FULL NOVELXO Chapter 1
Saturday, July 31st
Norah
Some people say the best way to start over is to dive in headfirst.
Though, those people probably aren’t doing it into the emotional equivalent of a brick wall like I am.
The engine vibrates as the driver hits the brakes and brings the big ol’ Greyhound bus to a stop with a less-than-gentle foot.
“Red Bridge!” she shouts over her shoulder, and her voice is so raspy, I imagine smoke billowing out from between her parted lips. She grabs the crank handle to her right with a hard hand and yanks the bus door open with a bang.
I hop up from my seat and gather my belongings as swiftly as I can.
After being sandwiched on this creaky metal tube for the past nine hours, only getting a handful of fifteen-minute breaks at gas stations so the driver could alternate between chain-smoking cigarettes and filling up the tank, sometimes dangerously at the same time, I’m more than ready to get the hell off.
I glance out the window as I swing my backpack onto my shoulder but stop in my tracks when I note the big yellow bridge that sits off in the distance.
“Last call for Red Bridge!” the driver shouts, and her blondish-gray bob swishes from side to side with her movements.
“Um…are you sure this is Red Bridge?” I call out toward her, cautiously making my way up the aisle, and she stares at me in the rearview mirror.
“Oh no, honey, you’re right. I’ve only driven this same route for the past twenty years and make a point not to follow the bus navigation. It gives me a real thrill to drop people off at the wrong stops.”
“I’m not questioning your bus-driving skills, which are awesome, by the way. Just fantastic, not-scared-at-all, feel-so-safe, this is the best bus ride I’ve ever had.” I punctuate that lie by holding up two thumbs. “But the Red Bridge red bridge is…well, yellow.”
She doesn’t offer any kind of response. Doesn’t even bother looking at the very yellow bridge I’m referring to. Instead, she just sits there, continuing to bore holes into my skull with crinkly, crow’s-feet-highlighted eyes. I think this is her silent, universal way of saying “Get off my effing bus.”
But as you might suspect, Red Bridge has always had a red bridge. For the first six years of my life that I spent in this sleepy Vermont town and, again, five years ago when I came back for my grandmother’s funeral—red.
As the driver glares, I speed up my crisis of reality and scoot my way down the rest of the aisle as carefully but quickly as I can. But cautious turns into clumsy, and before I know it, I’ve run over three people’s shoes with my bag and elbowed another two in the backs of their heads.
Each impact earns me more glares.
“Sorry! I am so, so sorry,” I mutter and flash apologies at as many people as I can, but the only real solution is to get the h-e-double-hockey-sticks off this bus, whether it’s really my final destination or not.
When I finally reach the exit, I lug my suitcase behind me, and it bounces erratically down the four big steps. Each time the wheels contact metal, a painful clanking echoes inside my ears.
I cringe. This is definitely not the kind of care my best friend Lillian had in mind when she let me borrow her favorite Louis Vuitton suitcase. And I highly doubt Louis himself expected this kind of trauma to his luxury goods. Lil’s poor bag will probably need therapy after this.
Clear of the bus door, I pause to get my bearings, but Harsh Helga at the Helm of the Greyhound is done waiting. In a cloud of dust and dirt and through the scream of its engine, the bus takes off behind me, leaving me in a whirlpool of its wake.
Just like that, I’m alone—something I haven’t been in years. And I’m in the middle of nowhere.
I look at all the trees and the absolutely wrong-color bridge.
This has to be Red Bridge…right?
I pull my cell out of my purse, hoping to get some confirmation from Google Maps, but I have zero bars of service. No doubt, my cell provider saw no reason for service out here because…no one is out here.
It’s been a while since I’ve been here and my memories are hazy, but the bridge does look familiar, even though the color isn’t right. And if I squint, I swear I can see a small sign sitting beside it that I think reads Red Bridge.
With no other option, I haul my suitcase behind me as I head toward the yellow beacon in the distance. Dry dirt kicks up with each step I take, and by the time I reach the bridge, my black boots look brown, and my jeans are thinking about retiring to a Utah ranch.
