Oh, Dakota

4- If I Had You

I’m going to explode.

My brain is just going to go ‘boom’ and I’ll be a goner. There was no way that I was going to survive that car ride all the way to Todd’s house. I don’t even know how I did it that morning, but this was just awful.

Well, as we were pulling out of the school parking lot with a full car, Todd just remembered that he had to mention this one time that I accidently killed my gold fish when I was twelve. He also thought it necessary to announce the fact that I was being unusually quiet in the car.

“Seriously, Kota,” He insisted. “You usually have something to say about everything.”

I glared at him through the rear view mirror because, even if he was joking, which it didn’t seem like, he was seriously killing me slowly and painfully. “I’m tired.” I replied simply, squeezing the steering wheel with everything inside of me not to implode.

“Even when you’re tired you’re a chatter box.” Todd said with a dramatic frown. “And you’re blushing.”

I knew that he was teasing me without actually coming out and saying that he was teasing me and I don’t know if he thought that whatever he was doing was funny, but he was just being a jerk and it stopped being fun a long time ago. Like, before it even started. “I’ve been in a hot gym for the past two hours, my face is just red.” I squeak nervously. I really hoped that Caleb didn’t catch on to what Todd was doing, because I’d seriously kill Todd, I really would.

“You’re going to break the steering wheel, Kota.” Owen laughed. “Loosen up.”

“I am loose.” I insisted. “Like a fucking goose.”

“Wow, you’re temperamental.” Todd muttered. “Is it your time of the month?”

My jaw dropped at his question and then I really was blushing and planning a million and four ways to kill that kid. “Can you just be quiet?” I snapped, trying not to make my voice sound shaky or anything.

“Just trying to make conversation.” He shrugged innocently.

“I’m going to claw your friend’s eyes out.” I informed Owen, speeding down the road to get to Todd’s house as soon as possible before he just comes out and blatantly informs both my brother and Caleb how pathetically in love I am with the guy.

“Go for it.” Owen laughed. “Oh, by the way, Dad told me to tell you that he’ll be home late tonight because… well, I don’t remember why but yeah, he’ll be home late.”

“Okay, then we can order pizza?” I wondered, just trying to keep the conversation between me and Owen so that Todd didn’t have any room to speak up.

“Actually, I think I’m going to go over to Todd’s for a while, so you can get pizza.” He informed me.

“Oh, no we can’t do that, my mom is in a bitch mood again so we’re going to your house.” Todd piped.

“Then why am I still driving towards your house?” I wondered with raised eyebrows.

“You still gotta take Caleb home.” Owen reminded me.

“Unless, of course, you wanna come over to Owen’s, Caleb.” Todd suggested, almost causing me to swerve out of the lane. It’s official- Todd is so past dead when I get out of that dang car. He’s never going to see daylight again because he’s going to be dead as a little rock by tomorrow, I really can’t stand the guy at the moment. Honestly, I couldn’t figure out why he was being such a jerk about this because this morning, he told me that he wouldn’t tell anybody but he failed to mention that he’d just feed around the bush and embarrass the poop out of me until somebody else realized what was going on.