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So really, not only should I care about this stupid account, but I should be actively helping Liz get it. I just can’t bring myself to care about a few more zeros added to Mother’s spreadsheets. As for my supposed disownment, I’m working myself out of doubt and into complete denial. She’d never cut me off. It’d take too much work. And besides, Liz has made it clear that I’m not welcome to help anyway. Which is totally fine by me. That kind of work is best left to the drones anyway.
My eyes flick to Liz. She’s still staring, jaw working as she contemplates whatever issue is streaking through her mind. I shouldn’t think of her as a drone, but then it’s not my fault she is one. That’s the job she agreed to, what all my mother’s worker bees are. How could she care so much about a job, a stupid soulless job?
It’s conflicting. If someone had told me that I’d be the happiest I’ve been in years waking up in an unheated shack in Ohio, I would have laughed myself sick. Yet the warmth and comfort… The feel of her lithe body molded to mine… The smell of her hair…
I shift and try to think of something else before I get an erection. It’s a small miracle that I hadn’t this morning. Now that would have made things a lot worse. And maybe my lack of arousal is a sign that I’m just being stupid. I’m Rhett Westing. I don’t cuddle. I fuck. And I definitely don’t do either of those things with one of Mother’s employees.
But then the memory of Liz standing in the headlights returns and with it comes that hot, confused, burning feeling I’d gotten there. I’d dealt with that feeling the only way I know how to. I pretended that we were locked out. Changed that lightness in her gray eyes to unspeakable anger. Because anger I can deal with. Hatred I know how to handle.
It had worked. Temporarily. But those feelings have crept in again and I’m running out of ways to avoid them.
The rest of the ride to Chicago is quiet and awful. I flip back and forth between trying to instigate conversation and wondering why in the fucking world I have any desire to do that. Mother’s employees always suck, but Liz is kinda cool. Funny, sometimes. When she’s not busting my balls. Which is almost always. And she’s cute. Cute like a girl next door who models on the side, which seems to go against the very concept of “girl next door” but Liz somehow manages to pull it off. She’s no-nonsense but not in the frigid, unyielding way that Mother is. Or maybe in exactly the same way, I just tolerate it more in her. She’s smart. She’s rude. She’s fearless. She’s stubborn. She’s—
It goes on and on like that as we drive down the drifty highways of northern Indiana. We take the bridge over Gary and then up Lake Michigan to Chicago. We’re just getting into the city when Liz finally speaks.
“I’ve always wanted to polar plunge,” she says.
“Huh?”
She nods at the lake beside us. The water is dark gray and choppy, the wind whipping off it so forcefully that I’m struggling to keep the car in a straight line. “Polar plunge. Like jump into the ocean in the middle of winter.”
“That’s a lake, Liz,” I say after a beat.
She flops her head around to look at me dolefully. “You know what I mean.”
“I know that sounds like a good way to get hypothermia,” I say. “You’d drown from shock.”
“No I wouldn’t!” she says. “Lots of people do it and are just fine.”
“But why?”
She shrugs. “Makes you feel alive?” she guesses.
“A four hundred horsepower bike will make you see God, and that’s without getting wet for no good reason.”
“I think I’d get pretty wet,” Liz says without thinking. She reddens instantly at the look on my face. “I meant from peeing my pants!”
“That’s less hot.”
“I wasn’t trying to be ‘hot’,” Liz says, crossing her arms. “Just being honest.”
“Yeah, I’m taking it back. I’m not letting you on any of my bikes.”
“Wouldn’t have wanted to get on them anyway.”
There’s a beat of stony silence. I’m just thinking that we won’t speak again until we get there when I find words jumping out of my mouth unexamined. “That’s why I hate the bank.”
Liz cocks her head. “Because I don’t want to ride your motorcycles?”
“No, the polar plunge thing. Everyone there is so dead inside, my mother included. And then once a year people go and do mud runs or go caribou hunting or ‘polar plunge’ and that’s supposed to tide them over until the next year.”
“So?”
“So it’s not good enough. We should feel alive every day. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
Liz looks at me funny. Then she chuckles and shakes her head. “I don’t think I could handle polar plunging every day, Rhett. Most people can’t. And believe it or not I actually like the bank. I think it’s exciting. Maybe if you actually did something around there, you’d be happy too.”
I really can’t argue with that, and I don’t have a good comeback. So instead I slow down, feign like I’m pulling over. “Want to stop then? Make a dream a reality?”
