Page 1 of No Summer Hotter than You

shoua

1 YEAR AGO

I thought I was going to die.

I watched as three other drivers pulled to the curb and clamored out of their cars. Distress was written on their faces as they glanced over to me with fear-stricken eyes. The smell of burning rubber was thick in the air. Rain pitter-pattered hard against my cracked dashboard.

Two burly men approached my car, which wouldn’t surprise me if it was a complete wreck. I tried to get out on my own, but they quickly helped pulled me out with my arms thrown over their shoulders.

“Is she all right?” I heard a woman holler. Her voice sounded so distant she might as well have been down the street.

My mind could hardly focus on anything as I attempted to walk over shards of broken glass and my car’s torn front bumper. Pain shot up my right ankle, making me wince loudly. I think the men said something to me, but I wasn’t sure. I tried to reply, and I felt my lips move, but I could hardly hear the words muttered out of my mouth in the hazy shock of it all. The sidewalk was littered with shards of glass from my car’s shattered windows. So, the men guided me to a clearing on the curbside, where I quickly took a seat.

Once they were gone, I sighed shakily. My chest constricted tightly as my eyes burned and chin trembled. I wanted to cry but wouldn’t. Not here. Not in front of these strangers as they continued to peer curiously at me and the state of my smoking car.

I couldn’t allow myself to cry. Instead, I swallowed the emotions threatening to rise up my throat and forced them back down to the pit of my stomach. A thick lump formed in my throat as my vision became blurry. I took in a deep breath to calm myself down. Then another. And another?—

My phone suddenly blared loudly and jolted my anxiety back up. My hands shook violently as I pulled it out of my back pocket. Blood pounded loudly in my ears when I caught sight of the name on the screen.

It was Anthony Hughes.

I answered his call with shaky fingers. Immediately, I could hear someone drilling and hammering away in the background on the other end. Anthony was the lead contractor of a team. As far as I knew, he was at a big project site today.

“Anthony,” I said as my eyes started tearing up again. “I—I–”

“Shoua?” he answered. His typically soothing voice was sharp and alarmed. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“I was just in a car accident and—” I choked out, still refusing to let myself cry. “My car’s completely totaled.”

“What? Are you all right? Are you hurt?” Anthony’s worried, urgent voice boomed so loudly that I had to pull my phone away from my ear.

The loud hammering immediately stopped on the other end of our call as I stared down at my right ankle, where most of the pain was concentrated. I couldn’t tell if it was bruised or swollen from the black, heeled knee-high boots I had on today. Rain drops pelted against my face as the lump in my throat grew bigger.

I took another deep breath to try to work through the hot tears threatening to fall. I quickly glanced over at my demolished car and at the pile of metal debris it essentially became.. With a cracked voice barely my own, I answered him as my body began trembling again “I don’t really know. All I know is that my ankle hurts, and I can barely?—”

The engine of a car suddenly started in the background. “Where are you? I’m heading to where you are right now.”

“I’m by Crenshaw and Hernandez.”

I was at least a good thirty minutes outside of the city since I was planning to show my clients a large multimillion dollar suburban home and estate. This house checked all the boxes they wanted. They were serious buyers, so I was hoping I would make a sale by the end of the day.

It was supposed to be a great day. But within a ten-second time span, my car was totaled, the other driver sped off, and my ankle might be broken.

“Okay, I’m coming.” Anthony’s reassuring words made me feel comforted, knowing someone who cared about me was on their way. “It might take me forty-five minutes, but I think I can get there in twenty.”

“Okay.” My voice trembled.

As our call ended, sirens from an ambulance, fire truck, and police car blared in the distance, heading straight toward the wreck. The flashing red and blue lights grew brighter and brighter, illuminating the overcast day. It wasn’t long before the paramedics checked on my injuries and the firefighters and police officers surveyed the accident.

My interview with a police officer was just wrapping up when I heard it—the sound of Anthony’s Jeep pickup truck pulling up in a screech. I looked up just in time to see him jump out of the driver’s seat and race over to me. His expression was taut with deeply creased brows. His lips tugged down in pure anguish.

Those honey brown orbs of his flickered to me with nothing but worry swimming in their depths. Before I could say anything, he picked me up out of the ambulance and pulled me into a tight hug. He let out a shaky breath into my hair as his heart hammered against the palm I placed over his chest.

“Thank god you’re all right, Shoua. I was so worried about you,” he croaked, his voice cracking.

Until now, I couldn’t let myself cry over the utter fear and shock I still felt down to the very marrow of my bones. But when Anthony pulled me into his comforting and safe embrace, I sobbed uncontrollably into his worn-out hoodie.

Even though I could see the severity of the crash and understand what I was looking at, all the first responders confirmed it: I could have died. The other driver was inches from barreling through me and my compact car with their truck. By sheer luck, I got away with just scratches, bruises, and a sprained ankle.

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