“The usual?” he asked, tucking his shaggy blonde hair behind one ear and uncapping his pen with his teeth.
I gestured at Sam to order. He was better at it anyways. I always forgot to order extra whipped cream. Sam was always crabby when he had to ration out the small ramekin of whipped cream we did get, making sure we both got an even amount without a fight.
“Oh hey, Mitch?” I called after our waiter as he turned to walk away when Sam had finished ordering. “Can we get an extra side of the whipped cream?” I kicked Sam underneath the table.
“You got it, Dyl!” Mitch flashed me a thumbs up as Sam kicked me back.
My body suddenly tensed up, a natural reaction to recalling something strange.
“Oh my god, sorry! Did I kick you too hard?” Sam had noticed my frozen deer-in-headlights expression.
I put my coffee cup down on the table because my hands had started to shake a little. Alright, breathe, Dylan, I told myself. Chapter 5: There’s always a logical explanation for the seemingly unexplained.
“Um, Dylan?” Sam was now looking at me, his face full of concern.
“I never told that man my name.”
“We’ve been coming here for years-- of course Mitch knows you.”
“No.” I shook my head firmly. “The man from the auto shop.” I took a deep breath and reiterated, “He called me Dylan the second we met him. There’s absolutely no way he should have known that.”
Sam didn’t believe me, convinced that I must have somehow told him without remembering that I did. “You were frazzled, how could you possibly remember?”
That was the thing, I did. My mom had always hated my nickname of Dylan and I hated the name Gwendolyn. So, we compromised. Anytime I met someone, I was Gwendolyn until they got to know me. Then, my nickname was allowed to come out.
I stayed annoyed at Sam all the way through the day until night fell. That’s when I realized I couldn’t lie in bed and overthink things anymore. Sam had brushed all of my concerns off nonchalantly and so I’d have to get answers myself.
I hopped in my car, which was actually running smoothly, and headed towards Gustav’s Auto Shop.
I passed the yellow house, confirming that I was getting close. I must have gone too far, however, because I didn’t see the shop. I looped back around. All that stood next to the abandoned warehouses was an empty parking lot. The moon glinted off something. It was the can Sam had kicked.
“This can’t be right?” I quickly locked the doors and drove forward. I needed to get out of there. As I passed the parking lot, all that was left was shadowy figures that resembled two small animals. Their glowing eyes were fixed on me as I drove off.
CHAPTER 3
I studied my reflection in the car window and decided it was time to give myself a pep talk.
“Dylan Dwyer, you are not crazy. You are going out with your friends and you will have the best night of your life.” There, I had said it, it was time to believe it. I was in the driveway of Nina’s house.
Nina had been my best friend since our freshman year of college. She was a model and had just about the sweetest personality of anyone I’d ever met. We called her ‘simply Nina’ because of her easy-going demeanor coupled with the way she looked magical no matter what she did.
I spotted Shelby and Ryland’s brand new and matching 2018 BMW models parked out front. They were friends who modeled with Nina and became my friends by default.
“Heeeeyyyy.” It was Shelby who spotted me first from her perch on the porch railing. She hopped off and ran towards me, her silver velvet jumpsuit shimmering in the summer sun. She was the only person I knew who could pull off a pixie haircut and velvet in this decade.
“This is cute!” I exclaimed, breaking out of her embrace and grabbing her hands to look at her.
“Thank you, doll. We went shopping right before.” She spun around several times until I stopped her. She was already a little tipsy, and all I needed was throw up on my shirt.
“The party is here!” Shelby literally screamed as she grabbed my hand, pulling me to the porch where Ryland was already lying down on the swing, her chestnut waves dangling over the side.
“Please don’t tell me you’re already too drunk to go out,” I scolded.
She shot straight up. “Woops. The world is spinning.” She closed her eyes. “Moving that quickly was a bad idea.”
Nina appeared a beat later, a bottle of water in hand.
