Wanderlust

10- The Dinner

“So much driving.” I groaned as I leaned against the window of the passenger seat.

Thomas chuckled softly but didn’t look my way since he was in the process of passing a slow semi-truck on the high way as we crossed the Iowa border, the fourth border I have ever crossed in my whole life.

“Yeah, what’d you expect when you suggest that we drive across the country?” He asked me. “And we’ve only been driving for like, two hours.”

“I get bored easily.” I muttered sheepishly. “Have you listened to any news broadcasts lately?” It was a stupid question because I haven’t left his side since this morning, we’d been driving nonstop and it was only ten in the morning so I would know if he’d listened to any of the broadcasts.

“No.” He sighed. “Do you want to?”

I shook my head. “Not really.” I was too frightened to see what they cops were saying about both me and Thomas. After what I saw this morning, I had even more doubts that what the news people are saying is even true. How can a guy so scared in his own sleep be capable of murder? He looked so scared and innocent this morning when he was sleeping. Then, my mind flashed back to when we were at Arby’s and he held a knife to that Arby’s worker- that was mildly terrifying even though he promised he wasn’t going to hurt anybody.

“What are you looking at?” Thomas asked when he realized that I was staring at him.

I quickly adverted my gaze to a llama farm that we were currently passing. “Nothing.” I muttered softly.

“Sure.” He chuckled.

Before he could tease me or say anything, I pulled out one of the maps that were held under the seat that showed where we were. “So we’re going west on 80.” I stated the obvious- we’ve been on eighty since we started this journey and we will be until we get to San Francisco, since I-80 goes all the way across the country. “I think we can get all the way through Iowa today.”

“You think?” Thomas asked. “Isn’t Iowa kind of… long?”

“Yeah, I guess, but we have all day.”

This made him smirk. “Aren’t you the one who just complained about driving too much?”

I shrugged. “The sooner we get to California, the better.”

“That’s the spirit.”

~~~~

“Okay, can we please stop driving now?” I whined as my butt protested against the soft seat by becoming unbearably numb.

“Yeah.” Thomas finally relented, maybe his own butt had become numb, but I didn’t ask because I was just thankful to get out of this car. “Are you hungry? It’s about dinner time.”

I nodded even though there was no need because just as Thomas asked that, my stomach let out a loud growl, causing me to blush and him to laugh.

“We can stop for pizza, it’ll give us a chance to stop driving for a while and then I think we can make it to Omaha tonight.”

I nodded in agreement, although I was silently dreading getting back on the road tonight. I didn’t know that driving could be so… excruciating. “Yeah, we’re not that far away, as long as we get a break soon because I can’t feel my butt.” We hadn’t stopped since we started driving this morning, we went through a drive thru for lunch and didn’t stop at all. “We need gas, too.”

He looked down at the gauge that was close to empty. “Okay, we’ll get gas too, while we’re stopping.” He announced as we pulled off of the highway into a tiny town called Avoca, Iowa. We got gas first, using some of the money that was stashed in the ash tray from the girl who owns the SUV.