I do not own CSI
When I woke up Jason was already active. He was everything but relaxed. Frantically, he was stuffing money in every pocket. The way he did it was quite amusing. I had to giggle. His head shot up from what he was doing to stare at me.
"Did I wake you up?" He had this look on his face like he disturbed a bear.
"No. It's just what you were doing that was funny."
"Do you have room in your pockets for some money?"
I smiled. Jason gave me one-hundred dollars and he had one-hundred also. My total consisted of ten one dollar bills, two fives, one ten, two twenties and a fifty. My day was going ok until Jason told me he threw our toothbrushes away. He quickly explained the logic behind his action and assured me we'd buy new ones. Until then, I was stuck with morning breath which I hate. But I learned to live with it.
Jason still didn't relax even after we check out and he bent up his credit card before throwing it in the trash. For the next few hours, Jason was on a fine line of breaking the speed limit and intensely gazing at the road. I didn't like the silence, but I liked how cute he looked when he had a determined look. Trying to lighten the intense mood, I spoke up.
"Did you know you look cute when you've got that look on your face?"
"This is not the time for flirting," he responded, still with the same face.
I decided to be silly. "Why not?"
"One, because I'm driving; two, I've got a lot to think about."
"I think you should take your mind off of that stuff then. Besides, I don't think you can flirt."
"Yes I can!" Jason objected. "Darling."
I laughed. If we were getting into pet names, darling was not a name I wanted to be called. It ended up that we decided to stick to our regular names. Boring yes, but we preferred that. Our flirting continued. Every time we flirted, we did something real cheesy that made us both laugh. Eventually it stopped.
"So first we were the bad guy and the damsel, and now where are we now?"
"How about girlfriend and boyfriend?" Jason suggested.
"No. First you got to ask," I corrected, grinning.
He sighed and gave me a look. I knew he didn't mind though.
"Carmen Vern? Will you be my girlfriend?"
"Hm. Let me think about it," I joked. "Sure. You're cute enough. You never hear about an ex-bad guy and a damsel falling in love."
We did eventually get our new toothbrushes. For lunch we picked up fast food. Then instead of eating in the car Jason found a camp ground and we used the trunk of the hummer as our seats. In the clearing, we were on a cliff overlooking a mountain range and a valley. The valley looked furry with all the trees clustered together. The trees must have been pine trees because the fresh smell was overwhelming.
I opened up the trunk of our hummer. Before we could sit down I pushed my souvenirs farther back into the trunk. Now it seemed silly that I had made Jason buy me a T-shirt and hat with Arkansas written on each of them. I guess it's nice to have a T-shirt and hat. They could come in handy—a smart buy.
After eating and admiring the view we got back on the road. When I asked where we were going he wouldn't tell me. I think he was afraid that there was a bug or something in the car. With his high level of paranoia, I was certain he wanted to get rid of our car too.
By six we were in Colorado—the mile high city. My ears popped as we climbed. Soon we got into Denver. Then we were pulling in by an apartment building. It wasn't real fancy.