DOUBT

Doubt

He isn’t sure how he got here. He thinks he should be angry, but with the warmth of the sun-heated car at his back, Banty can't bring himself to mind. It is summer after all. He doesn’t have anything better to do, and Riya’s unplanned road trip serves as a useful distraction from the uncertainty that consumes his life. 

But there it is, that nagging doubt as he wonders if this road trip isn’t as unplanned as Riya claims. Because Riya doesn’t do random, never acts without a goal. Even now, as she flirts with the young man who has pumped their gas, Banty knows she wants something. 

He also knows she will get it. 

Sighing, he turns his face up to the sun. He doesn’t want to watch the curling knife blade glint of Riya’s smile or the precise way she lays her hand on the man’s arm, each slim finger a suggestion and a lie. It’s not that he’s jealous. Most people are nothing to Riya, and a stranger is just a means to an end. 

He looks again, watches the way the man smiles, the way Riya steps closer. Her head tilts, inky hair slipping free from behind her ear, and the man pushes it back. Banty can tell the man's fingers are gentle, reverent. 

Lifting a hand to his face, he shields his eyes from the harsh glare of the sun on faded, cracked pavement, from the shine of it in Riya’s dark hair, from the man's bright eyed wonder. He means nothing to her. Banty knows it, but the man doesn’t, and Banty thinks he hates him just a little. 

He is, after all, just as taken with Riya as this stranger is, just as sucked in by her slow curving smiles and dark eyes. She says she loves him, but he will always doubt her sincerity when he knows she lies so well. He wonders even now if he--like the random road trip that isn’t random at all, like the poor stranger--is simply a name on a meticulous list, waiting to be checked off. 

“Hey.” 

She is standing in front of him now, and when he looks at her he can’t tell by her expression if she got what she wanted or not. He also knows that she did regardless. 

“Hey,” he says, because having her near has robbed him of anything more articulate. 

She grins, and he wishes he could hate her for her smug certainty, but the wish is gone a moment later when she touches his wrist with a brief brush of fingertips. The gesture is familiar and secret, and in that second he is absolutely sure of everything, even Riya. And then she is moving past him, getting into the car, and the feeling is lost. 

He climbs into the passenger seat, and they head toward a destination Banty doesn’t know, but one he is sure Riya has mapped out in exact lines and distances. 

“So. Free gas?” he asks. She looks at him, raises an eyebrow. “What do you think?” He thinks a lot of things but says nothing, and the gas station disappears behind them in silence. 

****************************************************************************