1. Getting into Gear
Possibly related: burn rubber, pedal to the metal, floor it, vroom vroom.
No one would die tonight. Probably. Definitely! Maybe?
The weather forecast for tonight would read: Mostly sunny with a slight chance of doom. But weathermen were wrong all the time, so there was no need to run and grab a doom umbrella or even try to figure out what a doom umbrella was… it probably came with helmets.
Danger made life exciting and that was my argument whenever someone said,Ryan, you’re going to get us all killed.I had a great track record of notactuallykilling anyone so far. I wanted to keep that streak going for as long as possible.
But this? People did this all the time. I could be one of those people now!
I sat in the passenger seat of the vehicle, hands hardly able to control themselves and not twitch impatiently, but my hands were jumpy bastards and they did a lot. Now, however, they couldn’t wait to be on the steering wheel, to drive.
…
Did we need the jaws of life? Didn’t pack that in my handbag.
Also, I didn’t own a handbag.
“Do you have a handbag?” I asked the hottie with a body sitting next to me. Not sure why the body part had to specified. Most people, as a general rule, had bodies even if they weren’t hotties.
“I’m a guy,” Luke Chambers said about my handbag question. Hey, me too! Me and my boyf had so much in common.
“I believe in you,” I told him seriously. He shouldn’t let a silly thing like gender stop him from having all the prettiest purses.
“Thanks, but I’m good.” His hand moved from the steering wheel to rest on my thigh. That wasn’t a very good example he was setting, but his hand was warm and comfortable resting there, so I allowed it.
Who came up with the phrase ‘jaws of life?’ That was a weird way to put it. Who would want a giant pair of jaws to save them? That sounded terrifying. I blamed sharks for that.
What I would trust?Thighs.Thighs of life.
“You have nice thighs,” I told Luke. His best features were vivid green eyes, adorable dimples, and a strong throwing arm from being a pitcher, so maybe his thighs didn’t get enough love. I should pen an ode to them.
“Your thighs are nice too,” he told me without batting an eye. Huh.
“Are you used to all my ways?” I asked him. “Do we have no spark anymore?” First my inquiries about a purse and now me just complimenting him out of nowhere and he didn’t even blink... Alright, I frequently talked about how hot he was. The world needed to know.
“Just wait,” Luke said.
I tried. One Mississ— nope, that was enough of that.
“You have something planned?” I asked in a not at all scary way. New excitement pooled in my belly, mixing with the old and thankfully not combusting or exploding.
“No, just wait,” he continued. “You’re going to do something weird and I won’t see it coming.”
“Hey!” I protested being called weird.
Me normal. Normal, normal, normal. All the time normal, that’s a me, Mario. Wait… that wasn’t right. I liked science and root beer and boys and cat memes. Me normal all the time. Jeez, I couldn’t even think that in my head correctly. Still, I tried to look totally chill and innocent, a normal guy who did normal things like… taxes or uh… something with drywall?
“It’s true, right?” Luke wondered idly. “The weirdness is coming.” Like winter, it always returned.
No! No winter weirdness tonight. We were going to drywall tonight…
Or not.
“Take a right here,” I admitted after a moment. I crossed my arms and pouted futilely for a moment.
Luke distracted me, looking pleased at being right. I loved being right even more than being drywall, I mean normal, and Luke being right was dumb and should never happen, but Luke looked really attractive when he was right, so that was nature’s consolation prize.
