Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз. Страница 75

I took her by the hand and led her outside, to the truck. “You just gotta see it. That’s all. C’mon.”

We got in and she hung her head half out the window, letting the wind pick her hair up and whip it back. I kept my eyes equally on her and the road, and at least twice had to remind myself to do things like blink and swallow. She was so gorgeous, it ached to look at her.

We pulled down a long, unused road I knew like I knew my truck, like I knew my past, like I knew my feelings for Bren, so sure they gave me courage just when I was about to chicken out.

When we got far enough down the road that it petered into nothing but a gravel path, I cut the engine and took it out of gear. “Wanna drive the rest of the way?”

“Really?” She bounced a little with excitement.

“Have you been practicing?” I tried to use a good school-teacher voice, but I don’t think I really had the hang of it.

“Yes!” She clapped a little and her eyes were wide and shiny. “Mom’s been taking me out every Sunday. And Thorsten made me parallel park for two hours in the parking lot at the mall one morning. I’m ready. Is it legal?”

“Yeah.” I paused. “Kind of. Not exactly. It’s just because we’re only a year apart. I need two years of being licensed. Legally. But I don’t even know if this is a road. Legally. You worried?”

She shook her head. “Not even a little bit. Can I just say that I’ve been waiting for months to drive this truck. I’m so psyched. Seriously!”

I hopped out of the driver’s side and she scooted into the driver’s seat. I walked around the front of the truck, and it was surreal, seeing Bren behind the steering wheel of my truck. I was feeling a weird pride about being one of the people who would teach her how to drive. For me, there wasn’t anything that meant freedom and possibility the way a license to drive did.

I got in the passenger side and tried to get comfortable in a seat I’d never sat in before. “This is weird.” Everything felt weird. Even the fact that the seatbelt got pulled down over my right shoulder instead of my left struck me as profoundly off. “Okay, you got all the basics, right?” I double-checked.

“I’ve got the basics,” she assured me. “But, Mom’s car is an automatic.”

I grinned wide. I knew that, and, cool as it was to help teach her to drive, teaching her stick was even more awesome. “The pedal all the way to the left is the clutch pedal, okay? It releases the clutch and lets you pull the stick into gear. Make sense?”

Brenna leaned back and checked the pedals, then tapped the one far on the left with her foot. “Got it.”

“Push the clutch all the way, and you gotta use your left foot. You never use your left for anything else, but you have to pull it out for this. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Turn it on.” I watched while Brenna turned the key and the engine hummed to life. “Alright. To move forward, you gotta move the shifter towards you…yeah, left, and you push it forward as far as it can go. Good. Now you’re in first. Now listen, cause this is tricky. Listen first, okay. You’re gonna let off the clutch and, simultaneously, you gotta give a little gas. Ready to try?”

“Ready.” Brenna sat on the edge of her seat and leaned forward, let the clutch out too fast, and grunted in frustration when the truck jerked forward and stalled. “Shit. I stalled.”

“Congratulations. You’re learning to drive stick.” I smiled across the seat at her, overwhelmed with a feeling of camaraderie with my very cool girlfriend. “Do it again. After a couple tries, you’ll get the hang of it. It’s something you have to just get the feel of.”

She bit her lip and tried again. And again. And once she got it and we stopped lurching like crazy, we worked on moving into second, where she stalled a few more times. Bren tended to be one of those people who had a knack for things and always caught on quick. It irritated the hell out of her to stall out so many times, but she kept at it, and soon she was cruising. Slowly, but cruising.

Brenna drove with a cool confidence that probably had as much to do with the fact that she’d never almost flipped a truck as it did with the way she attacked everything with head-on enthusiasm. She leaned over the wheel slightly, her eyes fixed on the road, her mouth in a serious, concentrated line. She followed the path until it gave up even attempting to be gravel and just turned to high, soft grass. She glanced at me.

“It’s alright. You can pull over right there.” I pointed to a flat spot and she pulled in and parked the way I instructed her with coordinated grace, then looked at me like she’d just won her first heat.

I shook my head at her. “I knew you’d be a natural driver. I’d better get used to sitting on the right. It’s still kind of weird for me.”

“You should have come to Ireland with me. Then we could have practiced, and you’d get to stay on the left.” She draped herself on the steering wheel and gave me a lazy smile.

“Maybe I will come next time you go.”

At that minute, it felt real. The whole damn world felt real and raw and attainable in a way it rarely ever had before.

The afternoon was sliding into evening, and the air was a little cool. I grabbed a duffel bag out of the back of the truck and walked around to Brenna.

“What’s in the bag?” she asked, turning sideways so she could hook her legs around my waist and pull me close.

“Secrets.” I liked the way she kept one hand hooked on the steering wheel. I never imagined I’d be so turned on by watching someone drive as I was by watching Brenna.

“You’re pretty full of them this summer, aren’t you?” She squeezed her legs and my head swam.

“Not really. I’m just a dumbass, and it takes me a while to figure out the answer, even when it’s hitting me upside the head.” The strap of her tank top had slid down the curve of her shoulder, and I hooked one finger through and pulled it back up.

She turned her head and watched my hand on her skin. “Maybe you should listen to me more. You know, since I’m always right.”

I kissed her shoulder and pulled her out of the truck. “You know, no one likes a know-it-all, girlie.”

“Really? You can’t seem to get enough of me.” I swatted her on the behind and she laughed, that bright, clear sound that made my heart seize up in my chest.

We tripped over the big rocks jutting out of the path and tramped along the grass, crushing it under our shoes until it let out the smell of summertime; sweet, clean, and full of all kinds of twisting possibilities.

We finally got to the edge of a rocky kind of cliff, and I helped her down until we were by a little hidden grove with a waterfall.

Alright, it wasn’t Niagara Falls, but it was pretty cool. It was a creek fall, so it was mostly this slide of water over a high rock incline. The areas next to the creek were all smooth stones, like maybe the creek used to be higher and ran over the stones for years until it cut back. All above and around were these huge old trees that seemed to pick up the wind and funnel the moans and rushes of the air through their branches, and straight up was the sky, so far away it felt like being at the bottom of a deep well.

Brenna and I didn’t talk much at all as I unzipped the duffel bag and unrolled my old sleeping bag, laying it flat so the soft, worn blue flannel side was up. Brenna slid her sandals off, cuffed her jeans, and waded into the water, walking carefully over the uneven, rounded stones.

When I was done spreading the blanket out, I kicked off my boots and socks and cuffed my jeans up so I could wade out next to her. The water was so cold it bit at my skin, and the rocks made it hard to keep balance. Bren tucked her arms around me as soon as I got close.

“What is this place?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

“Saxon and I stumbled on it back when we were kids, back when we both raced. There’s an old track about a half mile away. Saxon almost killed himself because we didn’t realize there was this drop. His bike was pretty wrecked.” I laughed at the memory of Saxon’s screams, the crush of the bike, and then our little-kid excitement when we found this place. We were so excited, Saxon forgot all about the bloody gashes and his mangled bike. We didn’t find out until later that he’d fractured his arm, and he never bitched because we were so excited to be down in this little magical place we discovered, the pain just didn’t register.