It’s just past midday when I pull up at Noah and Tully’s place. She had only messaged me less than fifteen minutes ago, but half the day is already gone. I didn’t realize how late it had gotten last night until Tully had fallen asleep mid conversation. That’s when I decided it was probably best that I get myself home. I’d slept half the day away and woke up to find the sun was busy trying to scorch the earth. I hope to God that Tully and Noah have turned on the air-conditioning or I might just melt.
I make my way inside and the very first thing I see is Tully standing in the living room, a devilish smirk on her lips, and a bag of what I’m assuming is the seafood in her hands.
“‘Bout time you showed up,” she tells me. “I feel like I’ve been waiting a lifetime for this.”
“Three months is hardly a lifetime.”
“Hey! That boy has been screwing with my emotions for far longer than three months. This is my time to shine. I’m going to annihilate him. By the time I’m finished with that sorry asshole, he’ll be begging for forgiveness. You’re either with me or against me, Henley. What’s it going to be?”
“Oh, I’m definitely with you, but isn’t he already begging for forgiveness?”
“Not enough.” She channels her inner beast. “I want him grovelling, tears and all, begging on his knees in desperation and until that happens, I’m hitting him with old seafood.”
“You’re dangerous.”
“Never mess with a woman scorned.”
All I can do is shake my head. “Where are the boys?”
Tully shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know. I think Noah’s working out and Rivers left early this morning. We haven’t seen him since.”
“So, what you’re saying is that this could be our only shot?”
“Yeah,” she declares, striding past me. “So get a move on. The longer this stays festering in the hot sun, the better.”
“Shit,” I laugh, following her back outside. “He’s going to kill you.”
She looks back over her shoulder. “I thought he already had.”
Fair enough.
We make our way over to Rivers’ Firebird that was turned into a mangled mess after the accident, and to make matters worse it has been sitting right outside Tully’s bedroom window as a constant reminder of the day from hell.
After the accident and after Rivers disappeared, we didn’t know where to send the car, so here is where it’s stayed and something tells me that’s how it’s going to always be until Rivers has a place of his own someday. Either that or Violet gets sick of having it outside her home and ships it off to a junkyard; which she’ll never do because she loves Rivers like a son.
Tully and I look over the car that the boys spent a good part of last night staring at. Both sides are completely destroyed. The left hand side where we were rammed into by oncoming traffic and the right hand side is where Tully was crushed into the tree.
I take in the doors. All four of them are fucked in their own way, making me wonder how the hell Rivers got us out. It couldn’t have been easy, but I guess when a person is faced with an impossible situation and adrenaline is pulsing through their veins, anything can happen.
If only everything didn’t go to shit after that.
“How are we supposed to get into this thing?” I question as the two of us walk around it, looking for a way in.
“I, uh…have no fucking idea,” Tully chuckles before placing the bag on top of the car and pulling at the driver’s door handle. It doesn’t budge and she quickly gives up before making her way to the next door.
I try the two on my side and it doesn’t take us long to realize that there’s no hope. The doors are jammed. It’s then we both look to the trunk and I instantly start shaking my head. “No. there’s no way. Leaning through an open door is one thing but crawling through all this twisted metal is just asking for trouble.”
“Don’t be such a pussy,” she says. “Our only other option is to go through the broken glass and my scarring is only just starting to fade. I don’t particularly feel like cutting up all my skin again.”
“But…”
“Come on,” Tully laughs. “Just picture their faces when they open this thing and can’t work out why the hell it smells like a dirty asshole. It’ll be even better when they figure it out and start looking for it only to discover it’s a moldy, seafood infestation.”
“You really have a way with words, you know that, right?”
“Uh-huh, and that’s why you love me. Now, help me break into this piece of shit.”
“Oooh,” I laugh as I join her around the back of the car. “If he heard you say that…”