Reception

Chapter 12 - Right Place Wrong Time

Through tinted windows the world took on a feeling of serenity, calm. Other gliders strafed along the electrically-charged guide rails, bobbing and weaving between each other down central roads. The colors each glider sported made the road seem like a fast-paced rainbow, an impossible spectrum of color. Their glider, itself, was sporting almost three-hundred miles per hour.

“Are we there yet?” Sarah’s question came out with a huff of air.

“Don’t make me turn this car around?” Joshua replied, his words sounding more like a question, as if he didn’t know what a proper response should have been.

“I would love to see you try and turn around a glider going over three-hundred,” she mocked, smacking his right shoulder with her left hand.

Joshua’s smile leapt over his face, leaving as quickly as it had arrived; if Sarah hadn’t been looking in his direction she would have missed it, “It’s easy. You just stop.”

Joshua began mimicking pumping his foot down on the brake, trying to get a reaction out of Sarah.

It worked.

She tried to hide her giggling, her laughing, but it was almost impossible. Joshua’s lips spread into a smile. Sarah noticed that he had a smile and laugh that could cause even the most uptight individual to crack a solid one. “Seriously, though, how far are we away?”

Joshua gazed at the glider’s dashboard while keeping his hands firm on the controls. The display read that it was Saturday, 4:49PM, “I’d say another ten, fifteen minutes?”

Sarah’s gaze returned to the buildings that lined the superhighway. The buildings hugged the highway’s edges, almost touching them. The structures towered high into the air. There was only enough room between the buildings to allow for two or three lanes of guide rails. It was impossible to catch a building long enough to admire it or even determine what shape it was. The speed of the glider caused them to blend together into an ethereal wall, not quite invisible, but not quite tangible. The blur normally caused her motion sickness but she felt different today.

Today, she was going home. She couldn’t wait to talk to Michael again.

Damien.

Suddenly her mind was full of him, his facial features, his deep, chocolate eyes, his brilliant-white teeth. She lingered on his smile. She sighed happily, her eyes and gaze piercing past the wall of buildings, taking him in as though he were standing right in front of her.

“I didn’t know you liked buildings that much. I’m a lamppost man, myself, but I sometimes cheat on them with mailboxes. Just can’t get around those curves,” said the playful voice to her right.

Her cheeks flashed a light pink, “What?”

“You almost moaned,” he teased, taking a peak over his left shoulder, checking his blind spot for other gliders. Sarah felt her body ignite, her skin tingling as her blood quickened. “I was wondering what you were thinking about.” A silence filled the air as Sarah grasped at what to say. “Or who,” he teased, a chuckle hugging his words.

She looked down, her cheeks burning with impossible heat, “Just someone. I want to talk to them. I feel bad for what’s happened lately, what I’ve put them through.” She took a peek from behind her lengths of blonde hair, meeting his eyes briefly before his returned to the road.

“I see,” Joshua replied, a large grin plastering his face, “He’s really lucky.”

Sarah’s heart stopped momentarily and seemed only to reluctantly beat again to satisfy her curiosity, “Really?” Her meek question came out weaker than she had intended it, but she chanced another question, “Why’s that?”