the first one • j. hughes

30

Age 15:

I was panicking. There I was, two hours from home with my ride now too drunk to drive. While I stood shivering my ass off trying to think without the sound of drunk guys and loud music. I could have sworn I saw a few girls when we got here but by that point, it seemed like I'm the only one. Which sort of left me uneasy about staying the night like my drunk-off-his-ass ride said would be fine.

There were two options. One involved calling Holly and asking her to come pick me up two hours away from home because I'm a dumbass and getting that lecture. Or... calling someone else and not getting a lecture until tomorrow. If it were to go perfectly. Because calling Mom was never going to happen and Dad was out of town. Even if he wasn't, there was no guarantee the lecture would come tomorrow still. Or I guess it was all that same day since it was around one in the morning.

So, you see, I had no choice.

"Jack," I said, teeth chattering slightly after. "I'm sorry."

"For what?" He mumbled into the phone. 'Cause of the whole one in the morning thing.

I took the deepest of breaths in. "I'm— Listen, I'm at this party thing like fifteen minutes from yours and the guy who brought me here got drunk and now he can't drive me home and basically what I'm asking of you is to come pick me up."

"Fifteen minutes from my house?" He asked.

"Yeah."

"That's like two hours away from your house."

"I know."

"I can't drive you home—"

"You don't have to!" I rushed out. "Take me back to your house and I'm sure by the time I'm awake Ellen will have called my mom because she'll have figured out I'm there by then and my mom will come storming here. No driving two hours west for you."

Silence from the other line made me worry that he was going to reject the plan. I wouldn't have blamed him. But, instead, he said, "Send your location or something."

"Holy shit. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank—" I was cut off by him hanging up. Probably smart seeing as I could have kept going for the entire time it would take him to come get me.

* * * * *

"You so owe me one," Jack said as I got in the passenger seat. "Like mega owe me one."

"Guess greetings are a thing of the past."

He laughed but it morphed into a groan of annoyance while he started pulling away. "What the hell are you doing going to parties two hours away? Without a sure ride back? Are you insane? Orla's going to kill you."

"She'd just find something else for us to argue about," I said. It was apparently the wrong thing to say or I showed a bit too much of how genuine I was about it because Jack pulled over. We were maybe five houses away from where we started.

"What's up?"

I looked at him and immediately looked away. "You tell me. You pulled over."

"I overheard my dad on the phone with yours the other day about how you and Orla are having these problems or something," he explained. I was done for. "Why are you fighting with your mom?"

"I'm not fighting with her."

"What? She's fighting with you?"

I covered my mouth with the back of my hand. Not sure if it was to stifle a laugh at him taking the words right out of my mouth or keep me from sobbing. Either way, Jack wasn't going to push a conversation I didn't want to have so he sighed. He let it go and started driving again.

Jack tapped his fingers on the wheel as he drove. "You know Id do anything for you right?"

I almost didn't want to answer. It sounded like a setup. Like he was about to crush me. He was about to say something that would hurt or tell me he can't do anything for me even if it seems that way. Tell me that when life was feeling so rocky, I didn't actually have all the allies I thought I had.

"Yeah," I said quietly, muffled by my hand. I swiftly put it back in my lap. I wished I had a wheel to tap on. "Yeah, I know."

"Don't make me lie to Orla," he said.

"I..."

"She's more than your mom that you may or may not be getting along with, Ken. Don't make me lie to her. I won't be able to even do it good enough to get past her and I need— You can't do that to me."

"When you think about it you won't be lying," I said. "I'll say I got here and then my ride couldn't take me back home and I called you and you came and got me."

"If she asks you why your ride couldn't take you home? Then what?" His tapping sped up.

"Jack, relax."

He pulled over and even unbuckled his seatbelt, the car immediately beeping at him to put it back on. Despite the cold, he turned it off. Roughly, his hands went through his hair which was still messy. "No. Don't tell me to relax when you're fighting with Orla and letting guys drive you to parties two hours away when I know there are parties you could have gone to that were closer. Then having to call me because the guy got too drunk to drive. Then trying to get me to see the loophole in lying to Orla? Come on."

Arguing with Jack has always been risky business. Quinn and Penn didn't argue with me other than small things like who gets the last of the cereal or whether the ball was out in a game of tennis. Holly and I fought a lot for a while and we always went too far, snapping back and forth until one of us was crying. There was that little Civil War a few months before the party. Luke and I couldn't argue for long, we'd get maybe two lines each with attitude until we settled into a calm discussion. We also weren't strangers to physical arguments.

Jack though. Oh, me and Jack could get in screaming matches if we let each other. Different than mine and Holly's. There'd be little to no insults. Somehow, fighting with Jack always made me feel worse than with Holly and her habit of knowing exactly where to twist the knife. Jack and I know exactly where to twist the knife to end the other and we don't. It's somehow so much worse.

"I mean, honestly, Kennedy. Did you even ask where he was taking you or did he tell you to get in the car and you did it no question?" He was really worked up.

I could always get more worked up. Take him right with me. "Yeah, Jack. Didn't even know the guy actually! Because I'm a fucking idiot who does idiot stuff." I crossed my arms and huffed. Like a child pouting which is what I was. "Have some faith or something."

"This isn't something to joke about. It's not funny."

"I'm not joking!"

"You are. I don't know what's wrong with you lately but I don't like it." He sighs and rubs at his eye with the heel of his palm. "I don't get why or how you feel things at two hundred percent while never letting it out. Talk to someone. Call Luke. Call me. Don't do stupid shit."

"Right, 'cause you do so much smart shit," I mumbled.

Jack's stare engrained itself into the side of my face. Anyone else, it would have felt like hate. Like they couldn't like me when I was acting the way I was. With Jack, it didn't feel like hate. More as if he could never hate me even if I did the worst thing imaginable. He sighed again and buckled back up. "All you have to do is pick up the damn phone. I'll answer. We can talk through it."

"There's some shit I can't talk through with other people. Or with myself. There's no solution. Each option has a probability of a bad result."

"Do they both have the probability of a good result?"

I hummed. "No. But there's always a bad."

"So stop thinking in bad probabilities and start thinking in what makes you feel good," he said. "For now though, let's go home and sleep until your mom deals with you."