I was done.
My foot pressed harder on the gas. My fingers clenched the steering wheel until my knuckles were white.
It was over. I was never going back to him. Never.
“I’m done,” I commanded myself.
I checked the rearview mirror again, half expecting to see the headlights of Nate’s cherry-red convertible tailing me. There was still a part of me that half wished he was. The shame and embarrassment of it had been riding shotgun since I’d merged onto the I-405.
It was just me and my beat-up 4Runner out on whatever highway this was now. I’d bought it as a trade-in for the sleek black Mercedes Nate had bought for me. He’d bought o many things for me that eventually my entire existence felt purchased. The diamond earrings in my cup holder?
Anniversary gift. That tennis bracelet burning a hole in the side pocket of my Chanel bag? Birthday present. Even the French manicure and my overpriced blond hair were on his credit card.
Which reminded me—I needed gas soon. Panic prickled in my chest. My fingers tapped on the steering wheel.
I was too low on supplies and too close to the Canadian border. I needed to stock up before I crossed. I found a run-down Texaco at the next exit, but the only option I had beyond that was a sprawling Walmart two miles up. This was good, though. Nate knew I was a Target girl. If he was coming after me, he probably wouldn’t look for me here.
Still, I pulled into a parking space near the exit side. Close enough so I could get back to my truck fast if I needed to.
It was surprisingly busy inside for eight o’clock at night in upper bumfuck Washington State. Normal people everywhere buying normal-looking things. It wasn’t hard to blend in with the crowd here, but even without the split lip and the black eye, I still would’ve stuck out like a sore, spray-tanned thumb.
I pulled my hood up and kept my head down as I tossed new clothes into my cart: practical leggings and a few long-sleeved T-shirts. Sweatshirt. Rain jacket. I grabbed the cheapest underwear I could find—comfortable cottons and a few plain, nude-colored bras. It was liberating to pass up the lace. Nate always wanted lace.
My mind kept wandering back to him too much today.
Back to the sweet memories that went down like smooth whiskey instead of the ones that strangled my throat. He said he loved it rough, but too many nights had left me with purple prints around my neck for me to feel the same.
When I passed a mirror in an empty corner of the ladies’ department, I forced myself to look at the black-and-blue map he’d left on my face. The gash on my cheek, angry red and puffy, would probably take the longest to heal. Hitting a dresser would do that.
I turned away and headed quickly to find the hair dye.
Dozens of choices lay before me, but I had to think through what wouldn’t turn out as orange as my ass. So I opted for my natural color—a dark brown, almost black, that I’d inherited from my mother.
Self-checkout was so slammed I thought about ditching my cart and bolting. I couldn’t risk anyone seeing my face. I was already terrified of the trail I was leaving. Terrified the handful of bills I’d swiped from his wallet at three o’clock this morning wouldn’t get me all the way to Alaska. I couldn’t let him find me, but I also couldn’t stand that I was still wearing clothes he’d bought for me. Every inch of my body felt like a transaction happening three states away. So I waited in line and ignored the concerned checkout attendant trying to catch my eye.
Fifteen anxiety-soaked minutes and $143.87 later, I was back on the road, debating with myself again as to whether or not I should find a rest stop to spend the night in or just keep driving until I couldn’t anymore. I’d peeled out of Malibu six-teen hours ago, and technically hadn’t slept in two days, but I refused to even consider the idea of sleep until I got to Canada.
I’d stolen Nate’s passport before I’d left, and chucked it and my pink iPhone into the Pacific Ocean on my way out of town.
By the time I got to the border, I knew I wouldn’t make it much farther. I could feel how bloodshot my eyes were with every blink. The border services agent took one look at my passport and asked me to take off my hood. His expression went from suspicious to alarmed in half a second flat.
“Ma’am, can I ask if you’re all right?” he said, handing back my passport.
“I’m fine. Thank you.”
“Not in any kind of trouble, are you?”
“No, sir. Not at all.” I smiled, and felt the cut on my lip crack open a little. “Is there a rest stop near here?”
