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My eyes snapped to the exit, where she was walking out the doors, skateboard under her arm.
My heart stopped, but the ticking got louder.
Or so I thought.
But I had it wrong.
The ticking stopped. But my heart thumped harder.
And suddenly, everything that had happened in the past three months flashed before my eyes. Like a predeath slideshow. Only it wasn’t death. It was Chloe. All Chloe.
I bounced on my feet.
And looked from the clock.
To the door.
To the clock.
Back to the door.
My hands fisted.
My body went rigid.
I turned to Josh.
He was smirking.
“Josh . . .”
That was all I had to say for his smirk to widen. “Hurry up, dude! She’s leaving!”
And then I ran.
Out the exit.
Through the parking lot.
And to her car.
She was pulling out of the spot.
I jumped into the passenger’s seat.
Literally, jumped.
She hit the brakes, her eyes wide. “What the hell are you doing?”
“The Road.”
“What!”
“Just drive!”
She stared a moment before a huge smile took over. “Are you sure?”
Adrenaline pumped through my veins. “Just drive, Chloe.” And for a split second, I panicked. Maybe she didn’t want me there. “Please?”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh my God,” she mumbled, before hitting the accelerator and peeling out of the parking lot.
We drove twenty minutes out of town before she pulled over. Her smile never faltered and she didn’t say a word. But when the car finally came to a stop and the squeal of her hand brake filled my ears, I got nervous.
She pushed open her door and stepped out.
I followed.
She started hastily walking down a hidden path, and it was only then that I realized where we were. Her mom’s lake. I had been too preoccupied, watching her drive, waiting for her to stop and kick me out, to notice where we’d been going.
She paused for a moment after the trees cleared and the lake was in view. I saw her shoulders lift, and I could picture what she was doing. She would have her eyes closed, be filling her lungs with the clean air that surrounded us.
I cleared my throat and stood next to her. “Chloe?”
She turned to me, confused, then a hint of a smile played on her lips. She took my hand, linking our fingers together, and led me to our rock. Or at least that was what I called it. A flat piece, hanging over the water’s edge. We had sat there, together, more times over the past nine weeks than I thought anyone had in an entire lifetime. She sat down, legs crossed like usual, and pulled me down with her. I sat behind her, with my legs on either side of her and my arms wrapped around her waist.
It was perfect.
And then it wasn’t.
“What are you doing, Blake?” She sounded so sad, I almost regretted getting into the car with her. Almost.
“I’m not ready to lose you.”
She tilted her head to look up at me. I kissed her. Just once. I couldn’t help it. She smiled against my lips, but when she pulled away, her smile was gone, replaced by a sadness that had the power to destroy me. “That’s not an answer,” she said.
I tensed. She was right. I tried to think of something that would satisfy her. “I have a proposition,” I said on a whim.
“I like the sound of that,” she joked.
“Are you being a pig?”
“Yes.”
We both laughed.
“Duke’s fall semester starts August 19. After—”
“I’ll take it,” she cut in. “I’ll take anything you give me.”
Chloe
I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why he’d chased after me, or why he was still there. He knew me. He knew my story. He knew everything.
“Stop it,” he murmured into my ear.
“What are you talking about?” I squeezed his hands and wrapped his arms tighter around me.
“I see the gears in your head spinning and, whatever you’re thinking about, stop it.”
“Okay,” I said quietly. “What do we do from here? Where do we go?”
He laughed. “Chloe, this is your journey. I’m just here for the ride. We do whatever you want.”
“I didn’t really have a plan,” I told him. “I was just gonna drive.”
He nuzzled his face into the crook of my neck. “That sounds like an amazing plan to me.”
And it was.
Until about two hours into the drive on the highway when he’d started to fidget in his seat. He’d changed the station on the radio numerous times, searched on his phone about hardwiring his iPod into said stereo, quizzed me about my lack of sports knowledge, and tried to fix the been-broken-forever console with a stick and a piece of gum.
Then he was bouncing in his seat, chewing his nails. He barely ever chewed his nails. “Did you know that the human head weighs eight pounds?”
I glanced at him quickly. “I did actually. The kid from Jerry Maguire taught me that.”
“I love that kid!”
“Me too!”
“I wanted to be a sports agent because of that film. You know, if basketball didn’t work out.”
“Oh yeah?”
He nodded enthusiastically. “Yup! Before that I wanted to be a fireman. And a racecar driver. Oh! And lion tamer. How good would that be? A lion tamer. I’d call my lion LeBron, and we’d go everywhere together. He would be my best friend and we’d go to the park and laugh at all the people with their petty dogs and I’d have a kick-ass lion. I’m going to do it. Do you think there are laws? Or an adoption program? All lions need love too. Maybe I can find a blind lion. It would be harder to train but it would be worth it because—”
