Wreckless

by Bria Quinlan

  I tried to move, tried to figure out what to do. My hands shook a bit and I wiped them on my skirt, afraid they were getting clammy. We shouldn't have been there. We were breaking the law, which would easily equal a night in jail. Or, if the owner was anything like Old Man Dalton, shot with salt rock.

  “It's okay, Bridget. We're not going to get caught.”

  I don't know what made him so sure. But as a new Dangerous Woman Living Dangerously, this seemed like a good place to start for a small rebellion. If only I could stop shaking.

  I followed Jake around the back of the pickup and let him pull me up into the bed. He laid out a blanket and lowered himself to sit with his back to the cab. I stood there in the back of the truck looking down at him until he patted the blanket next to him.

  “Come on, Bridget. This was the smallest rebellion I could come up with.”

  Okay. So. Trespassing.

  I was doing pretty well. We were about ten minutes past the gate. No cops. No angry farmers. I checked Jake out again. A hot guy. Not the right hot guy, but still.

  Of course, the right hot guy was no longer the right hot guy, so I couldn't really be picky, could I?

  I settled in next to him as he pulled out his phone and checked the time.

  “You said you needed to be someplace?”

  “Yeah, but not 'til later.” He stuffed his phone in his front pocket. “We're good.”

  “You can go. You know...” I wasn't sure how to say this without sounding even more pathetic. “You could just drop me at my drive. It's all good.”

  Jake turned his head against the back window to look at me as I stuttered through my lameness.

  “Bridget, it's not even nine. I've got nowhere to be this early.”

  Of course he didn’t. That was just more proof of my lameness. If I wasn’t careful I’d be going to the early bird specials with all the senior citizens before I was a high school senior.

  I nodded and laid my head back, too. It was one of those nights where the moon gave just enough light so you could make everything out, and yet the stars were so bright you wanted to reach up and touch them. They shone as if they were just right over... there.

  If I'd been in a good mood, if my world hadn't fallen apart thirty minutes ago, I might have said it was a magical kind of night.

  But magic was only for those who knew how to grab it.

  After a moment, I heard the spritz of a cap coming off a bottle and looked over to see Jake handing me a drink.

  “Here's to your freedom.”

  It figured. Only a guy would see getting dumped in the most public and humiliating way possible as freedom.

  I took a sip and almost spit it out on him. “What is this?”

  “Becks.”

  “What? Is this beer?” The bitter taste tainted my mouth, a thick feeling coating my tongue.

  I couldn’t believe I’d just poured that slog down my throat. I could still taste the harsh hops like they were glued there. If only I was one of those girls who carried a purse with her whole world in it. I could brush my teeth, rinse with Scope, then chew some gum.

  “Yeah,” He grinned, like this was a special treat. “Becks.”

  “You gave me a beer?”

  Jake laughed, a low, gravelly sound that seemed to rise up from deep in his chest like he was keeping it in, keeping it to himself. “You said you'd never drank. You said you wanted to stop being boring and not taking chances.”

  There wasn't much I could say to that.

  Except, “You could have warned me.”

  Jake took the bottle from my hand and downed a long swig from it. “Would you have tried it, or would we have argued about you taking a little sip for the next twenty minutes?”

  “That isn't the point.” I watched him take another swig as if he drank beer all the time. He probably did. He had one of those grins. My dad called them devil’s grin.

  Jake knew. He knew I was already backing out of everything I'd said while fueled on hurt and rage. Somehow, worrying about wandering the countryside with a stranger had unfocused reality a little for me.

  “What's the point?” He took another swig as if to challenge my complaint without words. “If you’re going to do it, just do it.”

  “The point is, from now on I want to know I'm about to break a law before I do it.”

  He stared at me, our heads resting side by side on the back of his cab, turned to face one another.

  If he were Tanner, if this were a date, I'd be thinking about when he was going to kiss me. About how romantic it was out in the quiet with the stars and the moon and nothing around but the two of us. But this wasn’t a date. It wasn’t even someone I’d want to date—you know, if he had even wanted to date me. Nope. This was just someone with nowhere to be just now.

  “I've never met anyone who had rules about how to break rules.” He rolled his neck, his gaze forced away from me for the moment. “There’s a whole lotta gray area running up to being reckless. You’re not even near the area near the area.”

  “There's nothing wrong with rules.” Rules kept society on track. It was a hard lesson, but one I’d learned young. Anarchy was never a good idea. Even personal anarchy.

  He kept looking at me as if he could see the answers to everything if he just watched me long enough. “Good enough. No more surprise law-breaking.”

  He held the beer out, clearly a dare he didn't think I'd take.

  Breathing through my nose, I took another sip. The cool, light liquid washed though my mouth contrasted with the bitter aftertaste it left behind. That aftertaste? It was just plain yucky, for lack of a better word.

  Looked like I didn't like beer.

  Shocker.

  I wasn't sure what to do when he opened a second one and drank from it. I was glad not to have to share a drink with him—that seemed a bit too personal at this point—but I wasn't sure he should be drinking one on his own if he was going to drive.

