GONER

13 • Lake Water

"What did you just say?" He asked quietly, his voice shaking gently. I looked at him, my eyes wide and my heart beating sporadically.

"Why did you stop in the middle of the road?"

"Don't say that. Don't say that." He muttered, dropping his head down from in between his hands on the steering wheel. "You're really great and I know that you are and it bothers me that there's a possibility of you not knowing that," he spoke quickly, shaking his head. "You know what? I'm just going to have to show you, I guess."

"Wait, what?" I asked, inhumanly confused at this entire situation.

He shook his head as if to clear it, easing his foot back on to the pedal, much to my relief. I sighed and he repeated himself, that smile back as quickly as it left. It had a bit missing, though. It reminded me of the smile full of water he shot at me earlier, and my heart sunk down to my stomach at the thought of Josh being sad. Heaven knows he didn't really deserve it.

"I'm just going to have to show you."

~~~

"Are you going to murder me? Because if so, I would like to send my mom a goodbye text beforehand," I said, my eyes scanning the area around us. The sky was darkening now, because we drove for a couple hours, but it wasn't hard to tell that we were parked in the woods, and my heart was thudding in my chest at the mere thought of being this alone with him.

"I wasn't actually thinking about that until you said it. Good idea," he smiled. "And, no. I won't let you call your mom. In fcat, you're going to have to leave it in here." You could find a flashlight in here, though. If you want to survive another day," he offered, yanking the keys from the ignition and throwing open the door, moving over to the rear end of the car.

I rolled my eyes with a small smile, using the light from my phone screen to navigate my way to the back of the car. Josh came to stand next to me, watching me struggle to open the trunk with one hand, and he laughed, shaking his head at me. With ease, it opened for him, making me scoff and direct the light towards the unknown contents we were currently facing. Who knew she had so much in the back?

"You think there's a flashlight in here?" I asked him, shifting around all of the stuff lazily. My hand ghosted jumper cables, and I startled a bit. I thought it was a snake, and, though spiders are worse, I'm not good with snakes, either.

"No ones lives in America and doesn't have a flashlight in their car," he said, before looking at me as if it was pre-packaged knowledge the human brain should automatically know. "Okay, maybe they do. But I'm looking anyway." He said. "We're gonna need some sort of light."

Before I could say anything else, he was in the trunk, his slender body fitting in effortlessly along with the garbage back there. It was quite obvious that instead of helping him, I would much rather stare at his gorgeous outline in the smallest amount of moonlight, and I think he knew that. Maybe not the second part, but that I wouldn't be useful in terms of helping him find anything. On occasion, his body would shift and a patch of the previously mentioned light would stream over him as if it was made to be displayed across his skin, and I would bite my lip, wondering how he could be so beautiful. Because he was. And, my god, it was a bit alarming and enticing at the same time.

"Victory," he screamed into the dark, startling me from my intense thoughts. He hopped from the trunk with a sense of excitement and urgency, felt the keys in his pocket, and flicked the flashlight on, directing the light towards me with a small smile on his face. "There's my Tyler."

My cheeks flamed at his words and his tone and his face and the way he looked in his jeans, and he spun around once more to slam the trunk shut. He held his hand out in front of him impatiently, until I remembered I couldn't have my phone. Which, if I'm being honest, worried me even further. He just opened the car door one more, tossed it in there, and we were on our way.