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By the time she gets that simple answer out, I’m grinning like a lunatic, laughter kicking at my rib cage while I shake my head in disbelief.
She makes several attempts to gain control of herself, most of them failing, a question on the tip of her tongue that she can’t seem to shake loose.
Gripping onto the side handle of the door with one hand and the harness of her seatbelt with the other, she clenches her eyes shut and opens and closes her mouth a few times before finally finding her voice again.
“How fast are we going?”
She screams it a little louder than necessary, but I let it go.
“Uh,” I glance down at the speedometer. It’s maxed out at one hundred and twenty, but I know my beauty is going at least seventy faster.
“Close to two hundred,” I answer her, the resulting scream tearing from her lungs making me wish I could slam the pedal down fully to the floor. I won’t do that to her, though. She’s barely holding on to sanity now.
“Sh-Shane, p-pleeeeease sloooow d-down. We-We’re going t-to d-die.”
I glance at her this time, only because I don’t think she realizes just how long it took her to make the statement. It was a spattering of words broken up by the deep gulps of air she was struggling to draw in.
“Nah. This ain’t nothing, Brin. Have you ever read how fast they go in rockets to space? They have to train for months just to handle the force of it, and they survived.”
“We’re not astronauts, jackass! Slow down the fucking car!”
“Not until you have fun,” I yell back.
I’d like to assure you I have complete control of the car. I wouldn’t put Brinley in danger, and I definitely wouldn’t travel at this speed with her if I hadn’t already done this a million times. I know this road like the back of my hand.
It’s a popular road for racing because of how straight it is. Where there are curves, they’re wide and not too dangerous.
It’s just us and the empty miles that stretch on endlessly without a shit ton of potholes or other hazards that could cause problems at this rate of speed.
“I’m having fun,” she lies, the sound of her voice pathetic.
“I don’t believe you, Brin. You’re not saying wheee.”
Grimacing as she opens her eyes for a split second to see the landscape fly by, she swallows hard before giving me an even more pathetic, “Wheee.”
At least she made the attempt to fool me, but the color draining from her face gives away her true feelings.
I let off the gas but don’t hit the brake. Beauty’s engine calms down as she slows to a more acceptable speed.
A little time passes before Brinley feels brave enough to open her eyes again, her knuckles white where she’s still clenching her hands. Daring to take a peek at the instrument panel, her eyes widen to see we’re still going just under a hundred.
“What is the speed limit out here?”
I think about telling the truth but decide against it. “Who cares?”
“Me! I care!”
“Why?”
“Because I want to live.”
See, that’s where she’s getting this wrong.
“You are living. Right here. Right now. Stop worrying about what can happen, and just enjoy the ride.”
At this speed, I’m barely pushing Beauty at all. The car is almost as bored as I am, the engine wanting to open up again so we can fly.
Brinley doesn’t see it that way.
