I waited in Danny's car as he went to go get his Danish. It was taking a little while. I reached back for my bag and searched for my MP3 player.
"Hey," Danny announced before I had a chance to slip the earphones in.
I held my hand out expectantly. He had gotten one for me, after all. He reached into the bag and pulled out a raspberry filled pastry.
I took it from him without a word. I bit into it and let the sweet, flaky pastry fill my mouth. I closed my eyes and savored the flavor.
Danny was oozing smiles. "Is it good?"
"No," I lied.
"Liar," Danny said. I dreaded to think that he had gotten to know me better in such a short amount of time. He shoved his Danish in his mouth and started up the car.
"Disgusting," I commented on Danny's manners.
Unable to say anything, Danny tried his best to press his lips together and smile. Crumbs were falling onto his lap.
"You're going to choke," I said and took another bite of my Danish.
Danny swallowed hard. "You know what I like about you? You're always looking out for me, princess."
Despite his sarcasm, there was one thing that rang true. He still liked me, even with my best efforts to change his mind.
"We still heading in the right direction?" Danny said as he made his way back onto the highway.
"Yes," I sighed. I decided to slip my headphones in anyway to try to tune him out if by the tiniest amount. "I'll let you know if anything changes."
The music started, and I was almost immediately swept away. I sorted through the recorded memories and refined the jumbled sound to pinpoint the meaning behind the words. Once I had it figured out, I'd have to move on to try not to get too connected, but I let my search go as slowly as possible. I savored the tune as the artist's foreign feelings washed over me.
The comfort I usually felt in escaping into the musician's world was unusually disconnected. I couldn't drift as I usually did because someone couldn't stop thinking about me. I debated whether I should tell him to stop or not. That might just make it worse. Instead, I tried my best to ignore my tether, though I had been trained to notice every detail. I needed to leave that aspect unexplored.
Before long, it just sort of blended. My name and various other yearnings weaved seamlessly through the lyrics of love and the melody of longing. It wasn't a bad mix, if still unwanted.
I felt a tug. A real one. My left ear bud was pulled out from my ear.
"Hey!" Danny said loudly. He looked from me to the road as he tried to grab my attention while driving.
"What?" I snapped. I took my earbud back.
"Talk to me," he demanded.
"Why?" I scoffed.
"Because I'm tired. Now, please. Talk to me so I don't drive myself crazy and us off the road."
I looked at the clock on the car's dashboard. Danny had driven for a long time. It even looked like we skipped lunch just to keep going.
"Please tell me we're almost there," he whined.
I closed my eyes and focused on the signal my sister and her mysterious traveling partner were giving off. It was considerably stronger. "We're getting closer."
"How close?" he asked.
"Closer than we were before. We might be able to reach them by tomorrow if we're lucky," I informed him.
He groaned. He took one hand off the steering wheel and ran it through his hair. He caught me looking at him. "What are you listening to anyway?"
"Nothing," I said defensively.
"Don't be like that. If you're not going to talk to me, you can at least let me listen to your music."
"Not a chance."
"Why? Is it something embarrassing?" I could feel him getting more excited. "If you don't tell me, I'm going to assume you were listening to something you shouldn't."
"Oh for pity's sake..." I ripped out my headphones from the jack and pressed played. I let the song play all for one second before I paused it again. "There. Satisfied?"
Danny grinned. Not only did he know the song, he had recognized it instantly from that one second. He pressed a couple of buttons on the stereo. The song I had been listening to started up from the beginning.
"I love this group!" Danny said loudly over the music.
I groaned. This was exactly what I didn't want to happen. The solidification of a connection. This wasn't something I could deny away. I needed to stay calm. One little connection didn't mean anything.
"So..." Danny turned down the music slightly. "What was it like growing up for you?"
"Are you still trying to talk to me?" I asked.
"I'm trying to compromise," he said. "It must have been some life considering..."
"I'd say it was pretty normal. The Chu syndicate wasn't nearly as criminal back then," I reminded him.
"I was going more along the lines of being a psychic. It's not like there's many of those running around," Danny clarified.
"Well...no." More than just liking me, he wanted to understand me. It was...odd. Different from his usual approaches. "It was easier in the beginning when I was young. I only learned later that normal people thought I was just playing pretend and making it up."
"You never tried to hide it?"
I shook my head. "After a point, I just didn't care. Most people can't handle the truth in their lives, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. I've never been ashamed of what I do or who I am. There aren't many people left who have the gift, so I have a duty to keep the it alive."
"But is that why you ran away?" Danny asked.
I looked at him. I searched his mind to see why he got the notion that I ran away. He knew of my sudden disappearance when I turned eighteen. I left without telling anyone, abandoning that town, what few friends I had, and my family.
