No Interest in Love (17 page)

5:27
A.M.

Shay isn't the type of girl someone could sneak out on, because her limbs become the Jaws of Life around the closest object in the sleeping vicinity. Yesterday it was my leg. Today it's my face.

Not that I'm complaining too much, but my nose hasn't been this close to cleavage since the Smurfs got action. So I'm not sure what to do, but I start subtly.

I clear my throat.

Tap her elbow.

Wiggle my head, but that only tightens her grip. The leg resting on my rib cage flexes and I'm suddenly swallowed by breast. Shay sighs in deep sleep and I try tapping harder on her arm because the air…it's gone. I can't find any bit of it, and I think back to when my eighth-grade buddy said if he could choose how he'd die he'd pick being smothered by a massive rack.

“Shay…” I manage to say, pushing my face under her arm to get some air. How in the hell is she keeping this grip up when I'm three times her size?

After trying more aggressive ways of waking her—pinching her side, plugging her nose, and nudging her leg from my ribs—I gather up all the volume I have…

And bark at her.

She shoots upright, knee getting awfully close to my face as she scrambles to her feet.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

She narrows her eyes at my grin, and I slowly stretch out all my sleeping muscles.

“You'll be happy to know,” I say, “that I came up with a plan last night.”

She covers a yawn. “Call my agency?”

“See, I knew you were gonna say that.” Which is why I tossed around, avoiding sleep till I came up with something. Turns out, according to the train brochure I found near the trash, we're only twenty miles from the airport. And since Shay likes to stay in motion, may as well push us in that direction.

I sit up and attempt to grab my toes. I only get to my kneecaps. “You up for a bit of walking?”

8:48
A.M.

“The Missouri River,” Shay says, looking down on it like it's an all-you-can-eat buffet.

“You know there's water in my bag.” I kick it with my foot. Shay was smart enough to fill the water bottle she stole on the train and keep it tucked away. So even though we're both starving, at least we're staying hydrated enough to suffer through the sun that's about to beat down on us all day.

“If it didn't mean probable death, I'd jump in right now.”

I put my hands on her shoulders and steer her back on course.

“I wish I knew what time it was,” Shay says as we head down a sidewalk off a pretty busy road. The sun's hitting the traffic low enough that several drivers heading east have their visors down. My bet is we haven't even made it six miles, but I think I lost my sanity about two days ago, so what the hell do I know?

It's the morning rush hour, and everyone passing us on the walk does a double take at Shay's wardrobe and the yellowing bruise under her eye.

“I think people think you're beating me,” she says as a dude jogging past gives me the look of death.

“I'd beat myself before I touched you.”

“Oh, I have no doubt you beat yourself.”

Was that a masturbation joke? “That's hitting a bit below the belt, don't you think?”

She lets out a breathless laugh. “Okay, you win this round.” Her fingers prod at her eye. “Is it bad?”

“Nah,” I lie. She gives me a look. “Okay, it's bad enough that if I were these people, yeah, I'd give me dirty looks too.”

“That damn toilet. I should leave him.”

I manage a laugh through my fuzzy brain. No food, little water, and exercise must be messing me up, because I'm finding Shay hilarious.

“Does it hurt?” I ask.

“No. I forgot it was even there. I thought something was on my face the first hour of this never-ending walk.”

“Something is on your face.”

“I kept trying to wipe it off.”

I laugh again, and a low grumble hits my gut. Shay and I are walking surround-sound systems, because hers starts going too.

“Our stomachs are talking to each other,” I mutter, trying to keep my grin, but I lost the energy around mile marker five.

“Is yours begging for bacon?”

“Always,” I say, and then ignore another round of hunger pangs. “And a big pile of pancakes.”

“Waffles.”

“No…I said
pan-cakes
,” I enunciate, and she wrinkles her nose at me.

“Pancakes are like the saddest of waffles. They are the waffles that fell on the floor and got trampled.”

