“What are you doing? You are drunk. Gimme the keys.”
He finally got the one foot out, then stood on it and pulled his jeans off the other leg. Then he bunched them up and threw them in the backseat, sat down behind the wheel so hard I bounced, and looked at me like I was the ridiculous one. “I’m not drunk. It’s hotter than shit, we got a ways to go, and I’m sweatin’ balls.”
I didn’t really have a response for that.
Except to burst out laughing. And then try to compose myself while Rusty looked at me, completely straight-faced, which brought on another wave. He just sat there in his faded plaid boxers, waiting patiently for me to finish.
I sucked in a big breath of air, cleared my throat, and did my best to mirror his straight face. “So . . . you’re just gonna . . . drive in your underwear. Because it’s hot. And you’re . . . sweating balls.” I pressed my lips together and nodded like it was totally reasonable.
“Pretty much.” He turned the key, then adjusted the mirrors back to his liking. “Wouldn’t bother me if you did, too.”
I laughed again and looked out my window, far away from Rusty in his underwear. Tan, built Rusty, who was now grinning at the dare like there wasn’t a chance I’d do it.
“Oh, yeah?” I stalled, doing a quick mental check of my guts and what I had on under my clothes.
He shrugged. “It’d be fine.”
I watched him for a second, trying to see if there was any hint of anything coming from him. And then I chickened out. “Thanks. I’m good, though.” I let my eyes shift ever so slightly in his direction when he looked over his shoulder and pulled us back onto the highway.
“Suit yourself,” he said casually. He caught my eyes for a second, then grinned confidence down the road. “Just try not to stare too hard.”
14
I never wanted to take my clothes off so badly in my entire life. After three spurts of driving, with three stops in between to let the engine cool down, my tank top was so sweat soaked, I’d given up unsticking it from myself. And my cutoffs. Well. They were a lost cause, no matter how I sat. I glanced over at Rusty, who looked relaxed and relatively comfortable, like he was catching a nice breeze for his, um . . . problem.
I’d run out of things to talk about that didn’t have to do with how miserable hot I was, and decided it was probably best to keep my mouth shut anyway, because I was a little scared I might say something embarrassing. So I sat quiet, alternating between trying to figure out how to sit so that the least amount of me was touching the seat, and making a concerted effort not to look over at him in his underwear. Too much. Rusty didn’t seem to notice the craziness that was going on in my mind. He drove and watched the temperature needle like the world depended on it. Which it kinda did.
He shook his head. “Thing’s way too hot. We need more water.”
“You could pour the rest of your whiskey in there.” I meant it as a joke, but it came out sarcastic.
Rusty didn’t respond.
I bent forward and rummaged around the floor until I found the two things I was looking for—my soda cup, which now held a brown-tinged mix of melted ice and the last drops of Coke, and the plastic soda bottle from the day before, still two-thirds of the way full and hot. I held them up to Rusty. “What about these?”
He slid his eyes over and took in what I was offering, then lit up a little. “Couldn’t hurt. We still got about twenty miles, and I bet that thing’s dry again.” He slowed, and we bumped over the dirt and gravel before coming to a stop. When he cut the engine, the Pala shuddered off, then was still. No sounds of bubbling water or steam or anything.
Rusty patted the dash. “Come on, Peaches. We only gotta make it a few more miles. Hang in there.”
“Peaches?”
He ignored me.
Normally, I would’ve given him a hard time for this. I always did with Finn whenever he started talking about the Pala like it was a girl. It was another one of those things I never got, and the couple of times I teased Finn about it, he just grinned his happy grin at me and brushed it off. Now I understood it was probably another joke between him and Rusty that I wasn’t in on, and chose to ignore it. I got out of the car, grateful for a little air.
Rusty did too, even though he was in his underwear. It was funny the first time we stopped, and every time after that, it made my cheeks rush hot all over again. By now he treated it as routine, as if it were normal to do all these things in your underwear: Get out, stretch, look over miles of desert that didn’t change, check the engine, get honked at and flashed by a car full of girls zooming by with their music blaring. None of it fazed him. Which was kind of even more attractive. Oh, god. I could barely stand myself.
I looked across the barren flatness to the mountains I hoped we’d make it to. I was sick of flat, ugly desert. I could’ve stayed in Texas to see this much brown dirt. But Finn had told me to go on an adventure, put my feet in the ocean. He’d set me down the highway with a pair of tickets and made it seem important enough to blow off orientation week and lie to Aunt Gina, not that he’d had any idea I’d do those things. I was having a hard time believing it myself. Guilt tugged at me again, heavy with the fear that I’d just used Finn’s gift as an excuse to run away. That even as I told myself I was doing this for him, it was a selfish thing. Maybe this ugly desert and broken-down car were fate’s way of telling me so. I motioned at the shrubs in front of us, wanting to change the subject in my mind. “Does Sedona look like this too?”