“No, thanks!” I keep walking, my body protesting my words with a shiver.
“If you don’t get in, I’m just going to drive along next to you like this. You can get rid of me a lot quicker if you let me drive you home.”
I wonder how cold it needs to be for someone’s brain to stop functioning properly, because my legs start to carry me in the direction of his truck against my will. It’s like my body wants so badly to be warm that it’s overruling my decision to stay out here in the cold. I climb into the passenger side of his truck and roll the window up. He has the heat cranked up, so the cab of his truck is toasty. I hold my hands over the vents, allowing the warm air to thaw my frozen fingers.
“What was that ridiculous dance you were doing out there?” He looks me over as he pulls back onto the road. “You’re not even wearing headphones. Were you just dancing to the sound of the traffic?” He smirks.
I cross my arms, already regretting my decision to get in his truck.
“It’s a good thing I picked you up when I did,” he continues. “You’re a terrible dancer. You would have caused an accident from all the traffic veering off the road just to get away from you.”
“I was trying to stay warm,” I mumble.
“It’s been a while since we’ve had a chance to have a conversation, just the two of us,” he says. I eye him distrustfully from my side of the vehicle. “How have you been? Still working as a glorified secretary?”
Of course he would ask about my job on the day I’ve been fired. It’s like the universe is out to get me, and he always gets the memo that it’s the perfect time to push my buttons. “I was never a secretary,” I say through my teeth. “And as a matter of fact, I don’t work there anymore. I just started my own business.”
“Event planner?”
I look over at him, surprised. He’s never taken my job seriously. He thinks he’s better than me because he’s an app developer like Tina and Ryan, so what I do has never been interesting enough for him to remember. I can’t tell if he actually knows what I do, or if this is just another dig.
“How did you guess?”
“You told me that’s what you wanted to do.” He takes his eyes off the road to look at me. It’s dark inside the truck, so I can only see his face when we pass under a streetlight. “You know, back when we used to be friends.”
I scoff. “We were never friends.”
“Ouch. You’re really mean, you know that?”
I watch my apartment complex through the window as we drive past it. It occurs to me that he has no idea where he’s taking me. A petty part of me wants to see how far he’ll keep going before he realizes he’s gone the wrong way.
“New truck, huh? What kind of gas mileage do you get in this thing?” I ask.
He shrugs. “Not much. Maybe sixteen in the city.”
“Oh.” So, not only will he be wasting time, he’ll be wasting money, too. I wonder briefly if my need to inconvenience him outweighs my concern for the environment. “Turn right up here.”
He does as I say, taking us onto a random street. I have no idea where we are.
“Left here.”
He turns left. We reach a main road, and I tell him to turn right again.
“I can’t believe you were going to walk this whole way,” he says. “You’re out of your mind.”
“I would have been fine. Make another right at the light.”
He pulls up to the stoplight and waits as a pedestrian crosses the road, then turns right.
“Ryan told me you were having dinner with him and Tina tonight,” he says. “I was kind of surprised to see that you weren’t there. Are you avoiding me or something?”
He says this with a smirk, like he’s amused by the thought, and the idea that I might be avoiding him is some sort of prize.
My face flushes. “I had things to do.”
“Sure you did.”
I look at him out of the corner of my eye. He’s staring at me instead of the road. “Keep your eye on the road,” I tell him. “You’re going to get us killed.”
