She stops, gaping at the car. “Are youfuckingkidding me?”
“Lana, get in please,” I sigh. “Stop being stubborn.”
“Whenyoustop being annoying.”
“Lana.”
“Christian.”
That’s the first time I hear her say my name in four years, and I think it makes me sick. It makes me hate myself a little more.
I remember all the ways she used to say it. She used to sing it with a skip when I picked her up at work or her apartment before she jumped so I could catch her around the waist. She used to moan it in my ear or against my lips when I touchedher and kissed her and made love to her. She used to breathe it against my neck when she held me after I had a bad day. She used to cry it when I came home a mess.
Lana keeps walking and I follow whether she likes it or not because I’m going to make sure she gets home safe. I miss driving her home, having her in the front seat and holding her thigh just to remind myself she is here and real and next to me.
“Would you stop?” Lana stomps her foot and keeps walking.
“No,” I growl. “Get in, it’s cold.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“No, you won’t,” I say. “You break out into hives when you’re too cold, Lana.”
She groans like she hates that I remember things about her. But I’ve known her like the back of my hand for years. You don’t just forget the back of your hand. And you certainly don’t just forgether.
“Shut up,” she says.
“Get in, and I promise I’ll stay quiet.”
Lana stops so I stomp on the brake. Another groan but this time, she’s turning and walking toward the car. She swings open the door and grumbles, “Your car is ridiculous, by the way.”
She slips in beautifully, filling the space of the two seater. Her hair is longer, and she’s got these shorter hairs framing her face like she’s grown out bangs. She’s wearing her classic mom jeans, her combat boots, and one of those black, square neck tops. Lana always raved about square necks and how good they looked with her collarbones. I see what she was always talking about.
I turn up the heat when she shivers as she puts on theseatbelt. Her entire body is tense and there is just this dooming silence between us that was never there. It is so quiet I swear I hear her heart racing.
“Are you sure you aren’t drunk?” she asks quietly.
“I’d never let you get in the car with me if I was,” I rasp.
“But you’d drive?”
I shake my head. “I just meant…I wouldn’t put you in that kind of danger.”
Her elbow is on the arm rest of the door and her chin is in her hand, her eyes looking out the window, avoiding me. “I know,” she whispers.
I slowly let my foot off the break, allowing the car to take it’s time pulling us froward. I turn right onto Main Street and I let the car roll, not stepping on the gas—mostly on purpose because I love her in my car.
I sneak a glance over at her and see the hand she has on her thigh. I focus on her middle finger. She still wears the dainty gold ring with a tiny ruby stone I gave her six years ago, only a few months before I left. Except, it was originally on her right hand before I switched it to her left.
Regardless, she still wears it.
It isn’t until we come to a stop sign at the corner of her bookshop cafe that she says, “Turn left.”
So I turn left onto Spring Road and follow her directions until she says, “Here.”
I ease off the gas and take as long as I can before I have to come to a complete stop. But then I finally stop and it feels like my life is over and doomed, and I’m not going to get back the love of my life. Not to be dramatic, but I think I’d rather die than to drop her off at home tonight and never see her again.
It feels the way it did four years ago.
