The Scenic Route

Ahead, the desert highway was flooded. But for Rose's own car, a cherry red 2008 Ford Mustang, the route had been empty for the past half hour. It was no surprise that the road had been nicknamed "The Loneliest Highway in America." The loneliness was fine with Rose, though. In fact, she preferred to be the only motorist traveling the highway at this time of the year, when the wildflowers were in bloom and the sandy wasteland was bright, in places at least, with reds and oranges, yellows and pinks, purples and many hues known only to an artist or a botanist.

As she approached the flooded portion of the highway, the water seemed to evaporate, all at once, in an instant. The "water" had been only another mirage, as Rose had known it would be. She smiled, thinking that Mother Nature was quite a magician, when she wanted to be. She was quite an artist, too, even here, in the hot, baked wastelands of the northern Nevada desert.

Rose was glad she'd mentioned her love of nature to Kevin, the technical writer for Desert Hydrology, Inc., where they both worked. She was the new girl on the job; he was both a veteran technical writer and a native resident of the Silver State. When she'd mentioned that she was an outdoors girl, he'd mentioned the desert flowers. In fact, he'd offered to accompany her on her weekend trip to view the blossoms in all their magnificent glory, but she'd turned him down. She still hadn't gotten over Bruce, or Bruce the Brute, as she now thought of him.

Bruce could be a sweet guy, in his own way--at times--but, in the bedroom, he'd preferred rough sex. He'd liked to spank, and he'd enjoyed water sports--as long as he was on the giving, rather than the receiving end, of course. He'd also liked bondage, and he'd once tied her in such a way that her breasts had turned purple. She'd feared the bastard might have injured her, but, fortunately, the "tit torture" session, as Bruce had called it, hadn't done her any lasting harm. Nevertheless, it had been the final straw. She'd had enough of his "tough love," and, the next day, while he was at work, she'd packed her things and left him, settling in Las Vegas, when she'd been offered a job as a graphic artist for Desert Hydrology. She'd been there a whole week now, and here she was, on her first weekend off, really enjoying Life After Bruce.