“I don’t think I could even if I wanted to,” I mumble, admitting my current nervous breakdown.
“I’ll be there in ten,” he says with an audible smile.
My stomach flips upside down and I take up speed as I pace around my room, biting my nails. I guess I could expect that. The Varner mansion is basically on the other side of the woods from the suburbs where I live.
“Are you still there?”
“Yeah. I’m here,” I say weakly.
“You sound nervous.”
Oh really.
“You called me at midnight and now you’re driving to my house. What exactly did you expect?”
“Actually something likedon’t comeorgo to hell. Something like that.”
“I can still say that.”
“Please don’t,” he says softly.
My breath gets shallow, my brain too hypnotized by the sound of his voice.
He seemed so cold at the event and now he’s so different. As if he had some mask there and now it’s off. As if he feels comfortable about this too, but also doesn’t know how to act around me either.
“Don’t park right outside my house, okay?” I say. “Just park at the next one.”
“Am I getting you in trouble? Are you getting out the window? Should I come and catch you?”
I chuckle under my breath. Now it looks like I have one of those strict parents when it’s actually the opposite.
“I just don’t want to wake up my mom, that’s all.”
“Okay, and,” he pauses, then adds, “The window?”
“Stay in the car,” I reply through a grin.
“Understood.”
Another moment of silence, every second stretching into quiet comfort.
“I’m here,” he says.
I gulp as I hang up and take an oversized sweatshirt, just so I’m not in the tank top that is showing way too much for my liking. The sleep shorts will do. It’s summer and it’s just for a moment.
I open my bedroom door slowly so it doesn’t creak and take the stairs, knowing exactly where to put my feet so I don’t make a sound. I grab some sneakers by the door and take the back garden exit, since the main door is too loud. I slip out into the garden and ridiculously crawl over the fence made of low bushes, tripping and catching myself on all fours.
Perfect.
I hope he didn’t see that. It was way too embarrassing for me to acknowledge that it happened. But the moonlight is quite bright so it’s possible I just made a good show.
Then I see the car. Big and black and the only one with the lights on. That’s him.
I walk toward it, open the passenger door, and get in, shutting the door behind me without looking at him yet.
The scent of cardamom, leather and a hint of cigarettes suddenly swallows me, making it feel like I just entered some highly intoxicating universe of his.
I take a second before I look at him. I need it.
