| torn up

~ chapter 40 ☁️

Eli and I have settled into a kind of quietness as we drive into the evening. And although one might expect this to sound awkward, it actually feels like a somewhat comfortable silence to me. The radio is playing as Eli concentrates on driving and I'm more than content gazing out of the window. There's always something I've found quite comforting about quiet late night drives like this and I just know that when I finally learn how to drive, I'll be doing this all the time.  

It's only when I actually stop daydreaming for a moment do I realise that the streets we are flying past don't resemble those of the ones found on the way to the cinema from my house.

'Hey, Eli.' I murmur in confusion, sitting up straighter in my seat and turning towards the green eyed boy. 'Wait a second, you're going the wrong way.'

'I know.' He shrugs carelessly, keeping his eyes on the road as he continues in a bored tone. 'This is the part where I drive you to some woods to murder you and then throw your body in a lake somewhere. Surprise, bitch.' 

I narrow my eyes at the dry sarcasm that leaks from his words and roll my eyes at his infamous dead sense of humour. Jokingly enough, I can't help but imagine that even if I annoyed Eli to the extent of wanting to murder me someday- he would never. This being purely due to the fact that I wouldn't be worth the jail time, as he'd likely say.

'Haha. Very funny, not. But seriously, Eli, where are we going? I thought we were going to the cinema.' I carry on in a tense tone, trying now to show my minute alarm leak through at the fact that Eli seems to be taking a mysterious detour for whatever reason.

'We still are, you idiot.' Eli explains, sounding exasperated with me. 'We're just going to Hillford's one instead.'

I cock my head at the mention of the town just next to ours that's about a 30 minute drive away. Despite it being quite close, I can't quite say I'm a regular visitor there, I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I've been.

'How come?' I ask in puzzlement.

'Because I wanted to.' He says in a nonchalant tone as if it completely makes sense for him to choose the farther option and pick Hillford's cinema over our local one as if it offers something unique- which by the way, I'm confident it does not.

'But why go to a cinema that's over half a hour away when you could just go to the one in town that's literally not even 1o minutes away?' I mutter, still not being able to see the logic in his decision.

'I don't like seeing people from school when I go out.' He casually explains, earning a nod in acknowledgement from me as I can also relate to this sometimes. 'Besides I don't think you'd fancy word of this possibly getting back to the girls considering they don't know about this, would you?

I pause at his words, eyes slightly widening at the sudden and unexpected mention of my best friends as he awaits my response with a raised brow and tilt of his head. My mind instantly flashes back to this morning when he and I had been texting about what time he would come pick me up. I had been slightly baffled when at the end of our conversation, he had asked if the girls were aware of our cinema plans.

Truth be told, the girls don't have a clue about tonight. Well they know that I'm going to watch Crimson Sky 2, what with my excitement and love for the movie series, there's no way I could ever keep that a secret. It's just that I might have told them a tiny white lie in that they think I'm going to see it with a friend who lives in my neighbourhood instead of Eli Walters. I'm just lucky they had bought it straight away and so I wasn't put under any pressure because god knows I can never get away with lying if I'm being grilled.