Truthfully, they’re my best friend Lillian’s black boots and jeans, but that’s an issue for another day. Right now, the town sign is transporting my mind straight back to twenty years ago.
Welcome to Red Bridge, it announces in big red letters. The smallest town in Vermont: Where everyone is someone and home is right here.
Right after my father passed away—after he’d battled an aggressive brain tumor for a year—my mother decided we were going to move away from this small town and start a new life in New York, and that sign is the very last thing I saw the day we left. I could barely read on my own at the time, but I can still hear my twelve-year-old sister Josie reading it aloud through her tears.
My grandmother Rose wasn’t happy about our leaving, but Eleanor Ellis, my mother, has always been a determined kind of woman. Maybe you have to be when you’ve buried both your youngest daughter and a husband before your thirtieth birthday.
But when Josie turned eighteen, she finally had a choice. She left New York and moved back here, despite our mother’s complaints. To this day, she and our mother aren’t on speaking terms, but it was like this town and our history with it were in Josie’s blood. Like she didn’t feel like she belonged anywhere but here. And for the past fourteen years, this is where she’s been.
Or, at least, I hope that’s still the case, because she’s the whole reason I got on that Greyhound and headed here. My whole life was in New York, and I walked away from it—had to walk away from it.
I check my cell again, hoping for enough service to GPS myself to Josie’s house, but half a bar isn’t enough juice to power anything but the time. So, I continue walking, hoping I’ll spot civilization at some point.
But the more I walk, the farther I feel like I’m going from actual humans.
I know the town is small, but where is it? Did they move it?
The late July sun beats down on my back, reminding me that even Vermont gets hot, and a small part of me wonders if I’m going to die out here alone with only a Louis Vuitton suitcase filled with my best friend’s clothes beside me.
I stop halfway across the bridge to catch my breath and watch the river flowing beneath it.
Everything about my life feels trapped in the flowing, bubbling, swirling water. Like I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m still moving forward at ten miles per hour.
Tires crunch on dirt and rock in the distance, and my head whips around to find the culprit. An old, vintage Ford pickup in a pristine shade of baby blue with chrome accents that glitter in the sun drives toward me.
Proof of life!
Without thinking, I start waving both hands in the air and try to flag down the unknown driver. Yes, I’ve listened to far too many crime podcasts to engage in this kind of reckless behavior on a normal day, but the boob sweat and three-inch helmet of frizz that’s now sitting atop my curls is anything but standard.
As the truck moves closer and closer without slowing, I realize this is a real red-wire, blue-wire kind of dilemma. The only thing that’s going to stop it is a risky move by me. I imagine this is what Bruce Willis felt like when they were trying to defuse the bomb in Armageddon.
Time is dwindling.
The truck is closing the distance.
And I cut the proverbial wire and put myself in the road. Directly in front of the moving truck.
A beat of time lifts my heart into my throat before tires skid across the dirt, and the truck comes to a shaky stop about a foot away from my body. A cloud of dust rushes forward and swirls around me like a tornado.
When we’re finally close enough to see each other, the driver’s eyes lock with mine, venom and disbelief within them. Guilt and shame form a friendship in my chest, shaking hands and sharing smiles and leaving me feeling like a buffoon.
“I’m sorry!” I exclaim toward him, lifting my arms in apology at his huge, unmoving frame. His tanned knuckles tighten reflexively around the white steering wheel.
Cautiously, I walk toward the driver’s side door. His window is rolled down, and the soft sounds of an oldies sixties song my father loved to listen to when Josie, Jezzy, and I were just kids trills from the speakers.
The man in the driver’s seat, however, is soundless.
I feel seventy shades of awkward, but I swallow past my discomfort and try to cut through the tension with an apologetic knife. “I’m really, really sorry. I just… I was just trying to get your attention and—” I stop midsentence when his blue eyes move across the dashboard to meet mine. The malevolence in them would silence anyone.
