Two Of Us

Chapter Four // BEFORE

Laramie's lap-staring would not stop me from staring at Samuel. Day by day and hour by hour he quickly became my newest obsession. I measured him move for move and action by simple action. His hand could so much as twitch and my head would spin into a million analyzations, a thousand scenarios all ending in the simple pleasure of being able to call him mine solitarily. It was agonizing. It put me through Hell, he sent me walking towards the devil and reeling at the possibility of even just being able to feel his touch. We were preordained. A red string of providence connected us. He was to never be anyone else's, if God and fate believed in two people, it was the two of us.

"I think I'm in love with Samuel," I murmured one day without thinking much of it in the car on the way home from dance after school.

I remember she rested her arm next to mine on the center console as she always did. Her energy once again flowed into me, as she was an extension of who I was and everything I was meant to be even if her breath stunk of coffee. "Aria, what the actual hell?"

"Laramie, I'm like not even kidding. Like I think I like him." It was hard to make it sound reasonable – she'd had him first, been closer to him, and even hated him more than I ever could. I was really trying my hardest to make it sound even the slightest bit sane.

She shook her head, partly to free those long dark locks of hers from the messy bun it'd been in all day. Today, Laramie's "eclectic" (as she dubbed it, though I found her music taste to be hilarious for the variety of what she enjoyed) playlist blasted through the speakers. I always worried a little bit whenever she plugged in her phone that the volumes at which she liked to hear this music would bust them, but they hadn't yet. Right now was a Childish Gambino song but I knew full well that it could switch in the blink of an eye to the Lumineers depending on what she felt at that moment. "I don't think you do."

I wrinkled my brow. I could feel my own tiny, knobby fists clenching around the steering wheel as acid rose into my throat and blood to my face. "And how would you know, bitch?"

"I've known you since you were twelve, what else can't I know about you? There's nothing he could offer you that you don't already have," she muttered. I could hear her fiddling with the levers on the side of the seat to try and make it recline.

I growled, after her own fashion, "Don't." The squeaking stopped – and suddenly she was whispering the words to "Sweatpants" while I tried to complete my thoughts. "Laramie, I don't think you understand."

Instead of replying, she simply started saying the words with him. Too frustrated to continue my argument, I gave into the trap of singing the words with her even though it quickly devolved into screams and giggles. "Watch a hater hate me, wanna play me like a piano / my architect speak Japanese, your girl she chalky knees..."

It was a quick substitute for trying to have this conversation with her. There were good days, where she'd listen to me and offer the advice I'd been waiting to hear all of my life, and there were bad ones like this. She was such a chameleon soul. I had no way to stop her colors from shifting as badly as I desired to.

In my mind I grappled with the thought of trying to explain it to her more than I already had, but decided it was best to wait for her to bring it up. Then I'd know if she truly had been listening instead of trying to memorize this first verse, and then I'd know that she was interested in trying to help me. But only then would I even talk to her about it, I decided in that spur of the moment.

Here was our exit. One way led you out to Century, another in the general direction of our homes, and yet another gave a slower but much more leisurely route to Inkom and the backwoods that begun to take over from here to the Utah border. I flipped on my turn signal. She turned the dial up just the tiniest bit more in hopes that I wouldn't notice right as the song hit the hook. "This one's for you, A," she laughed right as Childish Gambino expressed his anger at his family name.