Page 14 of Thoroughly Pucked

A LUCKY SHOT

Aubrey

In the Spin Zone, I barrel toward Ledger, hell-bent on banging my red-and-white car into his orange one. I slam him, shouting a victorious, “Take that!”

“Not so fast,” he retorts, then blasts his machine into reverse, shrewd eyes lasered right at me as he jerks it around and hunts me down, ready to hurl into me again. His blue eyes are cold and menacing. Ledger doesn’t mess around as he aims, but right before he can ram me, I’m ambushed from behind, another car sending mine right into his bumper car once more.

I bounce forward, a laugh bursting from me.

I’m a bumper car sandwich, and the front of my car lights up, flashing in time to the electronic beat playing overhead while the car spins around. Whenever a car is hit, it spins. Hence, the Spin Zone.

“No fair,” I shout, but it’s a joyful protest, and witheach hit, I feel another brick come loose inside me, crumbling away.

I steer away from them, weaving through other cars before I jerk my car around, then ram into the side of Dev’s lean green machine. His smile is electric, his hair a wild mess around his face, his eyes full of wicked glee.

“Got you,” I call out as his car whirls in a circle, beeping loudly like a Vegas slot machine.

I hit him again. Again, his car spins. While he’s doing a one-eighty, Ledger hits me from the side with a loud crash.

More bricks crumble inside me, toppling down.

From speeding down the country road, to chasing the veil, to cutting the dress then hitting the hammer, the entire afternoon of my un-wedding day has felt like a necessary explosion of pent-up, complicated, messy emotions leading to this moment—when I’m blowing off steam on an amusement park ride.

But there’s one big problem.

My day is a lie.

Dev and Ledger think they’ve saved me from embarrassment. They think my heart is breaking. They think I’m hurt and they’re just applying the Band-Aid of fun for a few hours and now I go home and tend my wounds for months.

Yes, I’m embarrassed. Yes, I’m hurt.

But not for the reasons they think. I can’t keep the truth in much longer. It feels so wrong to lead them on. Just like everything felt wrong inside me earlier today when I hadn’t told my besties the secret of my doubtful, worried heart.

Look where that silence got me.

Oof.

My torso slams forward, but I jerk my gaze back at a woman with a septum piercing, jet black hair, and a wicked smile. In her electric blue bumper car, her face saysgotchabefore she moves on from me and slams into a guy with a crooked nose and chunky silver rings on all his fingers.

“Babe!” he shouts. “How could you do that?”

“Love you,” she says, then slams into him once more.

She’s having such a good time. She’s here on a date with her honey. And I’m Ledger’s and Dev’s…pity date.

All the adrenaline burns off.

I can barely move my car. When Dev and Ledger hurtle toward me, I don’t jerk the wheel away or race off. Instead, I let them hurl into me.

When my car stops spinning, I’m facing down both men in their bumper cars. “I didn’t want to marry Aiden anyway,” I say, finally admitting it.

I slump back into the seat as they stare, wide-eyed, at me.

As the sun dips toward the horizon, the unlit vintage sign above the diner beckons, the orange script-y letters for Beverly’s visible from the highway exit. We pull off the ramp, then turn into the lot around six.

With its brushed metal exterior, a mint green door, and a poster in the window of a stack of pancakeshappily drowning in syrup, this diner might be one of the stars in a road-trip movie.

Today, it’s about to become the setting forAubrey’s big reveal.

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