Chapter 15 #2
I catch myself before face-planting on the asphalt only because I wore sneakers rather than heels in anticipation of laser tag. She smiles innocently at me when I glare at her.
“Cool,” Wyatt says, sending me his wide smile, and I follow him to his car while everyone else goes in the other direction. This is officially the first time I’ve been alone with him on our date.
“Thanks for driving,” I say, following him to a shiny blue two-door BMW.
“No problem,” he says, opening the passenger side door for me. I slide into the leather seat and admire just how new this car seems. It even has that new car smell, which I usually love, but right now it just makes my stomach feel unsettled.
Wyatt sinks into his own seat, and the engine roars to life. “Have you got any music requests?” he asks, opening the music app on his phone.
For a second, I consider requesting some of my favorite 80s rock songs from “Emi and Carina’s Ultra Cool and Fun Playlist” but then decide against it in favor of seeing what kind of music he’s into. “Whatever you want is good with me.”
“Awesome,” he says, picking a rap playlist and pulling out of the parking lot. It’s a little too loud to talk, so I just watch the trees go by and enjoy the air from the open windows as we drive.
After two songs I don’t know, my phone vibrates, and Jay’s name pops up on the screen.
Is your possum hairy?
I stifle a giggle since he remembers the code for a terrible date.
It’s not a date that’s sweeping me off my feet, but it’s not terrible.
Surprisingly, no.
I wait for him to reply the entire drive to laser tag, and even when we’re paying and getting our gear on, but he never does.
—
Laser tag was fun. We played three rounds of a free-for-all against strangers, and I won two of them.
In both rounds I won, Wyatt and Emmett acted like they were trying to win, but I knew they let me shoot them to get them out.
Each time they did it just made me more and more annoyed.
Did they think I couldn’t get them out on my own?
Did they think I wouldn’t have been able to win if they didn’t let me laser them?
It took the fun out of the win and felt patronizing—Jay would never do that.
Jay would probably try to get me out first just to piss me off and fire me up for the next round.
I would’ve enjoyed wiping the floor with him and knowing I earned it, not being patronized and allowed to win.
Not earning the win only made the queasiness in my stomach feel worse.
Kalani has been weird all night, and I can’t decide if it’s because the date is going well and she doesn’t like that or if it’s because I got her out in laser tag all three times. Either way, it upsets my stomach even more. She’s my best friend; I shouldn’t feel like throwing up around her.
By 11:00 p.m., we’re all saying goodbye and calling it a night. It’s early for a Friday night, but after dinner and laser tag, I’m excited to go lie in bed with Kevin and a sketchbook.
“Hey, Wyatt,” Emi says as we’re walking through the parking lot, “Emmett was supposed to drive Carina home, but he’s got to make a few stops first. Do you mind doing it?”
“I do?” Emmett asks, but when Emi shoots him a glare, his eyes widen, and he clears his throat. “I mean, I do. Sorry, Carina.”
I clench my jaw to stop myself from calling them out. If this is how they want to “help,” then fine, I’ll let it happen. As long as I’m in bed by 11:30 so this sick feeling can pass.
“Yeah, no problem,” Wyatt says, and I send him a small smile in thanks. As I wave goodbye to everyone, Kalani doesn’t catch my eye or say it back, and my throat tightens.
Like last time, Wyatt opens the car door for me and gently closes it. As he walks around the car, he wipes a smudge on the hood away with his sleeve, and suddenly I wonder if he opens my car door to be chivalrous or because he doesn’t want me to touch his car.
The possibility makes me giggle, and Wyatt sends me a look as he gets in the driver’s seat. “What’s so funny?”
“Just thinking about how easy it was to get you out today,” I recover, hoping for some fun back and forth for the ride home.
“Oh, yeah. You’re so good at laser tag,” he says, sending me a smile, and I resist the urge to groan.
Yes, he’s nice, and yes, he smiles a lot, but he’s just . . . boring. Emi and Daphne are convinced Wyatt is just like Emmett, but has Emmett always been this boring and I’ve never been able to see it?
“Seat belt?” he asks, and I’m hit with déjà vu of every car ride I’ve ever taken with Emmett.
Holy crap. Wyatt really is like Emmett. Which means maybe Emmett is boring. Why have I never seen it before? Have I been ignoring it just because I was so blinded by my unwavering crush, or have I grown as a person?
A pang runs through my stomach, and I wrap my arms around myself.
All night, I’ve been worried about Kalani and Emmett and Wyatt, but I’ve never had my feelings manifest into this many stomachaches before.
I’ve been trying to ignore them all night, but now that I’m alone in the car with Wyatt on the way home, my stomach pain is hard to ignore.
Even my breathing is more labored. I just need to keep cool until I get home, then I can lay in the fetal position in bed and feel better.
Wyatt pulls onto the highway, but even though it’s 11:10 and there’s not much traffic, he’s not driving as fast as I’d like. I want to be home now, and at this rate it won’t be for another ten or fifteen minutes. Maybe some air will help me feel less sick.
I push the button, but the window won’t budge. “Hey, Wyatt, mind if you open my window?”
“Oh yeah, sorry. Forgot it was locked,” he says and presses something, and my window unfurls an inch from the top.
I clutch the side of the door so I don’t yell at him. Through clenched teeth, I ask, “Can you open it all the way?”
“Oh, okay,” he says, and the window rolls all the way down, wind whipping into the car and giving me some much-needed air.
