Here we go. I’m going to have to lie to her about my new fake job. “Um, yeah, I think so? Although now that you mentioned flying instead of driving, I’m more nervous. I guess flying would make it so that I got home to Squeaker faster.”
“Do you know where you’re going first?” Kenda empties the last of the Skittles into her hand and tosses the bag into the backseat.
“Why I do declare!” I say in my best Scarlett O’Hara voice. “I do believe that is your second question!”
“Ugh! What if we can ask a couple of questions as long as it’s on the same topic?”
I just giggle. “What if we just have a conversation?”
She smiles and nods her head. “Yeah, okay. So! Do you know where you’re going first?”
I shake my head and then set the cruise control to match the car in front of us. “I do not. I’m okay not knowing. We have enough adventure ahead of us, honestly. Plus, maybe I can learn some tips from you when we find Mr. Randolf. I can’t believe we have to go hunting for him. How do we even know if he’s still in the same city?”
“We don’t. That’s the hard part, but he has the advance so if he did end up running off, Viv will sue him for breach of contract.”
“She can do that?”
“Viv can do a lot of things. She’s a very powerful woman. I’m surprised you didn’t already figure that out.” Kendra rustles in the bag from Speedway looking for more snacks but comes back emptyhanded.
“I had a feeling but wasn’t sure. Plus, I try to stay away from her. She’s kinda scary.”
Kendra yawns and leans back in her seat. “She’s very scary.” Kendra closes her eyes for a second and then jolts awake. “I’m sorry.” She pats herself on each cheek trying to wake herself up.
“It’s okay. I’m good, pinky swear. If you really want to take a nap, I can take the first shift of driving and then you can drive when I’m sleepy. How about that?” If she’s asleep then I don’t have to worry about paying more attention to driving and accidentally say something that I’ll regret.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to make you feel like you have to do all of the driving,” she says as her eyelids take longer and longer to open between blinks.
“Oh, I don’t feel like I have to do all of the driving because we for sure will be switching in a while. Just take a nap.”
Kendra barely mumbles an “okay” before she’s breathing deeply. I turn the radio on low, just enough that I can listen to it and then settle in to follow the green Toyota Camry in front of me.
Hours go by, the GPS directs me to get on a different highway heading through Ohio. I don’t know why my GPS chose all the toll roads. Of course, I don’t ever go this far out of Michigan, maybe that’s just the way to Connecticut. The sun comes out in full force and beats through the windshield. I reach over and turn the fan up so that it cools down the car. The air blowing on Kendra rouses her from her slumber.
“Mmm, I’m hungry.” She turns her head toward me and opens one of her eyes to look at me. “Can we eat?”
The clock on the dash reads 2:36pm. “Wow, you slept a long time! Don’t you ever sleep at home?”
“I do, but car rides are like a sleeping pill for me. Always have been. I really struggle to stay awake on car rides no matter who’s driving.” She sets her seat up and rubs her eyes carefully so as not to smear her eyeliner. She glances at the clock and says, “Oh my gosh! I didn’t know I was asleep that long! That’s almost four hours! And the sad thing is I could go right back to sleep. After eating, that is. Speaking of, any restaurants around here?”
“My GPS is so old and out of date that there’s no way I could rely on it to get us to a restaurant that’s still in business. I’ve seen signs advertising restaurants, but you were asleep. Wanna look on your phone to see if there’s anything coming up that you want?” I fight off the yawn that’s been threatening me for the last hour. “This would be a good time to switch drivers. I’m feeling the need to close my eyes for a while. I get what you mean. Riding in a car is definitely a sleeper.”
Kendra giggles and then pulls out her phone. She’s quiet for a few minutes before she just shrugs and sets her phone down. “Let’s just play restaurant roulette.”
“Where do you get all of these weird games?”
She laughs and says, “I just make them up. They’re fun.”
I roll my eyes and then decide that playing a game would probably help to wake me up. “Ok, how do we play?”
“It’s easy. Pick a number between one and three.”
“Uh, two?”
“Great! So, on the next exit sign, we go to the second restaurant listed.”
I know I’m silent for way too long. “But…what if it’s gross?”
“What would make it gross?”
I look over at her and she truly looks puzzled as if there isn’t any gross restaurant food out there ever. “Seafood. Seafood is gross.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“What?!? Are you serious? You don’t like crab, or lobster, or shrimp?”
“Ew, ew, and absolutely ew. I got sick off of shrimp before so there’s no way I can eat it. Even the texture makes me want to gag.” The thought of biting through the shrimp turns my stomach and suddenly I could drive a lot farther because I have no appetite.
“Oh, yeah, I would probably have an issue with shrimp if it made me sick. Okay, if it’s a seafood restaurant we have to keep going to the next sign until we get a restaurant in the second slot on the sign that’s not seafood.”
“Ha ha, good thing I’m not hungry,” I say, razzing her. “Might want to get a snack. The closer we get to Connecticut, the closer we are to the coast and the more seafood restaurants there will be. I googled it.”
“Maybe not,” Kendra points at a sign up ahead. “We have our first contender! Are we eating?”
Slowly the sign comes into range, and we are able to read it. Kendra slaps her hand against her knee. “Shoot! There’s only one option, McDonald’s. Guess we have to keep going.”
My stomach lets out a loud rumble. “Are you sure? It’s by a truck stop. I could get gas there too.”
