He glowered. “Slow down!”
She waved her hand dismissively. “See? A new crisis already!”
There was no slowing her down. She drove as recklessly as she wrote, and all he could do was hold on.
A soundtrack of ear-piercing break-up songs accompanied them as they shot through Hidden Cove like a rogue cannonball. Not even a stale yellow could stop them. A semi-trucklumbering down the road like a prehistoric beast nearly clipped them; Carla only rolled her eyes and gave the driver the finger. She slowed for exactly one stoplight and only because both lanes in front of her were blocked by law abiding drivers, to whom Jack probably owed his life.
“Where are we going?” he asked, taking advantage of the relative silence while they waited. He combed a hand through his hair and withdrew it, immediately defeated; the wind had whipped it into snarls with the efficiency of an eggbeater.
The engine revved.
“I dunno,” she said, grinning at him. “Wherever the road takes us.”
“Uh,” said Jack, struggling to recall exactly which highway led to Hidden Cove and where else it went. “I’m not really familiar with the area.”
“Right,” Carla snorted. “Tourist.”
“Not willingly,” he grumbled.
She laughed, loud and carefree. Some of the other drivers turned to stare at her. She paid them no heed, gaze locked on Jack as she waited for his reaction. “Aw, come on. It’s a nice town.”
“Maybe with more than one dollar and fifty cents in my pocket.”
‘Well, yeah. How’d you lose your wallet, anyway?”
“I left it on the train."
“And they don’t have it?”
“The clerk says he doesn’t.”
“I bet he’s fucking lying,” said Carla. Her sunglasses slid down her nose so that he could see the amusement in her eyes when she turned to look at him.
“I think he’s just an asshole.”
“A lying asshole,” she said, pulling onto the highway entrance ramp. The convertible launched into traffic at eighty miles an hour, slotting between a semi-truck and a station wagon with practiced ease.
Jack exhaled slowly. “Who taught you to drive?”
“The same person who taught me to write, apparently,” she groaned. “Ever ask yourself why you’re so judgmental?”
“I’m not,” he snapped. At her expression, he added, “I’m really not. I’m just… really fucking scared.”
“Yeah,” she scoffed. “Me, too. But you need to trust me. We can’t work together if we don’t trust each other.”
“Then slow down!” he shouted over the sound of yet another break-up song. What was this station? Heartbreak Only 101? “You’re fucking scaring me!”
To her credit, their speed dropped from ninety-five miles per hour back down to a leisurely eighty. “Sorry,” she said, reaching for the dial and cutting the music short. “I really wanted to get out of there.”
“Me, too,” said Jack, taking a relieved breath. “But I’d like to be alive for that part.”
She shook her head. “I already told you. It doesn’t matter! But fine, I’ll slow down. I can see that’s important to you.”
“Thank you,” he said, closing his eyes and leaning back in the seat, willing his pulse to slow.
“You know how to drive?”
He opened his eyes. “Kind of. I have a license.”
