Forces of Nature

Oh, Snap

"Let me get this straight. You and Tyson were about to kiss, some idiot leant on his horn, and then you ran like a bat out of hell?" Courtney said slowly, giving me a wide eyed stare.

Now how come when she said it, it sounded a lot worse than it actually was? Oh, who was I kidding? No matter how you said it, it was pretty bad.

"Well," I hedged. "It was more of a really fast paced walk."

She snorted at me and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'm so believing that one." Sarcasm laced her tone.

"Okay, fine," I huffed. "I would have made any Olympic sprinter proud. Or envious, depending on how you look at it." And wasn't that the truth. If I thought back on it hard enough, which I tried not to, I distinctly remember pumping my arms for all I was worth, and damned if I didn't make it all the way across the lot in less than five seconds flat.

Courtney cracked up laughing, almost falling off my bed while I scowled at her. I picked up an Oreo from the open sleeve on the bed and threw it at her, gaining no satisfaction when it bounced off the side of her head.

"I didn't tell you this so you could laugh at me," I yelled over her hooting and hollering. "I told you so you could tell me what the hell I'm supposed to do now."

I'd left Tyson standing in the parking lot, then instead of going home as planned I'd made a side trip to Courtney's house. Of course, Marie had not been ecstatic about Courtney coming over to my house three hours ahead of schedule, but after playing the I'm-lonely-and-need-company card, she'd helped us load Courtney's suitcases - yes, plural - into the back of my truck and waved us off, threatening that if Courtney didn't call tonight before she went to bed and once again in the morning before we departed, she'd race over to my house and drag her back home. So here we were, holed up in my room armed with enough snacks to feed a small army, One Tree Hill episodes playing on the plasma bracketed to my wall that neither of us was watching, while my best friend tried not to wet herself over my current dilemma.

"What do you mean, what are you supposed to do?" Courtney asked, wiping a few stray tears from her eyes and taking huge, gulping breaths. She flopped backwards onto the bed, her springy curls splayed out beside her face, a few snickers escaping her every so often. "You pretty much ruined any chance of salvaging the situation when you turned and hightailed it out of there. If he ever wondered about how you felt, you've just set the record straight."

I buried my head in my pillow. This was not good. And my best friend was just not getting it. I didn't care about how he perceived my actions. I cared about the next four days of my life, in which I'd have to spend every waking moment with him. My stomach was already twisting itself into huge knots out of fear and intense nervousness, my heart aflutter not with infatuation but at the uncertainty of how much I'd inadvertently just damaged our fragile relationship. If you could even call it that.

The twelve hours before I had to see him again was not nearly enough time to wrap my head around the situation enough to cope with the pending torture. And boy, would it be pure, unadulterated torture. Simply because Tyson was impossible to read - unpredictable in all his moodiness. It was like trying to figure out what a girl with an extreme case of PMS was going to do next. If possible you just gave her a wide berth until it was over. Unfortunately in Tyson's case, it was never over, and I didn't have the option of giving him a wide berth. Not unless I wanted to forgo the trip altogether and risk Courtney hating me for the rest of my life.

I sighed, the noise ending on a groan of misery. Why could nothing ever go smoothly for me? Courtney's renewed bout of laughter dragged me from my unpleasant thoughts, and I lifted my head to stare daggers at her.