Read Online Driving With the Top Down by Beth Harbison - Free Book Online Page A

Arctic Monkeys, I don’t know … all sorts of stuff. The Beatles. Bon Jovi.”
    “Bon Jovi?”
    “Yup.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Why not?”
    “They’re not that old, and not new enough to be in your current spehere. They’re just like in between .”
    Tamara gave a laugh. “They’ve been around, like, thirty years!”
    “No, they haven’t.” That seemed impossible.
    “Yeah. They have. Probably longer.” Tamara started fidgeting with the screen of her phone. “In fact, they’re probably even before your time.”
    “No, they were hot when I was coming of age.” Suddenly she was feeling really old. She didn’t even use expressions like “coming of age”! Soon she’d be complaining that her crinolines were too stiff and her corset was too tight.
    “Debut album, Bon Jovi, was released January twenty-first, 1984,” Tamara read from her phone.
    “Wow, really?”
    Tamara held her phone up, as if Colleen could read the minuscule print. “It’s a fact.”
    1984. A million years ago to Tamara. An era before she was a possibility. But Colleen’s life had been in full swing. And it didn’t even feel that long ago. And on the other hand, it also felt like lifetimes ago. How was it possible to feel so completely both ways at once?
    “Okay, then, that’s not before my time, exactly, but it’s definitely really early in my time.”
    Tamara laughed. “Anyway, he was pretty hot. Bon Jovi.”
    “Still is.”
    Tamara gave a small shrug.
    “Oh, I remember that feeling,” Colleen said.
    “What?”
    “I remember being around older women and thinking their idea of hot was just depressing. Older women like older men, but when you’re young you can’t see it.”
    “Wait a minute, you’re saying you wouldn’t do Bon Jovi, version 1984?”
    Of course she would. In a heartbeat. “We shouldn’t be having this conversation.”
    That lit it on fire for Tamara. “Who would you do, if you had to: Bon Jovi from back then or”—she crinkled her nose, thinking—“the dude who supposedly stomped on baby chickens on stage.”
    “Alice Cooper?”
    “Yeah, him.”
    “He didn’t really do that. Urban legend.”
    “Good. Him or Bon Jovi?”
    Colleen bit her lower lip, then said, “Not an appropriate game for us to play.”
    “So Alice Cooper, then?”
    “No way.”
    “Bon Jovi! I knew it!”
    “Easy guess. And his name is Jon.”
    “Jon Jovi?”
    Colleen laughed. At least they had something to talk about. “No, Jon Bon Jovi.”
    Tamara sighed. “Points off for the stupid name.”
    Colleen could have explained that his real name was John Bongiovi, and that it was kind of a hot, romantic, sexy Italian thing, but that would have been revealing way too much about her old pop star knowledge in general and her Jon Bon Jovi knowledge in particular, so she let it go.
    Then, just as quickly as it had come on, the moment was gone. More stiff silence.
    Colleen tapped the volume-up button on the steering wheel with her thumb until the music was loud enough for them to listen to without being ultraconscious of the lack of conversation. They passed quite a few miles that way, and Colleen wondered how on earth she was going to get through the next couple of weeks like this. Every minute passed like an hour. And it was probably even worse for Tamara because all she could do was sit there and mess with her phone; she didn’t even have the distraction of driving the car.
    After they’d been on the road for about four hours, they stopped at Colleen’s first marked stop, a salvage yard just south of Richmond, Virginia. The Yelp description had mentioned all kinds of intricate carved wooden pieces from buildings that had been glorious at the turn of the last century but which had been renovated recently. So Colleen wound around the back roads off I-95 to find it, turning around repeatedly on the road it was supposed to be on until finally she realized she’d passed it repeatedly. Far from the huge, glorious treasure trove