Unpredictability of Love

The Perks of Being Silly

Ethan and I spent a lot of time talking. Well, I spent a lot of time talking while he listened and drank coke. I told him about my childhood, my friends, my parents, my teachers; everything that could make conversation flow between us. He listened quietly, making an odd comment here and there, but mostly judging me with his silent grey eyes for some stupid thing I did when I was a kid. Of course, there were a few things I kept secret, but they were secrets I kept from my parents and some I even kept from Shirley, so they didn't count. By the time we were heading back to his car, he probably knew as much about me as the few friends I had in school did.

It was inside his car, when he looked at me expectantly to tell him my address, that I asked him the thing that had been bothering me since yesterday. "What happened?" I asked, looking at him determinedly.

"When?" he said in confusion. It was a little past 7 p. m., and the sun had already set, so it was hard to guess his expression. It was a cloudy night, and the moon had disappeared even before it had come up. The entire parking lot was rendered in darkness, with an occasional flash of light whenever a car was unlocked.

"You know what," I said, securing the seatbelt on my body, opposed to dying today due to his bad driving-skills. "You were clean for almost a week, what happened yesterday?"

A flash of light from a car's headlights illuminated the side of his face as his expression changed from confused to something I'd come to recognize as Ethan's anger at me. He turned away from me, face set in a frown and started the car without another word.

I clutched on to the seatbelt as the car jerked forward and nearly hit the one in front of us before, thankfully, going straight out of the parking-lot and onto the road where Ethan would hopefully have a lesser chance of hitting things. He drove as rashly as he did when we had come here, except the way he held on to the steering wheel - white knuckled and full of tension - gave away his temper.  I was too scared to interfere or chastise him for anything because of the expression: angry, but the anger was forced down to be hidden under a pseudo-calm expression.

He just drove like a maniac, honking randomly at others at stoplights, pissing off others on the road by trying to get past them faster and acting like a total douchebag on the road. For a moment, I was actually scared and considered getting off the car.

But then, deciding I wasn't a coward, I spoke, "You really need to drive slower. Driving rashly is not going to get you anywhere but the hospital." My voice took a reproaching tone and was surprisingly ice-cool, but cut through the noise of honking cars behind us like a knife.

There wasn't any indication that he heard me, but he relaxed on the gas, and the car slowed down.

I directed him towards my house in the same soft voice, refusing to raise it even when he almost hit a truck. Once we'd reached the street on which my house was, I had him stop a few metres from it, knowing that mom wouldn't approve of me getting out of a car whose owner she didn't know. He held on to the steering wheel, muscles taut with tension, head set straight, eyes on the road - a statue made of stone.

"And you call me a kid," I muttered, taking off the seatbelt. "How about you don't throw a temper tantrum everytime I ask you something?"

He turned to look at me, light falling on his face from the streetlight above us, eyes flashing with anger. "It's non of your business," he said, barely able to control the anger in his voice.

"It's not." I shrugged. "But it is my business when you almost hit a bunch of cars because you're angry. If you don't want to tell me something, don't. But that doesn't mean you get to do whatever you want - that's the approach taken by an angry five-year old. And you're supposed to be more mature than that." I wasn't shouting or yelling or even sounding angry; my tone of voice was quiet, but reproachful, not very loud, but firm. I felt like a school teacher showing a kid why breaking his crayons in anger was wrong.