Sunshiner

Regret is possibly the most meaningless concept invented by humans; it is absolutely pointless to feel remorse over something that you cannot change. I mean, if you feel so terrible about it, the only thing you can really do is try to fix it and make things better. But if you mourn about yesterday, then you will achieve nothing tomorrow.

That was how I tried to live my life. For me, there was only the present and the future. The past was just a long afternoon shadow, hanging around my feet; it was always there, and it would never go away, and I paid very little attention to it. I never forgot my memories, of course, but I would never allow myself to dwell in the shadows like that.

For instance, consider the prank I pulled on Candace out on Devil’s a few weeks back. That was one of the few times when I have ever felt shitty about something I did. I didn’t sit around and mope, however; I found Candace and I made things better. I still have the scar from the cigarette burn to prove it. Even to this day, it is still there.

It was my goal to keep moving forward and never look back for too long. It was okay to remember the past, but it was not okay to live in it. And with a full tank of gas and a few hundred miles of highway-freedom under my wheels, living like this was a lot easier than I could have ever imagined. The only looking back I did was an occasional quick glance in the rearview mirror; but I could not even see the road we had just taken, for Candace was currently sitting in the backseat (for more legroom, I presume) and her stupidly big blonde head was blocking the view.

“Where are we going?”

“You already asked me that.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Candace, you asked me that same question four minutes ago.”

“Well, you didn’t answer me.”

I tried to ignore her but the volume of her voice overpowered the volume of the radio. Her voice was raspy yet loud and sounded like sand – she was probably a terrible singer – but her words held a hidden undercurrent of power. It was enticing.

“What?” I asked over the music. I had heard her, of course, and although I had been trying to ignore her merely two seconds ago, I suddenly felt the urge to hear her voice again.

“Where are we going?” she repeated for a third time. “The sun’s going to set and I’m tired.” I looked to the west and sure enough the sun, which was now a blazing ruby in the heavens, was drowning behind the faint blue outline of the mountains in the horizon.

“We can drive a little bit more,” I suggested, but she made a face.

“We’ve been driving all day,” she protested.

“Not true. I’ve been driving all day. You haven’t helped at all,” I countered. “And besides, we stopped plenty of times. I even took you shopping in that little clothes store for four hours.” Candace had conveniently forgot to pack any money. Guess who paid for it all?

“It was a boutique,” she corrected me, and then added, “Don’t make that face, it was a cute store. And we were only there for two hours.”

“Four,” I argued. “And I don’t do cute. It’s not my style.”

“Your style? You call being a complete douche bag a style?”

“Actually, I have a trait called the Awesome Factor. Get your facts right, please.”

“My apologies. I am so sorry,” she said sarcastically.

“You should be.”

She snorted. “You liked the store,” she said and poked my shoulder.

“I hated it.”

“Well, fine,” she sighed. “Next time we stop, you get to choose where we go.”

“I choose not to stop, then,” I stated. I was very aware of how far we were from home, and although I didn’t know exactly how many miles we had travelled, I knew it was far. We definitely covered a lot of land in the eight-or-so hours of driving we had done. We had already crossed over several state borders – we were in Georgia now, I think. The only thing I really knew for certain was that we were at least out of Alabama. We had been going by the desert for miles and miles now and the scenery was getting boring, and the stretch of red sand and gnarly cactuses were making me thirsty. It had been a relief when a few palm trees came into sight.

Nevertheless, I had no intention of stopping any time soon. I liked the sight of the never-ending highway.

“I’m so tiiired,” Candace moaned and leaned over the back of the seat, securing her arms around my neck.

“But you just said I got to choose – “

“I lied,” she chirruped. “Take me to a motel.”

“Pushy, much?” I grumbled, but she just kissed my neck. I could feel her smiling against my skin and I didn’t feel bitter anymore.

By the time we found a motel, the sky had become a quilt of indigo and violet patches sloppily sewn together. I knew the place was scummy as soon as the tires hit the parking lot and began to crunch over the gravel; if a place wasn’t rich enough to pave the parking lot, then it definitely wasn’t rich enough to have nice bedrooms. But maybe that was the spoiled kid inside of me speaking.

