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Boyfriend. Huh. I could get used to that.
Ilikedthat.
“Ma’am, I need you to calm down,” the guard said. His pencil-thin mustache looked like a worm laid across his upper lip. Jess laid her hands flat on his desk, leaning toward him. It was as if she was channeling every drop of Queen Bitch energy she could possibly muster.
“Don’t youdaretell me to calm down,” she hissed. “If you don’t call that officer and find out what he’s seeing on those security tapes right this very second, I’m calling my lawyer.”
She didn’t have a lawyer, not that I knew of. The guard stuttered, shuffling around papers and saying something about a form. But when she whipped her cell phone out of her back pocket, he immediately clicked on his walkie and said, “Officer Madden, so we have any updates for Mr. Bent and Ms. Martin here?”
Seconds later, the walkie crackled and someone on the other end said, “We have two young women on tape planting the perfume in the bag. Suspect didn’t appear to see them do it.”
The guard audibly gulped, his eyes flickering over to me. I probably looked like I was going to kill him.
He’d be damned lucky if I didn’t.
***
It was like I was walkingin a daze until we got back to my car. I had my awareness again once I was behind the wheel, but only barely. My head was swimming, my bloodstream a cocktail of stress-induced chemicals that wouldn’t simply disappear. They lingered, making my hands shake and my stomach churn.
My fingers were gripped so tightly around the wheel that they ached as I sped down the highway. Every beat of my heart was sickening hard. It was hot, so damn hot that sweat was dripping down my back. No matter how high I turned the AC, it wasn’t enough.
Jess said something to me, but my ears couldn’t make sense of the words. They were drowned out by anger — by suffocating, chokingrage.
My only sense of relief was watching that odometer crawl higher and higher as I hauled ass down the highway.
It was always the same. No matter what efforts I made, no matter how I changed myself or vowed to do better, the world always gave me a reason to sink right back down again. I would have beaten that cop’s face in if Jess hadn’t stopped me; I probably would have gotten myself hauled off to jail or killed.
But that was the point. These people wouldn’t be satisfied until they found a way to make us disappear.
They sat in their churches and shouted “Amen!” to love and forgiveness, before they turned around and used every avenue they could to make those they didn’t approve of pay for merely existing. It wasn’t enough to keep your head down and try to disappear into the crowd. No, they’d sniff you out and make you the villain.
A shiny new Civic was trying to keep pace with me as I drove, revving up beside me and making it obvious he wanted to race. I nodded toward him, and we both slowed slightly until we were driving side by side at the same speed.
There was a storm in my chest with nowhere to go. The pressure was building, and I needed an outlet; I needed to do something, anything, to get rid of this feeling.
The Civic honked his horn in cadence, once, twice...on the third, we floored it. Jess gasped as the El Camino roared forward, blasting past the Civic without a struggle. He was barely even competition for me.
It wasn’t enough, it wasn’t fuckingenough.
“Lucas, you need to pull over,” Jess said. Her voice was calm and even, her eyes boring into the side of my face. I readjusted my hand, tightening it on the shifter. I didn’t need to be told what to do.
She reached over, laying her hand on my arm. “Lucas, you’re swerving. You’re angry. Pull over so you can calm down.”
The instinctual resistance that rose up in me wasn’t strong enough to defy her. I pulled off the highway, driving down a quiet residential street. The narrow road forced me to slow my speed, which I’d admittedly been pushing to dangerous levels.
Manson would fucking kill me if he found out I was driving like that, let alone with Jess in the car. The moment that thought hit me, shame hit with it. What was wrong with me? I’d let anger overtake everything else, I’d lost control when I should have been mature enough to handle it.
After driving aimlessly for a few minutes, I pulled off onto a dirt road. It led deep into the fields, but I parked to the side under the low-hanging boughs of a massive old oak tree. I turned off the engine, grasped my hands tightly on my knees, and closed my eyes as I focused on just breathing.
Jess’s fingers squeezed my arm; a reassurance I didn’t even know I needed. Her touch grounded me, and I finally opened my eyes.
“Let’s get out,” she said, giving me a nudge toward the door. “Come on.”
It was disorienting to step out in an unfamiliar place when I was already so on edge. Jess took my hand, walking with me to the back of the car. The sun was low in the sky, casting streaks of pink and orange through the clouds. The fields around us were quiet, with only the rustling of the grass and subtle buzzing of insects.
Opening the back of the car, we took a seat on the tailgate. She drew close to my side, leaning her head against my shoulder without saying a word. It was such a simple thing, but it meant more than she could have possibly known.
She hadn’t left me. She hadn’t run away when things went to shit, even though she could have. There was nothing to keep her there except the desire to protect me, which felt too damn strange to believe. But I’d seen it with my own eyes. Heard her words. Felt her grasp my hand and lead me out of there because I was too shell-shocked with anger to navigate my way out.
