Two Of Us

Chapter Eight // BEFORE

"I don't need a ride today," Laramie looked up at me from across the table in English. "I drove myself."
It was on another Monday in October that I watched as Samuel's brow furrowed. Those bushy brows, I wanted to trace them with my fingers just as I did every other contour of his face. How someone could do what he did to me confused me more than Juliette's motives behind her drunkenness or where I should draw the line between good and bad. (By the way, it should be noted that that line was the line of symmetry upon his body, his face, the fact that he looked like a Grecian sculpture might as well have been a sin in and of itself... but I digress.) "Do you have a license?"

She scoffed. "No," incredulously she laughed as if it were obvious. "You really think I have time to take driver's ed? I just took my parents' car this morning. My dad won't know."

"You took your mom's Rover?" I balked in slight disbelief. Driving a car that nice to Century was like a death wish. The parking lot was a disaster, and the teenage drivers even more so. It was almost the inevitable to get yourself into a wreck at any point of the day with the constant flow of students in and out of the building.

Laramie cocked her head. Dark hair spilled over her muscular shoulders though some of it was tied up into a half-bun. "I'm not stupid. I took my dad's car."

"So the Benz?" I replied.

"Oh, yeah, damn, that doesn't make it any better –" she was quickly cut off by Mrs. Eastwood explaining our independent novel assignments. We'd all already chosen ours. I was to read Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, as my sister had only a few short years ago. She'd loved the story, and I'd hoped that maybe – just maybe – I'd be able to salvage some family relations over a story of a man reminiscing on the college days of yore. In turn, Laramie, as daring and bold as she always was and always will be, chose to read Lolita. Samuel had decided to pick up The Martian, not like it was a classic, but because he loved that book. He was as fascinated with space as I was with him.

And the plotlines didn't really matter, neither did the assignment. What mattered was the aftermath of that school day – I'd gotten in a car accident even though I'd pictured Laramie being the one behind the wheel when it happened.

Instead, it was me. I'd been looking down at my phone to change the song ("Yayo" was a make-out song, and he wasn't here with me to be kissing my neck as she described the snake on her lover's tattoo. So many parenthetical statements as I write this, because all of my thoughts involving him were afterthoughts. They weren't conscious decisions, necessarily, just things I thought about after I'd made said decision. Thusly, I'd changed it from "Yayo" because I wanted him to put me on the back of his black motorcycle while I wore a fifties baby-doll dress for my "I do", to "Cheyenne" by Jason Derulo simply due to his absence). Before I knew it, my car and three others tumbled into each other. All of the drivers – Astrid being one of them – came out unharmed but our cars did not. In fact, mine was totaled.

Neither of my parents were home from work when I called them, so I called the next best solution: Samuel.

"You see this car wreck out here?" I laughed nervously.

He sounded so tired. "You mean the one that's stopping traffic? Yeah."

"I'm in it," I remember trying so hard to sound calm even though all I wanted to do was cry. The police were standing near me and my wrecked little stick shift.

I could hear him slam on his car horn. "You're what!?" he sounded shocked, concerned even.

"I'm okay," I said next. I was trying as hard as I could to be calculated about the entire thing. "I just need a ride home."