“I honestly don’t know, probably both.”
He closes my hand and releases it. “Sometimes I feel so fucking simple. It’s painful.”
“You’re not simple,” I counter without pause. “I’ve known you for less than a day, and you’re anything but simple.”
“And you’re exhausting. We done?”
“No, how do you like your eggs?” I jab in an attempt to lighten the mood.
He’s silent for a long moment, so long I’m unsure if he heard me or is even listening.
“Sorry, that was in poor taste. Forgive me,” I say as he speaks up.
“Joel’s been with me since he was twenty-two,” he mutters absently, speaking his thoughts aloud. “My whole life.”
“It’s apparent you two are close.”
“Thank fuck for that,” he says. “I love him.” His admission comes so easily that my heart warms, and inwardly, I sigh.
He senses my cogs turning. “What?”
I shake my head as he prods. “Tell me.”
“You’re a lot freer than you think, Easton.”
“How so?”
“Because you seem to live and speak with intent.”
“What’s living according to Natalie Butler?”
I nod toward our surroundings. “I guess, right now, what we’re doing today is my current definition. Coasting along to see where a day leads.” I smooth down my frizzy hair. “You know, in real life, I’m not really the mess you’ve been subjected to.”
“That’s a fucking shame,” he says, his eyes trailing down my profile.
“Sorry to disappoint, but my life is…highly structured, and while I wouldn’t change a lot about it most days, something happened recently that made my clear path…fuzzy.” I glance around. “Where are we anyway?”
His lips lift in a triumphant smile. “Lost.”
I return his grin. “I can’t say I hate it.”
He traces the steering wheel with his fingers. “I have this theory that if you don’t have enough days like this, then you’re pretty much living out someone else’s expectations, which is my definition of prison.”
I pause. “I know exactly what you mean by that.”
He nods, gripping the wheel. “I thought you might.”
Cult of Personality
Living Colour
Natalie
Once the rain stopped, we ate the small haul I bought at the gas station sitting on a weathered and slightly warped wooden picnic bench. We laid off the heavier talk, though with Easton, he refused to make it small. After a few minutes, he steered the questioning to my side of the table. He was probing me for more about myself and seemed to absorb the answers rather than just hear them with the intense look forever in his eyes. When the sun finally made an appearance, we raised our collective faces to it, soaking it in.
As Easton chauffeurs me back to my hotel, we sit in comfortable, amicable silence, wind whipping through the cabin, both occupied by our thoughts. In lieu of me playing DJ, Easton tuned into an oldies station. The music is at his usual level—a few obnoxious decibels over loud. As each mile passes, I find myself staring over at him, processing all he’d divulged today, my empathy for him increasing tenfold.
He’s seemingly in the midst of a crisis of his own—a battle about his future, and his predicament is far more daunting than mine. In order to venture into his career dream, he has to overcome his fear of the spotlight. The fact that he relayed why he hates the medium of the press and that he trusted me with that information says a lot. With every mile we travel, it’s on the tip of my tongue to thank him and ease his worries about what I’ll do with what he revealed. Just as I go to speak, he beats me to it.
“What do you listen to?”
He gestures toward the radio for me to take over.
“Nuh-uh, I’ll only disappoint you.”
“Go on,” he says, a barely-there lift of his lips.
“Okay, but you asked for it.”
I look at the time and calculate the difference at home before switching the dial to AM and Hearst’s national news radio. The puckered look of distaste on Easton’s face has me cackling. He listens for a few minutes and shakes his head.
“Two tornadoes killing sixteen people, left and right fighting, as usual. Tell me how this is uplifting?”
“It’s my life.”
“No, it’s other people’s lives.”
I raise a brow. “Careful, you’re getting offensive.”