The Next Day...
Jay turned the page of a Tom Clancy novel with swollen and bruised knuckles. He glances over at Andrew in the driver seat, sitting there with the same pants, ripped to shit.
"So when it's yer turn to fuel, you know what not to do, right?", Jay breaks the silence.
"Sure do. But that was insane!", Andrew was still pumping with adrenaline from that rumble, "I haven't been in a real street fight since high school. Damn, my hearts still fuckin' pounding!"
"Feels great, doesn't it?", Jay says with a grin, "I used to wrestle in high school."
"You got some pretty gnarly moves."
"Heh, those were nothing. I didn't want to kill the little fella." Jay pauses and closes his book. "you seeing pink cows yet?"
"Pink cows? What?" Andrew scans the snowy scenery around him, no pink cows anywhere.
"You might want to invest in some sunglasses. Staring at all this white ain't good for ya." Jay laughs.
"Oh, I see what you're saying. Ya, the snow's a little pink, but there's no pink fuckin' cows..."
"Kind of a trick question. You been driving non stop for almost eight hours and been up for longer than that, tryna make sure you're still awake. If you were seeing pink cows I'd have to take the wheel and you'd have to git yer ass in bed and get some sleep." Jay explains, eying a sign on the road that read how many miles they were until the next truck stop.
"Speaking of sleep, " Jay gets up from his seat, "I think I'm gonna slam in bed and get some shut eye. When you come up on that truck stop in about an hour or so, pull in and we'll both get some showers. Clean our stinky asses."
"Will do." Andrew says as Jay shut the velcro sealed privacy curtains to the bunk, leaving him to his own thoughts. The highway scenery was gorgeous as the sun hanging in the clear, star dotted sky began to descend behind the snow covered hills and snowy pine trees. Just as Andrew was getting comfortable in his own head within the realms of reminiscing, some strange noises emerged from behind the curtains. Andrew passed it off as television banter but the awkwardness crept up on him like black ice.
"Damn..." Andrew thought as he considered putting on his headphones to drown out the sound of whatever was going on back there, "...but I can't be on my fuckin phone while I'm driving. Ah, just real quick, just gonna turn on my jams real quick..."
Andrew glances back at the curtain real quick before pulling out his phone from his sweater pocket, scrolling through his app windows, finding his music app, stuffing his earbuds in his ears, then hitting the play button on a random shuffled playlist. The first song to play was a famous folk or some song of some kind of genre, called; The Comfy Cow Inn, by Lee and the Lost Men, a band that debuted in the seventies and is known for their catchy rhythms, choruses and lyrical absurdity. When Andrew was really, really bored while listening to music, he habitually and intrusively fantasized about being on stage in front of a crowd of people (mostly pretty women sitting in the front row), and performing whatever song he was into at the moment.
The song started with simple drums, a deep bass, and of course a cow bell to fit the song title before the E-piano introduced itself, and finally the vibraphone joined the band giving the song a subtle trippy, out of this world, circus or carnival like feel. Andrew was now on stage, taking the role of the singer at the microphone, clumsily mouthing the seemingly nonsensical lyrics that he didn't write. The audience seemed to enjoy Andrew's cringy, awkward and stupid performance, which would never be the case if this was reality. While lip syncing the chorus, Andrew's focus zoned in on a specific woman sitting about four rows back. She gazed at him with a subtle Mona Lisa smile and he could make out some scarring and other imperfections on her face and Andrew realized that this petite woman was his idea of a perfect woman. Andrew wasn't even moving his lips to the song anymore , just standing there like a jackass with his mouth open, love struck at the perfection that only his imagination could imagine. Andrew looks away for a split second but when his eyes returned to her, her head had been replaced with a giant, highway exit sign.
"Oh shit! The exit!" Andrew snaps out of it and yanks the wheel to the off ramp.