Forget You(25)
Author: Jennifer Echols

This is what must have happened. This is what I reconstructed in my mind. But my memory was just as blank as it had been yesterday when I woke up. It started and stopped with Doug.

A cool wind blew at my back just then, tossing my ponytail forward over my shoulder. The day was still overcast. Even though the air was warm as usual, this cool breeze kept creeping up on me. It tangled up the gray clouds in turbulence and filled the otherwise innocuous day in the countryside with foreboding. When the robes started billowing in movies about wizards, that always meant something ominous.

I was scaring myself again.

Taking Keke’s dad’s mini tape measure from my pocket, I set the end at the outer edge of one tire mark and walked along the metal tape, keeping it from drawing up on me, until I reached the outer edge of the other tire mark and set the measure down. Sixty and a half inches in width. This was the car that had come from the direction of Brandon’s house. When I got home I’d look up on the internet whether sixty and a half inches was the width of a Bug or a Miata. Then at least I’d know which way I’d been driving. Simple.

To triangulate my data, I put the end of the tape measure at the outer edge of the tire mark for the second car and calculated that width the same way. This was the car that had come from the direction of the beach.

Sixty and a half inches. Both cars were the same width.

"Fuck." Panic welled up inside me and my heart knocked against my chest wall, trying to escape. I told myself to calm down, calm down. I couldn’t wig out here in sight of Lila and Keke. I would find some other way to figure out what had happened to me, and then my life would be back in order. I told myself this, but my heart sped up instead of slowing down. I was on the verge of panic with the sky still overcast and the view south and north on the highway looking exactly the same, until luckily I was distracted by Keke yelling into the distant pickup. My heart slowed down.

At that distance I couldn’t tell what she was saying to the people inside, but she shook her poster at them, then her bucket. She threw her poster and bucket into the payload and climbed in after them. I began to see that she and Lila shared something with all their siblings. It was hereditary and they couldn’t help it. They were not good at following instructions, such as do not throw flour or stand here in the road until I call you. The truck must have contained hot boys.

Sure enough, as it drew closer, I saw it was Officer Fox, with Doug in the passenger seat. My heart sped up again.

I released the tape measure so it wound back up into its metal coil, slapping my legs as it went. Then I stuffed it into my back pocket like I wasn’t already caught.

"Busted!" Keke squealed at me as the truck pulled onto the shoulder in front of the Datsun. Doug opened the passenger door and stepped out, crutches first.

"Soliciting charitable donations is not illegal," I called past him into the cab to Officer Fox.

"It’s not safe to do it on the highway," Officer Fox said. "But you’re right, being stupid isn’t illegal. Otherwise half this town would be behind bars, and Doug would have gotten the death penalty by now. Hey–" Officer Safety opened the driver’s side door and fell out of the cab onto the highway with the engine still running to avoid Doug reaching across the seat to grab him.

Doug gave up, slammed the passenger door, and righted himself on his crutches, hopping a little. "What’cha doing?" he asked me in his sweet, sarcastic voice, pretending he hadn’t seen the tape measure.

"Getting some fresh air," I said. The wind at my back flipped my ponytail over my head. I brushed it away. "I’ve been hanging out at Keke and Lila’s house. They have, like, fifteen or sixteen siblings."

"We have three," Keke called from the payload as the pickup drove past to retrieve Lila.

"Seems like more," I called back. I stared after the retreating pickup, and Keke knocking on the window to bother Officer Fox, so I wouldn’t have to meet Doug’s gaze. I should thank him for insisting Keke take me home with her last night. I didn’t thank him because all I did lately was thank him and apologize to him and hope he wasn’t ruining my mother’s life behind my back. I wished we could go back to the way we were at the beginning of the school year, when we avoided each other. Before he called me a spoiled brat at the game. Before he knew I liked to snuggle in the grass. Before I knew what he smelled like.

Because now the wind swirled around us both and wound me up in his scent of chlorine and ocean.

He reached for my mouth. I didn’t know what he intended, so I willed myself to stay still and not make a big deal out of his hand moving in slow motion toward me, beside my cheek, almost out of my line of sight. With his pinky he brushed a strand of my hair from the corner of my mouth where the wind had blown it into my lip gloss. His fingertip trailed fire across that tender corner.

And then he put his hand down and smirked at what he’d done to me. At least, that’s how it seemed. He stood in the hot air and the cool wind, taller than ever on his crutches, and looked me up and down with his distant green eyes. "So, a little hair of the dog?"

"Where?" I glanced around. Now that Keke and Lila weren’t guarding the road, a car could fly by and cream whatever wandered into its path.

Doug whistled and passed his hand in front of my eyes to get my attention. "Hair of the dog. Bloody Mary after you’ve spent the night drinking. As in, revisiting something helps you get over it."

My eyes followed the path of his hands down as he grabbed the handle of his crutch before it fell over. Did he mean we’d spent the night drinking? I didn’t drink. Doug didn’t drink while he was in training. Mike did drink. However, he hadn’t been drinking before the wreck, or Doug would have been driving Mike’s Miata.

Doug’s fingers caressed the worn wooden handle of the secondhand crutch. My gaze trailed up his big hand, his wide wrist, his strong forearm meant for pulling his body weight through the water rather than maneuvering himself on land. Slowly I realized he was speaking metaphorically.

And I lashed out. "I do not need to get over you," I said more forcefully than I’d intended, because I was lying. Oh God, I was lying again, and now I was confused, but this had to stop. "I am happy dating Brandon. I didn’t know you would drive by while I was here. How could I know that?"

He stared at me without blinking, and tilted his head ever so slightly to one side. "I meant you’re getting over the wreck."

"Right!" I turned toward the skid marks in the road to hide my red face. He would use this to embarrass me in public. Embarrassing me in private was bad enough. Zoey likes me after she swore she didn’t. Zoey has been fantasizing about my knee on her thigh.