Page 84 of Money Shot

After he put the cigarette between his lips, he continued, the cigarette flipping up and down as he spoke.

“Pulp Fiction. You give ‘em some speech about right and wrong and breaking promises like you’re some fucker living on the moral high ground. I ain’t trying to say you’re some hypocrite, you’re just fucking weird,” he said with a laugh.

He reached for his lighter, lit his cigarette, and glanced at me as if expecting a response. As the smoke rose from the glowing tip and spread over the headliner of the truck, I considered what he said.

After a moment’s thought, I lit a cigarette, inhaled a long pull, and held it in my lungs. I turned my head, exhaled the smoke out the window, and turned toward Biggs.

“I’m not a hypocrite. I practice what I preach,” I said. “So if you want to call that weird, fucking whatever. I think I’m the last of a dying breed.”

He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and lifted the end close to his face and stared at it as if something was wrong. “I’ll give you that. You sure are a stubborn prick.”

I shrugged my shoulders and flicked my cigarette out the window. “Now I’m a stubborn prick?”

He shook his head and sucked on his cigarette. The ashes fell into his lap as we hit a bump in the road, but he didn’t seem to care. “No, you’ve always been a stubborn prick. Like the phone deal. You’re just a hot head, that’s all.”

“I get along fine without a phone,” I said.

“Don’t doubt that. Like anything else, you don’t miss what you’re used to being without, and you’ve been without for a couple years. Hell, there’s fuckers who ain’t got teeth, don’t mean they wouldn’t be better off with ‘em,” he said.

He took another drag from his cigarette, flicked the butt out the window, and took a drink of his soda.

“Ninety more miles,” he said.

I nodded my head in affirmation, but didn’t speak.

“So what? You think you’ll find another that’s better?” he asked.

I turned toward him and stared, feeling as if I must have missed part of something he said.

“Another what?” I asked.

“Girl,” he said.

I turned and stared out the side window, thinking about how to respond. As the fields and farmhouses swept past, I considered my life, living it in solitude, and the benefits of doing so. I loved Sienna and I was incapable of changing it, but unwilling to expose myself to the pain and suffering associated with allowing myself to actively love her. It had been almost three months that we were apart, and it seemed like an entire separate lifetime. Soon, my mind drifted off to thoughts of her and what fun we’d had while we were together.

As the fields and farms changed to the skyline of a fast approaching city, I wondered where the time had gone. Ninety miles passed in a matter of minutes.

“We’re here,” he said.

And although I could clearly see we had physically arrived, I realized in spirit, I was elsewhere.