Page 108 of Rebel Summer

“Are you sure?—“

“GO!” I yelled.

He waited a beat, still looking at me, before his excitement to be driving his car refused to be contained any longer. His grin grew even wider as he turned onto the main road heading toward the resort and got his baby up to the agreed-upon twenty-five miles per hour.

It was a bit…anticlimactic, to be honest. I mean, the car was amazing, but we were crawling.

“How bad is it killing you to go this slow?” I asked. The beat to the song on the radio was going faster than we were.

He rubbed his hand along the wheel trimmed in red. “In my mind, we’re flying down an empty freeway right now.”

“How do you plan to get the car off the island?”

“I’m sure Beau will help me, but I’d probably have to let him drive it on the mainland for a while after.”

We approached the entrance road to the resort where Dax turned the car around and threw it in park.

“It purrs like a dream,” he said, as he unbuckled his seatbelt. “Alright, you’re up, Books.”

I went to open the door, and nothing happened. I jiggled the handle and pushed my shoulder against it, but nothing budged. Dax leaned across the seat and tried it himself. After several attempts with his body half leaning against me, Dax reached his hand below, feeling around the door frame.

“Is this… Did you bring your purse?”

“Yeah.”

“The strap is stuck in the door.”

It must be noted that, by this time, parked so long in one place, Dax’s car began to feel like a sitting duck. Though I was still happy to be doing this with Dax, my heart rate was picking up...just a smidge.

“Why’d you bring your purse?” Dax gave it one more tug to no avail before sitting up.

“It has my license.”

We waited a beat, the words hanging in the air for about five whole seconds while we both registered my incredibly dumb thought process. Dax broke first, a snicker bursting free, before I followed suit.

There was a smile in his voice when he said, “Alright, I can’t open it. Just come out my side.”

It took some finagling in the bucket seats, but I maneuvered my way to Dax’s side of the car. Then I stepped out and allowed Dax to get in before me.

It was about the time when Dax was attempting to maneuver his six-foot frame across the seats of a confined muscle car that I began to glance around the darkened streets. My self-awareness heightened the longer we sat here. And then Dax’s leg went haywire, accidentally pressing the horn for what seemed like ten years, blaring a distress signal to the entire island.

We both froze. My hands covered my mouth.

“Did that sound like a golf cart horn to you?” Dax asked, his voice frantic.

One lone chortle escaped my mouth before I clamped it shut. And then another came, and it was hopeless. Soon, I was leaning on my knees, sucking in air as tears began falling down my face.

Dax poked his head out of the car. “Hey, Crazy Girl. Rein it in. We’ve gotta move.”

Right. Yes. I swiped at a few tears before I climbed inside and closed the door.

“Okay, we’re going to head back to the shop.”

“Wait. You said we could drive down to the square.”

“Well,” he checked out the window behind him. “That was before I blasted the horn for the entire island to hear. We can’t go anywhere near the square, we?—”

“We’re doing it, Grandma!”

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