  “So,” he started, setting the beer on his raised knee, “What’re you going to do?”

  “Maybe just dump it out?”

  Jake laughed again, letting that gravel sound rumble from the back of his throat.

  “No. About the boyfriend and best friend thing?”

  What could I do? It wasn’t like anyone cared. If anyone had cared, I'm sure I would have heard about it days ago…maybe weeks ago. Causing a scene would just embarrass me. If they were hooking up in public, there wasn't anything that would embarrass them. They’d proven that.

  I was definitely feeling like this was the perfect time to cut my losses.

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  “Nothing?” It was the first time I'd said anything that really seemed to surprise him. “You're just going to go to school Monday and pretend nothing happened?”

  “Well, I'm not going to hang out with Leah anymore or date Tanner. But what can I do? I was literally the last one to know. Any attempt at public humiliation would only backfire.”

  “Bridget, you can't allow a guy treat you like that and let it slide. That's a bad habit my sister would never agree to. You've got to draw a line in the sand, or guys are going to use you for the rest of your life.”

  As if there was going to be another guy. I just had to make it through junior and senior year, and then all this teen social anxiety would be over. I’d already been taking business classes through my homeschool group so I could get a job doing the books at one of the local businesses like my mom and not worry about the rest of the world.

  All I wanted was a clean-looking future and to grow out of that whole Poor Larson Girl thing.

  That was one of the things I had loved about Tanner. He never acted like he saw a tragedy when he looked at me.

  “We'll see.” I wasn't sure what Jake expected me to say, but I took another small sip of the beer and thought about all the ways Monday was going to stink. “This is really gross. Why do you drink it?”

  “It's an acquired taste.” He took another long sip off his b
ottle.

  “Why bother?”

  He stared out over the bed of the truck to the trees below us. “At first, just because. The guys get together. They have a beer or two. Then, after a while, I actually started to like it.”

  I started to worry that I was trapped in a truck with a drunk. It was a darn good thing I could drive, even if not legally.

  “You let me drive your truck.”

  Jake looked surprised again. “So?”

  “Tanner never let me drive his truck.”

  He smirked behind the bottle. “Technically, I only let you move it through a gate.”

  “He would have made me open the gate.”

  “Jackass.” The word came out low and under his breath, but I was positive that's what I'd heard. He’d said it before, but I’d been numb to everything at that moment. Now, the word kind of jolted me.

  Even Tanner—who I'd heard swear like a trucker when he was with his friends—rarely swore in front of me. Whenever he did, he’d always apologized.

  I waited of Jake to apologize. After a minute, I realized he wasn't going to.

  There was something nice about him not thinking I couldn't handle hearing a curse.

  I might not curse myself, but I wasn’t twelve. I could hear a curse word without going into a full swoon.

  “What are you grinning at?”

  I hadn’t realized I was grinning. There was something about someone not treating me like a five-year-old that made me a bit giddy.

  “Jake, I have to confess something.”

  He looked my way. I was a little nervous what he was going to say to this.

  “I don't have my license.”

  He kept looking at me. I wasn't sure what he expected me to do. Should I apologize?

  “And?”

  “And I should have told you before you let me drive your truck.”

  “Move. Move my truck. Through a gate.”

  I wasn't sure what his point was.

  “You went, what, twelve feet total?”

  “I guess.”

  “I think it's going to be okay. Chalk it up to your grand rebellion.” He took another swig of his beer.

  I looked at my own. I'd managed to almost finish the neck, but it still looked like no one was really drinking it. Poor beer. Jake’s was closer to done, but he didn't look like he was rushing through it.

  We sat like that, enjoying the quiet for a while. I knew Jake was thinking of taking me home when he pulled his phone out to check the time again. He ran through the texts he'd gotten since we'd left the fair. After he shot a couple back, he pushed the phone back in his pocket and finished his beer.

  Then he said the one thing I couldn’t believe a complete stranger would know about me.

  “Why don't you tell me what this rebellion is really about?”

  Chapter Five

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I forced the words past my lips, but at the same time, I thought I might know exactly what he was saying. I thought this guy—this guy who was pushier than any four people put together—might see more than just Tanner and Leah messing me over.

  But that wasn’t something I even wanted to think about, so there definitely wasn’t any way I was going to talk about it. Not with him.

  “Listen, you're adorable. A complete mess, but still adorable.”

  “What do you mean I'm a mess?”

  Jake took the beer out of my hand and finished off half of it in one gulp.

  “You've got this boyfriend-best friend fiasco, and that's just the lid on the pot. Darlin', you're dressed like a fifty-year-old nun, you panicked when I went five miles over the speed limit, and you've got so many rules you're making my principal look laidback. If you don't chill out soon, you're going to give yourself and everyone within six miles of you an ulcer by the time you’re twenty.”

  I had absolutely no idea what to say…to any of that.

  “Don’t call me ‘darlin'.’ I am not your darling.” I closed my eyes. I could not believe that was the best I could come up with.

  “Don't blame me for speaking the truth. I wasn't the one talking about how my boyfriend was screwing around with my best friend because of how boring I am.”

