I was in the backseat of an ugly station wagon, sitting next to my best friend from college.
"Thanks for the ride home," I said to his dad in front of me. He was smoking a cigarette that smelled nasty. He didn't respond for a while. Maybe 30 minutes of silence, not even filled by radio.
"Yeah, sure thing," he said like he had his mind on other things. And so set the tone for the rest of this long, boring drive through the desert.
Pretty much all me and my buddy ever talked about was girls. Which ones we liked. What we liked about them. What we had done with whom. So with his mom in the seat in front of him and his dad in the seat in front of me, I figured it was only a matter of seconds before we whipped out our phones and started texting while right next to each other.
"Don't do that," his dad said, empty eyes in the rearview mirror aimed low, at my lap. That was weird. I paused with my phone only halfway out of my pocket.
"Okay," I said. Waiting for something else to happen. But he only readjusted his mirror back up to the back window. And we were back to the quiet hum of the engine and AC. And I started to wish slightly that I was dead.
The desert was pretty, but I'd seen it a million times. Brandon's mom scratched an itch within her bra, on the side of her left breast where I could see. And she readjusted how her heavy breast sat in it. And suddenly, I was taken into a world of interest that would last me the rest of the 8-hour trip.
The car was old and rattling, and suddenly I could do nothing to miss every little jiggle of this mysterious woman's breasts in the corner of my eye. I hadn't seen her face, but I could see long, dark brown hair. And the longer I stared at it, the better I could smell it. She smelled like sweet blooming flowers. And her hands looked soft and warm whenever she touched her face, brushing her hair behind her ear. Or positioning her bra yet again. Like her tits were just too big to ever quite sit right just hanging there in front of her. She pulled down the sun visor to look at her minimal makeup in the mirror, and I saw her tired, patient, playful eyes. Her eyes showed sexy little creases from so much smiling. I wanted to see her smile. She glanced at my stare in the mirror before she put the visor back up, but didn't smile or say anything then. She just sort of saw me and waited half a second. Like she was curious what I was all about, or what I was going to do since I hadn't said much. It made me wonder the same thing. But I decided to distract myself from what came into my head then by searching the immediate vicinity in the car for a book to read.
I put down the Art of War a few hours later when the volume of an argument I hadn't noticed became too loud for me to think. Dad was furious. Brandon had given him some bad directions (likely because he couldn't use maps on his phone since the man didn't like to see them), and we were on a route now that added another entire hour to our journey. So much for dinner at home tonight. We stopped for our first gas and meal break, and I stared at Brandon's mom out of the corner of my eye the entire time. Her body was oddly desirable for a woman who showed her miles and lack of interest in the gym in her arms and tummy. They looked so soft. I stared at my plate for the rest of the meal after realizing I was growing resentful and jealous of Brandon's father. He didn't seem to appreciate that he'd picked a woman who was smarter and sweeter than anything on earth, and that she was his to have and hold and fuck and kiss even while he became more and more gaping an asshole as the day went on. It didn't quite seem fair. I tried not to dwell on it.
Brandon made his mom take his seat. She wasn't too happy about it. She didn't have to come, and said she only did for the desert view back. The setting sun on the desert horizon was one of her 15 favorite reasons for living, she'd said. I wanted to ask what the others were when she'd said it, but the argument had already picked back up by then. So the two of us only shared a bit of eye contact instead as she saw me open my mouth. And she gave a lighthearted little kind of giggle as the boistrous behavior of her son and husband interrupted an actually meaningful conversation about to take place. This whole situation was starting to test my patience.
"I've never understood how boys can read that," mom said softly under a safe cover of argument erupting in the front seat. "There aren't any characters. It doesn't have a plot. Not even any clear morals or creative ideas," she passed playful judgment on the book I had no choice in selecting to read. I stared at the woman a while. She was so intruiging. So wise and beautiful, I could tell. And I think her eyes were different colors in different lighting. Right now they looked sort of mysterious sea green.
"How do you know?" I pushed back gently.
"Know what?"
"That stuff about there being no plot, no characters."
She didn't reply for a minute. Like she knew she'd fallen into a bit of a trap.