Chapter 8
EVERETT
W e didn’t get home soon, not even close. Do you wanna know why? Since I was so busy running around trying to find flowers that weren’t completely wilted or cost so much I’d have to sell a kidney, I had forgotten to get gas.
“Why are we slowing down?” Jahnvi sat up. She had been looking at the sunset in a tired stupor. Well, whatever tired feeling she was feeling was going to vanish the second I broke the news to her.
“Well, that’s a funny story.”
“W-what do you mean?”
“We”—I pulled to the shoulder of the highway as we puttered to a stop and put the blinkers on—“are out of gas.”
“Out of gas?”
“Yup. It’s all right. I’m gonna call...hey, a-are you okay?”
Jahnvi’s eyes had gone wide, and her fingers clenched the edges of her hoodie. “Oh. My. God. We’re going to die!”
“Oh my—Jahnvi!” I shook her by the shoulders as she kept hyperventilating. “Jahnvi! Look. Look at me! We’re going to be fine.”
“No we’re not! It’s almost dark!” She pointed at the sinking sun, nearly taking my head off with her hand.
“Okay? And what happens when it’s dark? Do we immediately blow up if we’re out past dark?
Ow!” She whacked my shoulder and shot daggers at me with her eyes.
I grabbed both of her shoulders to shut her up.
“Listen, I have a friend who lives nearby. I’m gonna call him and we’ll get this sorted out.
Text your parents that you’ll be late while I call my friend, okay? ” I stepped out to call my buddy.
My hand hovered over the green call button. I hadn’t seen him in person for a while, and the last time I saw him was—
A story for another time when I wasn’t freezing on the side of a highway.
“Hey, Manny—”
“ Everett? Fuck, I haven’t heard your voice in years now. How are you, man?” His voice caused my stomach to twist. It was even more painful to have to explain to him that I was stranded on the side of the highway because I’d forgotten to gas up my truck.
I’d already taken advantage of him enough.
And this instance was no different. Before I could get two words in edgewise, I could already hear him grabbing his keys while reassuring me it would only be a quick minute before he would get here.
But of course, Miss Spoiled Princess of Fragrance Spice Kitchen couldn’t handle that. I was almost immediately pelted with an array of questions as soon as I opened the car door.
“Who are you calling? Do you really trust him? I mean, if you don’t know him well, then he might even be a murderer sharpening his sharpest axe for our throats. How far away does he live? What are you guys going to do when he gets here? Like—”
“Oh my god, Jahnvi, please!” I rested my head on the back of my seat. “Could you like, shut up? For just one second?”
As soon as I said it, I mentally slapped myself.
But like, it wasn’t my fault! It was just Jahnvi.
It was the way her spoiled nature peeked out at times.
Though neither of us have siblings, she was raised like the perfect only child, with everything she needed, if not more.
She always shows up to school with the fancy markers and pencils, her clothes perfectly clean and of the newest fashion.
Not that I hate rich people. But I hate rich people.
Respectful as always, she never tried to show it off.
But her snobbiness always found a way to shine.
It was always the fact that she expected everyone to answer her questions all the time.
Everyone needed to bare their inner souls to her or else she’d get peeved. Everything needed to go right, always.
But it wasn’t her fault.
It’s the way she was raised, that’s all. It was just hard to remember that sometimes.
“Are you cold?” I asked, even though the answer was obvious. She was shivering so much that I could swear the car was shaking. However, she was too stubborn to admit it.
Well, for five seconds anyway.
“Um, yeah. Do you have an extra coat? Oh! You don’t have to—” She cut off when I took off my jean jacket and threw it over to her. It was probably still warm. She didn’t have any complaints as she quickly slid it on and gave one last shiver as the warmth hit her.
Oh. Something about my jacket on her...did things to me deep down.
It was almost a painful feeling again. But this feeling, I didn’t resent it. I didn’t resent it at all. In fact, I wanted to keep feeling it.
There was only one problem: I didn’t even know what that feeling was.
