Page 11 of Knocked Up By The Mountain Man

"You want to take your coat off?" I ask her, looking at her out of the corner of my eye. "It's getting pretty warm in here, and it's a long drive."

She shifts, uncrossing her legs and then crossing them the other way, leaning away from me in the cab as though she's trying to put as much distance between her and me on this bench seat as possible.

"I'm good," she says. "I, um, I get cold easily."

She pulls her coat tighter around her, but something feels off. I don't know what it is. Maybe I make her uncomfortable.

I sure didn't make her uncomfortable the night we met. The night we met, we had instant chemistry.

In my fantasies, the chemistry would come rushing back as soon as we saw each other again, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I'm still attracted to her as ever. Still want her just as badly as I did that night, but her energy's completely different, and I'm not sure what I did wrong.

"I'm gonna have to go home and tear my whole house apart trying to find your phone number," I joke.

She smiles politely.

"It was a sticky note on your nightstand," she says. "I left it right there, next to your phone and the bedside lamp."

I scratch my chin, wondering how the hell I could have misplaced something like that.

Maybe it fell behind the nightstand somehow.

"It's okay, really," Alyssa begins. "I felt stupid after I left you my phone number. I mean, we were a one-night hookup. Both of us acknowledged that. Both of us knew, and I never expected to be back in Wildwood."

She says this with a bewildered tone, looking out the window.

"But you had to come back and see your dad again, right?" I ask.

She looks down.

"To tell you the truth, I'm starting to think he doesn't really live here. Like maybe his address is some kind of decoy."

"Decoy?" I ask.

She looks at me, those brown eyes searching mine.

"You know, he never really wanted to be found," she says. "I think he was worried my mom would make him pay her child support or something. My mom tried to find him once or twice, or at least that's what she says. I'm not sure I believe her, though."

"Is your mom in the habit of being dishonest?" I ask awkwardly.

It feels like an intrusive question, but then again, she's volunteering the information in the first place, and I'm desperate to know more about the woman who has been filling my fantasies and haunting my dreams for these last few weeks.

I want to know every last detail of whatever dysfunctional, weird family dynamic is at play.

I also want to know why the hell her father wouldn't have wanted to know such a wonderful girl as she was growing up.

He missed out, that's for sure.

"My mom doesn't so much as intentionally lie as convince herself of her own delusions and then share those delusions with other people," Alyssa says. "She really believes the things she says…even if it's obvious to everybody else that she made it all up. I don't know what to call it. Pathological lying? Some other kind of mental illness? I'm not sure, but it makes it harder to stay angry at her when I find out that something she said wasn't true.”

“I get it. I feel sorry for her,” I muse.

She raises her eyebrows at me. “You feel sorry for my mom? Why?"

I shrug, regretting that I said those words. I should probably stay out of this, stay neutral at best, even if she does want to share with me about her life.

"No, really," she says. "Why would you feel sorry for my mother?"