I was sure to lock the car, which earned me a skeptical look from Candace. We hadn’t bothered locking any of the doors since we had left the diner this morning; there weren’t too many people out here in East Bumblefuck and therefore we didn’t really have to worry about people stealing my stuff. Now that we were at this sketchy motel, well, who knew what could happen? This was a fifty-thousand-dollar Mustang and if anything happened to it, I would probably go on a psychotic murderous rampage. Not even kidding.

As we walked up to the entrance, I could see that a few of the windows had been boarded up and the nasty beige-color paint was chipping from the walls. This place was falling the fuck apart. Yeah. Running away definitely was not as glamorous as it seemed.

“Two rooms, please,” Candace said to the ancient man with wiry, lopsided glasses. Sitting behind a rather cluttered front desk, the man peered at us with black irises from under a curtain of wrinkles, as if he was glaring into our souls to make sure we weren’t up to trouble.

I gave Candace an incredulous stare and she met my gaze. She abruptly turned back to the old man. “One room it is, then,” she added, reading my look perfectly. I smirked. “But with two beds, please.” And then the smirk was gone.

The man still hadn’t said a word. He stared at Candace for a moment, and then – and this was hardly noticeable, since his eyes were hidden under hundreds of years’ worth of wrinkles – his eyes shifted to me.

I seized the opportunity. One bed, I mouthed. A ghost of a smile slithered across the man’s face and his gaze returned to Candace, who remained oblivious to it all. “Sure thing,” he said in a strong voice that did not match his physical appearance, and then he got up from his chair and wobbled to the back room at a snail’s pace.

“Room 412,” he said when he came back out, passing us the room key over the front counter.

“Thanks,” I muttered and turned to go, but I suddenly stopped when the man said, “Wait.” Candace and I both looked at him expectantly. “Take this, just in case.” And then he passed us something else…

“A condom?” Candace shrieked. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” And then she stormed off, making sure to slam the door loudly behind her. The ancient wood cried in pain from the force and I thought it was going to fall off of its hinges.

I, on the other hand, just burst out laughing. “Thanks,” I chuckled and – I wasn’t sure if this was the polite thing to do, or if it was just plain awkward – I took the condom and pocketed it.

But the old man didn’t wink at me or even laugh back, which I had assumed he would do since he seemed like he would be chill about this whole thing. But instead he just glared at me. “I don’t want you kids getting into any mischief,” he growled in that burly voice of his. “Don’t knock the girl up.”

I tried to cover my laughter, but instead I made a sound that was between a sneeze and a snort. “Yes, sir,” I said while biting my cheeks to strangle my smile, and before any laughs could escape the depths of my chest, I had hurried out the door, barely listening as the old man grumbled something about “no good, rowdy teenagers,” as I left.

“Hey, wait up,” I called after Candace, who had only walked a surprisingly short distance. Catching my questioning look, she answered, “I didn’t have the room key. I couldn’t get in.”

I said nothing and nodded, just nodded. It wasn’t hard to find the room, since there weren’t too many rooms to begin with, and even less since half of them were “UNDER REPAIR,” as the signs read, but in reality it meant that they were abandoned forever since they would never be fixed.

Candace was quick enough to catch the smirk on my face. “You took the condom, didn’t you?” she asked, to which I didn’t reply. “You so did,” she snarled, but I could see the hint of a smile on her face.

The room key didn’t work until the fourth try, and even then I basically had to kick the door down. The room had fallen victim to the sun for far too long and the glory of the walls, which were once painted who-knows-what color, had long since faded. A chair sat in the corner, and a TV, which I was positive didn’t work, was hooked up to the wall with its wires exposed like spilled intestines. The curtains were probably once beautiful but now the white lace had yellowed and its elegance had been torn to shreds over the years. There was no bed. Instead, a twin-sized mattress lay in the middle of the floor.

As shitty as the room was, I couldn’t help but like it. It was falling apart because of the sun, not because of mold or moisture or rats. And even though it was dark, the sunshine still seemed to float in the room, hiding like a whisper, as silent as a sparkle. I could almost see it, caught inside of the floating dust and tangled in the lace of the curtains.

“This is cozy,” I said, quite honestly actually, and threw myself on the ‘bed,’ stifling a cough as a torrent of dust exploded from my mattress.

