College Fiend [A$AP Rocky]

Twenty

“Thank you.”

Wayne looked at me strangely. “For what?”

“What else? You brought me to my mother’s house just when I’d given up on finding her. I have to repay you for that.”

He let his head fall against the window, which was damp from the rain that was beginning to fall. I left my mother’s house without saying goodbye, and for some reason the rain was making me feel the effect of that decision. It always looked so sad, rain.

“You’re welcome, Sabine.”

I wanted to smile at Wayne, but I couldn’t. Not with the stiffness of Quincy’s posture in the driver’s seat, or the heaviness that remained in my heart from my encounter with Mama, or the rain that kept getting heavier by the second. I couldn’t smile. I felt like someone had tied my hands and feet and restricted me from doing anything that they didn’t approve of.

It was me who tied myself up in the first place.

No other conversation was held after Wayne told me that I was welcome. He actually fell asleep in the back, his light snores adding to the pitter-patter out the windows and the hum of the car.

“Why aren’t you talking?” I asked Quincy suddenly. The sound of my own voice was like music to my ears; just something else to hear.

As I expected, for a few seconds he was quiet. I was beginning to notice that he was just a little bit stubborn. If I told him to do something, he would resist for a little while, just to show me that he didn’t have to do it but was only choosing to. There was a playful tone behind it, but it got frustrating.

“I don’t know what to say.” He replied finally. Genuinely, too. Now I knew that he wasn’t quiet because of Wayne, but because he heard. He was standing outside and heard everything that my mother and I said to each other. I should have known that he was eavesdropping. “This is all kind of awkward for me, Sabine.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know. I just wish it wasn’t.” And then we stopped at a red light, the only red light that we’d seen for a while. We were back in the city, finally. Now I didn’t really need to hear any voices, because I had something else to distract me from bursting into tears and fussing over which should to cry on: the faces outside. The stores, the other cars, the way people scurried to get inside or held their umbrellas so to protect them from being taken with the wind.

The street signs were relaxing, too. Based on the route we were taking—speaking of this route and all the others we’d taken, I didn’t understand how Quincy never needed to ask for directions and never got us lost—each sign took us closer to the highway. And the closer I got to the highway, the sooner I’d be in the midst of open space and no traffic.

But maybe that would give me more time to cry, anyway.

“Tell me what your mother told you.” Quincy said just as I closed my eyes to go to sleep. I inhaled deeply and then exhaled, from the tiredness I was trapped beneath and the resistance to fulfilling his request.

“If I were to do that, we’d be talking for hours.”

“We have hours to talk. There’ll be a lot of highway before we get to our destination.” He replied confidently. His eyes were glued to the road, which was something he never did. Whenever I spoke to him, he’d look at me while driving, not caring what was ahead. But now it seemed he couldn’t even stand to look at me. Maybe it was too “awkward” for him. That was another thing I could blame Mom for.

“And where exactly is our destination, as a matter of fact?” I asked.

Finally, there it was—he looked at me. The chocolaty shade of brown in his eyes seemed to pop now; maybe because of the khaki-and-rust t-shirt he wore. Or maybe it was because Wayne was asleep, and whenever he fell asleep everything Quincy did stood out to me.