At least her seatmate smelled good. Spicy and a hint of evergreen. But his knee kept bumping her.
“First stop, Megabus!” Amal, the driver, announced cheerfully over the blast of his music.
The dog growled.
“Megabus?” the man next to Harper repeated under his breath in a tone that suggested he couldn’t quite grasp the concept of a giant double-decker bus. What, was he taking a private jet or something? It happened to be a very quick way to get to Houston, thank you.
“Hush, Beanie,” the woman in the shower cap said. Presumably to the dog. She reached into her pocket, then shoved something through the wires of the carrier. “Excuse me, can you turn that down?”
“We’re going to be late, man!” the guy with the guitar shouted over the music. “Seriously, can you turn it down?”
“Your wish is my command,” Amal said, and turned down the music. “I don’t have a five-star rating by accident. I’m very good at my job,” he said, jabbing a finger upward. “Everyone will get to their destinations on time, trust me.” And then he turned left when he should have turned right. “You will not find another driver with ratings as high as mine. Five stars, every time. Trust.”
No one said a word as they sat at a light, watching cars move at a snail’s pace through the intersection.
Harper was increasingly aware of the press of her body against the long-limbed, hard-bodied man, mainly because he kept shifting, like he couldn’t quite fit between her and Guitar Guy. His knee bumped against her leg again.
God, her feet were prunes. If she did make her bus, which she would bet one hundred bucks she would not, it would be a miserable ride to Houston.
“You sure you want to go this way?” Guitar Guy asked. “The Megabus station is over by the capitol, isn’t it? If you go up Lamar, you can flip around to Gaudalupe.”
“The app is telling me to go this way,” Amal insisted, and pointed at the screen of his phone, perched like a lighthouse beacon squarely in the middle of the dash.
Harper managed to dislodge her arm from underneath the giant next to her and look at her watch. Amal’s five-star rating for on-time deliveries notwithstanding, she was going to be late.
She tried to put her arm back where it went, but that was impossible. So she sat forward, curved like a banana over her overstuffed tote bag.
“Come on, man,” Guitar Guy whined. “This is seriously the wrong way. I can’t miss my flight.”
“Well, I can’t miss mine, either,” the grandma in front said, as if Guitar Guy had somehow implied he was the only one who couldn’t miss a flight.
“Problem is,” Amal said, “the rain. Climate change is doing this. Never saw rain like this in Austin before global warming.”
“That’s a bunch of bullcrap,” the woman in the front seat said. “There’s no such thing as global warming.”
The man next to Harper sighed softly under his breath. Harper felt his pain and would have sighed, too, had breathing not been so difficult in her current position.
“This traffic is worse than it is during South by Southwest,” Amal said, referring to the annual arts festival. “I drove the Killers to their gig last year. Nice guys. Really nice guys. They had a guitar, too. It’s kind of weird when you think about it, like, maybe, people should leave earlier.”
What?
Harper glanced around the interior of the vehicle in the dark. Guitar Guy was staring out the window. Grandma was keeping a steady stream of treats going into the pet carrier. The guy in the middle kept shifting around, trying to get comfortable. She wished she could get a look at him, to see what face went with those thighs, but it was dark, and it would be very obvious if she did turn to look at him, because it would require the use of her entire body.
Amal and Grandma kept up their argument about climate change as they crawled toward the bus depot. Harper glanced at her watch again. Was this worth it? The long hours? The completion of project after project with the hope that something would happen? Was Soren really going to promote her like he’d hinted, or was she a chump for believing him? She could almost hear the voice of her best friend, Olivia, in her head. “You’re such a chump, Harper.”
They were only three blocks from the bus depot now. Dammit, she was going to have to hoof it to make the bus and her boots were already squishy and her suitcase was heavy. The light turned green, and Amal turned onto the depot street. And stopped. Just up ahead were the red brake lights of many more cars. “This isn’t good,” he opined.
“Dude—turn around and come in from the east,” Guitar Guy said.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Amal said uncertainly. “The app says this way.”
“I’m telling you, there is another way,” Guitar Guy said, and pulled out his phone.
Harper silently agreed—there had to be another way. She reached into her tote and pulled out her phone, too. The guy in the middle dug his elbow into her side as he fished his phone out of his pocket. “Sorry,” he muttered.
The three of them pulled up Google Maps and began searching for an alternative route.
“I’m turning around before the cops block off the whole street!” Amal suddenly shouted, and like a general taking charge, he gunned it, veering into the next lane. The two men smashed into Harper with the force of the car swinging left. And then Amal slammed on the brakes and they all lurched forward and phones went flying into the inky black of that van’s interior.
“If you kill us, that’s going to seriously fuck your five-star rating, man,” Guitar Guy snapped. He shoved his guitar into the face of the guy in the middle so he could lean over and search for his phone.
The guy in the middle and Harper both reached down, groping around for phones on the floorboard, their elbows knocking into each other, their hands colliding more than once. Amal gassed the car again, tossing them backward, then sped up and tore around a corner. Beanie barked frantically for all of them.
“That’s how you do it,” Amal announced triumphantly over the dog.
“That is not how you do it,” Grandma shouted. “We’re all lucky to be alive right now!”
Harper’s fingers touched something hard and square. She held it up—it was white. Her phone. The man next to her had found one, too, and was handing another one to Guitar Guy.
“Hey, Megabus, can you walk from here?” Amal asked, looking at Harper in his rearview. She quickly weighed her options: a block of unrelenting rain, or a block in Amal’s van. “Yes.”
He braked hard again, and the door panel slid open.
“Need help?” the man sitting next to her asked.