Part 5:
A Little
Bit of Both
As the enthusiasm of morning wore into the
slow, tired pace of late afternoon, the various vendors finished loading up
their trucks and pulling down the tents, as the first Farmers Market of the
season closed down for the day.
Kara’s grandma and grandpa gave each one of
the kids big hugs for their hard work,
her sweet grandmother making sure to whisper the menu for the dinner she
would be preparing for Nick in his ear, his knees going weak at the
incredible-sounding dishes as he vowed to marry her right then and there if she
would have him.
Then, after loading the last box of fruit into
the back of her, grandfather’s truck, Kara watched Allie walk to her car, not
saying goodbye to anybody before speeding off in a cloud of dust.
“What is her problem?” she muttered under her
breath, as Nick walked up beside her, patting her on her head.
“Hey, how about helping me find my car?”
***
“I swear to God, Kara, it’s around here
somewhere?”
The two had walked down the long frontage road
for almost half a mile, scanning the fields where people usually parked for the
Market.
“I was driving along this road and saw all the
people and cars, so I pulled into one of these fields to park.”
Kara shook her head, laughing to herself at
the completely oblivious tone of his voice.
“Hmmmm.”
Curling his upper lip, he scratched his head as he scanned the fields of
cars to his left and right, looking for the little convertible. “Do you see it anywhere?”
“Hey, ding dong.” Kara stood up on her tiptoes
to knock on his head with her knuckles.
“I don’t even know what kind of car you drive, so how would I possibly
know if I see it or not?”
Following his gaze to the left, she figured
with his kooky personality, he probably drove some little beater car from the
80s. Something that had been painted
twelve different shades of something nasty over its lifetime and had its carburetor
dragging on the ground.
“Is that it?”
She pointed to an old Gremlin with a bashed-in back panel and a white
racing stripe running through the lime green and primer exterior.
“Nope.”
He shook his head with a smile.
“Well, it has to be around here somewhere.”
“Hey, I see it!” He pointed to a clunky Suburban that was
pulling forward to reveal the most gorgeous red Mustang convertible Kara had
ever seen in her life.
“That… is your car?” she said in surprise, as
he pulled the keys from his pocket, dangling them from his index finger.
“Yup, that is my car.”
Nick took off in a gallop, Kara on his
heels. He reached the car first, pulling
open the door and sliding comfortably into the driver’s seat with a sigh.
“So, what’s the deal? Do you want me to drive you back to your car,
and then I can follow you back to your grandparents’ farm?”
Hanging over the back of the car, Kara inhaled
the scent of the fine leather interior.
“Hell no.” She walked around to
the passenger side of the car and climbed in.
“There is no way that I’m going to drive my crappy little Neon while you
get to drive around in this thing!”
Slamming the door shut behind her, she threw her arms up in the air and
let out a squeal.
“Well, what about your car?” Nick said, revving the engine, much to Kara’s
delight.
“Who cares!” she screamed, her head whipping
back as Nick pushed the pedal to the metal and roared through the field, up
onto the road.
As they sped along the open road, Nick dropped
his sunglasses over his eyes and flipped up the knob on the radio. Ironically, it was the same Bon Jovi song Kara
had heard this morning on the way to The Market.
“I like Bon Jovi,” Nick said matter-of-factly
over the roar of the car, as he fished around in the console between the seats,
coming up with a bottle of prescription medication that he tossed to Kara. “Can you pull me out two of those pills,
please?” he asked, reaching his arm over the backseat for a water bottle.
“Sure.”
Kara twisted the bottle around in her hand, looking at the label. His name was Nickolas Gene Carter, and the
pills appeared to be for severe migraines.
Shaking out two of the pale blue horse pills, she placed them in his
outstretched hand and put the bottle back in the console between the seats.
“So you get migraines?” she asked, settling
back in the soft buttery leather, the aches and pains from her first day at The
Market creeping into her bones.
“Among other things,” he answered, flipping a
left, on Kara’s instruction, at the crossroads that would lead them to Main
Street.
“Do the pills help?”
“Not really.
Not anymore.”
“Do you get the migraines often?”
“Hey, is that a gas station?” Quickly changing the subject, Nick popped the
pills in his mouth, taking a swig of water, before turning into the ancient old
gas station.
The place was complete with a little general
store and a spunky kid in overalls and a crisp, white cap who smiled brightly
at them as he dragged the gas pump around to the tank side of the car and asked
Nick if he wanted him to “fill her up.”
Kara waited outside while Nick went into the
general store and picked up some essential snacks to store in the trunk of his
car for the next leg of his journey.
Simple things like boxes of Ike and Mikes, some packs of Red Vines, two
large bags of Doritos, some bottles of Gatorade, and, of course, an extra large
bag of Pork Rinds.
On every tour, Brian and Nick had made a habit
out of each of them getting a big bag of Pork Rinds at various gas stations
across the country so that they could race each other to see who could down
their bag first. The whole things had
started on one of their first “tours.”
Way back before it could be called a tour. When it was the five of them and sweaty Lou
Pearlman stuffed in the back of a wood-paneled camper van.