“Yes, ma’am. One about a mile up from here, and another one about thirty minutes past that.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded. “You be safe out there, ma’am.”
I pulled away from the booth, wondering if I should’ve kept Nate’s passport with me. The Pacific was deep, but it wasn’t that deep.
The water in the bathroom at the rest stop thirty minutes into Canada was warm, at least.
I scrubbed and scrubbed until my skin was raw, the baking-soda paste I’d mixed with lemon juice washing away the fake orange tan that stained my skin, causing the water to turn a resentful yellow.
My hair was another story. It’d sucked up the dark dye like water in the desert. I thought I could make it better by giving it a quick cut. I wanted a change. Instead, I got a chop job that looked like a fifth grader had done it. At least the color looked good.
My reflection almost scared me. I hadn’t seen the woman looking back at me in years. A complete stranger. A doe scared of every headlight that pulled into the rest stop parking lot. Dark, wet hair. Blue-gray eyes full of fearful resolution. Yoga and the cute little Zumba classes at the country club had kept her thin, but not strong.
I could be strong, though. I had to be.
I slept in my backseat that night and dreamed I was in a motel instead. Through the watery, bruised void that was my dream, Nate kicked in the door and dragged me out by my freshly dyed hair.
• • •
It took two days to drive the coast of Canada. Two days of gas station junk food bought with Canadian cash that a nice man in a town called Quesnel had traded me for a couple of American hundred-dollar bills. I had no idea if he’d ripped me off, but I didn’t care about the exchange rate, because I was here. In Alaska.
And I was fucking starving.
I’d had too much time to think on the drive up here.
My mind had marinated in the things that had transpired to lead me here, and it was all my fault. God, I’d screwed up. I should’ve never talked to him. Should’ve never gotten in that deep. Should’ve never given up my life for him.
Should’ve never taken that long to get out.
I felt tears on my face again. My body wasn’t going to forget that last beating for a long time. And I didn’t want it to. The pain reminded me of that last horrific night. He’d chased me into the guest bathroom of our condo, and our maid, Yulanda, had found me on the floor hours later. I needed to remember what she’d said, the way she’d rushed me out of the house, so I could keep my foot on the gas.
I don’t want to find your body.
“I know,” I whispered to myself now, letting her words roll around in my head.
I mashed the gas pedal down to the floorboard.
Yulanda was how I escaped. Yulanda had known this day would come. Wise beyond her years, she cleaned me up that day and yanked me to her cousin’s used car lot where we traded in my shiny silver Mercedes for the 4Runner. She helped me pack my bags in a hurry, then placed a key in my hand before I ran out the door. The key was to a cabin her brother owned out in the middle of the mountains. She said he only went up there during the summer, liked to go fishing for salmon. Luckily for me, it was the off-season. Fall had started, which meant I could be alone in the woods, where I could have a proper fucking meltdown and let my bruises heal before figuring out what I was going to do with myself.
Nate wouldn’t suspect. He never got to know Yulanda.
Never cared. And she wasn’t about to say a thing.
Plus, this was Alaska. Not exactly the territory of Nate’s perfect little bleached-out Barbie.
I tried to focus on something else. Like how my hands were sore from gripping the steering wheel for so long, or how my skin still itched from trying to scrub off my fake tan. I glanced over at the map spread out across the passenger seat. I’d picked it up in Quesnel, once I realized how fucking much of Canada there was before you could cross into Alaska, and was surprised by how much it’d comforted me over the last couple of days. I felt off the grid with the flimsy paper. Untraceable. Safe.
But it was too fucking quiet in this car, and the quiet wormed its way into my worst fears. It didn’t help that I had been driving all day through the middle of nowhere. You’d think the picturesque scenery would quell my fears.
Luckily, I could see neon lights glowing up ahead. The word Diner flickered in a muted blue that had faded to something less abrasive than what I imagined it once was.
Perfect.
