Take Me Home | ✔

Chapter Thirty-One (unedited)

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 

VIENNA'S POV                                         

     "Vienna, are you almost done? Reynolds said our truck's waiting for us." 

           "Yeah, I'll be out in a second." 

           "What are you doing in there?" 

           "Elliot, I'm in the bathroom. Take a wild guess?" 

     I heard him chuckle softly outside the bathroom door, his shuffling footsteps following shortly. To be fair, he had a point; I'd been in the police station bathroom for over ten minutes, but it wasn't because I ate something gross or expired during the trip. I was reading over the letter to Austin, making sure it was perfected, and before we left, I needed a moment to myself. 

     It wasn't like the letter served a purpose; it probably wouldn't get to him until after graduation. And maybe he would just ball it up and completely disregard everything, throwing it away like it -- or we -- were nothing. Still, sending a letter like this felt freeing. 

       I recognized the problem. The problem wasn't Austin, it was me. I was the one who needed to defend myself and walk away. Austin was toxic, and always had been. He was just hiding it very, very well. I would rather have no relationship than one based on lies. And my letter signified that I didn't want to fall in love memories anymore, because face it, people change. 

        There was some part of me that didn't want to let go. That part of me that memorized every sweet gesture, every 3 AM message, every unperfect date that went wrong but ended up perfectly right. Holding the letter in my hands and deciding to let Austin read it required a lot of strength. 

I finally stuck the stamps onto the envelope and stood in front of the bathroom mirror, momentarily cringing at the flyaway hairs and the dark bags threatening to swallow my eyes. I dabbed at my face, trying to polish it clean -- or as clean it could be -- with a wet paper towel and ran my fingers through my dry hair.

          My clothes felt sweaty, sticky, and damp, Tessa's fine fabrics of even the simplest gray cotton shirt clinging to me in all the wrong places. In hindsight, I should've taken a shower at Elliot's uncle's house. 

          There were two knocks on the door. "Vienna," Elliot urged. "I'm beyond ready to go to Vegas. Can we go?" 

         "Fine," I replied, running the faucet. 

        All I could see in the dirty, smudged police station mirror was a person I wasn't sure of yet. But after completing the seemingly unfeasable feat of talking -- and hanging up -- on my own mom and closing up this letter to probably the only boy that left me emotionally drained, I felt strangely like I was on top of the world; that I could do anything. 

       "Vienna." 

       "Coming!" 

* * * *

     Now I could check two things off my non-existent bucket list; getting arrested and getting a police escort. Maybe I could get extra points for accomplishing them all in one day. 

      I'd only seen police escorts on TV and movies, and they were mainly for celebrities and really important heads of government. I had pictured six police cars flanking on both sides of our car, maybe a helicopter or two flying above us, and a couple of police motorcycles surrounding our truck. In reality, we had gotten Officer Reynolds one cop car driving in front of us with his sirens lit and blaring, with Elliot expertly driving right behind him. A police escort meant that we could go nearly as fast as the illegal limit (we were speeding down I-40 at eighty-five), and it meant getting to where we needed without getting a ticket.