Chapter 20
EVERETT
A bsolutely insane.
Completely maniacal.
I definitely wasn’t living to see nineteen.
Jahnvi at the wheel was the scariest experience ever. She drove like someone running from the police, with absolutely no disregard for others. We had almost hit like twenty students just trying to get out of the parking lot. Her excuse was a hissed, “Well, they were in my way!”
She would be any lawyer’s nightmare.
I didn’t want her to lose her confidence or anything, t hough, because I know it’s really annoying to have someone yelling at every little mistake you make. So, I just gripped the side of my seat and put on a thin smile, hoping she couldn’t sense that I was ready to pee my pants at any second.
If someone gave her a license, the world was doomed.
“Okay, and take this turn?” she asked.
“Yup, that’s the highway we need to get on.”
“This turn?”
“Yeah.”
“So, I turn now?”
I gripped the seat even tighter and had to fight such a strong urge to reach over and turn the wheel for her. I managed to get out a strained, “Yup. Just like the sign says and how I said like twenty times now. Please turn now .”
She glared at me and yanked on the wheel.
I was thrown against the window with a sharp turn. The world was silent for one second when all I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. Everything returned slowly when I managed to peel myself off the window and relax back into the street.
Now, for merging.
“Jahnvi. Jahnvi!”
“Huh! What?”
I pointed to the dashboard. “Turn signal. Have you ever merged onto a highway before?” That was meant to be a joke. Granted, it didn’t sound like one because my voice was shaking from the fear, but it was just a joke. I didn’t at all expect what she said next.
“Uhhh.” She glanced at me and laughed. “So, funny thing. I actually...haven’t? My dad never let me; told me to figure out how to drive on small roads first. But! I’ve seen other people do it a lot. It can’t be too hard.”
My hands tightened around my seat even more.
“Okay, very simple,” I started explaining quickly since there wasn’t much time.
“Your turn signal is already on; that’s step one.
Take a look to your left and see if there are any cars near you, but they are supposed to allow you to merge on.
Look, the car already slowed down for you, so just keep going. ”
“Oh, just keep merging?”
“Yup, good. Now turn the signal off and speed up. You’re twenty under the speed limit right now.”
After an aggressive swerve, she made it onto the highway.
I also told her to switch into the middle lane so that she didn’t have to worry about others merging.
Once she was in the middle and cruising, she suddenly looked at me for a second, her mouth in a wide smile that showed every single one of her front teeth.
Her hands were still gripping the wheel for dear life, and she was hunched forward uncomfortably, proving that she was still horrified.
But she was smiling.
“OMG, Everett, look at that! Now, that wasn’t so hard.”
“Right, I bet the twenty people who almost lost their lives today because of you disagree,” I joked, leaning forward to grab the phone off its little holder on the dash. We didn’t need the GPS for another thirty minutes.
But of course, Jahnvi didn’t agree with me.
“But what if we miss it?”
“We won’t. Promise. I’ll turn it back on in a few minutes. I need to save my data.”
“But what if you forget.”
“I won’t though.”
“But what if!”
“Then we’ll notice eventually, pull over, and then turn around or something. Relax, Jahnvi. Don’t you trust me?”
She opened her mouth and closed it, and I realized that my question had been a bit too harsh.
An awkward silence lapsed in the car, and I pulled open Insta on my phone to distract me from it.
I wasn’t paying attention as I was scrolling because I was thinking about a week earlier.
When I had asked Jahnvi the same question in my bedroom. “Do. You. Trust. Me?”
Then one thought led to another, and I suddenly found myself thinking about a year earlier, back to that night in this very truck.
I thought about the kiss.
And that led me to think about her, and how she’d looked that night. How she’d felt that night under my fingertips. I had already told her before that that wasn’t my first kiss. That wasn’t a lie; I had kissed others before. And as cliché as this sounds, there was no other way to put it.
She was different.
I didn’t know if it was because of how well I knew her or something else, but that kiss was different. Nothing had ever lit me on fire the way I’d felt when her lips clashed with mine that night.
Clashed is the right word.
Not molded or melted like I’d heard girls describe it. Once she was over the initial shock, our lips had clashed against each other in a mix of want and desire. In that moment, I swear I could feel how much she’d wanted me.
But I must have been wrong.
The next day when I saw her, she completely avoided me.
I’d given her a quick smile across the hall when I caught her staring at me, her finger playing with her lips, but she’d whipped her head away immediately.
In class, she threw a few hostile words at me when she’d gotten a higher score on something, and that was the end of that.
But that kiss was something I never really let go.
And now she was sitting in my car again, so close that I could smell that flowery shampoo she must have used. I couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.
“Everett...Everett!”
“Mmm?” I blinked myself out of the trance I had fallen into and looked over at her. “What is it?”
“I asked if I should pull over so you can drive.”
I checked my watch. “Jahnvi, it’s only been fifteen minutes.”
She huffed, eyes still carefully on the road. “But I’m getting kinda tired. This is kinda boring.”
I rolled my eyes and opened the glove compartment. “Here.” I fished around for a box of gum and handed her a piece. “To keep you awake. If you drive all the way there, I promise that I can drive on the way back.”
She chewed on her gum for a second before speaking softly. “Have you noticed that you say the word promise a lot?”
My hand froze halfway as I was putting gum in my mouth. I looked over at her, not knowing what to say.
She glanced over at me for a quick second, smiling. “Sorry, I don’t know how I’d respond to that either.”
“No, you’re right. I guess I do make a lot of promises. I always keep them though,” I chewed, contemplating. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Why are you so hell-bent on learning how to drive?”