"It's not what you or most people think," I sighed. "I left because I had to. Part of my training involved traveling to different places with absolutely no connections. No possessions. No tethers. Nomadic. Just drifting to places where I was needed."
"That...actually sounds really cool. Where did you go? Anywhere cool?"
"I mostly just went to places with high spiritual energies. Egypt, India, Denmark, Iceland, all over Great Britain..." I thought back. "The most special place would have to be this little grove in Norway. I was meditating in a forest when the fog settled in, and the spirits practically danced up through the cloud as the sun invisibly rose through..."
I paused.
"Why'd you stop?" Danny asked with a chuckle. "Keep going."
"I'm trying to figure out if you actually believe me," I said.
He shrugged. "I dunno. Most of you seems pretty unbelievable. I'm not psychic, so I'll just have to take your word for it."
I frowned. "I'll have you know, I lie a lot."
Danny laughed. "Well, at least you're still interesting. Tell me more about these spirit things. Are they like dead people or nature stuff..."
We talked long after the CD ran out of songs. It was almost fun slipping him lies within the truths. He guessed most of them.
I sort of got used to the way his annoying voice sounded. It was very honest. Very little of what he said was different than how he thought. It was repetitive but reassuring. I hadn't read a mind as straight forward as his in a long time.
"Ugh, I'm so tired!" Danny whined. He dragged his feet as we made our way to the front of the hotel. Danny insisted that he could drive no longer. We needed to stop somewhere for the night. "Nora, carry me!"
"Excuse me?!" Where did he get off calling me Nora?
"It's not like you did anything," he tried to convince me. "I did all the driving."
"First, don't call me Nora. Second, I'm psychically worn out. You're the one who kept asking me if we were going the right way every five minutes. Do you know how hard it is to read somebody's signal when they're that far away? Besides, you wouldn't even let me drive."
"Nobody drives my baby but me," Danny asserted. "And your name's too long, princess. Too many syllables."
I debated which was worse: Nora or princess. Both were equally unappealing.
"Whatever, I'll go get the rooms," I said.
The sliding doors opened at my weight, and I went to the counter. The lady behind there was in her early thirties and was nearing the end of her shift. She was about as disinterested as you could get. She was pretty much all checked out.
"Do you have any rooms available?" I asked. I only had to ask because she literally had no idea.
She clicked through the programs in her computer. "Only one left. California King. Apparently there's a basketball tournament in town. The students are taking up the other rooms."
Well, that explained the loud, hormonal, teenaged minds.
"Looks like all the other hotels in the area are pretty much full..." she added.
Small, old wheels squealed as Danny rolled himself through the sliding doors and into the lobby. He sat on a suitcase dolly while propelling himself forward with his legs. He had our bags in tow.
"Hey! What do we got?" Danny greeted us.
"Please, get off, sir." The hotel attendant was almost as annoyed as I was.
"They've only got one room left, and it's a California King," I reported. We'd have to keep driving despite Danny's apparently selective exhaustion.
He didn't seem at all as disappointed as I thought he would. "Perfect! We'll take it!"
"I don't think so," I said with plenty of attitude. I knew what Danny was thinking.
"Aw, don't be like that, sweetie!" he pretended to coo me.
"We're newlyweds," Danny said quietly to the attendant. "And let's just say my little road trip idea wasn't exactly as romantic as I imagined."
"Congratulations," she said, still as disinterested.
"I want a divorce," I said. I didn't care if the profiles gave us the same last names. There was no way I could even pretend to be married to that guy. At least siblings would have been more manageable.
"She's joking," he said with a forced laugh. Danny got up from the dolly and wrapped me up in his arms. He knew damn well there wasn't much I could do about it here unless I wanted to put our cover under speculation.
"Honey, baby, please." His heart was nearly going crazy. Excitement and joy and longing danced in his mind as he teased me. "I promise, tonight, I'll make up for it all." His voice was low a sensual as he held me closer. It was just loud enough to let the attendant in on the charade.
The nerve of the guy. My heart beat faster as he brought his idiotic face closer to mine. He smiled stupidly as I felt his composure slip. He puckered his lips and kissed the tip of my nose. It felt like a shock to my system. I needed to keep myself closed off. He had no effect on me. That was nothing. I hadn't felt anything.
"Fine. Do what you have to," I sighed. "Just don't expect me to be happy about it."
Danny grinned. "Thanks, babe. Love you too!" He turned to the attendant. "Isn't she great?"
She nodded. "I can see why you two are married."
I was shocked to see that she sort of meant it. Granted, she was only half paying attention, but after only seconds of encountering Danny and I, her mind pictured us as two different, very dysfunctional puzzle pieces that fit together in a way to make something better. The thought terrified me.