The Consequences of a Well-Timed Drive

“You can’t avoid this forever.” Her words break the silence like a hairline fracture in the thin skin of ice between us. The fissure spreads delicately and thoroughly like veins. It won’t support weight now. If we had just ignored it a bit longer, let the quiet deepen, the ice would have been able to withstand some poking and prodding. With even more time it could have thickened in the barren cold until everything underneath was unreachable and could be forgotten. But she wouldn't leave it alone. The sigh I release sounds like aggravation but feels like resignation.

“What do you want me to say, Nel.” She slips off her boots and tucks her legs up underneath herself, hands in her lap. The smell of her wool-socked feet fills the car along with the perfume of whatever she puts in her hair to hold the soft blonde waves that touch her shoulders. Her casual pose is at odds with her pointed observation and my white knuckles on the steering wheel. She seems determined to ignore the puncture she’s created in the semblance of normalcy between us. There will be no more small talk. No more consideration given to the drab, snowless cold. My shoulders gather towards my ears and, when I glance at her for the moment I’ll allow my eyes off the road, she’s staring at me with resolve.

“We won’t be there for another hour at least. I have you stuck here with me so we’re going to talk about this now.” I huff out a bitter laugh. I can't believe I hadn't seen it sooner in the overly eager smiles and furtive laughter. I had been so eager for the easiness of before that I missed it.

“You’ve been planning this ambush, haven’t you? Is your sister even having a party?”

“I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks, Theo. You keep dodging me. Now I have you trapped. So talk to me. Please.” The last word comes out quiet and small and it sneaks in through the cracks in my skin.

“You made yourself perfectly clear to me already Nel. I don’t think there’s much left to say.” I run a hand through my hair, keeping my gaze locked straight ahead. Her eyes burn into me and it takes everything I have not to meet them again. I don't want to know what I’ll see in them if I look.

“Theo. It was a surprise. I was surprised. You didn’t really give me a chance to..”

“That’s enough, Nel,” I interject so she can’t finish her thought. The unavoidable blush threads its way up from my chest to my throat and into my cheeks, my pale skin giving me away like usual. Fear is lodged in my throat, blocking my airway and the words that are attempting to climb out. The car tires devour the road ahead of us and a song plays in the background too softly to identify. Penelope shifts away from me, feet back on the floor, and I feel an oppositional pull in my gut. I’m relieved she’s relented and we might be able to put my indiscretion behind us. Beside that is an immense regret that I am too afraid to pull her close and tell her the truth.

I hazard a glance out of the corner of my eye. She’s staring straight ahead and her face is hard, her eyes far away. She looks distant and alien and I realize the damage I’d hoped to avoid has already been done. In trying to preserve what I was so afraid of losing, I’d done it anyway. We sit, arms nearly touching, but with a gulf growing between us that would soon be insurmountable. It becomes clear that anytime I’d thought I was heartbroken before, I was wrong. Something runs roughshod through my chest, tearing and ripping as it does but the lump in my throat is immovable. Suddenly, Penelope turns back to me.

“Theodore Walter. Pull this car over right now.”

The command lands with such force that I sit up straight like a chastised child. I check my rearview mirror. The road behind is quiet and deserted. The bare trees cut jagged, dark lines across the icy blue winter sky. Her eyes bore a hole in my skull as she waits for me to comply. I slow the car and pull on the shoulder, gravel crunching under the wheels until the car comes to a complete stop. Unsure what to do, I put on the hazard lights and turn off the engine. It’s only then that I turn to her, catching the full weight of her gaze. The heat it builds in me is palpable, made of guilt and desire and embarrassment and anger. She looks and looks, waiting for me to speak but I am mute under her stare.

If she would stop looking at me like that, I could think. If I could think, I would know what to say to her to fix this. Right now, all the words feel wrong, are all patently false except for the honest ones I cannot seem to say.

“That’s it? Ten years we’ve been friends and then you do what you did and then just.. Nothing?! Just “That’s enough, Nel?” Her cheeks are pink and her lips an agonizing red but the blood rushing to her face only highlights her anger. I deserve her ire but can’t help that it rankles me. I run my hand down my face to break the stare, look left, then right, finally landing on my hands still impotently gripping the wheel. The silence that grows between us, no longer solid, crackles with charge until I half expect our hair to stand on end. It’s then that Penelope shifts forward suddenly. Her movement pulls my gaze back to her before she closes the gap between us and kisses me.

It’s so abrupt that we crash into one another and her hands grasp my face like she’s afraid I’ll disappear. It takes only a second of disbelief before I’ve twisted and turned into her, my own hands cradling the sides of her face while my fingers wind their way into the softness of her hair. Our seat belts strain against the pull of our bodies but I won’t stop unless she does. I follow her lead, not willing to make a mistake on this fragile, tenuous ground. She slows and then stops but doesn’t pull away, leaving her hands gently along the sides of my jaw and resting her forehead against mine. I can’t help the smile that spreads my mouth painfully wide. My heart, weary of the acrobatics it’s been put through, stops, stutters, then soars. Our heavy breath mixes between us and she brushes her nose along mine as her eyes drift closed, the corners of her mouth lifting with a satisfied smirk.

“Nel, I..”

“I just needed to be sure Theo.” I pull back a few inches and her eyes open. I sink into their warmth, a deeply rich honey brown I’ve never been able to paint correctly no matter how many times I’ve tried. I’m like an engine turning over, sputtering sounds and the first word of a fleeting thought but unable to organize anything enough to create a coherent sentence. It takes longer than I’d like, partially because her thumb is stroking my cheek, then the lobe of my left ear, then the fullness of my bottom lip like she’s committing me to memory. I take both of her hands in mine and lower them together.

“I want to be clear, Nel. You do not have to..”

“Shut up, Theo,” she says and then her lips are on mine again and I decide we don’t need the words I’m trying to make anyway.