Free Driving With the Top Down by Beth Harbison Page A

what?” Colleen glanced but couldn’t tell what Tamara might be talking about. The trucker was gesturing still, rather broadly, but she couldn’t tell what it meant. Was he brandishing a gun or something? “What’s he saying?”
    “Ugh. I don’t know, but I think it’s something like ‘Oh, baby,’ and he’s— Ugh, it’s just too gross to say.”
    “Huh?” Colleen looked again and saw that the driver had somehow raised his pelvis up and appeared to be— There was no way. “Is he doing what he looks like he’s doing?”
    Tamara met her eyes for a moment. “Does he look like he’s beating off?”
    Colleen returned her eyes to the road. “Yes, he does.”
    “Then I think yes, he is.”
    “Oh, God.” Well, this was going to look great on her Résumé of Superior Guardianship when Chris saw it. Day One of her Excellent Adventure with Tamara, and so far they’d had fast food and convenience store snacks, seen a bunch of unremarkable doorknobs, and caught a middle-aged man masturbating. Add some roadkill and a motel room that smelled of bug bombs, and they’d have a banner Day One under their belts.
    “Ew!” Tamara cried, and looked away. “So nastyyy .”
    No kidding. This was the crescendo of their first day together? This? Some pervy trucker whacking off and, in so doing, subtly undermining Colleen even further. She was the impossibly boring straitlaced aunt taking a teenaged girl on a long drive south with old music and awkward spits of conversation—and now this? Asshole.
    At that moment, the sign for Henley appeared, just like Brigadoon in the mist. “Okay, hold on, Tam, we’re going to lose him.” She gunned the motor and shot ahead of the truck, then swerved into the exit lane, thinking he wouldn’t have time to do the same.
    Unfortunately, he seemed to have experience with this game of cat and mouse and moved into the lane behind her, quickly closing the gap between them.
    “This is so creepy,” Tamara said, looking fretful. It was amazing how fear transformed that hardened mask of an expression Tamara had been wearing all day and made her look like the vulnerable child she actually was.
    “There’s no way he can take an eighteen-wheeler on these back roads,” Colleen assured her—but was there?—and took a sudden left onto the main road into town.
    He followed.
    “Get your phone out and call 911,” Colleen said then, wondering why it had taken her so long to think of that. The idea alone made her feel a flood of relief.
    Tamara looked at her screen. “No reception.”
    Sudden panic surged through her with the force it can have only after a moment of false relief. “Shit! I mean shoot .”
    “I think he’s about to.”
    Colleen looked at Tamara, startled for a moment, replaying the comment and trying to figure out if the guy had taken out a gun or something, but when she met the girl’s eyes, she saw a tentative laugh in them.
    And then they both burst out laughing. The kind of hard, breathless laugh that felt like it was never going to stop. It had been a long time since Colleen last went on a laughing jag like that.
    “I cannot believe you said that,” she said.
    Tamara turned down the corners of her mouth and shrugged. “I can’t believe you got it.”
    “Ouch. Come on, how old do you think I am?”
    Tamara’s laughter quieted. “Actually, I don’t know. How old are you? Like … forty?”
    Ugh. “Thirty-six.”
    “Oh.” Tamara didn’t look surprised at the news, so it was hard to take the “forty” guess that personally. “I’m not very good at guessing people’s ages.”
    “I’ll say.” Colleen smiled to let her know it was okay.
    There was an old winding road into the mountain on the right, and Colleen couldn’t remember where it led, if anywhere, but she was positive she could take it at the last second and he’d overshoot it—everything was a pun suddenly—then even if he turned back, there was no way he could safely drive it.
    She took the turn