Honk Twice

And Taylor learned that she still preferred pain to fear.

“Taylor, you’ll be the end of me,” said her BFF Melanie, her voice hard and critical. 

Sixteen was supposed to be sweet, thought Taylor as she listened to her friend’s scolding. She’d gotten drunk at the right party, but apparently she’d kissed the wrong boy. Some skinny emo kid who’d actually listened to her hopes and horrors, and in a fit of impaired behavior she’d jumped him. While he’d not complained at the time, now he didn’t seem too keen on hanging out with some jock girl. 

“Philosophical differences,” the boy had explained. 

“Bullshit,” Taylor had replied.

But Melanie seemed to agree with the boy’s attitude about keeping social circles separate. And Taylor’s truculent attitude seemed to please neither Melanie, nor her other friends. So now she had to listen to her supposed friend’s lecture as they walked home from school. She was staring straight ahead, trying to ignore Melanie’s harangue, when her friend stepped in front of her, walking backwards, and scolded her: “Don’t you try and ignore me, Taylor, this is for your own good.”

Taylor turned her head away, and out of the corner of her eye she saw an obscenity-covered dump truck rattling, at speed, up their suburban road. When Melanie’s heel caught on a crack in the sidewalk, she stumbled and tilted into the road. Taylor reached for her, to save her. Just a little too slow. 

She grabbed Melanie’s hand and pulled, but not before the truck’s mirror clipped Melanie’s face.

They never spoke of it afterwards, but Melanie knew how fast Taylor could be, faster than a rust-bucket of a truck. They were on the same sports teams after all. And Taylor learned that she could create fear as well as feel it.

“Taylor, you’ll be the end of me,” said her supposed soul-mate as he proceeded to dump her, one day before her twenty-sixth birthday. “I’m not ready for all of this… stuff. Why is it that all you women have to talk about the future, about settling down? Why can’t you just live in the moment?”

They were sitting on the street-side patio of their favorite downtown cafe. That way she wouldn’t make a scene.

Taylor had been willing to forgive Brandon for ‘living in the moment’ with her friend Claire two weeks earlier. It was just proof that a Push Up bra, a bottle of bleach and a silly giggle could turn his head. But now it was apparent that a little taste of the new, after their three years together, had been enough to derail ‘true love’. And she just knew, knowing Claire, that it would end with two kids and a white picket fence. 

So Taylor sat stony faced through the farce of a meal and listened to the bullshit explanations. She’d hoped her silent treatment would be enough to make Brandon feel some twinge of guilt, but his poorly concealed anticipation of Claire’s reward left him oblivious.

He even offered to give her a lift home. He liked giving people lifts - it gave him an opportunity to wax poetic — well, as poetic as he could be — about his BMW roadster.  

“No, thanks,” she’d said. As coolly as she could. Brandon had shrugged, and held out his hand for a shake. She’d ignored it.

He shrugged, seemingly mystified at Taylor’s attitude. “Okay then,” was all he said. 

Taylor stood by the sidewalk, frustrated beyond reason, powerless before betrayal on all sides. 

Brandon’s BMW came to life in a smooth, purring roar. In his perfectly soundproofed car, Brandon couldn’t hear the coughing roar of the battered, overloaded pickup swaying down the road behind him. Brandon’s tires squealed; he did love the dramatic getaway.