“Yeah. Wonderful,” Candace said bitterly, closing the door behind her and tossing her bag on the lone chair. She looked around the room and grimaced. Other than a rusted mirror dangling crookedly on the wall, there was only one other painting. It featured a naked woman, poorly drawn, sprawled out on a crimson loveseat with pearls strewn all around. There were no other decorations.

Candace walked over to the TV and began fiddling with it, but just as I had predicted, it didn’t show any signs of life. She continued to press all of the buttons anyway. I got the feeling that she was avoiding going to bed with me.

I let out a sigh and rolled my eyes, slowly and silently getting up from the mattress and stealthily creeping over to where she stood. “Come on,” I said roughly and looped a finger through her belt loop, dragging her with me as I made my way back to the bed. Surprised, she stumbled after me, letting out a few incoherent swears before she could manage a full sentence: “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“We’re going to sleep,” I grinned and pushed her down, crawling over her and cleverly positioning myself so that my arms pinned her on either side.

“You totally took the condom,” she accused.

I laughed into her skin and pressed my lips against her neck. That quieted her a bit. Her hands found their way to the hem of my shirt and she barely had time to pull it off of me before there was a tapping on the window.

It was the old man, peering in at us.

“Oh dear god,” whispered a horrified Candace.

“Don’t knock her up!” he shouted through the glass.

“…Um,” I said slowly and walked over to the window. I tried not to make eye contact with the guy. I threw the curtains shut, but of course the flimsy material didn’t do much to block the window.

“I can still see you!” he shouted.

“Old people creep me out,” Candace cried.

“Pass me that blanket,” I said, and then I draped it over the window like a second layer of curtains. That seemed to do the trick; now, thankfully, the man couldn’t see us and we couldn’t see him.

We heard him chuckle from outside, but after that it was silent. We waited a few minutes in a nerve-wracking terror (I felt like I was in a horror movie) before Candace whispered, “Is he gone?”

I lifted the corner of the blanket and glanced out into the darkness. The space outside our window was empty. “Yeah. He’s gone.” I pulled the blanket a bit further, revealing more of the outside world, and I saw the ancient man hobbling across the parking lot with a wiry-looking cane and next to him hobbled an equally ancient woman. “Aw, he’s married,” I crooned in a very embarrassing voice. “He’s harmless.”

“You mean that dude is married?” she asked incredulously, her voice cracking, and darted to my side to make sure I was telling the truth. Her nose crinkled at the sight of the old couple. “Disgusting.”

“What’s so disgusting about it?” I questioned.

“Can you imagine two old people getting it on?”

I rolled my eyes and covered the window again. “I think it’s nice, actually,” I said and sat down on the mattress.

“What, two eighty-year-olds having se – “

“No, I mean the fact that two people can be married for so long,” I said and she gave me a weird look. “Oh come on, you’re a girl. You think about these sorts of things. I know you do.”

She shrugged her shoulders, not agreeing with my statement but not denying it either. “I don’t see what’s so great about being old,” she said sourly and sat down beside me. “I mean, everything goes wrong. Your bones dry up, your skin gets wrinkly, your body fails you.... You’re dying really slowly and you can’t stop it.”

I shrugged, a lame gesture, but I couldn’t think of anything good to say. “How else would you rather die, then?”

“Really fast,” she answered, “but not unexpectedly. I want to go out with a bang.”

“We all do,” I said. “Besides, don’t you think it’d be nice to grow old? To have seen so much of the world and to have so many years of wisdom?”

She flicked my nose. “You think too much about the future, Kasey Ray. Your head is in the clouds.”

“Ha. And yours isn’t?” I asked.

“I guess it would be okay to grow old,” she said, cleverly avoiding my question. We both knew she was a huge dreamer anyway, and I didn’t need her to confirm it. “I can’t imagine being married for that long, though. It’d get so boring.”

“Nah,” I shrugged. “Not if it was love.”

She looked at me. “You say the corniest things.”

I kissed her nose. “You like it.”

“I changed my mind,” she abruptly said before I could kiss her on the lips. “I would never want to grow old.”

“Uh huh, whatever you say,” I mumbled, not even paying attention anymore. My eyes had fallen on her bra strap, which had slipped off of her shoulder and was now visible against her bare skin, and my mind was only on one thing now.

But before my lips could move to her neck, however, I was interrupted yet again. Because at that precise moment she began coughing.