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I stood and walked to my closet to get a pair of black and neon pink Nike Air shoes. Black was my favorite, but mostly because of how well all other colors, especially bright ones, paired with it. I was a goth kid at heart, but I liked color, too.
After putting on my shoes, I went to my private bathroom, and checked myself in the mirror. I looked good. My hair was down and straightened. My makeup was well blended, and while I liked the smoky look, I used browns and tans instead of something darker. I usually did if I was wearing darker colors. I tried to balance it out. There definitely could be too much of a good thing.
I applied the same rules to picking out dresses. I always picked to show either cleavage or legs but never both.
Restrictions were lifted a couple days after spending the day with Rick. A checkup revealed I was healing better than average, and my pain was almost gone. There was still tenderness when they pressed on the area, but they said that would probably be there for another couple of weeks. Some people just had pain linger a little longer than others, and that was no ordinary injury and surgery either.
When the doctor had given Rick the okay, he’d talked to me about getting my driver’s license transferred over. Since I’d be living there for the foreseeable future and attending school, that meant I was a resident. Normally, a resident would have ten days to transfer over their license, but I had extenuating circumstances that required me to wait a little longer.
Until today, in fact. It was Wednesday and almost time for my appointment to take my test.
I’d filled out all the online stuff and completed all the requirementsexcepttaking the written exam. Today was the day. Javier would take me to the DMV, and as long as I passed—which I didn’t doubt for a second—I’d be licensed to drive in California. According to the doctors, as long as I could stomp my feet without pain, I could drive without restrictions, so I’d be free to explore.
Which I wasverymuch looking forward to.
When I walked outside, Javier stood next to a black Audi. Of course, he’d drive an Audi. “Nice car,” I said.
He shrugged. “Hey, if you pass today, I thought you’d like to drive back in style.”
My eyes widened. “Wait… What? Are you serious?”
He looked at me incredulously. “Duh. What the hell kind of celebration is it after you get your license to getchauffeuredback home? Besides, restrictions are up, you’ve been cleared to drive, and you deserve some fun.”
I wasn’t proud of the squeal that came out of me, but I closed the distance between Javier and me and hugged him tight. He laughed as he hugged me back.
“Well, damn. I didn’t know it would make youthishappy.”
I pulled back, though our arms still held one another as I looked into his dark eyes. Looking at him this close, I was startled by just how attractive he was. Attempting to hide what I wassurewere reddening cheeks, I released him and stepped back.
“I’ve never evensatin a car that nice. Getting to drive it would besofucking awesome!”
He laughed again, and I enjoyed the sound. “Glad to hear it. Now get in before your father thinks I’m out here trying to move in on his daughter.”
I snorted. Javier spent a lot of time at the house, so I’d gotten to know him relatively well since arriving. He’d seemed pretty nice when I met him in the hospital, but he was even funnier the longer I was around him. He was definitely the uptight kind of person until he knew someone enough to let go.
Rick and Javier told horrible jokes and basically scream laughed at each other when there were visitors. Rick had asked if I would be comfortable with his friends coming over for a weekly poker night. He’d said it was my choice since I was still adjusting, but I didn’t want to interrupt his life more than I already had. I was more than okay with it.
Besides, I was still on bedrest at the time, and I didn’t plan to do much outside of watch TV and nap, so it worked great. What I hadn’t anticipated was hearing them all laughing and carrying on all night. It made me laugh. The office where they’d set up my temporary room was pretty poorly insulated, so I’d heard a lot of their ridiculous conversations, trips down memory lane, and terrible dad jokes. Being a lover of dad jokes myself, though, I totally understood.
Javier had more than the average person, and I attributed that to his time in the military. My dad used to tell me some of the terrible jokes Pastor Montgomery told him from his time in the army, too. They were my favorite.
“So, you think you’ll pass?” Javier asked.
I nodded. “Definitely. I studied a lot just to make sure. I didn’t want to take any chances. It’s not like it’s a lot different, but I still didn’t want to have to retake it like I did when I got my license in Indiana. That would suck. I wanna go to the beach.”
“Oooh, it’s so nice. You’ll love it.”
We spent the rest of the trip talking about the beach, and he described all the best places to go and all the places I should visit while I was here. He told me that I should do as much as possible as soon as possible—just in case things didn’t work out, and I ended up going back to Indiana for good. I appreciated that he still took that into account. Even though things were going relatively well so far, I hadn’t yet made up my mind if I planned to stay after everything calmed down.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever know until that time came.
When I got to the DMV, there was a long line. However, thanks to preregistering, I was able to get in without waiting terribly long. It took about forty minutes to get seated with a test, and I was given the rules, time limit, and instructions on what to do after it was completed.
“Thank you,” I told the older woman who helped me.
She barely huffed as she nodded and walked away.My, she was pleasant,I thought.
I took my time and read everything carefully before answering. I didn’t want to take the chance of misreading something and screwing it up. There was no way Javier was driving back today. The clock on the wall seemed to move incredibly fast while the test moved slower than hell. Of course, that was probably my fault since I at least skimmed everything a second time.
