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10
Nick
Iwaited almost five whole minutes for Betty to get ready. I thought it was going to take longer, but about five minutes later, she was bouncing downstairs and she looked completely different. She had changed, her hair was up, and she'd even brushed on some kind of lip gloss or something that made her lips stand out. Truthfully, it just made me want to kiss her even more, and I had to fight the urge.
I don't know why exactly Betty was different, just that she was. She was not like other girls, and I was going to have to handle the situation differently. I was going to have to go slow and coax her into it. It was strange, the idea of having to coax any woman to my will. I was positive that I was up for the challenge. The worst part of it would be the waiting. Waiting for her to change her mind may very well kill me, but I had a feeling it would be worth it.
I asked her if she was ready and she agreed, so we went next door to get my truck. It seemed super convenient to me that she was staying next door. If I didn't know any better, I might have even thought that it was fated.
I might have been even more inclined to think it was fate, when I accelerated a bit too fast and she giggled instead of grabbing the front dashboard and squealing. That's what most girls did. They didn't like to go fast, and I usually had to drive very slow for them. Betty wasn't that way at all. She got a glistening brightness to her eyes and she had the biggest smile on her face. If I didn't know any better, I’d say that she liked going fast more than I did. I really like the idea of that.
Because we were both enjoying the speed, I hit the gas a little harder and we drove some of the winding roads that I loved so much.
“I didn't know trucks could go this fast.”
“Do you want me to slow down?”
She shook her head. “No, but we're not going to get in trouble or get arrested, are we? I can’t have that happen.”
That made me chuckle. She was apparently not worried about going down in a fiery crash, or she trusted me. But the police seemed to bother her quite a bit. I assured her that nobody came down the roads, so we really didn’t have anything to worry about.
“These are the roads I take when I need to go a little faster than usual. It's a good way to stay out of trouble. The cops will look the other way, most of the time anyways. You just have to know how to talk to them.”
She agreed, though she asked me what it was I was thinking about that made me have to go so fast.
Immediately, my dad came to mind. He was the bane of my existence and the reason that everything went so sideways. At least that's what I told myself. Maybe it wasn't him at all, maybe it was me. None of that was a conversation that I wanted to have with anyone else, not even Betty.
“Nothing much, just stuff.”
“Cute and mysterious, huh?”
I looked over at her soft expression and grinned. I was working on her already. She was going to want me at some point.
“You think I'm cute?”
Betty waved me off like I was saying something funny.
“Don't even act like you have a modicum of humility. I see the way you walk around with your swagger. I bet that every girl in Laurel wants a piece of you. Probably already had a taste, most of the cute ones.”
I had to agree. She could see exactly how it was, and even though I had never minded that assessment before, for some reason, hearing it come out of Betty's mouth, was not as good sounding as it was before. Before, there would have been a surge of pride to hear something like that, but now I wished that it was different.
“Probably every girl in Billings as well.”
“Oh, my, we really do think highly of ourselves. Are all the guys here like you?”
I shook my head and told her that nobody was like me. And then I told her I had a feeling that nobody was like her as well. It wasn't hard for me to see that Betty was definitely unlike anyone I ever met before.
I went a little faster and instead of being scared or worried, she just kind of got a little closer and leaned against my shoulder. It wasn't enough to make it hard to shift, but it was enough to make me feel something inside. A tiny spark so deep, in the place so dark, that I didn't even know it existed. Who was this girl?
I found myself asking that question several times that day.