“Preparing already.” She gave me a wink as she forced Ryland to take the water.
Shelby pulled me down into a nearby seat and whispered. “Ryland’s job is on the chopping block.”
Ryland worked as some sort of a receptionist at a fancy law firm called Rostin and Kowski. I couldn’t tell you what exactly she did or how much money she made, but I sure as hell could tell you how many free dinners she got a week out of the men she went on dates with. She had dropped out of law school to pursue modeling before dropping out of modeling to pursue men. She found that all her dreams became one when she got that job.
I knew what it was like to think you had your life planned out until suddenly, you didn’t. Sam and I had been fighting a lot lately.
“Cheer up, you’re making me depressed,” Nina snipped at Ryland but at the same time, she didn’t mean it. She was rubbing her shoulder gently.
“Ah, fuck it.” Ryland jumped up quickly once more but this time, she seemed unaffected. She was on a mission for her phone. “I’m Nexting and X’ing. Gotta find new men somewhere,” she announced as she opened the popular dating app on her phone.
For a minute, I wondered what it would be like to simply have all that attention on you. The men vying for your attention as if you were the star of your very own dating show. I shook the thought from my head. Sam and I were only fighting, not giving up on each other completely.
“Yo, let’s toast.” Nina lifted her glass. Her jet black hair which was expertly curled in waves had fallen down around her face.
“I just don’t want you to be sad,” Shelby was drunkenly whispering in Ryland’s ear now.
They hugged each other, and for a moment I thought they were both going to lose it.
“To Ryland,” Shelby announced as she pulled away from her embrace.
“To new beginnings,” Nina chimed in, lifting her glass into the air once more.
“To warm beer,” Ryland took a swig and almost spit it all out.
They were now all looking expectantly at me.
“To feeling like you’re not going crazy for the first time in a week.” I had just started the process of shaking the auto shop from my memory. Better to think I was delirious from lack of sleep than to think that I was losing my mind.
“Little weird, but okay, Dyl,” Nina said, clinking her glass against mine with a smile.
I took a deep gulp. The wine was good that she had given me. I was no expert, but it went down smoothly and left a faint strawberry taste in my mouth. “This is really good.”
“Glad you like it.” Nina topped my glass off. “Hey!” She suddenly realized, practically climbing over me to look at the back of my shirt which was laced together with a ribbon, “I bought you this!”
I shooed her off. “Yes, you did. Now, get off me. I can’t breathe.” I quickly drank down my wine.
“Sam hated this shirt.” Her eyes twinkled at the thought of me rebelling against him. “Did you sneak out in this?”
The wine was setting in. It was probably a good time to tell them about the fights him and I had that week, starting with our breakfast date at Flamingles.
“Are we all set to go?” Ryland cut in before I could even answer Nina. She flashed her phone at us. Gone was the dating app, and in its place was a ride-sharing app. “I’ve been itching to go since I sat down. Just say the wor-”
“WORD!” Nina jumped up and started dancing. “I’m ready!”
Shelby almost choked on her drink. “Not dancing like that, you aren’t.”
“Oh, piss
off.” Nina shot her a look. The only time she ever swore was when she was drunk.
We all slammed what remaining liquid was left in our cups as Ryland’s phone beeped, signaling that our driver had arrived to pick us up.
I was the first one to make it to the front of Nina’s house. Everyone else wanted one last touch-up of their makeup. Seeing as how this was the best I had looked in a few days, I wasn’t too concerned.
That meant I was also the first person to make it into the van. I slipped into the back seat diagonally from the driver. I was not about to be the person getting stuck sitting in the front.
The driver turned around, almost immediately surveying me without a hello.
I squirmed uncomfortably before he even locked eyes with me, slowly moving his eyes from my head down to my heels and back up again. He didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was being creepy.
“Name’s Vorcit.” The middle letters of his name came out in a hiss. It wasn’t just his staring that put me off; it was also his whole demeanor.
