GONER

17 • These Lights Flush You Out And You're Gorgeous

"Who's truck is that?" I asked, buckling my seat belt with an undeniable smile on my face. My cheeks actually burned viciously from how much grinning I've done around him since school ended, and my smile only grew when he grabbed my hand in his over the center console. I must've looked borderline idiotic to him, but I don't think he cared much. He couldn't have been to concerned with if he kept staring at me with a gleam in his light eyes, like every single inch of him was always in the purest form of happiness that there was. And I didn't know if it had anything to do with me, but I quickly decided that it didn't matter, and that as long as he was happy, I kind of was, too.

"My uncle's," he replied, referring to the same faded truck he drove us to school in a week ago, that his two brothers were washing vigorously with a hose and sponges. I don't know why they were washing such an old vehicle, but it didn't matter much to me. "I only had it the other day because my cars heater made a popping noise and I thought I was going to spontaneously combust, and my uncle never uses his car. It made perfect sense. And, because he's a much better human being than my other uncle, he agreed to it."

I laughed, and he smiled, shrugging. "I like my car more, though. It's nice to me." His hand patted the dashboard tenderly, and he sighed, gentle and quiet. "Pretty old, but it has character and drives nice."

"Reminds me of you."

His eyes moved to mine, and then back to the road, pulling a face at the windshield. "I would hope so. Don't think you'd ever look at this piece of trash and imagine Jack Black or something."

"I mean, maybe. He is pretty great. And hilarious."

"I don't think anyone can debate that. He's killed every movie he's even been in."

"You know," he started, smiling brightly. "This is what brought us together. Our love for Jack Black."

He hit his blinker in a fluid movement, smiling gently at me, before taking his hand from mine again, and grabbing his phone. My heart jumped excitedly, because this meant he was going to play me a song, and that meant I was going to receive a message, one way or another, and I hoped the message was somewhat okay.

"I have something to play you. Since we play music every single time we drive together," he started, biting his lip. The action made my heart thump even more than I thought possible, and I wanted to stick my head out of the window, a desperate attempt to get some air. "And I don't know if you understand what I'm trying to say to you through the songs that I play, but please just, like, try to. Okay? Can you do that?"

I swallowed the lump of anxiety and adoration forming deep in my throat, face going red under his eyes and under his words, and I wondered how on earth he thought it was acceptable to do this to me. Or anyone. Because it most certainly wasn't.

But I didn't want him to stop.

And then he clicked around on his screen with his fingers, and my heart was pounding to the beat of his little rhythm, and then the sounds were drifting through the speakers of the car, and my heart was falling out of my body.

Because, I knew this song. He played it in the background of one of our phone conversations earlier this week, and the first few chords made my body tense of and my eyes water.

It was I Like You by Man Overboard, and I didn't know how to breathe, or what air was, or how to function properly. My eyes were frantic, and I knew he was still staring straight ahead and not at me, but I couldn't help but feel like fire was burning right under my skin.

Like thousands of little stars were implanted into every single one of my pores, and I was sizzling and burning up into a feeling that was something beautiful and magnificent, and I could count the infinite amount of stars he created and laced into my skin, and maybe I could find a thousand more in his eyes but no one needed to know.