Room Service

Chapter Six

            “Don’t say it.”

            “—adventurous.”

            I groaned. “Too late. You said it.”

            “Look, it’s fine. I’ve got a spare Jerry can in the boot. All we’ve got to do is find a petrol station and we’ll be able to get enough to tide us over.” He looked at me, a little sheepishly. “You don’t happen to know where the nearest one is, do you?”

            I raised an eyebrow. “What? You mean you don’t fancy wandering in a random direction and hoping you stumble across one sometime in the next week? I thought you were all for the adventurous thing.”

            “I am,” he said, before adding in a smaller voice, “I’m just not quite that wild.”

            I was trying hard to maintain my annoyance, because Leon really had been a total idiot, and it was his fault for landing us both into this situation. Nevertheless, I found a faint smile tugging at the corners of my lips. “There’s a petrol station about half a mile from here,” I told him grudgingly. “We should be able to walk it.”

            A beat of silence passed between us before he broke out into his own proper grin. “Thanks, Coraline,” he said. “What would I do without you?”

            “I dread to think,” I murmured, already unclipping my seatbelt and clambering out of the car.

            As it turned out, the walk didn’t end up being totally unbearable. I knew the area better than anybody, so working out the route to the petrol station wasn’t a problem, even though the sun had long since set in the sky. Streetlights were few and far between, which made for some pretty dark patches along the road, but we got through the worst spots with the help of the light from Leon’s phone. We walked closer than we needed to, the petrol can swinging in his other hand, though I couldn’t work out how this had been initiated. The brisk walk was really the only thing keeping me from shivering; the disappearance of the sun had brought a real drop in temperature, and I’d stupidly left my jacket in the boot of the car.

            It was bearable, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t immensely relived when the faint light of our destination came into view a little way up the road.

            “You’re a lifesaver, Coraline,” he told me, as we drew close enough to read the words on the blinking sign, some of them close to giving out completely. “Seriously.”

            “Oh, I know,” I shot back. “You’d be totally lost without me. Tell me something I don’t know.”

            “And you say I’m the arrogant one.”

            “You are. Disgustingly so.”

            We were approaching the place now, closing the last of the distance between us and the petrol pumps on the forecourt. Before Leon had a chance to retort, I cut him off with a glance to my left. “Are you putting your sunglasses on, or what?”

            “Oh, shit, yeah.” Digging into one of his front pockets, his hand enclosed the pair of shades I’d yet to notice him without. “I’m going to look like a right idiot, wearing these at this time of night. The sun’s not even out! What am I going to do, pretend they’re moon glasses?”

            I couldn’t help but snigger at that. “You kind of deserve looking like an idiot,” I pointed out. “You were the one who forgot to put petrol in your car, after all.”