Page 19 of Boyfriend
“Well, does it?”
I grab the keys out of her hand. “I’ll show you,” I growl.
She snickers. But the truth is I’d like to show her more than my driving capabilities.
Down, boy. I unlock the car and get behind the wheel, scooting the seat back about eight inches so I can get my legs into the car. In fact, I drove this car once before. But Abbi was so rattled, she doesn’t remember.
She’s not rattled now, though. She slides into the passenger seat, humming to herself. “I’m so happy to have a couple of days away from school and work. I will go anywhere with you this weekend, so long as it does not involve serving fried food to drunk people.”
“You won’t have to serve any food,” I say as her old engine roars to life. “And hopefully there won’t be many drunk people.” Honestly, drunk people are fine. Unless we’re talking about my father.
In this situation, that could be problematic.
I pull out of the parking spot at the flannel factory. It’s in an old brick building on the Winooski River. “What do you do at this place, anyway? How many jobs do you have?”
“This was my fun job,” she insists. “My internship here is just ending, and I got course credit instead of pay.”
“Cool. Which kind of business major are you?” I head for the highway. Abbi’s car is a little sluggish. I wonder if she’s gotten it serviced lately.
“I’m doing two concentrations—finance and marketing. I want to work on product development, but when I look at job openings for next year, most of them are in marketing.”
“Marketing might be fun?” I say hopefully.
“Possibly,” she hedges. “This internship was in marketing, and I spent a lot of time trying to take good pictures of flannel with my phone. But I guess everyone starts somewhere.”
“True.” Stepping on the gas, I accelerate onto southbound 89. But the needle doesn’t budge. “Um, Abbi? I don’t think your speedometer is working.”
“Oh, it’s not. You have to just watch the other traffic and blend in.”
“Okay.” I chuckle as I ease back into the right lane. "Any other quirks I should know about?” She insisted it would be a waste of money to use a rental for the weekend when she had a "perfectly good" car that just sits around most of the time.
Her idea of "perfectly good" and mine are apparently different.
"Well, the gas gauge is also broken. But you don't have to worry about that, because I keep track of my mileage on the trip odometer."
“Ah, okay?” I glance nervously at the gas tank indicator. “So we don't really have three-quarters of a tank?"
"The tank is full, Weston," she says gently. “You're not going to run out of gas. Not today, anyway."
“Good to know.” And it’s not like I need any extra things to worry about. I’m drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, wondering whether this whole trip was a colossally bad idea.
Abbi reaches over and momentarily places a hand over my twitching one. “Do we need to sing it out? I could cue up a nice loud song.”
"Oh, definitely," I admit. "At some point. Why don’t you find us something seasonal to listen to?” I like holiday music. Or at least I used to, in the Before Times.
“Good idea,” she says, grabbing her phone to scroll through the available tunes. "I'll find something."
I glance briefly toward the passenger seat, where the sun illuminates her silky hair. We're cruising down 89 South toward my corner of Vermont. It's the day before Christmas Eve, and the highway is empty, even for Vermont. There's crisp white snow blanketing the landscape.
There's beautiful scenery everywhere, especially on the passenger side of the car. I'd just like to take a gulp of her.
But I won't, of course. "Hey, Abbi? We'll probably have to share a room. But you can trust me to be a gentleman."
"I know that,” she says easily.
"One of the rooms has two sets of bunk beds in it, and that's probably the one we'll get anyway. You can have first dibs.” I can count on my brother to claim the other room with the double bed in it.
“Thanks,” she says, still scrolling. “Tell me where we’re going, anyway. I never drive around Eastern Vermont.”
