Page 41 of My (Not So) Perfect Plan

EVAN

I study her face carefully, wondering if she’s going to run screaming. She doesn’t and her phone is still at her ear. After a frozen beat where she stares at me like she’s seen a ghost, she speaks into the phone.

“Okay. If he knows what he’s doing, I trust him,” she says. She slowly lowers the phone and gets in the front seat. My arms are crossed in front of me and it feels like my knees are up to my elbows in this little car. She studies my face carefully.

“Your eye is okay?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I don’t offer any more than that. There’s no way I can tell her that her hands on mine, her touch so loving and sweet, had messed me up. She just cared. No ulterior motives.

“How did they rope you into doing this?” she asks. She tries to keep her voice neutral, but the little scowl lines between her brows give her away.

I sigh. “No one roped me into anything.”

“So you volunteered?” She obviously thinks that’s unbelievable. I guess I can’t blame her considering how I’ve been treating her, but I’m not ready to talk about us yet or about how destroyed I felt when she dumped me like yesterday’s gossip. I want her around, need her around, but I can’t act like everything is cool. It’s my own special form of self-torture.

“Let’s just get this started, okay? I plan on going to the game later tonight and still need to do my exercises,” I say.

After a moment she nods and shuts her door. “Okay.”

I walk her through the first steps and after a few false starts we are able to get the vehicle moved a few feet, and then another few feet, before coming to a jerky stop and stalling out. She takes her hands off the steering wheel and shakes her fingers to loosen them up.

She laughs without humor. “I keep screwing it up.”

“That’s normal for people first learning how to drive stick.”

“I don’t know. Apparently my mom was never able to pick it up.”

“You can do it.”

Apparently my encouragement was all she needed because we are able to get around the parking lot for a bit. I tell her to take a turn toward the main road and just go exploring in the area of the school grounds. She brakes and goes to take a left turn. The gears grind and she panics. I start trying to walk her through it, but one of the late buses is behind us and we’re blocking the road.

“Put it in first,” I say. Gears grind and the car jolts forward a foot. “Try again.”

Somehow we end up zooming backwards almost backing into the bus. I’m yelling at her to brake and she’s screaming because she thinks she’s going to hit the bus. The bus honks at us and students are starting to yell at us out the bus windows. She’s more flustered than ever and her eyes are starting to tear up.

“What do I do? What do I do?” she screams. Anxiety and driving never make good neighbors, so I do the first thing I can think of that might calm her done. I put my hand on her upper back and start making slow circles.

“It’s going to be okay. We are just going to start at the beginning of the process, okay. Start at the beginning.”

Her breathing calms down and I walk her through it. The entire school bus is hanging out the side laughing and jeering, but I tell her to ignore them and just focus on what she needs to do. The car moves forward out of the way of the bus and we continue driving at a snail’s pace.

“Okay, shift again up to second and then bring it up to speed,” I say.

She starts to get the hang of it and within a half hour she’s able to down shift and up shift with ease, take turns, and start driving from a stop or parked position.

She parks next to my truck and sighs before turning toward me. I have one hand on the door ready to leave because I haven’t forgotten her all-important plan and how I just don’t fit into it. For a few seconds today we shared some carefree moments like we used to, but it’s painful and it makes me angry that she’s not willing to give us a chance.

“Thank you for teaching me,” she says.

It’s not what I want to hear, so friend-zone, that I just nod abruptly and get out of her car. My knee twinges as I get out and I hear her gasp, showing that she has a heart after all, but I catch myself on her door, gain my footing and limp around to my truck without another glance in her direction.

I turn on music that has a pounding bass, something that drowns out everything else. I tear out of the parking lot but watch her in my rear view mirror as she turns on to the main road. I keep track of her until I’m sure she knows what she’s doing and then I go home, do my exercises, and lift weights until my arms are noodles and I’m too tired to think.

At the football game I sit on the sidelines with everyone else. Somewhere behind the stands the gala committee has set up a booth to sell tickets to the gala. It’s turning into a huge event and I’m doing everything I can to quietly promote it for her, even getting my mom to buy tickets, though I’m 97% sure my dad isn’t going to show.

Lane is really starting to come into his own on the field. I’m proud of him, but I hate having to sit on the sidelines like a ball boy while he eats up my glory. My teammates try to include me in their ribbing, but it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth and I begin to wonder why I had decided to come after all.

I catch myself searching the stands for Claire. I force my eyes back to the game and lose myself in it for awhile. It’s a welcome relief and the game is over too soon.

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