“Ah.” I took a few minutes to focus on getting out of the parking space—a process made harder knowing Conrad was watching—and getting us back on the interstate. A weird but comfortable silence settled over us—Conrad messing around with his phone, me driving, busy St. Louis traffic whizzing by as we passed through the city proper into what felt like endless suburbs. As in Indiana, driving felt easier now, with not quite so many anxieties all competing for attention at once.
“Jasper says hi.” Conrad looked up from his phone right as traffic finally started to thin out. “His sister is still in the hospital, but they think she’s going to make it. He said your mom—the doctor one—called his parents to see if she could do anything. That was nice.”
“Mimi must have told her about the reason for the credit card charge.” I didn’t like how Conrad seemed to want to put my moms on a pedestal. Yes, they could be nice, but that didn’t mean that growing up with them had always been easy. Explaining that, however, was challenging because I didn’t want to seem too ungrateful. “Did Professor Tuttle reply to the pictures we sent of the Arch?”
“Permission to browse your messages?” He was already reaching for my phone, which was in the console, GPS set to the pizza place in Columbia that Conrad was so set on.
“Sure.” It wasn’t like I had anything worth keeping from him. Other than lots of back-and-forth with the moms, I didn’t get a lot of messages. I wasn’t completely friendless, but my contacts tended to be more situational, like my online Odyssey play group, and not the sort of random friends that Conrad probably had dozens of.
“The prof says, ‘So glad to see you two getting along’ and adds that his surgery went well. I’ll reply to see when he gets to go home.”
“Okay.” I wasn’t sure I agreed with Professor Tuttle’s assessment that we were getting along. Getting awkward perhaps. My shoulders rolled, the memory of his arm around me still fresh enough to make my body hum. But we weren’t active enemies at this point, which could be seen as an improvement, I supposed.
“I’m also telling him how you waxed that dude last night and that I’ll send the video as soon as we’ve got free Wi-Fi somewhere.”
“My phone works as a hot spot,” I pointed out, kind of liking him bragging on me.
“Because of course it does,” Conrad huffed. “If I reach around to grab the laptop bag, is that going to distract you from the road?”
“Yes.” Better I answer honestly than lie and endanger us both. But not wanting to be a total drag, I added, “But you can turn on the radio if you’re bored.”
“First letting me eat in the car, now radio. Boy, when you let loose…” Conrad laughed, but it wasn’t a mean sort of laugh—at least, I didn’t think so. It was warm, almost affectionate. He found a mutually agreeable contemporary station after nixing my suggestions of jazz and the news. “We need to remind you that you’re twenty-three, not eighty-two, Grandpa. Pay attention, and I’ll teach you what’s popular with all the kiddos these days.”
“Says the guy who listens to country.”
And so I suffered Conrad’s surprisingly entertaining music education class until we arrived at Columbia, right in time for the lunch rush. Conrad pointed out the town’s famous columns as we looked for a place to park Black Jack. Unlike Conrad, I wasn’t squeezing in anywhere, so we ended up needing to walk a few blocks. As we passed, we did pictures at the columns—remnants from some long-ago building. To me, they looked weird—nothing to support, nothing to hold up. Almost lonely. They needed a purpose.
Conrad, however, had no trouble goofing off around the sad structures, making faces for my camera before leading the way to a large pizza parlor that had an old-fashioned vibe to it—lots of wood and decor straight out of a seventies movie.
“You get us a table,” I ordered as we joined the long line waiting for the counter. “I’m pickier about toppings.”
This also left me to pay, which was my desired outcome. It meant making sure Conrad both ate and saved some money, and also ensured that I could get half with cheese and green peppers for me and half with meat lover’s for the carnivore.
I took our ticket to the booth Conrad had snagged by the back corner, almost too private, but nicely insulated from the busy room. He fished out some cash, but I waved it off.
“We’ll work it out later.”
“I don’t need charity.” He glared at me.
“I didn’t say you did.” This was what I got for trying to be nice—him all moody and playing with the straw dispenser and not talking to me while we waited for our food.