Highway Dares

The sedan had been rolling west on US-54 for about four hours when I decided the heat had cooked something loose in my brain. The air conditioning had quit outside Amarillo, so we rode with the windows down, and all that came in was air like a hair dryer set to low. Ray drove with one wrist on the wheel, his other hand resting on my knee, same as always. Two years of knowing him and one year of marriage, and his hand still found my knee like it was magnetic.

He'd been out of work a month. The garage in Dalhart closed its doors without warning, and he took it hard, so I planned this trip. One anniversary, one long weekend of highway, no plan except pointing the car west and spending his severance at a rate I refused to calculate. He was twenty-three, I was twenty-two, and we had been married exactly one year that Tuesday, which I figured was as good an excuse as any to be stupid.

"You're quiet," he said around mile two hundred of nothing.

"I'm plotting."

"That's never good."

I watched the feed silos go by and let the plot finish cooking. Here is the thing about my husband, and I mean this with love. He is a big man, mechanic's shoulders, forearms like rope, and he goes red at the ears when the waitress flirts with him. The idea that walked into my head was so obvious I laughed out loud, and he glanced over at me with the wary look he gets when I laugh for no reason.

"What," he said.

"Nothing yet. First stop we make, I've got a dare for you."

"A dare."

"A dare. You can say no to it, any time, no penalty, no hard feelings. Money has nothing to do with it."

He chewed on that for a couple miles. Ray would sooner lose money than back down from me, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it, which is basically how our whole marriage works.

"Fine," he said. "What's the dare?"

"Pull in anywhere and you'll see."

***

The station came up outside a town so small the sign didn't even bother with a population number. He parked at the pump and looked at me, waiting, and I reached into my bag and pulled out a pair of my panties. Plain cotton, pink, nothing scary.

"Under your shorts," I said. "Go change in the restroom and come out and pump the gas like nothing's happening."

He stared at the panties like they might bite. "Rina."

"Or say no and we move on."

"I can't believe..." He trailed off, took them, and got out of the car. I watched him walk to the restroom with his shoulders up around his ears and I laughed so hard a guy emptying the ice machine gave me a look.

When he came back out, something had changed in how he moved. Not much. Just a smaller step, a carefulness, as if carrying a full cup of coffee across a parking lot. He unscrewed the gas cap and started pumping, and I leaned out the window and watched him try to act normal while the cotton sat pressed up against his cock the whole time. Every time the wind moved his shorts I could see him stiffen, and I don't mean his spine. He caught me watching and pointed the nozzle at me like a warning, and I blew him a kiss.

He got back in the car and sat there a second with his hands on the wheel, breathing.

"Well?" I said.

"It's..." He shifted in the seat. "It's different. It moves different."

"Good different or bad different?"

He thought about it honestly, which is one of the ten thousand things I love about him. "Good different," he admitted, and his ears went red, and we pulled back onto the highway.

***

The diner in Boise City had the best pie in the Panhandle and a waitress named Dot who had been working there since before either of us was born, and we split a slice of lemon meringue and split a plate of chicken fried steak, because we were celebrating and nobody was watching. Except the whole time we ate, my foot was in Ray's lap under the table, and I kept telling him about dare number two.

"You're going to wear my bra under your shirt when we leave," I said.

He nearly choked on his sweet tea. "A bra. Rina, there's people."

"There's always people. That's the point of a dare." I rubbed my foot against his thigh. "You liked the panties. You said good different."

"I said a lot of things."

"You did. And you can say no. Truly. We'll just finish the pie." I sipped my tea and let him sit with it. He never could sit with it. Ninety seconds later he said yes, fine, real quiet, and Dot brought the check and called us hon and he had to smile at her like his whole insides weren't rearranging themselves.

He changed in the restroom again and came out with his shirt buttoned all the way up, which he never does, and the lace cups of my bra pressed flat and tight against his chest under the cotton. He walked to the car like the shirt was made of sandpaper. I could tell he was aware of every person in that lot, and I could also tell, from the way he got into the driver's seat slow and careful, that the bra was doing for him what the panties had done, only more.

"It's tight," he said, pulling at the hem of his shirt.

"That's how they fit."

"Every time I breathe there's..." He stopped, and his hand drifted to his chest, and I watched him press his palm flat over the lace as if to confirm it was real. He drove the next thirty miles without saying a word, but he drove them with a little smile he kept trying to kill and couldn't.

***

The rest area west of Boise City was empty except for a family with a loud dog and a semi idling at the far end. I had a thin pink tank top of mine folded in the bag, and I held it up while he leaned against the car drinking a warm Dr Pepper.

"Swap," I said. "Yours for mine. Right here, no restroom, quick."

"Right here? Out in the open?"

"There's nobody looking. Dog's the only witness and he doesn't count."

He looked around anyway, tugged his shirt off fast, and pulled my tank over his head before anyone could see anything. It clung to him. That was the part I hadn't predicted, how the pink fabric would sit on those big shoulders and stretch across his chest and just cling, like it had been shrink-wrapped on. The bra straps showed at the edges in little pale lines of lace and he crossed his arms over them out of pure reflex.

"Nobody's looking," I said again, softer this time.

He dropped his arms. He stood there in the flat afternoon light in my pink top with the wind moving it against him, and I took a picture with my eyes only, because I wanted to keep it. He looked scared and proud at the same time, and I understood right then that the dares weren't really dares anymore. They were doors and he was walking through them and I was just holding them open.

"How's it feel?" I asked.

"Like everyone can see."

"Everyone can see. That's the good part, isn't it?"

He looked at the ground, then at me, and nodded once. "Yeah," he said. "It's the good part."

***

By the time the sun dropped we pulled into a motel outside a town with one blinking light, a place with a neon VACANCY sign and a room key on an actual keychain. The room smelled like old cigarettes and bleach, the good honest smell of a cheap motel, and the AC rattled in the window but worked, which put it ahead of the car.

I laid the dress on the bed while he watched. Black, short, a little