Especially the coke-dealing biker guest with the weapon strapped to his leg.
Since I didn’t let her drive, Summer road shotgun and navigated. Which meant she occasionally made judgmental noises about me driving too slow on the dark, winding road, muttered, “Watch out for deer,” a couple times, and generally ignored me while talking to Andre about music again.
He was asking her all kinds of questions about the music she’d played at the party, and I was so clueless about what she did in general, I couldn’t even understand the questions much less the answers.
After they’d gone on for way too long about someone named “Deadmouse” (guesstimated spelling), who I managed to discern was a famous DJ—which meant it was probably spelled with two silent X’s and some binary code in it or something—Summer shouted, “What are you doing?”
I shifted my foot to the brake automatically, slowing down. “Do you really need to shout at me while I’m driving?”
“You missed the turn.” She looked out into the dark of the trees. “Where the hell are we?”
“What do you mean where are we? You’re navigating.”
“This doesn’t look right. You missed the junction.”
“How do you know?” I slowed down a little more, looking into the dark of the trees along the road. There were no signs, no landmarks. “It all looks the same.”
“No. I can feel it. You’ve gone way too far.”
Well, that would explain why this road seemed rougher than it did on the way in. Narrow, and not so well graded. The potholes were everywhere, and we kept bouncing in and out of them. I could barely avoid them.
But since I didn’t trust her driving skills all that much, I was feeling a little dubious on her navigational skills.
“I turned at the junction,” I told her.
“Which junction?”
Okay. Now I was annoyed. “What do you mean, which junction? The one you told me to turn at.”
“Yeah, but then there’s the other one. The little one. You have to watch for it.”
“I definitely didn’t see that. We couldn’t have passed it.” I almost just wanted to argue with her. At least she was paying attention to me.
Yeah. Sad.
But I was getting a sinking feeling. Who the fuck knew if we were about to drive off a cliff out here. I couldn’t see much but black beyond the headlights.
“Did you seriously just get us lost?”
“You’re driving.”
“You’re supposed to be navigating.”
The road was getting worse, and we hit a pothole, bottoming out on the loosely-packed gravel and mess of tree roots that the road was gradually becoming. It made a terrible scraping sound on the bottom of the car.
Andre gave a low whistle, but said nothing.
“Jesus, slow down,” Summer said. As if she hadn’t complained about my slow driving the entire way until now. “You have to go slow.”
“I grew up on the west coast of Canada. Think I know how to drive on a logging road.” We were snaking our way slowly along as I sought out the surest path with the least pits. They were getting harder to make out in the headlights as we bounced around. I flicked the high beams on, just as we hit another one. My molars vibrated and I grit my teeth. “Shit.”
The car rental company was gonna love this.
“You’re gonna get us stuck,” Summer warned.
“The road wasn’t this rough on the way here…” Andre pointed out.
“Because we’re on the wrong road. You need to turn around,” Summer informed me.
I was afraid she was right. I didn’t like her being right about this, even if it was her fault we were lost. “Where did I miss the junction?”
“I don’t know. You’re driving.”
Worst navigator ever.
“Andre?” she said, like she was waiting for him to pipe up in her defense.
“I’m staying out of this one,” he said, for once sensing when to keep his mouth shut. He was probably too busy white-knuckling it in the backseat to argue with us.
We bottomed out on another gnarly pothole and I decided to slow down to a barely moving crawl. “I’m turning around.” I started to turn left to pull a U-turn; it would probably take a ten-point turn on the narrow road.
The left front tire loped into a nasty hole. I gave it gas and steered us out.
We’d barely got traction again on the actual road when we dropped into another one. There was a sick crunch of metal, and since we were now twisted across the road at an awkward angle, we got stuck.
“Are we stuck?” Summer said.
“We’re not stuck.” I gave it gas again, flooring it, and we rolled up out of the hole, tires spitting gravel. “See, we’re—”
My voice was drowned out by an ugly crunch, a squeal-groan of metal on metal… and a strange thunking feeling. The whole car shook with it.
We came to a dead stop.
I tapped the gas, tentatively, and nothing happened. Tires spun in gravel, the car groaned, and we went nowhere.
“Holy Jesus,” Summer said.
“Bro,” Andre said. “What happened?”
I put the car in park.
“Well, this is gonna cost me,” Summer muttered.
“I’ll pay for it,” I grit out.
Andre was already climbing out of the back. “Hang on. I’ll check it out.” He went around the front of the car. He stood in the headlight beams, leaning down to look under the front of the car, as I asked myself where my life had gone so fucking wrong.
One minute you’re retiring your services as a bodyguard and heading home to your quiet, empty apartment with your cold, dead heart neatly intact… and the next you’re trying to play hero to a woman who staunchly refuses to want to need you, and would rather get stuck on a remote road in the dark in the middle of God-knew-where than actually listen when you advise her not to come here in the first place.
Andre strolled back to my window, taking his time. That didn’t seem like a good sign.
I didn’t even want to ask. “How’s it look?”
“Well, one tire is like this.” He held his hand up, vertically.
