Page 4 of This Might Hurt

ANDREW

The spot under my clavicle where he jammed the gun throbs slowly as I step out into the desolate, bone-bleaching sun.

That storm has moved closer, tinting the air faintly yellow as the breeze picks up and blows trash across the parking lot.

I try to listen for police sirens, but we’re trapped in a huge bubble of silence.

I keep retracing the line of cause and effect, trying to stop it from breaking down.

I’m letting a criminal into my car because he pointed a gun at me.

He pointed a gun at me because I wouldn’t leave the gas station.

I wouldn’t leave the gas station because…

I didn’t want to. Why didn’t I want to? I’ve been so good my whole life.

I do what I’m told to do and fear what I’m told to fear.

My body rebelled when I tried to walk away from him, to a place where he wasn’t.

I didn’t want him to stop looking at me.

No one else has ever looked at me before.

For a second, I think he isn’t coming. Then the door squeaks, followed by the scuff of shoes.

In the light he looks even younger than me, despite his stubble and the dark circles under his eyes.

The wind flutters his baggy gray Arctic Monkeys t-shirt around his lean, energetic body.

With a heavy sigh, like robbing a convenience store was unreasonably tiring, he pushes his sweaty hair off his forehead with the barrel of the unloaded gun and squints at the highway.

Archie’s dark blue coupe unlocks itself as I approach.

I climb in and turn on the air conditioning, but when I try to shut my door, the stranger snags it with the same hand that’s clutching the bag of stolen cash.

He props an elbow along the top and studies me with blatant curiosity, brown eyes flaring amber-gold when the sun hits them. “Why are you helping me?”

I glance down at my palm. Half the sweat smeared on it is his. “Because I don’t feel like running your stupid errands.”

I reach for the door, but he tugs it further out of my reach in an easy way that makes my stomach flip. “What do you want, though?”

Some sick part of me wonders what he’d do if I told him what I want today.

The thing I’ve carried for so long that it has molded itself into the only shape that fits against my worst fears and most fragmented desires.

A faint rumble of thunder echoes across the sky, warning me that I’ve waited too long.

And under it, even more quietly, the distant whoop of a police siren.

“I need to go. If the police catch us because you’re slow as shit, I’m going to tell them that you beat me up, stole my wallet, and tried to murder me. ”

I watch in confusion as a slow, brilliant grin spreads across his face, exposing a little gap between his front teeth.

With his messy crop of blond hair, the turned up nose scattered with freckles, he’s devastatingly attractive in a puppyish, high-school-quarterback wet dream kind of way.

Assuming that the puppy had a gun pointed at your head and a chaotic smile like it thinks everything you do and say is fascinating.

My finger hovers over the door lock button as I watch him run around the car.

I think this is the last moment I can walk away before he derails my plan even further.

But I’m lying to myself; the last moment to get rid of him passed a long time ago, maybe when I grabbed the gun and he just looked in my eyes and said what are you doing very gently.

A moment later he throws open his door in a rush of wind and noise and slings his backpack on the floor of the passenger side.

While he fastens his seatbelt, I stare at the chaotic jumble of patches sewn to the dusty canvas bag between his feet.

Yellowstone National Park, a samurai, a gray and white cat in a space suit, I like big books and I cannot lie.

The biggest one features a leering green dinosaur holding a basketball under the words Kearns High School Raptors.

I don’t recognize the town name, but it sounds local.

“Let’s go!” He bounces in his seat to get my attention. The sirens have coalesced into a clear, continuous whoop so close I’m not sure we’ll make it to the highway before they come into sight.

“Now you’re in a hurry?” I back up and floor it, letting the car buck and squeal until rubber gains traction on asphalt.

The thought of fucking up Archie’s tires gives me a rush of satisfaction.

As I check my blind spot and merge onto the highway at ninety miles an hour, I catch the glint of sun on patrol cars way back, too far for them to clock us in the steady stream of traffic.

It’s been silent in this car all day, between stints of bad radio when I got bored. Now the stillness feels overwhelmingly awkward with nothing but the sound of panting and my own heartbeat in my ears, like we just ran a long way.