I managed a polite hello. The last thing I wanted to do was piss someone off when our lives were in his hands.
“Woohoo, party time!” Ryland now had a fresh beer in her hand and was waving it around as the door automatically slid open for her.
“What ya doing in here?” She leaned in super-close, her face inches from mine, and her breath heavy with the smell of cheap beer. “Flirting with the driver?” She shot him a look.
I scolded her to dump her beer out, something that always made me antsy until Vorcit turned around and told her she could drink it as long as she kept it out of sight.
Strike two for him.
“Where to?” he asked, again moving his gaze to the rearview mirror, and finding my eyes once more. If he did this one more time, I had a plan to migrate to the back of the van where he wouldn’t be able to see me.
For my sake, I hoped he’d mellow out. My head was fuzzy.
Luckily Nina, the voice of reason, had arrived and was already giving him directions from the front seat. She was a brave soul.
“What?” Nina asked me. Apparently I had commended her out loud. I really was drunk. I looked over at Ryland and Shelby, both of whom were texting and not paying a lick of attention to anyone around them. All that mattered was whoever was on the other end. That’s probably why they didn’t notice that yet again Vorcit was watching me in the mirror when he should have been looking at the road. I realized he was staring before I even looked up.
A loud pop of music broke through the quiet of the car, pulling everyone out of their own worlds.
“Sorry.” Nina shouted to us. She had clicked the radio on and didn’t realize that it was on full blast. When the music quieted down, I spoke up.
“This night is much needed. Sam has been making me question my sanity lately.”
The music turned completely off.
“What the fuck,” Ryland screamed, but it wasn’t me she was yelling at. Vorcit had accelerated over a speed bump, causing everything inside to rattle loose. Ryland’s phone flew from her hands. She unbuckled her seatbelt to search underneath the driver’s side seat.
I wanted to tell her it was a bad idea, but Vorcit was grumbling, “They put them damn things on the outskirts of downtown. Apparently the town is cracking down on speeding.”
Which might have been true, but it didn’t explain why he literally sped up to go over a speed bump. He flashed me another look.
“Way to force it, Vorcit.” Nina laughed, her twinkling voice breaking up the silence that again took over the car.
Vorcit smiled, but from the rearview mirror the smile didn’t quite reach his dark eyes. No one around me bothered to ask anything more about Sam, and perhaps I had dodged a bullet. I didn’t need more people to reassure me of my insanity.
“Seriously?” Ryland was now red in the face, the color almost matching her dress. Vorcit had slammed on the brakes on a seemingly empty road. The phone that she had back in her hands once again was sent flying. This time it landed at my feet. I handed it back to her. “I was in the middle of an epic Instagram post.” She went back to making pouty faces into the camera.
“There’s no stop sign here, dumbass,” Shelby grumbled softly enough not to be heard by Vorcit.
“There’s deer.” He apparently did hear her.
“There’s no deer.” Nina had rolled her window down, her upper body now hanging halfway out, surveying the trees on either side.
“There’s deer here,” Vorcit said in a final tone, signaling the end of that conversation.
We were still several blocks away from the new club that Nina had wanted to check out, a recommendation that someone had told her about during her most recent modeling audition.
“Oh shit.” It was Vorcit who spoke this time, his voice soft as he slowed his car to a crawl.
“Seriously, can we just walk?” Ryland asked, but everyone ignored her.
“What is it?” Nina had poked her head back in the car, and now it was my turn to look around. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just a dark road.
Vorcit had found my eyes in the rearview mirror again. “There was a girl this time.” He pointed off into the trees, as if bored with everything that was happening.
I looked in the direction he’d pointed and, as I had expected, there was no one there.
“We’ll just get out here,” I said, reiterating what Ryland had asked.
“What?” Nina asked, turning to look at me like I was crazy. “We’re at least six blocks away.” She gestured down at her shoes, a pair of black sparkly stilettos. She cared more about the pain her ankles would endure than the car ride from hell we seemed to be stuck in.