“And you thought it was a good idea to throw your body in front of my truck?” he questions with a deep, husky voice of honey and sandpaper all at once.
My stomach lurches and pitches to one side. I loathe upsetting people, even strangers, and yes, I imagine Freud would have something to say about that.
“Again, I’m sorry.” I wince and swallow past the nausea that’s migrating up my throat. “I just got off a nine-hour bus ride where I was sandwiched between two people who found camaraderie in chatting about politics and a driver who must’ve gotten her license from NASCAR. It’s been a bad day, an even worse week, and it’s hot, and while I know my methods for trying to get your attention weren’t ideal, I’m just…I’m trying to get into Red Bridge.”
He might as well be made of stone.
“Again, I sincerely apologize.” I continue to try to win him over. “I’m not generally this much of a mess. Normally, I have it together, I swear. It’s just that the bus driver dropped me off out here, and I’m starting to question if they’ve moved the town. I don’t know the logistics that are involved with moving an entire town, no matter if it’s the size of a shoebox or not, but I can imagine it would take, like, NASA engineers. And permits. Lots of permits. Everything needs permits these days, you know?” I joke and offer an encouraging “go ahead and laugh with me because I’m really funny, right?” kind of laugh, but it comes out all stilted and stroppy because I’m talking a million miles a minute and my lungs are having a hard time keeping up and I’m starting to wonder if I should be muzzled. Or sedated. Either would probably work.
Get it together, Norah. Do not make this more awkward for this guy than you already have.
The man behind the wheel looks to be midthirties, is definitely attractive, but he’s also big and kind of intimidating. A real brute of a man. He could play hockey or football and certainly gets more than enough protein every day. For all I know, his favorite pastime includes lifting big, heavy things for fun.
If we were back in the Stone Age, he’d be the alpha of the tribe, his brow and nose and chin all screaming “marble-cut barbarian.”
It also looks like he hasn’t shaved in at least a month. He has thick brown hair that’s showcasing an “I just run my fingers through it” kind of style, and splatters of pastel-colored paint mar the skin on his hands.
Basically, he’s attractive in a can-make-women-turn-feral kind of way. Still intimidating as all get-out, but definitely good-looking.
I bet he’s the type of guy who tears your panties and throws you up against the wall when he wants to make you come. And when he does make you come—
“You need a ride or what?”
His question is an abrupt snap of fingers in front of my face.
“Wh-what?” I pause and silently pray I heard him correctly. “You’ll give me a ride?”
“You threw your body in front of my truck,” he states without humor. “Anyone that desperate gets a lift to the town square, at least.”
Hold the phone. I didn’t throw my body in front of anything. I stepped in front of his truck. Walked to the middle of the road. Calmly made my presence known. But I definitely didn’t throw my body in front of his vehicle like some kind of desperate woman being chased by Michael Myers with a chainsaw.
Don’t get sassy, Norah. Just be polite and accept the damn ride.
“Thanks. I’ll get my bag,” I answer, keeping my manners intact. Quickly, I move back around the front of the truck to the side of the road where the dusty Louis sits.
I reach for the handle, but a big hand grabs it before I can, the weight of his presence behind me hitting like his truck, had he not managed to stop.
Is he some kind of ninja? I didn’t even hear his door open.
I have to look up, up, up to meet his eyes, and I realize just how tall the macho man is. He has to be well over six foot and makes my average five-foot-four frame look pint-sized.
If this were a rom-com movie, this would be our meet-cute. I’d be the petite damsel in distress, and he’d be the big, strong, and sexy hero ready to save the day. But I’m not Emma Stone, this isn’t a movie, and if I go by his tight jawline or furrowed brow, this guy isn’t thrilled with his supposed hero role. Or me, for that matter.
Without a word, he lifts my suitcase and carries it to his truck, tossing it in the bed like it weighs less than a trash bag full of feathers. And then, he’s back in the driver’s seat before I can say thank you. Before I can say or do anything, actually.
I guess this is the part where I get inside the truck?