“When you kissed me, Clyde? I felt more in that one, pissed-off kiss than I felt in those three or four attempts at making love. And I realized it wasn’t a lie, after all. That was the best kiss I’ve ever had. By far. So tell me what I have to do to earn another one, because embarrassingly enough, I always seem to be the girl begging for affection, and even with a broken give-a-damn, I don’t know how much more humiliation I can take.”
“That kiss didn’t mean a damn thing, Bonnie Rae. I kissed you so I wouldn’t kill you. That’s all. There won’t be another one, because the next time I want to kill you, I’ll just drive away without you.”
I would have been hurt, but Finn Clyde was blushing and that just made me like him more. For someone so big, bad, long-haired, and tattooed, he was remarkably uptight. I put my boots up on his dashboard and started to laugh. I liked this new feeling. When you stopped caring, things got very interesting and a whole helluva lot easier. Finn flipped the radio back on, and I sang along loudly, feeling lighter than I’d felt in a very long time.
Chapter Six
THE SNOW THAT had started falling that morning continued in fits and starts as we crossed into Ohio and beyond. We moved slowly through patches of rough into patches that seemed untouched by the storm. Not knowing what was coming was part of the adventure, and neither of us were particularly worried at that moment about the world outside of the vehicle. It definitely wasn’t blizzard conditions yet, and the old Blazer hummed along, windshield wipers flying. But as day descended into night, the snow that was on the ground was caught up in high winds, and it was almost impossible to tell what was coming down, what was going up, and which way was what in the dizzying swirl.
“Let’s get off at the next exit. I think we should stop for the night. It’s getting bad,” Finn said.
I tried to make out what services were available on the large green road sign, but it was covered in a fine layer of snow and what little was visible was obscured by the flakes sticking to the passenger side window.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“We’re somewhere between Cleveland and Columbus. I can’t tell you much more than that.” Clyde slowed to a crawl, not wanting to miss the exit. We inched along that way for several miles and had almost decided we’d missed it when I spotted the exit marker.
“There’s an exit!”
Even at the crawling speed, the fat, black tires on the Blazer were no match for freezing sleet and snow and roads that had not been cleared, and the Blazer fishtailed as we descended the off-ramp. I squeezed my eyes shut and crossed my fingers, a habit from childhood that I still fell back on when a situation required luck or divine intervention.
“Try clicking your heels together in those boots, too,” Clyde teased, but his eyes were clinging to the barely visible road in front of him, and both of his hands were on the wheel as the tires finally found purchase, and the slide down the off-ramp was halted.
In those few, nervous moments, when our attention was on the ice and the snow, maybe we missed a sign or a landmark, or maybe we should have gone left off the exit instead of right, but regardless, as we inched along the road, heading with hope and little else, we definitely missed a vital piece of information that would have saved us from what came next.
The blinding white was relentless, and we may as well have been in outer Siberia for all the luck we were having finding signs of life. There weren’t even any other cars traversing the road in either direction.
“I’m going to turn around. There’s nothing here.” Finn eased the Chevy around and headed back in the direction we had come, retracing the path we’d just created.
“We’ll just get back on the freeway and drive until we hit the next town. We can’t be too far from Columbus.” Clyde said. But as we neared the point where the on-ramp should be, the visibility was so poor we ended up missing it and turning around for a re-attempt. I even rolled down my window and stuck my head out, getting a face full of frosty flakes, as I searched for the freeway entrance.
“Is that it?” I peered doubtfully at the looming underpass, and Finn tried to take the right onto the on-ramp a half second too late. The Blazer swung in a complete circle, moving sideways as it spun, sending us hurtling in the opposite direction, snow flying into the cab through my still-open window. Without warning, we were off the road, back tires wedged into a snow bank, front tires spinning uselessly against the ice and the steadily falling snow. Clyde jumped out and tried to push us free, rocking the vehicle as I matched his motion on the gas pedal.
But we were stuck.
The back wheels, all the way up to the bumper, were buried, the snow several feet deep where we’d come to a stop. We couldn’t get the traction we needed to get back on the road. I climbed into the passenger seat as Clyde tumbled back into the Blazer, his boots soaked, his pants wet to above his knees, and his hands red and raw. He pulled out his old cell phone and, with frozen fingers, called his insurance company to send out some roadside assistance. An automated voice told Clyde it was “very sorry, but could he please hold?” Clyde held on for fifteen minutes until his phone started bleeping pathetically and died in his palm, at which point I started apologizing for acting like a spoiled baby and throwing Gran’s phone out the window when we really could have used it.
“I’ve got a charger. We’ll just sit tight, I’ll get warm, and I’ll try again in a few minutes.”
The problem was, when he tried again and finally got through to a real, live operator, he couldn’t tell them where we were. He did the best he could, giving them the last sign he’d seen off I-71, but I didn’t think it would help much, especially in the whiteout conditions. The operator promised to get a tow truck sent out in our general direction, promising that they would find us, which, comforting as the words were to hear, was a lie.