Page 39 of Never Say Yes To Your Boss

“Darius, you don’t have to do that. It’s like torture. It hurts you, and I don’t like that.”

“I know.” I just stand in one spot, totally paralyzed. My breathing has already gone to shit. I’m already spiraling, and I’m not even close to the car. I’m just thinking about it. “I just want to do a bit of an experiment if you’re willing.”

The furrow between her brows only digs in harder, but I can see she’s intrigued, too. “It’s a good thing I know you already because that might be the sketchiest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

A burst of laughter escapes me. She looks at me like I’m crazy, and I don’t blame her one bit.

But she does follow me to the garage, walking barefoot the entire way. I’m dressed to go to a board meeting in the usual immaculate button-down shirt and slacks, and she’s a summer princess, a breath of fresh air. I focus on her instead of the cherry red convertible in the garage. We’re alone in here, and my breaths are coming out more as sharp pants. I want to control them, but I can’t. When Everleigh looks at me, asking me silently if I’m ready, I focus on the exact blue of her eyes. They’re such a light blue with little flecks of darker color around her pupils.

“I want you to get in the backseat with me.”

She blinks at me like she’s trying to decide if I’m joking. “Alright, file that under extra creepy,” she says, but there’s no recrimination, and I know she doesn’t really mean it.

“It’s not like that.”

“Yeah, D, I know.” I don’t know when she started calling me that. Maybe the other night in my room, I think. I hate it when people call me that. Hans does it to annoy the shit out of me, and I only allow it because he won’t stop. But Ilikeit when Everleigh does it because it sounds right coming from her.

She doesn’t open any doors but literally puts her hand on the passenger side and leaps into the back like a little kid. She does it so effortlessly that her dress barely even ruffles as she jumps. God, she’s like a superhero because that was amazing.

There’s no way I can replicate it, so I get in from the driver’s side and slide over the edge of the car to drop into the backseat beside her. It’s crazy small, deep, and totally cramped. Once my ass touches the seat, my knees automatically draw up to my chin.I can feel the panic coming on, the white-hot bands that are going to wrap around my lungs, my stomach, and my brain, but I take a calming breath, as deep as I can force it, which is little more than a hiccup, and turn to face Everleigh.

“It doesn’t matter which seat I’m in. It just generally goes to shit right about now. The thing is, I’ve never tried it with a variable before.”

“A variable?” she asks.

“You,” I reply.

“Thanks,” she scoffs. “I’ve been called lots of things before, but—” I take her hand in both of mine, and she stops mid-sentence. She gets serious fast. “We did sit in here together that one time…”

“Not like this.”

“What do you need me to do?”

Be my shield.“Just wrap an arm around my shoulders and lean in.”

“Like a hug? If you wanted a hug, you could have just said. I’m naturally a hugger. I’d be more than happy to—”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She scoots closer and slides her arms around me. And. It. Is. Heaven. I close my eyes and breathe in the scent of her shampoo as her hair slides across my shoulder. It feels good. So, so good. I focus on that instead of the images looming behind my eyes. I force myself to keep them open, focusing only on her. Focusing on the way she smells, the cadence of her breaths, and how soft she is.

I’m still roiling inside, still panicking. There is still acid crawling up my throat, and it feels like something is going to tear apart inside me and get sucked into the black hole that is the past, but it’s not so bad this time. Not like it usually is.

If we started moving in this car, I’d have a major meltdown for sure, but right now…

“Can I tell you something?”

She goes rigid against me but then replies, “Yeah, sure. Like this?”

“If that’s okay,” I say to her hair. I like that it smells like warm fruit in the summer. Although I’m not sure if warm fruit is very appetizing, I like it on her. She nods against my shoulder, and her arms tighten around me. I really like it. Everything is okay for a minute. Just for this minute. I’m going to wreck that right away, but I need to tell someone. I haven’t even told Hans half of this shit before. He knows the basics, but that’s it. I guess the only way to say it is to just start, so I do. “The accident was the catalyst for everything that came after. We’d all been lying to ourselves about my dad. Telling ourselves and each other that he was fine, that people just become forgetful. He was too young for anything major to be wrong.”

There’s a hitch in Everleigh’s breath. It’s subtle, but I notice it. She runs her hand over my shoulder ever so gently because she knows it’s the scarred one. It’s so soothing that I close my eyes. Then, her voice comes wafting out, sounding so soft. She holds me, blanketing herself over me to keep me safe, to keep me sane so I can tell her everything I need to get out. “You don’t think it was your fault, do you?”

At her question, my breath punches out of me. I’m not even thinking about being in the backseat of this car right now. I’m thinking about the black mass of crapshit that’s been roiling in me for so many years. “I don’t think it was, not really, but I still feel guilty. I told him right, not left, because he was going to miss the turn. The road forked, and he was going to go in the wrong direction. I told him a little too late. I couldn’t believe he was actually going to miss the turning to get home.”

“What—what happened?” She doesn’t stop hugging me.

This is so much more than I deserve. It feels like she’s fighting for me, being the strong one so that, just for once, I can let myguard down enough to get this out. There’s no eye contact, but it’s like we both need and don’t need that at the same time. I’m afraid I’ll stop if I have to look her in the eye. That the panic will take over again, and that will be that. I’m going to tell her all of it, and I hate this because it still hurts, though not in a white-hot panic sort of way and not in a fear sort of way. It hurts in the sense where, I had a life before that, a solid family unit, a mother and a father, and now all of that is different, and it hurts.

---