The Wilde Expedition

31. coffee chat

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〮CHAPTER THIRTY ONE 〮

The next day I woke up groggy and somewhat stiff from sleeping on the front bench. After a minute or two of just simply lying there, staring at the ceiling bordered with seventy's shag carpeting, I realized it wasn't the soreness in my shoulder that woke me up. It was Gavin on the phone outside-he must've thought I couldn't hear through walls or something, because he was leaning up against the side door of the van, chatting away.

"Ha, yeah, you've gotta show me all your favorite restaurants. I don't care if I'm not able to move tomorrow, I'll eat everything-What was that? Oh, yeah, I may be a Midwesterner, but I can handle spicy food. Granted, we won't get there till this evening but-"

For a moment I was disoriented-clearly he had plans to visit someone that he failed to mention to me, but I quickly realized that this wasn't solely my road trip. I was here for the ride, and that ride meant visiting more strangers like Harley and Scarlett, and Blake.

But then I realized where we were, and what our next plan of action was-New Mexico. New Mexico meant Santa Fe, despite the fact that it was on the northern side of the state. He'd mentioned it a while ago, but clearly it was still on his mind considering he was talking to our future hosts on the phone.

The hitchhikers he met in Yellowstone. They lived in Santa Fe.

I waited another ten or so minutes until he was off the phone. He talked some more about plans for tomorrow, since apparently we'd be spending the whole day there and drive through the night. By the sound of it, Gavin didn't usually drive at night unless he had someone to tag team with. A new member of the Wilde Child, perhaps?

There was a sudden lack of light over my head, so I peered up to find Gavin peering back. When he realized I was awake, he pulled the door open and commented, "You're awake. How'd you sleep?"

"Fine, I guess. And yourself?" I stretched my arms up, since now I had the room to do so. He moved out of the way to make room for my lanky arms.

"Same here. I didn't wake you up, did I?" Whenever someone says that, I can never find it in me to verbally accuse them, so of course I said no. "Great! I have some news-everybody loves news, right?"

"Unless it involves death or something, sure."

"Well, besides that. No one's dying-yet. We'll be in Santa Fe today and tomorrow," he added as soon as the quizzical expression on my face came into view. I twisted myself up into a sitting position so I wasn't upside down.

"So we are going to Santa Fe?"

"Yeah, we'll get there by noon if we leave soon. What do you want for breakfast?" He looked ecstatic, like he did the hours coming to visit Harley and Scarlett. I felt kind of bummed out that I'd caused our stay in San Francisco to be cut short-it sounded like he wanted to spend at least a few more nights with them.

After deciding on a morning meal, we wound up at a diner drinking ice tea and eating flapjacks. Gavin had his computer powered up, loading pictures from his SD card, and typing a lot. I'd noticed that when we stopped in small towns for meals, and he went about his habit of starting up his computer, that he spent half his time recounting little notes from a moleskin pad of his.

"What're you working on anyway?" I asked abruptly. We hadn't been talking, so I caught him a bit off guard.

"Oh, I dunno. I just like to keep details about my photos in my journal here, so that when I upload them, I can add notes to them. See here-" He twisted the computer around so there wasn't a glare in my view, and sure enough, I saw his album of photographs. In the information listed with the picture, there were short comments about the contents that he copied down from his moleskin journal.