Chapter 3 #3
Thane shakes his head and removes his shoes. “For the record, I think this is a bad idea.”
“I know. But it’s the best we’ve got.”
Thane climbs his six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound body onto my back. He places one foot over my shoulder blades, and one foot on my pelvis. Immediately my knees and hands groan under the extra weight.
“Hurry!” I grunt. “I may not last long!”
“Don’t make me laugh!” Thane protests, wiggling his weight back and forth to loosen the window.
My knees dig into the cement. My palms throb. I close my eyes tightly and do my best to keep the pain reined in. The last thing I want is for Thane to know that I’m struggling. Still, I can feel every movement he makes, and my arms are buckling.
“Is it open?” I cry from my hands and knees.
“I think I got it!” he shouts, making one last tug.
He hops down off my back, and I let out a sigh of relief. I ease up slowly and brush off my sore hands and knees. Thane grabs my hands and turns them over.
“Your hands are all red!” he says with concern in his eyes.
“I’m fine,” I insist, even though I want to whimper as I brush little tiny rocks from my skin. “Please tell me this worked.”
“Oh, it totally worked. Now we just need to get in there and get the keys.” He crouches down, clasping his hands together to give me a boost.
“Wait, what are you doing?”
“There’s no way I’ll fit through that,” he replies, tipping his head toward the half-open sunroof. “Now it’s my turn to give you a boost.”
I shake my head. “I don’t like this one bit.”
“We’re committed to it now. Come on,” he says, “we’ve already wasted so much time.”
He knows exactly how to convince me: refer to the schedule we’re currently behind on. I glance down at his hands, then up into his espresso eyes. He nods in reassurance, and before I know it, I’m placing a very reluctant foot into his hands.
Thane lifts me up onto the roof of the car like I weigh nothing, and because I don’t like the idea that my very curvy, Puerto Rican butt is in his face, I straighten my knee quickly, launching myself head-first into the sunroof window. I’m dangling half in and half out, but fully humiliated.
The day I had hoped for vanished before my eyes.
When I woke up this morning, I imagined a relaxing, first-class flight to Amethyst Lake, where I’d be greeted by the sound of the waves lapping at the dock.
I’d sway lazily with a book in the hammock by day, and sip a cocktail by the fire pit at night while I watched the fireflies dance in the twilight.
What I didn’t picture was myself hanging halfway out of a sunroof by my waist in front of Thane Donnelly, while he laughed hysterically at my plight.
“Thane! This is not funny!” I shout upside down from inside the car.
“Oh yes it is!” he says between laughs, pulling out his phone.
“Don’t you dare take photographic evidence of this or I’ll make you wish you were never born!” I threaten pathetically. I look around to plan my descent, but everywhere in that tiny coffin on wheels looks like a rough landing.
Thane doubles over in laughter after taking several pictures from different angles, leaving me solo to figure out how to lower into the car without landing on my head.
After a few minutes of panicking, yelling at Thane, and careful consideration of the best way to proceed, I wedge my hands onto the seats and slowly lower into the car.
After most of my weight shifts from the roof to the inside of the car, my arms collapse underneath me, and I fold up like a cheap lawn chair between the front and back seats.
By the increase in volume of Thane’s laugh and subsequent filming, I know that I look as ridiculous as I feel.
“I’m going to shave your eyebrows off in your sleep, Thane Donnelly!” I yell from beneath my tangled-up body.
“It would be worth it!” he hollers from outside, taking another photo.
I squirm, adjust, and squirm some more. I right myself, lean over the back seat, and grab my purse. I jingle the keys at Thane through the window and scramble into the driver’s seat before I hit the unlock button.
“Wait, I thought I was driving,” he protests.
“Well, by the time we reach the city, rush hour will be over. And after that fiasco, I think I’ve earned some time in the captain’s chair,” I reply, doing my best to fix my off-kilter bun and smeared lipstick.
Thane unlocks his phone and turns it around to face me. There on his home screen is my butt hanging out of the sunroof. He smiles at it and chuckles to himself like someone who laughs at his own jokes. “I think I got your most photogenic side, Pidge.”
I shoot daggers out my eyes at him.
He waves the white flag of the moment. “You know what? I think you’re right. You’ve definitely earned it. I’ll co-pilot for the first leg,” he says, opening his GPS and handing over his phone. “You pick the route, I’ll pick the music.”
I sigh, select the route, and put the car in reverse.
“You know the good thing about this morning?” I ask after a few miles.
“What’s that?”
“When you start a trip off as horribly as we have, it can only go up from here.”