Kendra’s stomach matches the whale song that my stomach made, and she nods her head. “Okay, yeah, I could eat some french fries.” She looks over at the fuel gauge. “Wow! Your car goes for a long way without needing gas!”
I look over at her with a smirk on my face. “You sleep pretty hard, don’t you? I had to get gas already. You slept through the whole thing.” I giggle a little before my stomach mocks me with its own noises.
“No way! I’ve never slept through a car stopping before. That usually wakes me up.”
I flip on the turn signal to get off onto the exit ramp. “I think I would be able to kidnap you and you would just sleep all the way to my kidnappers lair.”
Kendra stops moving and then looks over at me. “We need to have you edit a nicer book.”
A bubble of laughter slips out of my mouth at the realization that I sound like a crazy person. And it’s only going to get worse once Viv starts setting me up with “meetings.”
The McDonald’s comes into view and it’s like my stomach can see the sign. It growls so loud that it drowns out the radio and the fan on the air conditioner. Kendra looks at me with her mouth open and we just laugh. “Coffee and snacks only last for so long, I guess.”
Once we’re at the drive-thru window, I put in our order and Kendra passes the company card over. I pay and the person hands us the piping hot bag of fries and burgers, along with our Diet Coke’s. I get the card back and quickly slip into a parking spot. Kendra is already eating fries out of the bag. She hands me a straw and a container of fries. The fries are so fresh the cardboard container is too hot to hold.
“Ouch! How are you just cramming these sticks of fire into your mouth? Aren’t you burning your mouth?” I set my fries on the dash in front of me because they’re even too hot to set on my lap.
Kendra shrugs her shoulders and mumbles a sound that resembles the words I don’t know. Her mouth is so full of fries that she can’t even talk. I decide to dig my burger out of the bag and eat that while my fries cool.
After I take a bite of my quarter pounder, I ask, “So do you think you know where Mr. Randolf is, or are we just shooting blindly?”
Kendra finishes off her fries in record time and grabs her burger. “I honestly don’t know. I wish I had a clue other than his address. And quite frankly, I’m not even sure that the address is his residence. I know he was married when he signed the contract, but I believe he may be divorced now.”
I grab a napkin and wipe the mayo dripping down my chin. “I’m not sure I could be married to a man who wrote erotica either. It’s kinda like living a second life. Except it’s all in your head.”
Kendra takes a bite of her burger, chews it a little, and then says with her mouth full, “I mean, all authors live a second life in their head. We read their other lives all the time. Some are interesting and some are kind of creepy.” She chews the rest of her mouth full up and swallows before saying, “Mr. Randolf’s just went from one spectrum to another.”
I take another bite of my hamburger, eating my way around the edge where the crispy meat edges are before making my way through the rest. “Have you ever known another author to go from one spectrum to another? I mean, is that a normal progression?”
Kendra shakes her head. “Never. Sure, the author transforms, gets better, grows into a great author, but none that I’ve ever worked with, went from romance novelist to hardcore. I would even dare to say that it’s harder than hardcore. Some of it makes me cringe. Almost nauseous.”
I finish my burger, take a sip of my drink, and then start eating my fries. They’re just cool enough to not burn my fingertips. “That makes me a little afraid of what we’re going to find. Where does an author get their inspiration for stuff like that?”
Kendra stuffs her garbage into the bag and set it on the floor as I finish my fries. “I don’t know, and I’m afraid I don’t think we want to know. But we’re going to have to find out. Especially if he’s not at the address that’s listed on his contract.”
I put my garbage into the McDonald’s bag, roll it up and toss it into the backseat where there’s a healthy pile of random wrappers. The car glides in reverse out of the parking spot and quietly takes us to the truck stop across the street. “How does the advance work? Does it go out in payments? Wouldn’t those payments have to be mailed to the address on his contract?”
Again, Kendra shakes her head. “Nope. We cut a check on the spot once he signed the contract.”
“On the spot?!? Is Viv made of money? How can she just cut a check like that?” When a blue station wagon passes me, I’m able to pull into the truck stop and up to a gas pump.
Kendra grabs her purse and sets it in her lap. “Pretty much. Viv has done a great job with the publishing house.”
The car sputters to silence when I put the car in park and turn off the key in the ignition. There are five or six semi-trucks here and only one other car like ours. Truck drivers always give me the creeps. When I was a kid, my mom and dad and I were driving to Texas. I was maybe eight or nine. I was motioning out the window for the truck driver to honk the horn, and he did. My dad was so upset. He said that truck drivers aren’t men to be messed with because they may do things to girls that are inappropriate. Ever since then, I stay away, if I can help it.
Kendra gets the company card out to swipe in the gas pump and then looks at me with a puzzled look on her face. “Hey! You said that you stopped to get gas while I was asleep. How did you pay?”
I open my door and grab my phone to put into my pocket. “I used my own card. I kept the receipt though.”
“Oh, okay. Next time, just use the card or wake me up. Viv hates having to combine things to have a final cost.” Kendra gets out of the car and shuts the door behind her. Several of the truck drivers have already seen us both and are staring at us. Kendra comes over by me and swipes the card. “I’m going to see if I can find some snacks. The ones we have are boring.”
“Ha, okay. We haven’t even gotten to some of them, but you do you, boo.”
Kendra laughs as she walks toward the store. I take the gas cap off and start pumping gas into my car. I watch as a truck driver follows Kendra into the store and then I hear a deep, smoker voice from behind me, “Hey, pretty lady. What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?”