I pulled into the cracked parking lot, eyeing the buckling wooden deck out front. The windows were fogged with god knows what, but at least the odd, canary yellow doorframe still had some life to it.
The inside was a lot more put together, at least. It smelled like bacon grease and lemon-scented Lysol. I felt every single look that landed on me when I walked in, and I focused on the two bobblehead hula dancers next to the register on the long, shiny counter to avoid the stares coming from the lone table of crossword-playing men in the corner. It was harder to ignore the whispers of the cook, though, or the woman at the counter who almost shattered my resolve with a single look.
Ignore them. Just eat then get out of here.
I picked a booth in the back corner close to the bright-red exit sign. The seat crackled when I sat down. I set my backpack next to me and reached for one of the flimsy plastic-cased menus. I hadn’t eaten a real meal in days.
“Can I help you, hon?”
I tried not to jump.
Her name tag looked like it had soaked up some of the cigarette smoke that also had sucked the softness out of her voice. It read “Shirley,” but that’s as far as my eyes reached before guilt forced them back down to the menu, as if it was now of the utmost importance.
My splotchy fingers clutched at the worn menu, the patches of tan around paler skin showing me that I’d done a piss-poor job of taking the dye off.
“Hon?”
Shit, how long had she been standing there? I squirmed in my seat as her eyes trailed from the cut on my lip to the purple-and-blue bruise hugging the corner of my eye.
“What’s good?” I asked. It was my turn to snap her out of her thoughts. I tried to hide the bitterness, but there was no hiding the bite in my voice.
I pulled my hood farther around my bruised cheek, hoping it looked like I was cold, but the ruse was up. Her brown eyes, decorated with tacky blue eye shadow, saw through my desperate facade. Sympathy poured from those eyes, but her lips remained silent with my secret.
It was so much easier before, but then again, before was something solemn women dared not acknowledge even among each other. Acknowledging it meant admitting there was a problem, and admitting it meant doing something, like leaving—which was easier said than done when Nate had the keys to the cage he’d built for me out of diamond earrings and tennis lessons. God, I hated tennis.
“Everything’s good here. Breakfast, lunch, dinner.”
“I don’t—” I tried to steady my breathing. “I have no idea what to get.”
She nodded, her eyes soft. “I can have ’em fry you up anything six ways to Sunday.”
My splotchy fingers clutched at the worn plastic menu.
My hands started to shake. All of a sudden, what to order was a decision I couldn’t make. I had had to make too many decisions recently.
“It’s okay if you don’t know,” she said with a shrug.
“Blank slate, sweetie—means you’ve got plenty of options.”
Fuck if I knew that. The only option I wanted was one where I could scream my head off in a cabin by myself.
“When you’ve got options, and none of them bad, the best thing to do is to pick one.”
I wanted one of her cigarettes. I looked back at the menu. The first words that stood out were the ones at the bottom corner of the page. “Breakfast?”
“Always a good choice.”
“Uh, I like pancakes.” I mean, who didn’t like pancakes?
“Eggs?” she asked.
“Can’t hurt?”
“Sure can’t.” She wrote it down on her pad. “You get another side too.”
My brows rose. This place should be called All Sides.
“Right.”
“So, choose one.”
“Oh—um. Bacon?”
“You can’t go wrong with it. To drink?”
I blinked. The sound of something sizzling in hot grease filled the air, diffusing the tension in the silence between us.
The vibration of a phone cut through the noise. My eyes looked up to see the crossword game briefly interrupted until the man ignored the call. I didn’t know how he could ignore it because it sounded so loud, like my own phone vibrating on the Plexiglas, his name lighting up the screen with that picture of us I’d carefully picked out when we first started dating. It never changed over the years, unlike us.
The phone vibrated again. My fingers twitched for my own, but it was long gone at the bottom of the Pacific where it belonged. I’d stopped trusting myself with it, but even without it I wondered how many miles I’d make it before answering him.
Someone had switched the old box television in the corner to a football game. I listened to the cheering and the murmurs about how useless one team’s defense was, but what I really heard was myself screaming when his fist met my face.