“We’re two blocks away.” I pulled out my phone to check a map of the location. “We’ll be fine.” I nodded at her. “Pull over,” I said firmly to Vorcit. He looked back up in the mirror to find my face, and this time I held his gaze. Neither of us blinked until I heard the click of the van doors unlocking. They inched open slowly until finally there was enough room to get out. I waited, however, until everyone else was out safely.
I leaned forward, a five-dollar bill in my hand as a tip. Without warning, Vorcit grabbed my wrist and held my shocked gaze for a few seconds. I was too stunned to break free. The bill fluttered to the crumb-filled floor of the van.
He let go to pick it up and I darted out.
“That was fucking weird,” Ryland said, shaking her head at him as he sped past us. “I’m definitely leaving one star.” She wasn’t playing. I looked over and she was already tapping her perfectly manicured nails angrily against the phone.
After a block of walking, we fell into a pattern. Nina and I were behind Ryland and Shelby, who had linked arms and were passing the beer, which had survived the car ride, back and forth.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your problems with Sam?” Nina took my hand gently, and I couldn’t help but think about what just happened with the driver. I rubbed the spot on my wrist where Vorcit had grabbed me.
“I’m sorry. I wanted to.” Our heels clicking against the road was the only sound. Up ahead, we could make out the lights and sounds of downtown. “It’s just that saying it out loud makes me realize how bad it has been.”
“You think you’ll break up?”
It was a question that I wasn’t ready to face. All I really wanted was someone to reassure me about the thoughts and worries that filled my head. I wanted someone to tell me they were valid.
“Yes!” Shelby stopped abruptly and screeched, “We’re here!”
We sure were. We easily found the club. It was the only place that actually had red velvet ropes and a bodyguard standing outside. Give it a few weeks, I thought, and the hype would die down just like everything else in this city. A girl in front of us was already complaining that they had been waiting for hours.
“Think she’s being dramatic?” Nina raised her eyebrows at me.
“Who knows? 10-B.” I read the name of the
club out loud. “What’s the B stand for?”
“Boobies.” Ryland turned around and started shimmying.
“You’re gross.” I gave her a playful shove back around.
“This is a clusterfuck,” Shelby commented, gesturing at everyone huddled together.
“I blame the dipshit cab driver. It’s now the busy time,” Ryland answered with an eye roll.
“It’s fine, you guys,” I said, pulling them into line. “What’s a little wait when you’ve got good company?”
“You guys,” Nina shrieked from behind us. She had been talking to two guys that had joined the line. For a moment, I was worried they had done something to her.
She was spinning in a circle. “My bracelet is gone.”
I looked around. Nothing gold and sparkly caught my eye. “Are you sure?”
Nina pulled her collar down, staring as if it had somehow fallen in there. She then patted her form fitting dress and touched her hair before stating again with certainty that the bracelet was gone.
“The one from senior year?” Ryland asked.
We had to find it. That bracelet was given to Nina after her cousin Camilla committed suicide two weeks after Nina’s eighteenth birthday. It was a simple gold band with one charm saying ‘hope’ and another charm of a tree which matched the tattoo her cousin had.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Nina was having a full blown meltdown. The crowd in front of us was winding down as more people were allowed in.
I saw the other girls exchange a look as we got closer to the front. There was no way Nina would go in without that bracelet.
I began to move backwards from our current spot in line in an attempt to look between people’s legs. Lots of heels and shiny oxford shoes, but no glimmering sign of a bracelet.
I made it to the end of the line and looked back towards Nina, who was going row by row asking people if they had seen it.
I took a deep breath and looked up at the stars. The night wasn’t off to the start I had hoped for, and suddenly I felt exhausted from just about everything, the booze, the drive, and Sam all catching up to me and causing a crescendo of emotions in my brain.
If Heaven Had Cheese Fries Page 3
