I balked. Leaving the safety of my house was not something I did lightly. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise,” she said.
“I’m not really a surprise kind of guy,” I said. This was me, trying to be diplomatic. The truth is, I don’t like surprises; in fact, I hate them. “And I don’t go out in public anymore.”
“Trust me,” she said. She stood with the door open as if she had every confidence that I would just climb into the passenger seat like a damn sheep. So I climbed into the Jeep, natch. She ran around the front of the car to the driver’s side.
“Did you buy this today?” I asked.
“Borrowed it,” she said. “Hang on.”
I buckled up and grabbed the armrest on the door. The woman drove like she did everything else—at top speed, all in, giving it one hundred percent.
“Where are we—” I began but she interrupted.
“I’m not telling you,” she said. “But I am confident you’re going to like it.”
She blew through the open gate and headed east on Camelback Road. The city lights whipped past us, and a tingle of excitement crept into my veins. How long had it been since I’d been out of my house in the evening? Ages. I’d been so determined to get my health back to optimum, I considered sleep one of the best things I could do for myself. Subsequently, I was rarely up past ten, last night being a major exception, and I was usually hunkered in for the night by seven. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was seven thirty and I hadn’t even eaten.
I glanced down at myself. When exactly had I become an eighty-five-year-old man? But I knew the answer. My stroke had changed everything for me.
It was cold out. The cloth top of the Jeep kept most of the night air out but not all of it. Annabelle had the heat cranked up, and it blasted over my feet so my bottom half was hot while my upper half was chilled. She must have registered my discomfort because she grabbed a fleecy throw from the back seat and shoved it at me. I wrapped it around both of our shoulders, and she flashed me a grateful smile. It occurred to me that there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do to be on the receiving end of that smile.
As she drove us through Scottsdale and the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation Reservation, I tried not to panic, thinking about how far I was from a hospital if I suddenly needed one. My anxiety spiked and I did some of the calming exercises that Jackson had taught me. We were flying up the Beeline Highway into the Tonto National Forest, and the air was getting cooler, the night darker, and the world quieter.
She peeled off on an exit that was one lane of loose dirt and then she flicked on her high beams. We followed the pitted road into the rocky terrain for several miles. There were no other cars, no other signs of life, and I tried very hard not to have a complete freak-out.
Annabelle consulted her phone two or three times until, satisfied, she pulled into a small dirt lot. A posted sign announced that it was the trailhead for a hike. Sweet baby Jesus, she did not think we were going night hiking, did she? That was a hard no.
She switched off the engine and cut the headlights. Then she began unfastening the cloth top of the Jeep by the light of her phone.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. I was getting impatient.
“Wait for it,” she said. I saw her flash of a smile in the darkness, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to throttle her or kiss her. Oh, who was I kidding? I was only here because I wanted to kiss her until the end of time. Damn it.
When she had the top completely dismantled, she reached over me and pulled the lever on my seat. I went down hard into a full recline and she landed on top of me. My arms went instinctively around her and pulled her close.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi,” I said. Before I lost my train of thought, I asked, “If you won’t tell me what we’re doing here, will you tell me why we’re here?”
“Light pollution,” she said. “We had to get out of it, so we could see.”
“See what?” I asked. We were in the middle of nowhere in the dark. What were we supposed to see? Cactus? Coyotes?
Again she grinned and said, “Wait—”
“For it,” I said. “Yeah, I got that. Is it all right if I kiss you while I’m waiting?”
She glanced at her phone. “Yes, we have a few minutes before it gets good.”
And that, my friends, was how I came to be making out in a borrowed Jeep in the middle of the desert at night. I had just gotten to the point where I felt clothing needed to be removed when Annabelle pulled back and reclined her own seat. She had more blankets that she pulled from the back seat as well as a flask of whiskey, which she handed to me.
“Okay, get ready,” she said.
Get ready for what? My prurient brain had a host of scenarios run through it, and I was about to give her a dirty multiple-choice pop quiz when she grabbed my hand and gasped, “Look!”
In the darkness I could just make out her profile and I noticed she was watching the sky. I turned my head and glanced up. The stars were a million times brighter out here and I had to admire how many there were and how they sparkled like a fistful of glitter that had been thrown across the dark night and stuck.
And then a flash caught my eye. It was gone before I registered what it was. I stared, trying to figure it out. And then, there was another and another. It was as if the sky had come alive, and I marveled at the natural wonder as bright sparks kept flying off in all directions.
“Is that . . . ?” My voice trailed off. I had no words to describe it.
“Shooting stars,” she said. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I said. I was whispering as if a loud noise might interrupt the magic.
Annabelle reached between our seats and grabbed my hand in hers and gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. “I know they’re not really shooting stars,” she said. “It’s actually a meteor shower.”
Her hand felt right pressed into mine. It occurred to me that I’d never had this natural rapport with a woman before. It was astonishing and rather delightful.
“I heard about it on KJZZ today,” she explained. “They said tonight was the best night to view the meteors because the moon is just a crescent, but that you had to get out of the city to really be able to see. I’ve never seen one before, and I didn’t want to miss it, so I borrowed Nyah’s Jeep.”
“Who is Nyah?”
“One of my hot tub friends,” she said. There was mischief in her voice, and her grin was a slash of white in the night. Irresistible.
I rose up out of my seat and leaned over her. Then I kissed her. She responded immediately, wrapping her arms around my neck and returning my kiss measure for measure. The taste of her, the scent of her, which reminded me of apple blossoms and honey, filled my senses and sent them swimming, mostly south. Reluctantly, I pulled back and collapsed into my seat.