“Coffee and water please,” I forced out.
They never tell you about this part.
In the movies and television it’s always so easy; they’re always so angry. I wish I could be that angry. Instead, it’s claws I feel ripping my own heart apart because no one wants to admit that they still love the person who turned them black and blue. No one tells you that the anger doesn’t come easily but the regret does. The self-doubt, self-deprecation, and self-loathing does. No one tells you what to do with the love you still have for them.
“Got it,” she answered.
I hated being on my own, but right now it was all I wanted. I needed to pull it together. I couldn’t have a breakdown in a run-down diner in the middle of nowhere Alaska.
When she returned she set the coffee in front of me and lingered at the table, business cards looking back at me from under the sporadically foggy clear top. That damn phone rang again. It might as well have been him barking my name out. It took everything I had to keep a sob from slipping out.
It would just be a few more hours, then I could lose it. No one wanted to see me like this, a blubbering mess of tears and shameful excuses, including myself.
“Are you all right?” She slid into the crackly booth seat across from me.
I couldn’t remember the last time someone asked me that question and actually meant it, or expected an answer other than “Fine.” No one really wanted to know the true answer anyway, they just wanted to be able to check the box off on their “I’m a good person” list before they headed down to Starbucks for something grande and nonfat.
The last time I told someone I wasn’t fine, she just patted my hand in the ladies’ room of that bougie country club Nate loved and told me, “Keep your chin up.” It didn’t matter that I had mentioned to her how Nate had gotten a little too heated and knocked me into the dresser, or that the bruise that I showed her hidden beneath my long skirt corroborated my story. It didn’t faze her. In that moment I remember thinking that I should have just kept my mouth shut, that I was better off looking through the “Quotes” section on Pinterest for advice. At least the inspirational font and frilly art decor would have distracted from the hollowness of the words. At least the quotes wouldn’t have gossiped or watched me like a pack of vultures waiting to rip apart the fresh corpse.
When I looked back at Shirley, I knew that I was far from that Malibu country club, and at this point, what the hell else did I have to lose? I was in the middle of Alaska, far from him and far from those people.
“No.” It was so much harder to say than I remembered.
She nodded slowly, her own suspicions confirmed. “Do you want to talk about it?”
My head automatically started to shake even though inside I was screaming yes. Why couldn’t I just say yes?
“Okay,” she said, as if she was afraid her reply would further crack the already broken china before her. “How long since you left?”
“A little over a week,” I lied. It sounded better than the truth, which was pitiful. A tiny part of my brain wondered if I would even make it a full week.
She nodded. “Where’s your phone?”
“In the ocean,” I admitted painfully. Although I wasn’t going to admit that it didn’t matter. I had a burner. Yulanda’s number was preprogrammed, just for emergencies. There was another number I didn’t dare program in, although it didn’t matter. It was one I dangerously knew by heart.
“Good.” She gave me a firm nod. “Leave it there. Belongs there and not in your hand,” she added, although it felt like she meant more than the phone.
She stood and started to wipe her hands on her faded blue apron.
“Does it get better?” I asked, surprising myself.
Shirley paused for a moment, and when she spoke again, a softness had returned to her voice.
“You get better.”
The cook hit the bell on the counter, summoning her away from my table.
My fingers slid through my short hair as the last few days’ events danced around my head in a cruel ballet, caging me. I just wanted to be free. I wanted to feel like I could breathe again, but it felt like the weight of what I had done was suffocating me.
Shirley came back a few minutes later and dropped off a hot plate of pancakes, with crispy bacon on the side and scrambled eggs.
“Carbs help, wine helps, burning pictures of them helps, shooting at said pictures with a twelve-gauge also helps.” She shrugged, her lips quirking into a small smile. “There’s no right way to do this, but you will do this.”
“Thank you.”
“I do what I can,” she said, and I believed it.
I took one bite and an embarrassing groan escaped me.
The coffee chased down the carbs I practically shoveled into my mouth and eventually, Shirley was filling another cup for me and eyeing the flimsy paper map I pulled out of my backpack.
