6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

C lark’s eyebrows rose in response. “I see. How does Penalty Twenty Questions work?”

Cleo shifted toward Clark and pulled her leg up onto the seat to tuck it under the other one. “Well, one person gets to ask a question, and the other people can answer it or choose to pass and therefore take a hit. If you get three hits, you have to answer the next question the person asks, no passes. At the end of twenty questions the person who passes the most loses, and the winner is allowed to make the loser do anything of her choice. A dare.”

“You mean of his choice?”

“I mean of her choice.

“Ooh, this sounds fun,” Dottie said from the front.

“So, you agree to the terms?” Cleo asked.

One of Clark’s eyes scrunched closed and his lips pursed. “Did you just make this game up?”

“No, I’ve played this with my friends before.” As soon as Cleo said it, she felt like taking the words back. Would Clark find her completely juvenile for playing silly games like this? What would he think about her life if he knew the whole truth of it? What did a guy like Clark, who seemed to have his act together, think of someone like silly her?

He probably saw her life as pointless, even without knowing how much money she’d grown up with and how spoiled she’d been. He had no idea, however, that she would give it all away if it meant having a normal childhood with a loving father and mother.

Cleo didn’t know why she even cared what Clark thought about her. She wasn’t here to impress anybody, even the person she hoped to find in Texas. She didn’t want to be with anyone who didn’t see past her privilege to the girl underneath–a lonely girl who just wanted to be loved.

“Okay, then show me how it’s done,” he growled. Grumpy Clark was quickly growing on Cleo, now that she knew about his gooey center. He didn’t scare her anymore.

“Don’t worry, I’ll start off easy. What is your favorite band?”

Clark scrunched up his nose. “That’s supposed to be easy? I can’t pick just one band.”

“Ooh, I can!” Dottie volunteered. “It’s The Mamas & the Papas.”

“Solid choice,” Cleo commented.

Clark spent much too long deciding. “Clark, your answer isn’t getting written in stone for all eternity. You can just pick a favorite, even if it isn’t the favorite. I’ll never know any differently anyway.”

“So you condone lying in your games?”

“It’s not a lie, just not the only truth.”

Clark finally responded, “My favorite band right now is The Cure.”

“Shut up.”

“What?”

“They’re one of my favorites, too.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“I only discovered them a few years ago, but I can’t stop listening to them lately,” he said.

“Did you see them on tour recently?”

“No, but I wanted to. Did you?”

“I did. Twice.” Actually, Cleo had gone three times, but Clark didn’t need to know the depth of her obsession. “You know what I think is awesome? You can’t always hear accents when people sing, but from the very first time I heard The Cure, I knew they weren’t from the U.S. I fell in love with their accents as much as with their music.”

“Huh, I guess I hadn’t really noticed that, but you’re right. You can’t hear other British artists’ accents until you hear them talk, like Elton John or Mick Jagger, but you can totally hear Robert Smith’s when he sings.” Clark bobbed his head to the music on the radio then said, “Alright, my turn.” He scratched his chin before asking, “If you could marry a celebrity, who would it be?”

Cleo had actually hung out with her fair share of celebrities, enough to know that they were just normal people, nothing special. She’d quickly become disenchanted with the idea of being famous. From what she could tell, it was a complicated existence. She wouldn’t marry someone famous for their money or notoriety, so if she were to marry a celebrity, it would be for their character. And there was one famous person who she felt had a good character. “Hugh Jackman.”

Clark rolled his eyes. “Ugh, I might have known. My sisters are all obsessed with him too, and I don’t get it. He’s so old!”

“And still dead sexy.” Cleo had seen him in The Music Man on Broadway twice.

Dottie nodded her head, “Oh yes, I agree. Although, mine would be Michael Cane.” Huh. Cleo had more in common with Dottie than she’d have ever thought.

Clark’s brow was furrowed as he turned to Cleo. “I thought you’d say Harry Styles or someone closer to your age.”

“No way, too many tatts.” She popped a piece of gum into her mouth. “What about you?”

“Tattoos? None visible.”

Cleo was intrigued, but let that question wait for another time. “No, which celebrity would you choose?”

“Is that your next question?”

Cleo shrugged. “Sure.”

A slow smile took over his face and he ducked his head. “Shakira.”

