CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"Faith, the light was red." Avery said as we glided beneath the traffic lights.

The machinery worked with me to keep the car moving steadily on the road. There wasn't much traffic. In a town as small as ours, there rarely ever was.

"No, it was turning red." I refused to let Avery's lack of confidence in me shake my resolve. I've seen life after death, so I know with full confidence that I have nothing left to lose.

Plus, I knew how to be cautious behind the wheel. I remembered what they talked about in the driving course I took a few months ago.

I watched the speedometer so that it never ventured outside the speed limit, and I checked my mirrors at all times.

"I'm pretty sure it was already red when you went through it."

Unfortunately, these courses were only equipped to teach you technical things. There were other skills that were more naturally obtained, like fluidity.

I knew when the car was supposed to move and how much space to leave between me and the person in front of me before stopping. But being able to perform these actions gracefully was a different obstacle altogether. 

"Aiden messaged me," she continued. Her phone screen brought some light back inside the dark interior of the car.

"What did he say?"

"He wants to know if we have a bottle for tonight."

I turned off the main road and onto a side street. "We have my bottle."

"But that's ours." She made it sound like this fact was supposed to be obvious. "He can just have some of whatever Nathan's drinking."

The hour was growing late. Every house we passed was even darker than the last. Families were turning in for the evening, anticipating the dawn of yet another day.

I couldn't allow myself to think that far ahead. The hope that I felt was only barely keeping me alive.

Tomorrow, for me, could be the end of the world. Especially if things continued to unravel the way they had so far.

"Okay," I replied. And I was willing to leave it at that.

But it didn't seem like Avery was done discussing the matter. "It's not like he deserves it anyway."

"He gets mad at me all the time."

"What do you mean?"

She sighed. "It's the same thing every time. We start talking again, just as friends. And after a while, he starts being weird."

"Eventually he tells me how much he likes me, and I have to remind him that we're just friends." She put emphasis on the last few words. "Then we stop talking for a little while until he decides he's ready to come back and do it all over again."

"How long did he stop talking to you this time?"

"It's been like three weeks, I think."

I only knew pieces of Aiden. From stories told by Julian during our nights together. And things I had gathered about him through the grapevine. So this was an entirely different narrative for me.

"Okay, you're gonna wanna slow down," Avery said. My foot moved from the gas. "It's this green house right up here."

"So what about Chase, then?" The car slowed to stop at the curb in front of his house. "Does he still have a crush on you?"

I joked. "I hope not." She cringed. "He's got even less of a chance than Aiden does."

She texted Chase, we waited patiently in the hum of the engine. The cool breeze pouring from the vents made the humidity in the air feel lighter.

Above us, the charcoal clouds were slowly dispersing. I could see, through the windshield, as the sky's canvas smoothed back to its original state.

A figure made its way closer to the driver's side window. At first, I thought it was Chase. But unless Chase was a blonde woman in her late thirties, something wasn't right.

I turned over to look at Avery in the passenger seat, but her gaze was already on me; the expression on her face was identical to mine.

My lips parted, but I didn't even know what to say. I moved my hand to the switch, unwillingly, and cracked the glass just enough for conversation.

"Oops. I'm sorry. Wrong car." The woman apologized when she finally saw us. She pulled back the money in her hand and walked away without saying another word.

We were quiet for a moment. Neither of us really seemed to know how to process this current event. But then, like she was my reflection, Avery erupted into a fit of laughter just as I had.

"There's no way that just happened." Avery gasped for a breath.

My stomach hurt— the good kind of hurt. "That's crazy."

Sometimes, in moments like these, I'd see the faintest glimpse of the person I was before all of this. Before heartbreak and distractions, when moving through the world, purposelessness felt so natural.

But the vision was always temporary. I couldn't erase my memory of what his love felt like, even if none of it was ever real.

"I guess everybody's buying weed tonight." I said, once the laughter finally left me.

"Faith, she wasn't buying weed." Avery's brows creased. "She was definitely getting something stronger than that."

Honestly, she probably wasn't wrong. For a town that was a whole lot of nothing, we sure did have a really high crime rate.

Chase took his time walking from the sidewalk to my car. "That's him, right?" After what happened, I couldn't be too sure.

Avery nodded. But instead of going to the driver side, like we both anticipated, he made a detour towards where she was sitting.

She sighed, "Of course he'd come over here," rolling the window down.

"What's up?" He asked, trading his small plastic bag for her twenty-dollar bill.

I could tell that he was older than us, but not by how many years, for sure. He had a stocky build beneath his stained t-shirt, and there was a shine in his hair that resembled grease.

"It was good seeing you." He tried again at Avery.

Her round lips flattened into a pity smile as she rolled the window back up. The contents of the bag filled the car, even from inside the plastic. I shifted the gear into drive, letting Charles grow smaller behind us, and headed for home.

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