“Blasphemy, and I like it,” I say, setting my backpack and cooler on the floor near the dog. She dips her nose, sniffing, but doesn’t try to open the cooler. Well-trained—that’s Delilah. I stretch to stroke her soft head. “She looks like a little furry person sitting upright.”
River beams. “Be still, my beating heart. Complimenting my dog. You are officially my favorite person.”
And you’re mine.
I keep that thought to myself as I turn around, tug on the seatbelt and click it in.
When I raise my face, River’s fiddling with his Waze app. As he taps in his sister’s address in Petaluma, I steal a few seconds to stare shamelessly. His sun-streaked hair falls onto his face, and I want to push those strands off his forehead and say, Can’t you see better like that? He works the corner of his bottom lip with his teeth as he types, like concentrating on Echo’s location is mission-critical. Then, he lifts his hand and sweeps his hair off his forehead. The angle affords me an up-close view of his inked skin, since he’s pushed up the sleeve of his shirt, showing off the tattoos that cover his left arm. Black bands, sunbursts, a tree, a sparrow, and a rainbow band too. I want to trace them all with my fingertips, then my tongue, then my lips.
My chest twists.
TJ is right.
I’ve got to say something.
It’s going to eat me alive.
I’m surprised it hasn’t yet.
“All set,” River says, then drops his hand to the wheel. For a few seconds, his gaze travels down my body, then back up, slowing at my lips, then my eyes. He blinks, swallows, then flashes a bigger grin. “Oh, by the way, Grant asked if we’d stop at Declan’s mom’s cabin to do a few quick things to get it ready for their visit next weekend. Should take fifteen minutes tops.”
“Sounds good.”
“Excellent. Ready, then?”
Nope. Not one bit. But maybe somewhere on the way to or from Tahoe I’ll find the guts to tell you I want to be more than friends with you. So badly.
“Let’s get this show on the road. I made a playlist,” I say with as much vim and vigor as I can inject into my tone.
“I thought we could listen to a podcast,” he counters as he pulls into Friday afternoon traffic.
I mime retching.
“You don’t like podcasts? Like, in general?”
“That’s like saying you don’t like cake in general? When the answer is I love chocolate cake, but I can’t stand red velvet. In fact, I’d go so far as to call it a cake abomination.”
As he flicks the turn signal, he shakes his head, tsking me. “That’s because you’re a cream cheese hater.”
“Cream cheese is up there with raisins, Monday mornings, and yogurt that expired a day ago.”
“I love cream cheese. Cream cheese with chives, cream cheese with strawberries, garlic cream cheese.” River lets his tongue loll from his mouth for a few seconds.
I cringe, not at his tongue, but at the flavor mention. “Garlic is unacceptable.”
“As what? As a garnish? A flavor? A spice?”
“As anything. It’s unacceptable as literally anything,” I say as he cruises up Fillmore on the way to the bridge.
“So you won’t kiss someone with garlic breath?”
“Not if I can help it.”
River mimes checking off an item on a list. “Note to self: no garlic.”
My heart speeds up. My mind jumps too many steps ahead. To kissing, to fresh breath, to how his lips might taste. So I do the thing I do well. Needle him. “Anyway, the retching was for your podcasts.”
He arches a questioning brow. “My podcasts? What’s wrong with my podcasts? Are they red velvet podcasts to you?”
“Yes, they are. Red velvet and raisins.”
River’s jaw drops. “I’m just learning this now? You equate my podcast taste to . . . raisins? The mutant form of grapes?”
I nod several times. “Because you listen to all those murder shows.”
“You don’t like murder podcasts?” he asks, as if I said I don’t like chocolate or champagne, when I love both.
Clearly.
“I don’t like murder,” I correct as we reach the Golden Gate Bridge.
River cracks up. “No one likes murder, Owen.” He tilts his head, takes a beat, then raises a finger. “Wait. Hold on. Do murderers?” He curls both hands tighter around the wheel as we cruise across the bridge, concentration etched in his brow perhaps from the driving, or perhaps from the questions he’s asking himself. “They must, right? At least, serial killers do. They probably dig murder. They probably relish murder. I mean, the mind of a serial killer is a fascinating place. But even so, do they actually love murder? Can they love anything? Even something evil? Or is it about their own twisted makeup? Hmmm. So much to think about.”
Exasperated, I toss up my hands. “And this is why I hate your podcasts. They make you think about murder, and talk about murder, and wonder about murder. I don’t want to think about murder. I also don’t want to think about politics, or the national debt, or global warming, or news, for that matter. So I don’t listen to those podcasts either.”
“I like news. And politics.” He taps his temple. “But I like you too. And I get you now, cutie. You want podcasts about cats or cake or maybe even something quirky and fascinating. Well, don’t you worry. I’ll find something perfect for you. Also, I said that as P-U-R-R-F-E-C-T, since you love cats.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I say, rolling my eyes, but laughing too much as he hands me his phone.
I take it.
“Just look in Pocketcast. I downloaded some stuff for you.”
I turn to River, study his face. “You did?”
“This surprises you?”
It sure does. “A little,” I say, but it excites me too. The idea that he picked something for me in advance, that he researched something I might like. Was he in his apartment looking up podcasts late last night? Did he check them out on his hike?
I’ll take any of the above options.
Like I have a spring in my step, I open the app, scrolling through his endless list of true crime and unsolved murder podcasts.
“There. At the bottom. Found three just for you,” River says, sounding pleased, but a touch nervous too. Almost like he’s worried if I’ll like them. Or that he wants me to like them.
It’s possible I’m reading way too much into this moment.
But I also don’t care. I want to read the world into it, and so does my hummingbird-fast-beating heart as I slide my thumb to the bottom of the app.
A stupid grin spreads across my face as I find the trio. I try, truly I do, to rein in the grin. But it’s futile. “How to Tell if Your Cat is a Certified Asshole. This is a podcast?”
“That’s an important life lesson. I thought we could get to the bottom of Goldilocks’s issues.”
“Newsflash—she’s a cat. Ergo, she’s an asshole.”
We cruise past the seaside town of Sausalito, mid-November sunlight reflecting off the crisp blue of Richardson Bay. “Maybe she’s just picky. Certifiably picky, to be precise,” River says.
I click to the next one. “Everything You Wanted to Know About Cake But Were Afraid to Ask,” I read, then scratch my chin. “I dunno. Is there that much I want to know about the subject?”