“Jahnvi?”
“Hmm?” She had tucked her legs underneath my jacket as well so her whole body was underneath it. It was annoying her stubborn inner self, the fact that she was wearing my coat and that she wasn’t willing to take it off. I could tell because she wasn’t meeting my eyes.
“His name is Manny,” I explained and, just as I expected, that caught her attention. She looked up at me and my heart gave another twitch.
Indigestion?
“The friend you called?”
“Yeah.” I nodded and drummed my fingers on the cold wheel. “He runs an auto shop about thirty minutes away. I’ve known him since I was born and, um, he was around when, well, at a time I needed some help. So, very trustworthy. Definitely not an axe murderer, promise.”
She nodded, absentmindedly fingering the collar of my coat around her shoulders. It made me focus on her slim fingers and hot pink nails. She had painted them herself, I could tell very easily. It was uneven, touching the skin on the sides of her nails in many places.
“I’m...sorry,” she said, but quietly that I would’ve missed it if it weren’t for the dead-silent highway.
I shook my head. “You don’t need to apologize. I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
“You sure?”
A car zoomed past us. The temporary flash of light illuminated her face. She was smiling slightly to herself. “I’m positive. I know I’m...nosy.”
“ Re -ally? I have no clue where you got that from.”
She was laughing now. “Hey! That’s mean.”
“No, really! Whoever told you that, J?” I smiled down at her, trying to get her to laugh more. My smile vanished as soon as I noticed her laughter had almost immediately died down. Her hand went back to rubbing the jean jacket collar and her eyes were somewhere else again.
Shoot, what did I say?
“You know KJ?” she asked, almost whispering.
“Of course I know KJ.” He and I had been friends since middle school. He was one of those people who was always jovial; you know, the life of the party at every moment.
“I think he was the one who told me first, in middle school. We were working on a project and out of nowhere, he said, ‘Jahnvi, you’re so nosy and bossy!’ I think I cried about it to my mom that night.” She smiled, I guess thinking about the memory.
I mean, KJ did hate her. Well, he said he hates her, but he’s wrong.
People hate people when they’ve done something horrible to them, but Jahnvi has never done anything even slightly rude or mean to KJ, ever.
She just isn’t his type, and therefore he hates her.
He’s one of those guys where a girl only exists in his world if she fits his type.
And his type was the total opposite of what Jahnvi was.
He liked girls who were blond, White, and laughed at his stupid jokes about either porn or poop. Those were the only two things he ever talks about.
“I mean, you know KJ. He’s stupid; I had to explain to him that I could still be Christian even though I was brown.” I shrugged as a pathetic attempt to brush it off. KJ was a jerk.
“You know what’s even funnier?” She looked up at a distant streetlight and its yellowish light.
“I actually ended up starting to ‘like’ him after that, whatever ‘like’ means to a middle schooler. I’d try to wear dresses and let my hair down to get his attention.
I even laughed at his stupid sex jokes because for some reason, I needed him to notice me.
I needed to please his standards or whatever because I knew I wasn’t good enough for him. But he never did pay attention.”
“What made you stop trying to get his attention?” I asked quietly after a little.
“Another boy,” she said simply. It was in a tone that clearly told me that I shouldn’t probe further. And so I didn’t.
“Jahnvi?”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck KJ and his stupid blond girls. I don’t even think he showers, so you wouldn’t even wanna get within a five-foot radius of him.”
She laughed again and, strangely, I realized that that was what I was trying to achieve with my words. That was my goal—to make her laugh. She looked back up at me. “He really doesn’t shower?”
“Nope. I also don’t think he knows what laundry is either. Let me tell you, his stench is so, so bad. I don’t know how you’ve never noticed.”
She threw her head back as a cascade of giggles burst from her, and my smile grew; there wasn’t a single thing I could’ve done about it. Her laughs were some of the most contagious things I’d ever heard.
And to my shocking realization, I was ready to do anything to hear them.