  This was what happened when you let a few honest thoughts slip out.

  “I am not boring.”

  “Oh yeah? What about that list? We're sitting here killing time, you drank like three sips of a beer, and you look like the truck's the only thing holding you up. Now you're going to go home, cry yourself to sleep, then go to school Monday and pretend everything is fine.”

  “No, I'm not.” Although that was basically my plan until Jake made it sound like the equivalent of rolling over and dying.

  “And what are you going to do about it?”

  I was so angry I had no idea what I was going to do. My hands were shaking and I was so warm I untied my sweater from around my waist just to get some type of layer off of me. I couldn't believe this guy—the one who had been my knight in shining armor just thirty minutes ago—was calling me boring. And a coward. And a nun!

  A nun was just too far. We were Lutheran, for crying out loud.

  I grabbed up my beer and downed as much as I could stand in one measure, gulping it past my taste buds as quickly as possible. Setting it down with a glass-on-metal thud, I pushed myself off the truck bed and swung down from the tailgate.

  “Where do you think you're going?” Jake stood, hands tucked in his back pockets.

  “I'm going to make a list.” I yanked open the passenger's side door and pulled the glove compartment open. He may not have had a pen and paper in there, but a Sharpie and Dairy Queen napkin would do just fine. I went around to the front of the truck to use the hood as a desk.

  1. Trespassing

  I wrote it down then put a scratch through it. This list was going pretty darn well.

  2. Drinking

  Another scratch.

  3. TP a house

  I had one in mind for that.

  4. Lie to my parents

  Not as easy. Especially after today when they had accused me of lying when I hadn’t. I couldn’t decide if today’s events made this one harder or easier. Maybe today counted. I mean, as far as my parents were concerned, for that two-hour period, I had already lied to them.

  But that seemed like a cop out.

  5. Miss curfew

  6. Stay out all night

  7. Steal a sign

  I studied this one for a second. It wasn’t so much the desire to steal any sign. I put Larson Lane in parentheses at the end of line seven.

  This was going really well. A sweet warmth stole through me at the idea of it all coming together so easily, my head just a little light.

  8. Break a law

  I’d have to figure out if the underage drinking and trespassing counted. Although, combining entries seemed like cheating and we’d already established today that I was not a cheater.

  9. Pick up a boy at a party

  10. Kiss him

  TV made this look easy. The shows on the CW made me think if you were a girl within three miles of a party, you’d be picking up a boy.

  Somehow I doubted this was true.

  Of course, they also made it look like you could own your own international business in high school and wear Gucci to pep rallies.

  I was going to actually need to go to a party to kiss a boy at one.

  11. Go to a party

  “What is this?” Jake snatched my list from me. “You're not serious, right?”

  I whipped around, surprised how close he was, surprised I felt just a little off-balance.

  This must be buzzed.

  I grinned to myself. This wasn’t so bad. I kind of felt…fun. I was fun. Or maybe I could be fun.

  “You're the one who brought up the list. Maybe I need to get busy being less boring.”

  “Oh yeah. You're really going to head out and just do all these.”

  “Look at that.” I pointed at one and two
. “The first two are already scratched off.”

  “Because, by the way you tell it, I all but kidnapped you to come chill out before taking you home.” He held the napkin up to the light. “I’m not sure you’ve really earned the right to cross off ‘drinking,’ either. Is there some other thing you could put on the list, like, ‘sipped almost indiscernible amount of a potentially alcoholic beverage?’”

  “I had more than that. And besides, I don't need you to do these. I can do them on my own.”

  I wasn't sure how, but I would.

  “Sure. You're just going to rush right out and do them all…without a friend or a car or a license. That's really going to happen.”

  I knew he was right. I wasn’t that girl. And even if I wanted to be, I was lacking Rebellion Resources.

  “Maybe I'm more adventurous than you think.”

  And completely bluffing at this point.

  Jake cocked an eyebrow at me. “Really? Because there seems to be something missing from this list.”

  I tried to glance at it, but his hand covered most of three through nine leaving me straining to remember what they all were.

  “I wasn't done.”

  “No? Then what did you forget?”

  I couldn't think of anything I'd forgotten.

  “Oh, wait. Cow-tipping. I hadn't put it on there yet.” I tried to reach for the DQ napkin, but he held it over my head.

  “Cow-tipping? That's the one you think you forgot?” He shook his head. “You're all talk.”

  “I am not. I'm going to do the whole darn list.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.” Absolutely. One day. Even if cow-tipping wasn’t a real thing. I’d figure out a way to do it anyway.

  “So if I happen to remember the item you've left off the list, you'll go do it? Not someday. Not a little at a time. Tonight. You’ll do the whole darn thing, no backing out.”

  This was stupid. I was going to end up in some farmer’s backyard with salt rock in my behind. I had no idea where this dare was going, but Jake was ticking me off so bad, I'd’ve promise just about anything.

  “Fine.”

  There went that eyebrow again.

  “Fine?” he asked.

  “Yes. Fine. You remember something I said I wanted to do, and we'll put it on the list.”