the car back to . . . this way.
“Hey, Rusty?” I wanted to tell him thank you . . . or that I was really happy he was here . . . or—
“Yeah?” He said it over his shoulder, didn’t even bother to turn around as he headed for the driver’s side, and somehow that one tiny thing brought my senses back.
“I’m driving,” I said. That got him to turn around. “You’ve been drinking. Out of your little flask thingy.” I waved an invisible one between my thumb and forefinger.
He blinked once, twice, then tossed me the keys. “Fine. Just watch the brakes. And the temperature gauge. It starts climbin’, we got a problem.”
13
Half an hour down the road, we had a problem.
“It’s going up—the temperature gauge. Past where it usually is,” I said, squinting at the shaking needle.
Rusty leaned over close; so close I could smell the mix of gum and alcohol and whatever deodorant he was wearing. “Damn.” He slid the heater knob over to the little red bars, then turned the vents on high. Hot, sticky air blasted out at us.
“What’re you doing? It’s a hundred degrees in here already.” I reached to turn it off, but Rusty blocked my hand.
“Leave it. It’ll help cool the engine down.”
“No, it won’t. That’s not gonna do anything but make it more miserable hot than it already is in here.” I had no idea if it would help or not, but the last thing I wanted right then was the heater on full blast. I leaned forward on the wheel and felt the wetness of my tank top cling to my back. “Seriously. Turn that off.” I reached for it again.
“We got about forty miles of nothing between here and Sedona, half a jug of water, and a leaking radiator,” Rusty said, kicking off his boots. “Give it a few minutes. If it doesn’t work, you can turn it off.” He leaned back in the seat and stretched out his legs, then locked his fingers behind his head. “It’ll work, though.”
“Fine.” I sighed loud enough for him to hear, unstuck my legs from the seat, and tried to distract myself from the thick, nasty heat. Rusty, with his bare feet down by the door, didn’t look half as bothered by it as me, and I wished I’d thought to take my boots off before we got on the road. I briefly contemplated my slip-them-off-while-driving move, but didn’t wanna chance landing us off the road again, so I settled on flying an arm out the window instead.