Willing time to go faster—willing this drive to go faster—Lyric rested her forehead against the passenger-side window and stared out into the bleak grayness of the storm. With all of its driving rain, flashes of lightning, and tree-bending winds, it was a perfect reflection of her mood and the temper tantrum part of her really wanted to throw.
“Are you cold?” Heath asked after a few minutes, talking loudly to be heard over the chorus of “Cherry Cherry.” He nodded toward the backseat. “I might have a sweatshirt in my bag, if you want to cover your legs with it.”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you sure? Because I don’t mind. You can have whatever—“
“I’m fine, Heath. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okaaaaay,” he said after several long seconds of silence. “Do you want to call your mom? Or Harmony? Check on your dad’s condition?”
“I really don’t.”
Now she could feel
the weight of his stare even with her head turned in the opposite direction. She didn’t want to justify herself to him, but— “If my daddy’s dead, I don’t want to know about it … not yet.”
No matter how cowardly-lion it made her, she just couldn’t face it. Not now and not over the phone. If she didn’t talk to her family, there was still hope. And right now, hope was all she was living on. She rubbed her temples. Well, hope and the violent need to find Neil Diamond and stab him in his “cherry cherries” for writing this damn song.
Heath’s big, warm hand settled on her knee. Sparks, hot and completely inappropriate, shot up her leg at the contact. What kind of pervert was she to be experiencing sparks when her father was so sick? It took every ounce of self-control she had not to shove his hand off her knee. Or bang her head into the glass window it rested on.
“It’s going to be okay.” His tone was that of a preschool teacher comforting a four-year-old.
“Define okay.” God, she really was a snippy bitch—and getting snippier by the second. She couldn’t help it. Her old college roommate, Tiffany, had said that emotional stress always brought out Lyric’s inner Cranky Pants. Since Tiffany had been the manically perky cheerleader type, Lyric’s inner Cranky Pants had become her whole persona that entire semester. Now, not only had Cranky Pants taken up residence, but she’d brought Crazy too. Which meant that if Lyric wanted to get to San Angelo in one piece, she needed something to do besides sit here thinking about everything that could go wrong for her father.
As the chorus to “Cherry Cherry” rang out for what seemed like the millionth time—it turned out the song was on a never-ending loop—she knew exactly what to do to pass the time. If she could build a rocket at the age of nine out of nothing but fireworks and a Coke bottle, she could damn well figure out how to make Neil Diamond stop singing.
She shoved her phone back in her purse. Prying her legs up from the seat, she unbuckled her seat belt and attempted to slide onto the floorboard, but she kept sticking to the seat. After repeatedly peeling her shirt and boxers from the leather, she grabbed the shirt hem, wound it around her hand, and looped it in a knot at her waist. In a maneuver that was part stop-drop-and-roll and part turtle-stranded-on-its-back, she ducked under the dash. Her position—head, neck, and shoulders on the floorboard, while her torso and legs flailed around on the seat—gave the double benefit of muffling the music a little and gave her access to the wires that ran close to the radio.
“Are you okay?” Heath demanded anxiously. “Is the pot smell getting to you?”
“It’s not the pot that’s getting to me. I’m just looking for some wires that will—” She cut herself off in mid-sentence, because she was going to say “stop Neil Diamond,” but she didn’t want to offend Cherry again. Not for one second did she believe the car was actually a sentient being, but she’d read Christine, and on the off chance that Stephen King had something there, she figured it was better to be safe than sorry. “I’m hoping to find an answer to the pressurized carbon situation we’ve got going on here.”
Heath looked at her like she was speaking in tongues. But that was nothing new—she’d spent her whole life having to explain herself, one way or the other.
“You know,” she said, jerking her head toward the stereo, “pressurized carbon. It makes …” She trailed, leaving him to fill in the blank.
“A mess?”
“Diamonds,” she finally told him, exasperated. “Pressurized carbon makes diamonds.”
“And you hope to find some under the dash? I only spent eight grand on the car. It might be flashy, but I don’t think it’s diamond studded.”
Seriously? Lyric rolled her eyes. How many hits had he taken on the football field through the years anyway? She almost asked him, but she didn’t want to make Cherry Cherry mad. They seemed to have bonded.
“I don’t want diamonds. I want to stop …” She raised her eyebrows.
“Oh my God, it’s another one of those fill-in-the-blank questions.” He hummed along with the chorus of “Cherry Cherry.” “I do better with multiple choice. Like … you want to stop—blank. A. Global warming, B. Poverty, or C. Those misguided souls outside of the US who keep referring to soccer as football. D. All of the above. E. None of the above. FYI—if you choose E, none of the above, it’s a deal breaker. That soccer thing really bugs me.” He did that one-eyebrow-up thing. “See how it works?”
Before she could answer, Heath went from humming to mouthing the words. Lyric shook her head. It looked like she was in this all alone. He had obviously fallen under Cherry Cherry’s spell and crossed over to the dark side.
“Want me to leave you two alone so you can sign her hood?” Neil Diamond made her snarky.
“Don’t be a hater.” He started bobbing his head with the beat. She couldn’t help wondering if there was a twelve-step program for Neil Diamond groupies. If so, she was signing him up. Would Neil sing them the Serenity Prayer?
They spent the next hour driving in relative quiet—except, of course, for good old Neil. Heath grooved along with the beat as Lyric did her best to figure out how to stop the torture. But every time she came close to solving the problem, Cherry would whine or sputter or squeal. Once, she even whistled. Lyric was close to giving up when the car slowed and they pulled off the road. The engine died.
“Why are we stopping? I didn’t do anything.” She poked her head up. “Cherry, I swear I didn’t touch anything.”