Forget You(34)
Author: Jennifer Echols

I didn’t know what to do. I needed him to come with me so I could find out about the wreck. And I’ll admit, even if I’d figured out everything there was to know about the wreck, I would have invented an excuse to spend more time alone with Doug.

I opened my eyes and told him the truth. "I’m dating Brandon–"

He slid his wallet from his back pocket, slipped out an imaginary card, and tried to hand it to me.

I thumped at his fingers with mine. "But sometime in the future, if things didn’t work out between me and Brandon . . . I don’t want to say you’d have a chance with me, because that sounds like I’m some pink and orange stuffed animal at the county fair that you’d pay a dollar fifty to throw darts at."

He rolled his eyes. Then he reached for me. The rest of the team had flowed into the locker rooms by now The pool deck was empty. No one saw

. him run his middle finger across my forehead, tracing what was left of the bruise. All my hair stood on end as he tucked one wet strand behind my ear and whispered, "That’s good enough." 10 I walked yet another slow circle around the Bug, then another circle around the Miata. Examining the diagram of the wreck I’d drawn on the clipboard, I leaned back against the Miata. I leaped up again when it groaned and shifted under me. "So, I saw the deer and jerked the wheel to the left." I held the clipboard in front of me and turned it left like a steering wheel.

Doug shrugged as well as he could while leaning on his crutches in the weedy junkyard. He slapped at a mosquito.

"Mike, headed the other way, simultaneously visualized said ruminant and relocated the steering device leftward."

"I am listening," Doug insisted.

I put my hand gently on the crushed front panel of the Miata. "Seems like both of us would have turned right automatically. As a driver, you’d try to crash on your side rather than the passenger side, since you’re the one responsible."

"Let’s not go there," Doug said, shaking his head. "It was dark, it was raining, the roads were slick. There was a f**king deer, for God’s sake. Y don’t

ou remember the wreck, so you have to trust me. I do remember it and I couldn’t even tell you who turned the wheel where. It happened so fast. Deer, bam, and it was over."

Deflated, I let the clipboard sag. And not just because Doug couldn’t give me details about the wreck. I wanted details about him, too, and he thwarted me at every turn. One of the few things I knew for sure about him was that he and Mike hated each other. Whenever they found themselves sitting next to each other in the swim team van, they made someone else move so they could get away from each other. And now it sounded like he was defending Mike.

"What’s this?" he asked, hobbling over to the car next to the Bug, this one protected by a canvas. He peeled back one corner of the cover to reveal the sparkle of red metallic paint. "Holy f**k, it’s a 1987 Porsche 944."

I ventured closer. "I thought you didn’t know anything about cars."

"But I am male, and I recognize a 1987 Porsche 944 when I see one."

From the reverence in his voice, I could tell this car was something special. It didn’t look like much, though. "That’s some paint job."

"Y eah, that’s probably part of the reason a Porsche is sitting in a junkyard. That color is definitely not found in nature." Then he grinned at me. "Wanna go parking?"

"Ha ha ha," I said nervously.

He snapped his fingers. "Y told Mike you left your condoms in the Bug. Did you want those?"

"Ah, right," I said, moving to the front of the Bug (the engine was in the trunk). I turned my key in the lock, but the hood didn’t pop open–not surprising since the front right fender was demolished. I pushed it, pried it. "Thanks for remembering my condoms," I said as I struggled. "Do you have plans?"

In answer, he let his crutches fall, prodded me aside, and threw his whole weight into forcing the hood open.

"Don’t hurt it!" I pleaded.

He looked at me.

"Okay, you’re right," I admitted. The Bug was toast.

With a groan from both Doug and the car, the hood popped open. I blinked back tears at the sight of my pristine trunk, which I’d covered in fresh carpet from the remnant store a few weeks before. The inside space was concave. Poor Bug.

The vat of condoms had slid to the back wall. I reached in for it and half fell into the trunk. Doug put his hand on my lower back to steady me.

The vat of condoms was suddenly just out of reach and strangely hard to grip. Doug’s warm hand burned through the skin of my lower back.

When I couldn’t draw it out any longer without being painfully obvious, I grabbed the big box and backed out of the hood. Very slowly. Doug’s hand smoothed up my back, under my shirt, all the way to my bra.

I turned to him.

He gazed down at me with absolutely no expression on his face while tracing his fingers down my back, out of my shirt. "What?" he asked innocently, daring me to mention Brandon again.

"I guess I should get all the stuff out of my car before it’s crushed into a metal cube and lost forever." Dropping the box of condoms at his feet, I ducked away from him and ran to the driver’s door, which opened easily. On the floorboard and under the driver’s seat, there was nothing. I had trouble wedging my head into the space between the bashed-in passenger side dashboard and the seat, but once I did, I saw nothing. The glove compartment, permanently popped open with the force of the crash, was empty. None of this surprised me. I kept a very clean car, unlike Keke and Lila’s Datsun, which was knee-deep in candy wrappers. I folded the seat forward and slid into the back.

Doug pushed the driver’s seat into place and sat down, grunting a little as he hoisted his cast into the car. "Looking for something?"

"I was half hoping I’d find my diamond earrings in here," I admitted, my voice muffled against the carpeted floor. I righted myself and brushed my hair out of my face. "I was wearing them the night of the wreck, and I haven’t seen them since."

He reached in front of him and popped open the ashtray in the dash. Diamonds glittered inside.

"Eureka!" Leaning through the space between the front seats, I scooped the diamonds out. My fingers hit an unexpected bump, and I leaned forward to look. The ashtray had caved in with the dash. One of the earring posts was bent. The same force that bent a platinum earring post had also done a number on Doug’s leg over in Mike’s car. It was a wonder he still had a leg at all. But Doug didn’t need to be reminded of that, so I swallowed my nausea and smiled. "How’d you know my earrings would be in the ashtray?"