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After I had filled my Vera Bradley tote bag with blankets, my lap top, and movies, we grabbed our mugs of hot chocolate and went out to the car. I pooped the car’s trunk open and jumped inside. Then I started to set up shop. He jumped in beside me and I spread one of the blankets over us. I set the laptop in between us and hit the play button that popped onto the screen. The movie “Christmas Vacation” started playing. Cody gave me a funny look that said ‘really we are watching this movie’. “What this is my favorite winter-time movie! It’s totally awesome!” I argued.
“No, I think it’s a great movie, but I didn’t know girls liked this kind of stuff.”
“There is only one thing that every girl on the earth cannot stand and that is blood, guts, and gore. The only reason you would ever see one of those movies is if it’s a guy that you like.” He gave me a confused look,” So you can hold their hand when we get scared, duh!”
“Oh well I guess that makes sense.” Now I was the one giving him a funny look. “Well, hypothetically, I don’t know. Quit looking at me like that you make me feel stupid!”
“That was the whole point,” I laughed and he did too.”Now shut up the movie’s starting.” I reached for my mug and took a swig of the hot beverage. I could feel the scalding hot liquid running down the back of my throat. Cody scooted in closer to the screen. He clutched his mug and shivered from the cold wind.”You know if your cold we can just shut the door.” I offered.
“Yeah, let’s do that, I’m freezing.” I pressed the button next to my hip and the door automatically came down. I moved in closer too, our hips only inches apart. I wondered if he noticed this too, and what he thought about it, since he didn’t retreat, he either didn’t notice or didn’t mind it. I liked that. I then pressed another button and the seats behind me started folding themselves into the floor. I laid back and stared at the ceiling of the car.”Aren’t you going to watch the movie?”
“I already know the movie by heart. I can watch it in my mind.”
He chuckled, “ How many times have you seen this movie?”
“Some would say too many, but I would say nowhere near enough.”
“That’s very…” he searched for the word, ”prophetic.”
I turned to look at him, I forgot to thank you, so thanks.” He gave me a questioning look so I figured I should explain. “Most guys I know, when a girl starts crying, run off and hide. Oh, and they would have definitely gone sledding instead of staying in here with me.”
“Really? We definitely weren’t that big of douches when we were little freshmen.”
“Ya, our guys are awful, they couldn’t treat a woman right to save their lives! Look at Kyle he’s a great example.”
“I meant to ask you about that. What happened? I know you’ve been dating him for a really long time, Austin always told me that he would screw up with you.”
“Really!” I smacked my hands on the floor,” He saw it coming and didn’t warn me! That ass hurt me really bad, he broke up with me on facebook on our one year anniversary! Austin could have prevented that, but instead he kept it to himself.”
“Well obviously, he is a douche, so when we get back to school he can expect a visit from me.”
“You would do that for me?”
“Of course I would!” he sounded offended that I hadn’t believed him.” You seem like a pretty awesome girl, and he’s obviously an ass, an d guys like that need to be taught a lesson.”
“Wow, you know you’re not half bad.”
“Thanks for the extraordinary complement. Since you don’t think I’m so bad, what would you say to spending more time together?” He cracked a hopeful smile.
“Well we are together right now, “I gave him a coy smile back,” but I’d love to spend more time with you.” I felt his hand move underneath the blanket and come to rest on top of mine. He leaned in closer to me, close enough to where our lips almost brushed. Suddenly a car horn blew right next to us, and we jumped apart. We ended up where we had started, on opposite sides of the car. I saw a shiny blue truck pull up beside us and six dark figures jump out of it. “Quick get under the blanket!” I squeaked. We pulled the blankets over our heads and froze. I heard unfamiliar voices from outside, I heard mine and Cody’s names mixed into the conversation. “Shit! What are we going to do?”
“Chill, they’ll leave in a sec and we’ll-“he didn’t get to finish his sentence, there was a beep and a sharp cold wind blew into the car. Cody’s eyes grew wide and we held our breath. There was a voice, Austin’s voice, “Well this is where Paige normally is when we play in the snow. Maybe she’s upstairs in my room, I’ll go look.”
“Do you want me to go.” It was Kyle. What the hell was he doing here? \
“Hell no, I’m almost positive she doesn’t want to talk to you, but I’m going to ask just in case she wants to scream at you, or better yet, slap you.” Now my eyes were wide. I felt a hand crawl across my hip to hit the button to close the trunk door.
“Why the hell is Kyle here!!” I exclaimed when I heard the door click shut, still under the blanket.
“How am I supposed to know!” Cody exclaimed back. “I’m busy worrying about the fact that we are never going to get out of here without getting caught!”
“I’m freaking out about that too, I just never want to see him again, and here he is… at my house.” My stomach vibrated as my phone went off in my coat pocket. It was a text message from Austin.
Hey where r u Kyles here nd Ik u don’t want to .
Talk to him but mayb ud want to yell @ him
I turned my phone so Cody could see the message. I hit reply and told him some bullshit lie about how I saw Kyle pull up and Cody and I hid to avoid him. Five minutes later I heard Austin’s voice again,” She doesn’t want to talk to you ever again.” Kyle didn’t respond so I figured he had just walked away. Then the trunk door flew up again and we froze. Some one smacked my leg, “Ok you two get out from under the blanket.” Both mine and Cody’s eyes grew wide, it was Austin. The blanket flew off of us, and Austin stood there staring at us. “What I’m not stupid I have eyes.”
“Well Kyle didn’t see us.”
“That’s because Kyle is stupid, now if you wouldn’t mind telling me why you too were in here in the first place, well that would just be great. I explained all about what had happened in my room and how Cody had been nice enough to not leave me alone to deal with it all.
“Oh, I don’t know what I was expecting, but that was not it. That was , well that was a relief.”
Cody slid and jumped out of the car, “well I am going sledding.” He gave me a reassuring look and took off towards the hill. Austin jumped into the car where Cody had just been. “So this Taylor thing is still bothering you.”
“It’s not the fact that she’s gone, I know that and I’ve excepted it, but it still hurts. The problem is that every time I think about her I see her in the woods again. You have no idea what that was like and hopefully you never will because it is the scariest thing in your life. I felt so helpless that the world was falling apart and it was all my fault. Like I could’ve done something the emptiness inside me when they took her off of all the machines and when the heart monitor stopped beating, and my world fell completely apart. I relive the worst month of my life every time I think of her.” I could feel myself so close to the breaking point, standing on the edge about to fall over.
Austin pulled me in for a hug, “ I know there’s no such thing as brain wash, but why not try to replace those sad memories of her with happy ones.”
I let go of him and straightened up, “I’ve tried that and every time I think of good memories, the bad ones follow. “
“Your never going to be able to shake what happened. Its always going to haunt you, but you still have choices. You can either let it control you or use it as inspiration. What I mean by that is everytime you think about her say would Taylor really want me to be upset or would she want me to keep living my life.”
“Thanks big brother, you always know exactly what to say.” I hugged him so tight I heard his back pop. He exhaled sharply and I let go of him.
“Now come on let’s go have some fun.” He jumped out of the car.
“Na, you go ahead, I’m going to go upstairs and write some more.”
“Have it your way.” He shrugged and went to join the others.
A couple of hours later, around eleven, I was dozing off in my bed, dreaming of Cody.