They had pulled into some rundown gas station
so that Lou could go to the john. The
guys had all gone into the gas station for snacks when Nick spotted two big,
dusty bags of Pork Rinds sitting on the shelf.
A.J. had gone off, the way only A.J. could do, making a huge production
about how sick and wrong pork rinds were and how only a true psycho would eat
those things. Well, that was all Nick
and Brian needed to hear as each one scooped up a dusty bag, tore it open, and
began to crunch the tasteless wonders down one by one, much to A.J.’s disgust.
Setting the bag on the counter now, along with
his other things, Nick found it funny that, over time, he had actually
developed a taste for the things. He
even set a record on the last tour for the fastest time eating a whole
bag. Three minutes, forty two
seconds. His bag was gone before they
even pulled away from the gas station.
Paying for his items, the woman behind the
counter smiled brightly at Nick, telling him to enjoy his stay in town as she
handed him his change. Smiling back at
her, he figured that his fancy car must have given him away as a tourist.
Walking back towards the car, Nick noticed
Kara was sitting in the driver’s seat, talking and laughing with the kid who
had pumped the gas. His first instinct
was that jealous feeling in your gut, the one that started out like butterflies
and then turned into something really nasty like bad heartburn. He realized that he wanted to knock that
stupid white cap right off of the kid’s head.
But when he reached the car and the kid stuck out his hand to shake
Nick’s hand, welcoming him to town, all his jealousy faded away.
“How the hell does everybody know I’m not from
around here?” Nick asked, motioning for
Kara to scoot over, despite her obvious desire to drive his car.
“Well, number one, nobody around here drives a
car like this,” the kid said, pushing the driver’s side door shut once Nick was
safely inside the car.
“And second?”
Nick motioned for Kara to put on her seatbelt, ignoring her outstretched
hand as she tried to get his keys from him.
“Second is that you don’t let Kara have
everything she wants.” The kid grinned
widely, as Kara rolled her eyes and dropped her outstretched hand. “Guys from around here would bend over
backwards to make Kara Clark happy, and everybody knows it.”
Nick raised his eyebrows at Kara as if to say,
“Is that true?” But she gave nothing
away, as she casually flipped her ponytail and stuck her nose in the air with a
smile. Nick slowly pulled out of the
station as the kid waved goodbye.
“So guys would do anything for you, huh? Even Roy?”
Nick stole a glance at Kara as she adjusted her side mirror with a
smile.
“I don’t want to talk about me now, and I definitely
don’t want to talk about Roy. Let’s talk
about you,” she said, pointing to the right.
Nick followed her directions, turning down a
tree lined street. Glancing around, he noticed that every house seemed to have
a white picket fence and a dog in the yard.
“Okay, what do you want to know?”
“Well, for starters, are you here on business
or pleasure or both?”
“I don’t really know.”
Kara noticed the way his expression changed to
something sad and contemplative as he said the words.
“What do you mean you don’t really know?”
---
“Nick, I need to know where you are planning
on going.”
Nick stood in the foyer of his Florida home,
engaged in another battle royale with his Mother.
“What the hell difference does it make to you
where I go?” His arms were folded across
his chest in a defiant way that would have signaled to a sane, rational person
to back the hell off. But he had never
considered his mother to be sane or rational.
“I need to know where you will be in case
something happens to you.” She pushed at
her bleached blonde hair as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other
in obvious irritation.
“Since when do you give a fuck what happens to
me, Mom?”
“Knock it off, Nicky. You are treading on thin ice with that attitude
of yours, and I won’t put up with it.”
Nick snorted out a sarcastic laugh, his
mother’s eyes narrowing as her lips disappeared into a thin line of
irritation. “I’m not stupid, Mom. You only care if something happens to me
because you want to make sure you get what I leave behind.” She raised a hand to slap him, but Nick stood
his ground, squaring up his jaw, his eyes blue steel. “Go ahead and hit me, Mom. It won’t be the first time, but it might be
the last.”
His mother dropped her hand, her fists
clenching at her sides. “Nick, you know
that I… that I… love you.” She stumbled
over the word “love” like it was poison on her tongue.
Nick dropped his head and sighed. “If something happens to me, you can play the
poor grieving mother, you can tell everybody how much you loved me and how much
you’ll miss me, I really don’t care. But
you’re not getting my money or my things.
I worked my ass off for all of this-”
He spread his arms wide. “-and I
decide where it goes.”
Grabbing up the old, black duffel bag at his
feet, he turned and walked towards the door, tossing his final goodbye to his
mother over his shoulder on his way out the door. “Everything has been taken care of. My lawyers will know what to do.” Turning, he twitched his mouth up in a
mischievous half-smile that had always worked so well at pissing his mother off
in the past.
“See you around, Mom.”
---
“Well,
business or pleasure?”
Kara leaned into Nick’s face, batting her big
green eyes at him, making him laugh. And
after careful consideration of her question, Nick finally answered her.
“Let’s just say it’s a little bit of both.”
***