He must sense that I want to get home ASAP, because he pulls into the left lane of the highway—the fast lane. Cars whiz past me, and air flows into the window, but it’s only doing so much for my nausea. I gulp down as much air as I can.
You do not feel sick. You do not feel sick. Everything is okay. Just hold off until you get home.
Chanting to myself with my eyes closed doesn’t help. Nothing seems to help. The shrimp and chocolate cake want out, and they want out now.
“So, Carina . . .” Wyatt starts. I’m not looking at him.
I can’t. I’m too busy trying to breathe, to keep everything down.
He continues, “I had a really great time tonight, and I think we have fun together. Prom’s in two weeks, and I don’t have a date yet .
. . so I was thinking . . . maybe you and I—”
“Pull over,” I interrupt.
“What?”
“Pull over!” I repeat, harsher this time, more urgently.
“Okay?”
The sound of his signal fills the car, but he doesn’t change lanes.
“Now, Wyatt!” I can’t hold it. I can’t. This is going to happen, and it’s going to happen now.
“There’s a white car in my blind spot, I can’t merge yet.”
With shaking fingers, I click off my seat belt.
“What are you do—”
I answer him by leaning out the window while he’s doing a hundred kilometers an hour on the highway and emptying out the entire contents of my stomach.
“My car!” he exclaims, but I tune him out.
I continue puking out the window while Wyatt drives.
I’m mostly sure nothing lands inside the car.
On the car, I’m not too positive, but I’m not too concerned about that right now.
I manage to pull my hair out of my face, and Wyatt finally starts changing lanes to get to the shoulder.
The second the car is slow enough, I open the door and hop out onto the dirt shoulder, continuing puking all my dinner out, and maybe even lunch and breakfast. My throat burns the entire time, tears stream down my face, and my stomach hurts.
This is not how I was supposed to end a “successful” date.
Eventually, I calm down enough to take some deep breaths, and despite the loud noises from the speeding cars on the five-lane highway at my back, it’s eerily quiet. So quiet that it’s hard to ignore. So quiet that I’m almost scared to turn around.
With no other option than my hand, I wipe my mouth and shake it off in the sparse grass.
Even though I don’t want to, I slowly turn to face Wyatt.
He’s standing beside his car, staring at me with an expression that’s part horror and part disbelief.
He’s holding a box of tissues, but it looks like he’s used most of it to wipe off whatever landed on the outside of his car.
I wonder if he pulled over so fast not because I was sick but because he wanted to save his car. The thought makes me laugh.
His face twists into confusion at my giggling, and I step closer to him to pluck the box of tissues from his hand.
I use the rest to clean myself up; all the while, Wyatt stares at me like he’s considering ditching me here.
The thought of him getting in the car to desert me on the side of a busy highway, covered in the remnants of my stomach contents, just makes me laugh harder.
This was supposed to be the successful date.
We got along, he was nice and polite, he seemed interested in me—he was supposed to be my Emmett.
He was even going to ask me to prom! And even though I set out to prove to Kalani that I could have a successful date and was overlooking the dullness of it, I went ahead and ruined it anyway.
I’m pretty sure this is solidifying my chances of never getting a second date with him, or him as my prom date, especially if the way he’s eyeing me right now is any indication.
Kalani is going to love that I screwed this date up even without her interference. I didn’t need her to give fake tips or pay my mortal enemy or pick a drug dealer for the date to not work out. I ruined it all on my own, along with the help of some shrimp, which, looking back, was probably bad.
Once my face and hands and the front pieces of my hair are cleaned up, I shove the dirty tissues into the empty box and send Wyatt a small smile. “Sorry.”
He blinks at me.
And for some reason, that makes me start giggling again.
He’s been boring the entire time, and after I threw up out the window of a moving vehicle on a five-lane highway, he still has nothing interesting to say.
I wonder what Jay would’ve said and done.
Probably more than clean his car before checking on me.
“Did I get any on the inside?” I ask, more so because I feel like that’s what I’m supposed to ask.
He shakes his head and clears his throat. “Um . . . no. Just . . . some on the outside . . .”
“Okay, cool,” I say, closing the distance between us and handing him the tissue box. His jaw drops as he takes it. “Let’s get home before I start up again, yeah?”
Without waiting for a response, I get in the car and shut the door behind me, leaving Wyatt standing outside like he doesn’t remember how to move.
I thought I wanted the date to work out.
I thought I wanted everything to go perfectly.
I thought I wanted to like Wyatt. But I just .
. . don’t care. It’s almost a relief that I ruined his prom date invitation.
I don’t want to go to prom with him. I never wanted to go with a date.
I just wanted to have fun with my friends before we go off to university and life gets hectic.
I’m still unsure how I feel about the chance that Kalani’s purposely setting me up on bad dates, but we’ve been best friends for years, and prom is in two weeks.
We have time to sort it out, and we can go to prom the way we were meant to: as best friends enjoying their time together.
Kalani and Emi might have a problem with me fifth wheeling, but they’re going to have to deal.
I refuse to go on any other dates that they set up.
Any future dates will be ones that I agree to, not feel coerced or guilted into going on.
Wyatt slips into the car, still holding the tissue box, and gently places it on the floor mat in the back seat. At least he doesn’t litter, but that’s totally an Emmett move because Wyatt is just like him.
Wordlessly, Wyatt starts the car and pulls back onto the highway, and we spend the rest of the fifteen-minute drive to my house in awkward silence. And I’m not even mad about it.