Meet Me Here - Bryan Bliss Page 0,2
have to face tomorrow morning, when I finally don’t show up at the recruiter’s office. The moment everybody I’ve ever known will mark me as a liar and a coward.
I’m tired of pretending tomorrow isn’t a reckoning. That I’m not scared to death about what I have to do. Every last ounce of pretending inside me is gone.
Will couldn’t know this, of course. Couldn’t know that maybe the only thing he could say that would make me get in the middle of a lovers’ quarrel tonight is “You can go back to the party.”
“Sorry, man.”
I push past him and jump in the truck. He starts banging on my window, telling me he’s going to do all sorts of things to me—that I’ll regret this. Threats without teeth, because as soon as I turn the ignition, his voice pitches up an octave.
“Are you kidding me?”
Will walks with us as I put the truck in gear and slowly pull onto the road. He even runs beside us for a few steps before I get out of first gear. But soon we’re moving too fast and he can’t keep up.
And then it’s just me and Mallory once again.
CHAPTER TWO
These roads are in my blood, and that’s how I drive them: fast, with the windows rolled down. Letting the early-summer air crash into the cab as we pick up speed. I know every turn, every pebble.
And seeing Mallory in the passenger seat, biting the side of her thumb, kicks something alive in my stomach, a strange expectation. It’s hearing your favorite song come on the radio or that first day of summer vacation. This is what our friendship could’ve become. Riding around with the windows down and the radio turned up. I shake my head, trying to focus.
“I shouldn’t have hit him,” she finally says. “That was a mistake.”
“He looked pretty upset,” I say.
She turns to face me, worried. “Like how upset? If you had to rate him from one to ten, what would he be? A five maybe?”
“Five sounds about right,” I say, turning back to the road. But Will was an easy ten, and maybe higher. Whatever she said had him freaked. She nods once, twice.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” she says. “He’ll be fine.”
We’re next to my grandpa’s field, minutes from both our houses, when the headlights first appear behind us, just pinpricks. The car is riding my ass in seconds, then whipping into the left lane. Another dude living out his NASCAR fantasy, I think, slowing down to let him pass. But it’s Will hanging out the window, gesturing wildly and yelling into the wind.
I glance at Mallory. “Do you want me to stop?”
She shakes her head, and I hit the gas; but his friend Jeremy’s new Mustang keeps pace with us easily. Will keeps rising up out of the window, eyeing the truck’s bed like he’s thinking of taking a chance, so I slow down, make the angle more problematic. Every time Will yells for her, Mallory shrinks farther down in the seat.
An oncoming car forces Will and his friend to slingshot behind us. They give me the high beams, ride my bumper. And then he’s right back next to us, tossing out insults at me, my truck. Begging Mallory to hear him.
Jeremy fires his engine and races in front of me, hitting the brakes as soon as they clear my front end. I cut the wheel as I stop but still nearly put us in the ditch. Will jumps out, holding out his hands like he’s trying to feel his way through the night. I’ve got my seat belt off and the door half open when Mallory grabs my forearm and says, “Please don’t.”
“Mallory, get out of the truck,” Will says. “You can’t say something like that and then disappear.”
I expect Mallory to lean out the window and tell him exactly what he can do with himself, but she’s down so low on the seat that I’m not sure she can even see above the dash.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask. “Run them over?”
I’m half smiling at the thought of going monster truck on Jeremy’s car. I try to imagine their faces; the stories people would tell when they saw the twin black streaks of rubber across his hood tomorrow morning. What else could you expect from a night with Mallory? But whatever fueled her boxing display has disappeared. She refuses to look at Will or me, shaking her head rapidly back and forth. Smaller by