The guy angles his head to watch in the side mirror as the cop cars pull onto the gas station exit and disappear.

“Nice driving.” His grin suggests that he would have found this entertaining whether or not we succeeded.

He sticks out a hand, his broad palm facing up.

I glance at it, then back to the road. When he doesn’t move for an embarrassingly long time, I take one hand off the wheel and go for a halfhearted high five.

He slips his palm out from under mine at the last second, then makes a fist, leaving me to flounder.

His low laugh is the nicest sound I’ve ever heard.

“No, no. Okay.” He catches my wrist, holding me still.

“First you go like this.” His long fingers drag delicately up my palm and out until our fingertips catch for a moment.

He’s slightly smaller than I am, but his hands are bigger.

“Now make a fist. How have you never done this before?”

I hesitate, but his will has such a relentless pull I don’t understand. If he had asked one more time, I would have delivered that money for him. I might have re-arranged my plans today to make it happen, which is a terrifying thought.

When I curl my fingers together, he makes such a pleased sound and taps his knuckles against mine. “There you go. Now we’re partners in crime.”

“Stop trying to spread your guilt around.” When I twist my arm away, he lets me go and sits back with a smile.

“My name’s Jude.”

“Okay.” My hands are still shaking, so I clamp them around the wheel as I pass a string of semis hauling steel pipes.

“Yes, like the song,” the man called Jude adds, speaking with a lilt like this is a script he recites every time. “Except I don’t make things better.” Something about his presence fills the car until I can’t breathe—a heat, smoke, the second before everything explodes.

When I don’t respond, he clears his throat and helpfully hums the first six notes of “Hey Jude” with awful pitch.

“I know it,” I snap to make him stop. If that song was stuck in my head when I got to the end of my journey, would I be satisfied? I might. It’s better than “Redneck Woman”.

Fuck. I was going somewhere important. The clouds are so dark in the rearview, and I’m so hungry.

I’m starting to lose my grip on the part of me that wasn’t afraid, and it’s his fault.

I need to get myself away from him before I change my mind.

Gravel pops under the tires as I pull off onto the shoulder of the highway, barely clinging to the sharp drop-off into a sea of brown grass.

Wind buffets the car as we sit in silence. I can sense Jude watching me, unmoving. I’ll drop him off here. It’s not so bad. He can catch another ride to wherever he’s going.

I check the rearview mirror with a surge of guilt.

When the police leave, they’ll pass this way and notice him lurking on the side of the road.

They’ll pull over to arrest him for hitchhiking and discover the bag of cash and the gun.

This will all have been a massive waste of time, and he’s already wasted enough of my time.

Jude stays perfectly still, like he’s trying not to draw my attention.

I jab irritably at the navigation screen, zooming out to find the nearest city—Buffalo.

Fine, who cares? I know nothing about it, but to the west I notice a winding blue snake of a river, dotted with patches of green.

I had so many sad, half-imagined hopes of how I wanted this day to look, but now that I’ve fucked everything up, I have to throw them out and pick somewhere at random.

“I’ll drop you off in Buffalo,” I offer, yanking the car back onto the road and forcing the 500-horsepower engine back up to speed. “That’s the best I can do.”

“Thanks.” He doesn’t even glance at the map. Maybe he has no destination. His clothes are sun-faded and dusty, his tan baked into the back of his neck, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in a month.

“How many times have you done this?”

He cocks his head at me thoughtfully, tracing his fingers along the pattern on the grip of the gun. “What? Taking rides from weird rich guys?”

“All of it.” I expect him to give me something—a story about how this isn’t what it looks like, that he’s not a bad person, that there’s an explanation. Even if we both know it’s not true, he could at least pretend to feel bad.

He shrugs, his eyes clouded. “I’m not gonna tell you that.”

Apparently I’m not even worth lying to, which feels ungrateful given what I’ve just done for him. “In that case,” I mutter, changing lanes much too aggressively, “I would have thought you’d be better at it by now.”

After a startled pause, he lets out a loud, slightly unhinged laugh. “Fair.”