The scream that was just about to blare from her lips lodged squarely in her throat however when, instead of the horribly jagged and weathered face she was expecting, Regina was met with one that provided nothing but innocence and vigor.
“He’s just a kid,” she winced, the buzzing hive of her nerves settling somewhat when she realized how young the stranger seemed.
“Ted Bundy seemed sweet and charming too,” her conscience jabbed, but it was helpless to stop the maternal urge inside Regina from guiding her hand over to unlock the Prius’ door.
“God..Thank You for stopping,” the hitchhiker immediately gasped, opening the door in a frantic rush before easing his soaked and shivering frame down into the passenger seat.
“His accent…,” Regina thought to herself, her mind still awash in the surreality of what she’d done.
It sounded European to her untrained ear, but she had no clue which part. All Regina could do was sit there and listen to him thank her several more times as he wedged his sleet covered backpack between his boots in the floorboard.
Ramping the car’s heater up to full blast when she saw the stranger twist off his gloves and hold his bluish pale fingers in front of the vent, Regina’s first reaction from his youthful appearance was that he might be a runaway.
“Oh…Yeesss,” he sighed when the warm exhaust began de-thawing his numb digits.
The analytic part of Regina’s brain, the one she depended on for her profession knew the risks of picking up someone off the interstate. She was literally putting her life on the line. Seeing someone as strapping, and as visibly healthy as this guy, reduced to such a shivering mass of humanity, the nurturing part of Regina’s soul understood how his life would have been on the line if she, or someone else, hadn’t taken the chance and picked him up.
“What’s your name?” the most obvious of questions slipped from her lips.
“Anton,” he replied quite amiably through his chattering teeth.
“Regina…Regina Wellstone,” she followed, both appearing to want to politely shake hands but quickly deciding not to from the binding of their heavy coats along with the cramped positioning of their bodies.
“Where are you going?” Regina soon asked cliché question number two.
“Miami,” the young man answered with sheepish but sharp comedic timing. “I think I might have taken a wrong turn somewhere.”
Immediately sensing the stranger’s seeming worldliness in the minute or so he’d sat down beside her, Regina was pretty sure he wasn’t a runaway, at least not from anywhere around there.
“Maybe if you could just get me up to the next town….I’ll take my chances finding a room,” he offered, smelling the obvious and understandable trepidation seeping from the woman’s pores.
“…OK,” Regina nodded her head in slow motion and agreed, as if in a fog.
“The weather forecast says this stuff is supposed to keep up through the night..I was thinking about pulling over for the night myself,” she added, the words sounding dry and flat as the intermittent wipers screeched across the dry windshield from being under the overpass.