Free Pushing the Envelope: A Prequel from "The Barter System" World by Shayne McClendon Page B

void as possible.  She loved and looked after her best friend’s daughter as if she was her own and Archer had always been a father figure to Tawny. 
    “Mom keeps questioning me about where you’re going.  Will she have enough to eat?  Will she be around people she doesn’t know?   That kind of thing and it’s escalating.  While you’re here, she isn’t being too persistent, but I shudder to think about how bad things will get before you resurface.”  She paused, watching two elderly women power walk down the beach.  “What if she gets it out of me?”
    “Simple.  If you tell her what I’m really doing, I tell Aunt Maggie about those piercings to your kitty and your nipples that I held your hand through a few months ago.” 
    Riya grinned mischievously.  Tawny would find herself subjected to withering glares and subtle are you on drugs questions from her old-school mom if she ever found out what Tawny was really like. 
    The redhead laughed despite herself.  “I’m worried myself, of course.  I’m going to ask once more and then I won’t be a mother hen anymore… much .  Are you sure you’re going to be okay?”
    She placed her hands on Tawny’s shoulders, only slightly lower than her own. 
    “I promise to be careful.  The phones have a built-in GPS so if I go too long without uploading files, you’re allowed to check on me, but please don’t worry.  I’ll see you in New York for our celebratory chick weekend in early November and we’ll road trip back together.” 
    She hugged her one more time, glanced at her little beach place, and got in the car.  Rolling the windows down to remove some of the sweltering humidity, the full blast air conditioning made it bearable to breathe. 
    When she turned on the stereo, the CD player blasted what could only be one of Tawny’s mixes.  Riya smiled.  “You made me a compilation.” 
    Tawny nodded and both of them ignored the tears shimmering in her eyes.
    She leaned out the window.  “I’m a clever girl and I won’t let anything happen to my best friend’s best friend.”  Putting the car in reverse, she blew her a kiss.  “See ya, Tee.”

Chapter Three
     
    As she pulled away, Riya allowed herself one final glance in the rearview mirror, immediately wishing she hadn’t.  Tawny dropped her face in her hands and cried as she drove away.  Her best friend was not a crier, not ever, so when she disappeared from sight, Riya was almost relieved. 
    If they’d spent much more time strolling down memory lane, she might have begun to question her dissertation, her subjects, and worse – herself.
    As much as she loved her friend like a sister, she needed to do this. 
    She didn’t know how everything would play out, if the research would balance against her own sense of self-worth in the end, but one thing was certain - it was the experience of a lifetime and she was on the road, heading toward it. 
    She got on the interstate and headed north toward Orlando.  Tawny’s mix was a selection of hits popular in Florida to remind her of home.  Flo Rida, T-Pain, the Bad Boys soundtrack, and Will Smith’s Miami thumped through the speakers and had her singing along. 
    Songs they’d danced to a hundred times in one of their living rooms pumped her up instead of making her homesick for what she was getting further from with every mile.
    Over the last several years, Riya had fallen into a deep rut of schoolwork and writing that found her sitting alone in her house for days at a time.  A friendly, positive person by nature, she realized the year before that she needed something to shake her up – to bring her back into the world again.
    It wasn’t that she was bitter or that she hated men; nothing could be further from the truth.  She simply didn’t even bother putting herself out there anymore. 
    Though she didn’t know, it had been Aunt Maggie who shocked her to her core two years prior.  Introspective after the departure of another