“You're officially delusional.” I bump into her, but I'm not sure if it's intentional. “Pancakes are fluffy clouds your grandma makes you on Monday mornings when you know your day's gonna be total shit. But then you have that pancake and it's all good.”

“For the sake of our nonarguing week, I won't rebut your insane pancake campaign.” Then she bumps into me. Again, I'm not sure if it's intentional. “But I do love that you think highly of your grandmother.”

“My grandma is the sweetest woman in the whole damn world. I'm gonna buy her a house one day.”

Shay turns her head just a tad to look at me. “Is that why you don't have anything left of your advance from the movie? Saving up or something?”

She catches on quick. And here I am, just trying to get one foot in front of the other.

“It all went to her, yeah. Few years ago I lost a buttload of money doing stupid stuff. Grandma bailed me out.”

“Did you gamble it all away like in
21
? Or were you drained of all your money like Andrew Garfield in
The Social Network
?”

“It's so hot when you reference movies.” I don't even know why I say it out loud. “But no. It wasn't anything worth a movie script.”

“I thought your whole life was a movie,” she says with a lift of her eyebrow. I shake my head and adjust my grip on the handle of my carry-on.

“Well, NYU isn't cheap.”

“You said you blew it on something stupid. School isn't stupid.”

“No, but blowing all your student loan money on keggers is. What's even more stupid is letting your sweet grandmother pay for all your classes with the money she got from selling her house.”

She sucks in a breath through her teeth. “Um, yeah. I don't think I can associate with you anymore.”

She pretends to walk away, but she's heading out toward traffic so I grab her shoulders and steer her clear of the oncoming bus.

“I tried paying her back. She didn't accept checks, so I started forwarding money into her account. Then she found out and stuffed it back into mine, so now I've got it put away where she can't see it. She'll get the money in the form of a house. She's always wanted one with a green door, a big porch, a swing in the front, and room for a dog out back. I've been looking, found a few.”

Shay bumps into me again, and the ripped-up shirt she's wearing slides from her shoulder. “You're looking already?”

“I'm serious about it. That's the first thing I'm gonna do if I ever make it to a bigger screen.” I shrug. “Even if I don't, I guess.”

“Damn,” she says, then something in Korean. She tucks a loose piece of hair back up into her elastic holder. “That's ridiculously attractive.”

“What was that?” I ask with a lift of my lip.

“Huh?”

“You think I'm sexy? My sensitive side gets your motor running.”

“And your mouth just killed my lady boner.”

“Payback for you killing my actual boners all the time,” I lie straight through my teeth. I wonder if she's noticed that she's been the cause of most of them nearly this whole week. But really, the wind could rustle and Woody would stand up and salute that he's reporting for duty.

She waves her arm, elbow hitting me lazily across my hollow stomach. “You want to try your card again while I pee?”

I nod at the gas station she's pointing at. We make our way across the parking lot, my arm tired from dragging my carry-on for who knows how many hours now. She meanders off to the restrooms while I locate the ATM in the back. Right when I swipe my card and hit
Account Balances
, my vision spots, and I consider stealing the bag of beef jerky hanging from the rack by my left arm.

Checking balance: –$23.54, avail. $0.00

Savings balance: $25.00, avail. $0.00

VISA credit: –$3,011.92, avail. $0.00

Damn it.

2:12
P.M.

We've gotta be getting close. At least halfway.

At least.

I want a meatball sub so bad right now.

“Sometimes I want to hate you,” Shay says, pulling me out of marinara-sauce fantasies. I'm not sure where the thought comes from, but I go with it.

“The feeling has been mutual.”

“But I can't.”

Yeah…with her on that one too.

“It's because of the meme thing, isn't it?” I ask, letting my eyes skate from the sidewalk to the light sweat on her face.

“That meme sucks. It's always there haunting me so no one at my agency takes me seriously.”

“You can blame me for that. I'll take responsibility for my asshole shenanigans.”