“Oh, sweetie . . .”
I couldn’t meet her gaze. “I know, but I don’t have a phone, and I needed a map.”
“Where are ya headed?”
“A cabin—my friend’s brother’s,” I replied. “It’s quiet there.”
“We need to get you a better map. Do you have a phone out there?”
I felt like I had been caught, but when her eyes met mine, there was no judgment. No disdain. Something else that looked like a fire, a spark, that seemed to move something in me. “I think there’s a landline. And I don’t. I picked up a burner phone once I crossed the border. Just in case of emergencies.”
“I think Carl has a better map you can take.” She nudged her chin toward the cook with a gray military buzz cut in the back. “You mind?” she asked, her chin indicating the stained sticky note with the address on it.
I peeled the note off and handed it to her. “No, that would be great. Thank you.”
She winked at me with a hopeful smile and walked back to the counter. Carl whispered something to her that had her bellowing out a laugh. It didn’t take long for me to finish my plate or for her to return to me. We traded plate for a worn map with a coffee stain on the far right edge of it.
I opened it up and quickly found the star drawn on an area next to my sticky note. My eyes wandered around the map—dozens of notes had been made about the area. North of the star, different-colored highlighters had outlined areas that looked like no-man’s-land.
“That’s where you’re headed,” Shirley told me, her finger pointing to the star. A pink highlighter had been used to draw a path on the map from the diner to the star. Hopefully foolproof enough for me.
A smile tugged at my lips. My fingers moved past hers to the outlined areas north of the star. “What’s that?”
“Private property,” she answered right as the bells on the front door chimed.
Four large men walked in, a rigidness about them making me shift in my seat. It didn’t help that Shirley’s stance changed as she watched them, her arms crossed and her eyes trying to hide a flicker of fear. Their tight steps made it seem like they could snap at any second.
“I’m going to get you your check,” she told me.
It was when she left to get my change that one of the men’s molten golden eyes caught mine. They were so vivid, so bright. Like the sun roaring to life in Death Valley.
There was something else there, too, but I was yanked away from staring when another’s gaze found mine. He looked me over as he tied his greasy hair into a ponytail, his lips curled into a smirk. The other men around him started to quietly laugh.
Every hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Nate wasn’t here to save me.
I hated myself for that thought.
Shirley walked back with my change and a to-go bag.
Her eyes flickered to the table behind me, her lips thinning into a stiff line.
“What’s this?” I asked her.
“For the road,” she answered, clasping my hands over the bag. Her gaze came back to mine.
“You didn’t have to.”
“Don’t worry about it, now you better get going. I wrote down our phone number here and put it in the bag for you, just in case. You need to watch out for washed-out roads.
Happens this time of year. If you see one, don’t go through it, turn around and come here. We’ll figure something out.”
I wanted to answer her, but if I did, I knew I would start crying. She squeezed my hand before I stepped out of the booth, my gut telling my feet to walk faster.
“Hey, sweetheart!” a cold voice called as I reached for the metal handle of the door.
My body froze in place, my head turning even though my mind screamed to run.
Golden eyes bored into mine. A smile curled on chapped lips. The man tilted his head, nostrils flaring, then looked back at me. “Damn, baby, you smell good.”
I threw the door open and sprinted to my car. My fingers fumbled with the keys as I looked over my shoulder at the diner window.
The men were still watching me—eyes locked on me.
My foot stomped on the gas, kicking up gravel behind me. There was something sinister behind their eyes, something that nagged at me even as I put miles between me and the diner. I half expected golden eyes to be looking right back at me every time I looked in the rearview mirror, and I half wanted to see Nate’s hazel eyes smiling at me instead.
I hit the gas harder. The farther I was from him, the more difficult it would be for me to turn around. It was a thought that only brought his laughter to my imagination. I could see him now shaking his head at me, as if he had just caught me doing something silly.
There was only a black eye looking at me in the rearview mirror, and I couldn’t run from that.
