Saving Quinton (Nova #2)(16)
Author: Jessica Sorensen

She’s silent again and it’s driving me crazy. Although I’ll still go no matter what she says, I want her to support me and I wish she would relax. But I do understand where she’s coming from, considering what I’ve put her through in the past.

My mom’s still not saying anything when Lea gets into the car. She drops a large bag of Cheetos in between us, along with a bottle of water and a bottle of Dr Pepper, then shuts the door. She gives me a weird look as I start the engine and crank the air conditioning. She starts to say something, but I hold up my finger.

“Mom, are you there?” I ask, rolling up the window.

“Yeah, I’m here.” She exhales loudly. “All right, I’ll let you do this, but I’m not happy about it at all. And I want you to call me three times a day at least and if things get bad, I need Lea to tell me. Not you.”

I’m a little wounded by her last remark, but at the same time I can’t blame her. All that time I spent telling her I was okay, when I was dying inside—she knows how easily I can be silent when things get hard.

“Okay,” I tell her, knowing she can’t really force me to do anything, since I’m an adult. Calling her is just me trying to be a good daughter and let her know my plans. “I can do that for you.”

“Now put Lea on the phone,” she says in a stern tone.

“What? Why?”

“Because I want to talk to her.”

“Okay…hold on.” I hand Lea the phone.

Lea takes it, her face contorting with confusion. “What’s up?” she asks me, staring down at the screen.

“She wants to talk to you,” I explain, putting the car into drive. “But I don’t know about what.”

Lea places the phone up to her ear and says hello as I drive back onto the freeway. They chat for a while, Lea keeping her answers pretty simple. Eventually Lea hangs up and puts my phone down on the seat between us. She doesn’t say anything, opening up the bag of Cheetos as she relaxes back in the seat, and aiming the vent at her face.

“So are you going to tell me what she said?” I ask.

Lea shrugs as she pops a Cheeto into her mouth. “Nothing much. She just told me to keep an eye on you, which I was already planning on doing.” She puts her feet up on the dash. “She really cares about you, you know.”

“I know,” I say, taking a handful of Cheetos. “I hate that she’s worried.”

“You should be glad that she does worry. It means she loves you.” She says it sadly, probably thinking about her own mom and their strained relationship since her father took his own life and her mother left Lea and her sister to live with their grandmother, because she couldn’t handle being a mother alone. I think she’s been trying to get back into Lea’s life, but Lea’s struggling with it.

“I am glad.” I switch lanes, then wipe my Cheeto fingers on the side of my shorts. “But I hate worrying her.”

And I do. I’ve put my mom through enough already, but going to Vegas—to Quinton—is something I have to do. If I don’t, I’ll always look back and regret it, and like Lea’s tattoo says, I don’t want to live my life with regrets. I have a lot of them in my life and I don’t want any more.

Lea and I eat Cheetos and talk about what we’re going to do for the next few weeks until the city comes into view. Then Lea sits up, lowering her feet to the floor, and leans forward to look at the city sinfully glinting in the distance. “God, it’s small, yet it’s not.”

I nod in agreement as I take in the uniquely shaped towers and buildings stretching toward the sky, and the massive billboards on the sides of the road trying to convince us of how much fun we’re going to have.

“You know, I came here a few times when I was younger,” Lea says. “But I never went directly into the city onto the Strip…but now I’m sort of curious.”

“It looks intense,” I remark, checking the GPS on the dash for directions. “This thing says we don’t even go into the city to get to your uncle’s house.”

Lea slumps back in the seat and turns the air conditioning up a notch. “Well, we’ll have to go do something fun.”

“Don’t you have to be twenty-one to do things in Vegas?” I ask as the voice on the GPS tells me to make a turn in 1.5 miles.

She shakes her head. “No. I mean, you have to be twenty-one to gamble and shit, but there’s a ton of other stuff we could do, like go see bands play or do karaoke. It could be a lot of fun.”

I remove my hand from the shifter and extend it to her, not really wanting to go out while I’m here, but she seems sad and maybe going out could cheer her up. “Okay, it’s a deal. We’ll go out and have some fun while we’re here.”

She smiles as we shake on it. “Deal.”

We let go of each other’s hands and I put mine back on the shifter, tapping the brakes as I follow the GPS’s instructions and make a right off the nearest off-ramp. As we pass by average-looking houses, I wonder what kind of place Quinton’s living in. I have an idea, since I saw the place he lived in a year ago: a trailer in a very run-down trailer park that had a lot of druggies living in it.

My thoughts remain focused on Quinton’s living situation until I pull into a neighborhood where all the houses look identical and so do the yards. There are sprinklers watering the grass and people outside checking their mailboxes, working on their cars, walking their dogs. This neighborhood has sort of a homey feel to it, which I wasn’t expecting in a place nicknamed Sin City.

“Which one is it?” I ask as the GPS announces I’ve arrived at my destination.

Lea points at the house at the end of the cul-de-sac, a decent single-story stucco home with a garage, and a lawn in front of it. The driveway is empty and there’s a fence around the backyard, but it’s short and I can easily see over it.

I park in the driveway in front of the shut garage door. “Is he home?”

Lea takes off her seat belt and cracks her door. “No, I told you he was out of town for a few days on some business trip or something, but he said there’s a key under a flowerpot in the back and we could just let ourselves in.”

We get out and meet at the front of the car. The first thing I notice is the heat, like I’ve just stepped into a sauna, only there’s no moisture and it’s like it’s feeding on mine.

“Holy hell, it’s hot.” I fan my hand in front of my face.