WILD RIDE Read Free

route.
    After all, he might follow me, now that his Harley was
all fixed up.  To tell the truth, I wasn’t all that worried about it.  Cal
wasn’t clever enough to find me.  He wasn’t driven enough to commit himself to a
journey like that.  He’d get distracted by his goddamn spark plugs or some such
before the idea would take hold.  Tulsa was his stomping grounds and he had no
desire to spread his wings.  Plus, even Cal would’ve figured out by now that
whatever relationship we might have had in the past had well and truly
sputtered out.  We hadn’t been intimate in a while, if ‘being intimate’ was
even an accurate description of what we did.  Cal was my first lover – my only lover – and I didn’t know a lot beyond the experience of being with him.  But
I’d read books.  I’d heard people talk about ‘foreplay’ and ‘multiple orgasms’
and all that fanciful-sounding stuff.  And it didn’t require a college degree
to figure out that I might have been missing out on a few things.  Maybe our
chemistry wasn’t right.  Maybe our ‘pheromones’ – whatever those were –
weren’t quite compatible.  Maybe we’d both be better off trying our luck
elsewhere.
    The thought gave me a little rush of excitement.  Maybe
those Texas guys had something better to offer me.  I was curious.
    Taking another swig of whiskey, I turned south onto
Route 69, smiling again as I read the road sign.  Another intriguing thought. 
Cal hadn’t been all that interested in stuff that didn’t involve his own quick
and immediate gratification.  69 .  It wasn’t something we’d ever tried. 
There were a whole lot of things, come to think of it, that we’d never tried. 
The thought of a skilled, sun-tanned rebound Texan entertained me as I drove
along.  I let my daydreams wander into risqué directions.  How would that work,
exactly?  What would that be like ?  What would it feel like?
    I was brought back to an abrupt reality when my car’s
engine made a loud knocking sound.
    Oh, hell.
    But it seemed to recover.  A few smaller knocks faded
to the once-again steady hum of the motor.
    Please just get me to Austin.  Another
shot of whiskey calmed me as the hot air blew in through the open windows,
rippling through my long hair.  I wiped the sweat from my forehead with a
bandana.  My air conditioner hadn’t even worked when I’d bought this hunk of
junk so I didn’t even bother.  And the motor was making more noises.  A burning
smell was hard to ignore.  I was going to get to Austin come hell or high water,
one way or the other, car or no car.  There was simply no way I was turning
around and going back.  Even if I had to walk to Texas.
    And luck was on my side, at least for now.  The car had
issues, that was obvious enough, but at least it was still propelling me in a
forward direction.  Which it continued to do for another fifty or so miles.
    But then it happened.  Just, in fact, as I was rolling
across the Texas border.  Welcome to Texas! rolled past at a sickeningly
diminishing speed.
    I had no choice but to pull over on to the dusty
shoulder of the highway as my car came to a smoking and very final stop.

 
    Chapter
Three
     
    I was glad for the shade the Welcome to Texas! sign offered me.  The situation wasn’t great but things weren’t all bad. 
Firstly, I was out of Oklahoma, across an entire border from my past and
my disappointments.  Second, I had shade and was thankful I’d worn the cool,
thin, very-short cotton dress.  I had a hat and sunglasses.  The temperature
even in the shade must have been a hundred degrees or more.  But I had water
and a bottle of liquid courage to my name.  I’d had to eat the chocolate before
it melted so I was out of food, but that didn’t worry me.  This was a main
thoroughfare; other people would drive by sooner rather than later, I guessed,
and I’d hitch a ride to the next town.  From there, I’d figure things out.
    I put my few