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I whine when it’s time to get back on the road after our parents finish topping up the gas in their vehicles and letting the girls run around for a few minutes. Samir only allows me to slide to his side right before Dad maneuvers the boxes back in place, then pulls me back on top of him when Dad climbs into the driver’s seat. I don’t think either of us wants him to know that I’ve been sitting on Samir’s lap this whole time. I mean, talk about awkward, though I don’t know what our parents expected us to do with the tiny space we were given.
“Everything ok back there, kids?” Dad shouts to be heard over the highway noise from the front.
The cardboard wall of boxes is tall enough that we can’t see each other in the rearview mirror, so he doesn’t clock the exaggerated eye-roll I give him. “Sure, Dad. We’re having soooo much fun braiding each other’s hair and talking about our crushes, right Samir?” I’m sure Dad is giving me an eye roll of his own.
Goosebumps rise along my arms when Samir whispers so that only I will hear, “I’m having fun.” He doesn’t sound the least bit sarcastic, and I shoot him a questioning look over my shoulder.
Several hours later, my hips are killing me from sitting in the same position for so long. I do my best to keep still after Samir barks at me to quit squirming again, but it’s a losing battle.
Dad turned up his cringey Dad-rock music an hour ago, singing off-key at the top of his lungs, so I have to practically shout to be heard when I ask him, “Can you pull over so I can stretch my legs?”
“What’s that?” he yells.
I lean forward, raising myself off Samir’s lap to peer over the cardboard wall, subconsciously noting the little whistling noise he makes in the back of his throat from behind me. “I said, can you please pull over!”
Dad finally turns down the music, thank god, and calls Mom, whom he’s following behind at a safe distance. Samir pulls me back down directly over his lap with his hands on my hips while we wait. Half my attention is on Dad while he has a quick conversation with Mom. The other half is fixed on the fact that Samir hasn’t removed his hands for some reason as he adjusts his legs under me to get more comfortable and groans.
What the hell is going on with him?
Dad apologizes and says, “Try to hold on a little while longer. Veda says the girls are finally napping, and she doesn’t want to risk waking them by stopping the car.”
I can’t blame her. I’m sure the twins are just as miserable as we are, crying off and on in their car seats loudly enough to make Mom want to rip her luscious hair out at the roots until they finally drifted off.
Dad cranks the volume to an ear-splitting level when his favorite song by Nickelback comes on, cutting off my whine and any attempts I might make to argue. He knows me so well.
Samir’s legs are probably cramped and asleep underneath me, but he’s only complained the one time so far on the journey—up until I start twisting and turning on his lap, slapping him in the face with my ponytail, searching for just a smidgen of extra leg room. I grind my teeth and have half a mind to accidentally kick a hole in one of the boxes of breakables just so I can stretch my legs out in front of me. It’s a good thing I chose to wear leggings today instead of jeans, or this would be ten times more uncomfortable.
“What’s wrong?” Samir asks with a tone I haven’t heard from him before as he rubs his thumbs up and down the outsides of my thighs. He almost sounds like he cares. Almost. I wish he cared.
“My hips. I’ve been sitting for too long, and they ache like they do when I’m about to get my period. I need to stretch my legs, but there’s no room,” I say with a pout.
“First of all, TMI.” A beat passes while he flexes his own hips beneath me. He probably needs a good stretch, too, especially since his legs are so much longer than mine. “Second, put your knees up on the seat.”
I turn to stare at him over my shoulder, bunching my brows with confusion. “On the seat? How?”
He pats the sliver of space between the seatbelt buckles on either side of him. “Feet here.” Then he taps the edge of the seat. “Knees here.”
I shoot him another confused look, and he rolls his golden brown eyes like I’m the dumb one when he’s the one not making any sense. Samir directs me to slip off my sandals, and with his grip on the back of my hips, he slides me forward on his legs toward his knees, tells me to brace my hands against the boxes, and then helps me scoot each foot up onto the seat. My face heats when I realize the position my step-brother has put me in, sitting reverse-cowgirl style on his lap, before he slides his hands over my shirt up to my ribs and pulls my top half back so that my shoulders rest against his chest.
“Now drop your head back on my shoulder,” he says with a low rumble.
My mouth goes dry as I do what he says, and I suck in a shuddery breath when he grips my hips again and pushes my lower half up and away from his body so that I’m stretched out in a modified bridge position. I close my eyes and moan with instant relief as the ache in my hips eases. Samir curses under his breath, his nose brushing the column of my neck, then pushes with more force to extend the stretch.
I reach up behind me to grip the top of the seat on either side of his headrest as I flex my hips. He helps me rock them slightly up and down in the air—flex and release, flex and release—to stretch my hip flexors as I grip the top of the seat harder.
“Damn, that feels so good,” I say with a moan.
“Becca,” he whispers with a strained voice, then mumbles a curse as he thumps his head back against his headrest.
“Yeah?”
“Nothing,” he rushes to say.
We hold the position for close to a minute before he drops me. I lean forward, rest my hands on my knees, and wiggle side to side when the ache immediately returns. When that doesn’t help, I sit up on my knees and arch my back, twisting my torso to one side, then the other, but it doesn’t feel nearly as good as the bridge position.
“Fuck me,” Samir bites out, louder this time. He pulls me down sharply onto his lap again and directs me to drop my head back to his shoulder. He braces his hands behind my hips and pushes, stretching me out until his arms start to shake from holding me up. I might be smaller than him, but I’m no featherweight. As strong as he is after working out close to five days a week since he was on our high school’s lacrosse team all four years, I don’t know how much longer he can hold the position before his arms protest and give out.
“I’m good now,” I lie, slightly embarrassed. Unlike Samir, I’ve spent the last four years sitting at my keyboard, uploading covers of famous songs and a few originals to my YouTube channel, so the only things that get a workout are my fingers and vocal cords.