She blows out a long breath. “It would be easier to blame you. But I don't.”

Somewhere in my exhausted state, those words give me a shot of adrenaline straight into my chest. “So if it's not that, then why…?”

She shakes her head. “I don't know. I'm not even sure why I said that.” Her eyes lock with mine, glasses making me see my reflection. I'm so surprised by the unfamiliar look in my own eyes that I dart my gaze back to the sidewalk.

“You wanna try that gas station for an ATM?” I point my chin toward the intersection coming up. I feel her nod next to me, and even though we both know it's pointless, we check my bank account again before heading back out.

3:49
P.M.

We haven't said a damn word in about an hour.

And I'm pretty sure I'm chafing.

4:01
P.M.

“I take it back,” Shay blurts, scaring me enough to misstep off the sidewalk and into the gutter. After the silence and nothing but our growling stomachs to keep us occupied, I set my body to autopilot.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, shaking off my now-soaked foot. It doesn't even faze me at this point.

“I don't want to hate you.”

“Well, I wouldn't blame you if you did. I am a jackass.”

“And I'm emotionally constipated.” She sighs, wiping the sweat accumulating on the back of her neck. “And you…you're actually…”

A few seconds pass and I look at her to make sure I haven't lost my hearing. “Uh…you gonna finish that sentence?”

“You're actually one of the few people I have fun with.” And I swear it, her already flushed face turns another shade darker. “So I take it back. I don't hate you…and not just because I
can't
seem to…to hate you.”

Wow. Normally this would be the time to think of a joke or to tell her she's full of it. But I don't want her to be full of it. I have fun arguing with her. I have fun dishing it out and I anticipate her tossing it back. And I realize that this is a rare moment in Miss Unlikely's dialogue. An unexpected dose of sincerity that makes me wonder what the screenwriter has in store for her next—if I'll get to hear something like this again in the near future. Because as much as I'm against commitment, I don't think I'd mind hearing these thoughts from her for as long as she's willing to hand them out.

And I want to hand them out too.

“Hey, Shay?”

“Hmm?”

“The feeling is mutual.”

7:26
P.M.

We're back to busy streets, and Shay's eyes narrow at a kid waiting at the bus stop.

“Do you think that guy would notice if I took his lunch bag?”

“That ‘guy' is probably thirteen.”

“I could take him.”

Honestly, I don't know if she's joking or not, since she did steal that water yesterday, so I make sure to stick myself between the two as we pass. The sun's getting lower on the west side, and I'm not sure how much farther we've got till the airport. But once we get there, I have no plan B. I've just been praying to that damn universe screenwriter to send some money our way.

Shay's stomach snarls, and I'm so delirious I end up laughing for twenty minutes about it.

“Whose genius idea was it to walk?” she asks, grabbing onto the crook of my arm for balance. If I had the energy, I'd flex.

“I'll try another ATM.”

“Never give up…”

“…never surrender,” I finish the
Galaxy Quest
quote. “That's damn sexy, by the way.”

“What?”

“Finishing my movie quotes.”

She snorts. “I think you're delusional.”

“Probably,” I say before we go silent again. The next two gas stations we pass don't have ATMs, but third time's the charm. Even though I know both of us don't expect any change in my bank account.

“This is it,” she says, leaning against the wall next to the ATM, shoulders slumped with the hopeless air surrounding us. “They are going to can my ass.”

“You can still work for me.” I offer up a grin, but it's pretty lackluster.

“I appreciate the sentiment, but you wouldn't want to work with me.”

“I don't care what you think, I need you to get me auditions.”

She rolls her head to face me. “I'd lose all my contacts. And getting fired from one agency puts a damper on my chances of getting into a new one.”

“Eh, I still think you could do it.”

“You are the
only
person who thinks that.”

I swipe my card through the ATM. “I think you're too hard on yourself. Anyone with eyes can see how anal you are about your work.”