West of Nowhere Read Online Free

but none were as nice as this one, with its camper shell attached. It had tan leather seats with wood trim on the dashboard, a wide-screen navigation system, CD player and satellite radio, and touch controls for everything on the steering wheel.
    “Nice truck…lots of fancy stuff.”
    “Thanks. Technically, it belongs to my pop, but he never drives it anymore. He bought it about four years ago when my mom got sick so they could take a few trips together. She died not long after that and…well, he and I get along just fine most of the time, but not well enough to spend time together in a pillbox like this.”
    California women were nothing like the ones Amber knew in Tennessee and Kentucky. In the first place, she didn’t know a single one who would just pick up and drive all the way across the country by herself. Practically all her friends had boyfriends or husbands, and it was the guys who went off and did crap like that.
    In the second place, she looked strong and physically fit, with muscles in her arms and legs. Her appearance was meticulous, like she’d gone out of her way to make every single detail perfect. Her bright yellow T-shirt, with a pocket logo that read Big Stick, was tucked into her shorts. Both had obviously been ironed.
    Ironed! Who ironed shorts and T-shirts?
    Joy’s obsession with neatness extended well beyond picking up paper towels in the restroom. There wasn’t a speck of dust on the dashboard or even a smudge on the windshield.
    “What sort of work do you do, Amber?”
    Amber sighed, wishing she could have another cigarette. “A little of this, a little of that. My last job was at a daycare. Before that I worked at the Friendly Mart…that’s a convenience store in Nashville, but don’t be fooled by the name. The owner’s an asshole. I’ve flipped hamburgers, made tacos, sold vitamins over the phone…sat with old people. I would have liked doing the merchandising for Gus Holley, but that was all one big joke on me.”
    “That’s a lousy way to treat somebody. I’m sorry they did that to you.”
    “You know what they say…lay down with dogs and get fleas.” She was accustomed to disappointment. All those jobs she’d mentioned had ended with her being fired or quitting because she couldn’t work under ridiculous conditions with bosses who yelled at her all the time for no reason. She would have done great work for Gus if only he’d given her a chance.
    “So you know Gus Holley? My goddaughter tells me he’s a pretty big name in country music.”
    “Yeah, he’s a nice guy…a lot better than those jerkoffs in his band. I bet he’ll be pissed when he hears what Corey did to me.”
    She was tired of thinking about Corey and turned her thoughts to Molly, one of the first friends she’d made in Nashville after splitting up with Archie, her boyfriend from high school. She and Molly had shared an apartment with two other girls for about a year, during which Amber discovered she liked sleeping with women a lot more than with men. Though they’d kept it casual—not to mention secret—she’d been disappointed when Molly left suddenly to take a desk clerk job at her cousin’s motel in Limon. She’d even toyed with moving out there when Molly said there was a job cleaning rooms, but by that time she’d started seeing Corey and it just seemed easier to stay put.
    They passed a sign for a rest area and Amber decided she could wait no longer for a cigarette. “Can we stop here?”
    She went first to the restroom and then used the time walking Skippy to smoke. From the hillside above the parking lot, she watched as Joy took a cloth and cleaned both the windshield and headlights before wiping down the truck’s grill. She’d never seen someone so finicky about a stupid pickup truck.
    Joy met her at the passenger door with a plastic bag. “Here, I thought you might need this to clean up after Skippy.”
    Amber stuffed it in her pocket. “He didn’t do anything this time.”