Fast and Furious: Future (editing and adding to)

Chapter 5: Santa Monica

'Oneof them now being me,' he interrupted. His voice told me he wasjust trying to make me feel better than I probably looked.

Witha simple smile, I continued. 'Yes and my life just makes sense,most of the time.' I thought back to when mum left and it was justme and dad; I hated what happened, I only wish mum had took me withher even when I knew why she had to leave me behind.

'Butis it all that you want it to be?'

'Whatdo you mean?'

Heimmediately decided what he asked was a bad idea. 'Oh, nothing. Itdoesn't matter. I can see that you're happy. And knowing aboutwhen you were a kid, it makes me happy for you too.'

Notknowing what he meant by that and my head still deciding I didn'tneed to know too much, I sat there in silence pondering on what hemight have said and finished eating my dinner.

Neitherof us felt like dessert so we paid the bill (I insisted on paying myhalf) and quietly left. Jack had only had one drink whereas he hadordered me a second without really asking me if I wanted another. Hehelped me into his car, which made me feel a lot more ladylike than Ihad in a long time, and walked around to get behind the wheel.

'Whereto now?' he asked, buckling himself in.

'Idunno.' Then I had an idea. 'How about that drive you wanted totake me on?'

Wemirrored the other's smile as we glanced at each other. 'Fine byme. Did you think of anywhere in particular?'

'Notreally, I thought you might just drive wherever you felt like so Inever gave it any thought as to where.' With that he started thecar and we made our way onto the Santa Monica Freeway. That was theonly road he drove on after getting onto it. We were headed westwhich meant he had decided on ending up in Santa Monica itself. Iknew I had been there a few times but I didn't remember much aboutthe place. At the end of the freeway was the pier and aquarium. Therewere a few nice eateries and hotels around that small area as wellbut that was all I remembered, everything else was a distant blurfrom the past.

Possiblythe most exciting thing about this particular freeway around LA wasthat it formed part of Route 66. I had always wanted to drive thefull length of that famous and historic route, from start to finish(or finish to start depending on how you looked at it and where youwere from). However, I had never actually planned it in my headenough to make a final decision and do it. It was just short of twothousand, five hundred miles (or just short of four thousandkilometres) which meant a lot of money, water, fuel, pit stops (forother reasons) and motels. It was impossible to do the route in asingle day although there have been many that have tried.

AsI thought about this, I paid less attention to Jack's driving andspent my time staring out of the window into the passing sceneryoutside. Now and again I would look up at the sky but there wasnothing to see tonight as it was overcast by clouds. They didn'tappear to be very thick, since I could still make out the moon'soutline, yet the stars were not visible from the cover. I did notethat Jack hadn't put on any music, nor even had he switched theradio on at all. I didn't mind; the rumble of the engine and hisgear changes was a calming sound and I felt the thunder of them racethrough my blood like oil round an engine.

'You'revery quiet,' he pointed out as we pulled up in a huge parking lotright on the beach front.

'Iwas just chilling.'

'Chilling?'

'Yeh.You weren't driving like an idiot so I could just relax.'

Hislips pressed together and he looked at me with the definite hint ofannoyance. I simply smiled as I unclipped my belt. We were both soonout of the car and walking towards the sand. There were a few othercars in the lot and you could just about see the silhouettes of smallgroups of people off in the distance on the shoreline. Some were alsocouples and it made me feel a bit queasy and uncomfortable but Iwasn't going to let it show. We didn't wander too far from thecar park and the patch of beach we were on was rather narrow comparedto the rest to the north. This meant we were now on the edge of theshoreline. It was odd to think that the sea we could see was actuallythe North Pacific Ocean. It was fairly calm tonight so the sound ofwaves was calming and tranquil. To our right was a lifeguard standand to our left were the pier and the small boardwalk which led ontothe pier from this side.