“About a year ago,” he said. “She’d been sitting on someone’s property for years and needed a lot of work.” He glanced over at me. “But she was worth the effort.”
“She’s beautiful,” I said. He looked down and away, but not quick enough to hide his smile. I didn’t know shit about cars, but I knew a nice one when I saw it. “Does she have a name?”
“Name?” His brow furrowed for a moment. “No, I…I’ve never been into naming inanimate objects. It’s not good to get attached to possessions.”
He put the car into gear, backing out of the garage. He pulled out of the yard onto the dirt road, parking for a moment while he closed and locked the gate. We bumped slowly along the dirt before we turned onto Route 15, the engine growling aggressively as Manson picked up speed.
The streetlights flashed overhead as I watched him out of the corner of my eye, trying not to make it obvious. The muscles in his arm were taut as he moved the gearshift, eyes focused on the road.
“Do you wanna see how fast she can go?” he said, his expression turned mischievous.
I pulled my seatbelt tighter, bracing myself. “Oh, hell yes.”
He accelerated, the force of it pressing me back into my seat. The engine roared so loud it drowned out my laughter as he sped down the road. The wind whipped through the open windows, and we passed the turn for my house in the blink of an eye. Our speed reached 90…100…110. I braced my hands against the metal bars encircling the cab, my heart in my throat as we flew down the open road.
“Holy shit, Manson!” I shrieked as he downshifted, wrenchingthe wheel as the tires squealed. The back end of the car slid out in a half-circle before he straightened out, our speed climbing again as he took the narrow twisting road that led up into the hills behind the gated community of Wickeston Heights.
He was smiling wide as he whipped through the road’s curves. It was no wonder he’d fallen in love with this: the speed, the power, the freedom. He brought us to the crest of the hill and pulled off to the side, the tires crackling in the dirt. There was a lookout here with a view of the town, and he parked right next to the large boulders guarding the edge of the hillside.
“You know, coming up to the lookout with someone usually means you’re trying to get lucky,” I said. People had been coming up here for years with the sole intent to have sex, hotbox their vehicles, drink, or generally be degenerates.
“I think having you in my car at all is pretty lucky,” he said. The sincerity of his words caught me off guard, and I shifted in my seat, staring at the distant lights. This feeling was almost sad, but too full of desire to be melancholy.
Was I just tired and overthinking? There was something about the way he was looking at me that made me feel like I couldn’t get enough air despite the open windows. I wasn’t supposed to feel like this. This soft vulnerability. Thisneedthat had nothing to do with sex. This wasonlysupposed to be about sex, nothing more.
Why did it feel like there was more?
He spoke before I could. “Let’s go see the view.”
We got out and joined each other at the front of the car. He leaned against the hood, hands inside the pockets of his hoodie as he looked out at the twinkling lights below. I leaned beside him, the metal warm through Jason’s oversized pants. Wickeston looked a lot prettier from up here — all glittering lights spread out in the darkness. The breeze picked up and made me shiver a bit, and I glanced over as Manson unzippedhis jacket.
“Here, you must be cold,” he said, ushering me closer. He pulled me to his chest, and I leaned against the hood between his legs as he pulled the jacket around both of us. His chin rested on my shoulder, his hands finding mine beneath the jacket.
He pressed lightly on the pad of my middle finger, and I said, “The heart healed. No scar.”
“You sound disappointed,” he said.
“I guess I hoped it would scar,” I admitted. “I liked looking at it. It made me feel like…I don’t know.” I shrugged sheepishly. “It made me feel like maybe I’d been forgiven. At least before I went and fucked things up again.”
It wasn’t easy to admit; I hated to say I was wrong. People would take advantage of that. If you gave them even an inch, one single moment of weakness, they’d find a way to wield it over you. Pride kept me safe. It was a barrier I’d thought no one could breach.
Oh, how incorrect I’d been.
“I know that probably sounds really hypocritical of me,” I said, as his silence drew out. I needed him to say something, anything. It felt like such a silly thing to admit that a little cut on my finger made me feel so much. If I’d tried to tell that to anyone else in my life, they would have laughed or been disgusted, horrified, maybe even concerned.
“I think we’re all hypocrites, in one way or another,” he said, and his arms tightened around me. “As we grow up and figure out who we are, sometimes our thoughts change before our behavior does. It’s not pretty, and it can be fucked up, but we’re not perfect. We’ve all done it.”
“Yeah?” My voice sounded far more timid than I wanted. “You’ve done it too?”
“I…well, fuck…” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Once I met this girl, and I thought she was the most beautiful womanI’d ever seen. But I wasn’t good enough for her, you know…I was a mess and didn’t know how to talk to anyone. I was always in my own head just trying to get through another day.”
I swallowed hard, thankful for the jacket’s warmth. I knew this story and it wasn’t easy to hear, but I needed to.
“I think I should have hated that girl,” he said, but he didn’t sound hateful at all. “Because she was always with the same people who hurt me, and she stood for everything I didn’t. Perfection, popularity, beauty…she was part of the system that rejected me. She was what we all were supposed to aspire to be, or to have.” He turned his head, so his cheek rested on my shoulder and he was facing away from me. “But I didn’t hate her, Jess. Never. Not even once. I don’t think I could, even if I tried, even if I wanted to.”
There were parts of myself that only existed because people wanted them, parts of me designed entirely to please people who didn’t even care in the end. I’d thought it would be easier that way, but it didn’t feel easy at all. It felt like I’d ripped myself in two pieces and couldn’t make any of the edges match up again.
“You should probably hate her,” I said. “Because it sounds like she deserves it.”