“Ha! You like ‘em older, too!”

“Not usually. There’s just something about her–”

“-hips?”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “They don’t lie!”

“I have a question!” Dottie fairly shouted. She toned it down to ask, “What kind of animal would you be if you could be any animal?”

Cleo leaned her head back and closed her eyes as she listened to Clark and Dottie debate the merits of various animals. She laughed quietly when Dottie couldn’t make up her mind between a sloth and a panda bear.

Cleo must have nodded off for a bit because she didn’t notice them passing into Tennessee until they were already to Knoxville.

“Why didn’t you wake me?” she accused the others when she noticed signs for Nashville, 180 miles.

“Well, we didn’t know the Little Princess cared about seeing the wilds of eastern Tennessee,” Dottie said.

Cleo quietly replied, “I want to see it all.” Dottie raised an eyebrow but didn’t respond. Her tone when she spoke again had less of a bite, though.

“I came to school at UT Knoxville for a bit, you know,” Dottie told them as they drove through the city.

“You were a Volunteer, eh?” Clark asked.

“Sure was. I was fixin’ to study agriculture, to make myself more useful on the ranch. Only lasted one year until my daddy got sick and needed me back home again. I learned enough anyway, I reckon’,” Dottie trailed off. She scratched the side of her face and sighed. Cleo had a feeling there was a lot more to Miss Dottie than meets the eye.

“Do you regret not finishing?” she asked.

“I don’t regret the education, per se, but I did have to leave behind…other things.”

Dottie didn’t elaborate, but at the vagueness of her answer Cleo suspected that what she meant was that she’d had to leave behind some one .

“Is he from Knoxville?” she ventured.

“Nah, he’s a Jackson boy.” Her hand flew to her mouth and she gasped before turning slitted eyes on Cleo. “Oh, you’re good. How’d you do that?”

“Lucky guess,” Cleo replied. “Did you keep in touch?”

“We tried to for a little while, but we didn’t have cell phones back then o’ course, so we had to do it the old-fashioned way: letters and rotary phones. We wrote and called less and less as the years wore on, and then I heard he might’ve gotten married. I haven’t heard from him since.”

Cleo mulled that over. Dottie had a great heartbreak in her past. In fact, she still felt it, or so Cleo suspected.

She leaned over to Clark and whispered, “There’s your love story. You accused me yesterday of one, but that’s the real deal right there.”

Clark had been writing in a notebook, his pen pausing as he listened to Cleo. “I don’t write love stories,” he replied.

“You seemed to know the whole formula for one yesterday, even though it sounded like gibberish to me. I figured you were a historical romance author, maybe with a pen name like Ellen Andrews who writes bodice rippers. No wait, you write modern romantic comedies! That’s how you know so much about them!”

The corner of Clark’s mouth twitched. “I’m a writer, but I do not write bodice rippers. Or romcoms.”

“Then what do you write?”

Clark opened his mouth to answer but Cleo’s attention was caught by a tall structure behind him, topped with a shiny gold ball that appeared as if it was on fire. “What is that?” she pointed before he could answer her properly.

Dottie glanced toward the globe. “Oh, that’s the Sunsphere. Pretty, ain’t it?”

“The Sunsphere?” Cleo repeated.

“Yeah, it was created for the World’s Fair back in the ‘80’s.”

“I had no idea this existed!” Cleo exclaimed. “Ooh, and look at everything else around it. All the buildings are so…charming!”

“Knoxville is one of the loveliest cities, it’s true,” Dottie agreed. “The Tennessee River goes right past that tower and there are multiple bridges that criss-cross over it.”

Clark pointed to a huge structure near the Sunsphere. “That’s the University of Tennessee and its stadium right there. One of the more picturesque stadiums to play in by far.”

Cleo oohed and aahed at all the sites. Clark added, “A lot of buildings here are made of marble. There’s a quarry nearby that I believe provided the marble for Grand Central Station in New York City and the National Gallery of Art in D.C.”

Cleo’s hand flew to her mouth. “Grand Central Station is one of my favorite buildings ever! I love marble! I think I need to move Knoxville high up on my list of places to visit.”

Dottie smiled and Cleo could tell she was pleased. “Wait till you see Nashville and Memphis.”

Cleo couldn’t wait.