Warmer | r

III

Jaedra threw her hands up and drove with her knees.

"This is awesome!" She shouted, putting her hands back on the wheel. R looked over at her, concerned at the speed she was going. He relaxed a bit when he heard her laugh.

The wind blew through her hair as she drove the convertible car. R had never known how to turn on the car, but Jaedra was bored and wanted to explore, so he showed the car garage to her. He took her to see his favourite car and she immediately turned it on. There was still petrol in the tank.

She looked over at her not-so-new zombie friend and he looked back at her. Seeing those grey eyes sent a chill down her spine and a pang through her heart. She missed the vibrant blue they had once been.

She had hoped that, after almost four years, she would have gotten over him, but here she was, grasping at straws with his corpse. She tried asking if he had remembered anything from her past, but all he did was reply with a shrug. He did that a lot. Shrugging seemed to be his only known way to answer questions other than a short one or two-word reply. She brushed it off. Any contact was still contact, and she would take what she could get. He didn't remember her, and that surely meant he wouldn't understand if she had tried to explain that he did. She didn't want to freak him out so she let it go and tried to act as if none of that had ever happened.

"Do you want to try?" She asked him, smiling. He nodded slowly, unsure. She skidded the car to a stop and got out to change sides with him.

He pressed his foot on the gas then the brake, jerking them forward and back.

"Oh, god," he did it again.

"R, jeez. Pick a foot," she said. He looked over at her, confused.

"You're using both feet. Pick one and press the gas pedal," she explained. He did as told and they started to drive smoother. She smiled at him.

"There you go, you got this," she laughed. His eyes looked hopeful.

Funny how he could express so much and still hold that same look on his face. How did he do it? Was it his eyes? Or the slightest twitch of his mouth? She shook off the thought and continued to instruct him.

He took one hand off the wheel and looked over at her, almost placing a hand on her knee. She took in a sharp breath and pushed his hand away, memories flooding through her head of all the times they used to go driving. That was before all the apocalypse stuff came along.

"Alright buddy, two hands on the wheel," she said. He did so and continued driving around the large lot.

After a while, he drove back to the garage and attempted to park. Instead, he accidentally slammed the front end of the Mercedes into another car.

"R! This was a nice car," Jaedra breathed out, laughing softly. They were lucky the airbags didn't work.

They went back to the plane and sat on the ground in between the piles of things and the seats that had been moved to accommodate them.

"What's with all the vinyl? Couldn't figure out how to work an iPod?" Jaedra asked, moving over to rummage through his collections.

"B-better ... sound," he said.

"Oh, you're a purist, huh?" She teased, laughing.

"M-more ... alive," he said, turning his finger around in a circle, just like a vinyl would on a record player.

"Yup, that's true. A lot more trouble, though," she said. He shrugged.

"There you go again. Shrugging! Stop shrugging, you shrugger. It's a very non-committal gesture," she said.