“This is about the accident that took your parents?”
I scrunch my face, then nod. “Yes.”
Leaning over, he kisses my forehead. “I’m sorry that happened to you. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
Lifting my shoulders, I answer, “I don’t mind so much. When Bram and I went to college, we always went home for the summer, and Mom and Dad would take us on vacation before dropping us off.”
“Sounds like a lovely tradition.”
I smile, thinking through some of the places we’d gone. “We didn’t have a lot of money, so it was mostly camping at national parks, but…I dunno. We always had a good time with each other. Anyway, we were on our way to college, and my father had been following the construction signs on the road, slowing down and letting people into our lane since the left lane was about to end.
“Despite the fact we were still going highway speeds, the driver of the eighteen-wheeler behind us was unimpressed with my father’s generosity and hit the horn a couple of times. With only a few feet to go, the driver jerked the entire rig into the disappearing passing lane. My father immediately slowed down and let him pass us just before he ran out of room.”
“That must have been so frightening,” he says, sitting next to me. I lean into him, resting my head on his shoulder.
“It was more annoying. Like, we didn’t know what the big rush was. We were all in that shitty traffic together, you know? Thing is, in all of his maneuvering, what neither my father nor the driver had seen was that the traffic directly ahead of us had stopped. Bram and I found out later that the driver of the eighteen-wheeler pulled his emergency brake.”
Javier’s hand goes to his mouth and he tightens his grip on me. I continue, “And because he’d cut us off, we flew right into the back of him.”
I breathe through the memories. The sounds. The smells.
“Did he hit the car in front of him?”
Javier’s voice brings me back into the moment.
“He did. Family van. Severely injured everyone in the van. Pretty sure the little girl ended up in a chair. But they all survived.”
Unlike my family.
Playing with his pretty collarbones, I tell him the worst part. “I never lost consciousness, so before our car disappeared under the back of the truck, I saw everything.”
Javier’s sharp inhale somehow makes me feel more seen than a thousand hookups. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
What I don’t say is that the underride guards, the metal that hangs down under the back of an eighteen-wheeler, failed. They save a lot of lives by preventing cars from going under eighteen-wheelers in rear collisions. Unfortunately, they don’t hold up at highway speeds.
Given what it had done to glass and metal, my parents’ mortal bodies were no match. We slammed to a stop with the rear of the eighteen-wheeler inches from Bram’s and my faces.
“So, yeah. I had severe whiplash, but I was otherwise shockinglyfine. Physically, at least. Mom and Dad, however, were gone. Crushed under the back of the truck.”
I leave off the part about Mom’s blood filling the foot well.
“Bram was bleeding so badly from his head wound I assumed the worst for him too.”
“I can’t imagine how awful that was for you,” he says, sympathy and understanding marking his features.
“I have never felt more alone than I did in that moment. Even as other drivers approached the vehicle, I could only register their words as distant chatter.”
“How were they able to get you out of the car?”
I flinch, remembering the percussive whine of metal as the Jaws of Life were used to peel away my door.
“That’s where it gets a little weird, actually. Guy called himself Ed. Said he was a retired firefighter. Cut open the door and asked me if I was okay.”
“What did you say?”
“I just lost my whole family. So, no, I’m not okay.”
Another Javier kiss on my forehead.
