“Jesus Christ,” he laughed, sounding impressed. “Okay, I’ll just take a nap. You have fun.”
“Don’t you dare!” I scolded.
We’d eventually come to an intersection, a street light, or a pedestrian. Plus, he worked the gas.
“Can we go faster?” I asked.
I’d been tensing and concentrating so hard, I wanted to be thrilled.
He shifted and accelerated, and if my count was right, we were in fourth or fifth gear.
“It’s pretty straight for the next couple of minutes,” he told me. “You want some music?”
I thought about it, realizing I could feel us running over the reflectors, and I didn’t necessarily need to hear them.
“Okay.”
He turned on his stereo, “Go to Hell” playing, and I relaxed back into him, my heart beating hard with the speed but still studying every little bump underneath us to keep us on the road.
An engine started to rumble from farther off, and the ground under me shook a little harder. What was that?
I turned my head to check with him, but all of a sudden, the wind whipped past us and a loud horn blared as a truck, I thought, zoomed right past us.
I gasped, feeling the car shake with the draft, and my hands shook on the wheel, feeling the reflectors underneath the right tires again. “Holy shit!”
I laughed, and I felt his body shake with his own laughter behind me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I barked but smiled. “We could’ve died!”
“Fun, huh?”
Asshole jerk.
And yes, it was fun.
“Ready for more?” he taunted.
“Yes.” I bit my bottom lip, butterflies still swarming my stomach, but I couldn’t stop.
“In a minute, you’re going to jerk the wheel to nine-o’clock,” he explained. “I’m not going to slow down.”
“What?”
“In three…two…”
“Wait, you said I had ‘a minute’!” I yelped.
“One!” he shouted in my ear. “Go!”
“Fuck…” I cried out, jerking the wheel left to nine o’clock and gasping. “You!”
The car skidded, bouncing and barreling over the pavement and onto a gravel road, and I felt his hand cover the top of my head as our bodies were thrown side to side, my skull damn near hitting the roof.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God…”
He down shifted. “Straighten out,” he told me.
I did, breathing faster than a bullet as he shifted again and sped up, both of us charging into the night, down an unlit gravel road, to whatever tree we were going to wrap this car around.