Game Theory × NH

010 | neon

When I got to the side doors that were closest to where I parked, I turned and saw her a few feet behind me, struggling with her things. Rolling my eyes and letting out an angry grunt of annoyance, I rushed over to her and took the large bag from her shoulder and the rolling suitcase without a word. She was so damn slow and was wasting my evening as it was.

"Thank you," she said in a small voice as she kept in pace beside me.

"Whatever," I retorted. The last thing I wanted was her gratitude when I really just wanted to get the hell out of there.

I pushed through the glass double doors without bothering to hold them open for Lynn and walked the distance to my car. I took my keys and clicked the button, unlocking the doors. I dropped Lynn's bags on the asphalt (if she had anything fragile, they would have been in pieces) of the parking lot and popped open the trunk.

"Whoa," I heard Lynn say in awe. I looked over my shoulder and saw her gazing at my black, sleek Jaguar coup. "This is yours?"

Picking up the bags I dropped on the ground, I shoved them into the trunk carelessly (if the fragile things weren't broken before, they were now) and took the one Lynn was still holding along with the backpack and threw them in, too.

"Well," I said, slamming the trunk shut. "I didn't steal it, if that's what you're inquiring. Now get in."

I was walking around the car to the driver side when Lynn bumped into me, going around the same way I was, and I couldn't help but grin at how clueless she looked.

"The passenger seat is on the other side," I mocked. "You're in London now. Things are different here."

The look on Lynn's face was priceless when it dawned on her what I was saying. "Right," she said with a nervous smile that followed with a laugh. She quickly walked to the other side and slipped in as I started up my Jaguar coup and took off out of the lot.

We sat in an uncomfortable silence, so uncomfortable that I swore a knife could cut through it. My hands were gripping the steering wheel so tight that my knuckles were turning white. I kept my eyes on the road as I sped down the motorway and tried my best to pretend there wasn't a body with the prettiest blue eyes sitting next to me.

I reached out and turned the radio up, the song Start of Something Good by Daughtry was playing and I rolled my eyes. Honestly, I should have been used to this - the painful silence, I mean. The day I was born to the day I left Ireland I had lived in that kind of silence, but unfortunately, I was pretty sure that kind of soundlessness wasn't something anyone could ever get used to.

I was zipping through traffic, trying to get back to campus before nine, but I only had five minutes to go to achieve that goal. It was doable if I went twenty over the speed limit all the way there, a theory I was willing to test out.

"That's a bad habit," I heard Lynn say over the loud music.

I looked over at her. "What?"

"Biting your nails. It's a bad habit, not to mention annoying."

"I don't care?" I said mockingly and continued to bite my nails just to piss her off.

Pressing on the gas, I sped through the motorway and weaved through cars. From the corner of my eye, I saw Lynn grip onto the leather seat in fear, her eyes wide as the engine of the Jaguar came alive with power.

Lynn reached over and turned the volume down on the radio. "I get that you have something better to do, but you don't have to kill us just to prove a point," she alleged, her eyes wide with fear. Just from that look I almost slowed down. Almost.