Hybrid

THIRTY-THREE

⫷ ARIA ⫸

"Are you hungry?" James asks me after an embarrassing growl from my stomach.

I push myself farther against the car door, wishing that I can just open the damn thing and jump out. "Nope."

"Are you lying?" He presses with a hint of amusement.

"Nope."

He chuckles, causing a weird feeling to flutter inside of me. "You're a bad liar, Aria."

"Please don't say that like you know me," I groan. My hands unconsciously rub at my throbbing head. I'm seriously considering getting that ear piercing that's supposed to help with headaches. "It's weird."

"Weird?"

"Yes."

James suddenly pulls into a McDonalds, going into the drive through. He orders food and I'm too busy trying not to pay attention to him to know what he got. Before I know it, I feel a hot bag being placed on my lap.

"What's this?" I ask.

James holds a burger in one hand and steers the wheel with the other. "Your food."

"I said I wasn't hungry."

"Just eat the damn food."

Sighing heavily, I dig through to see what he got me. Big mac meal. How did he know that's my favourite? I open my mouth to ask, then I see a smirk on his lips. Instead of fuelling the fire of inflating his ego, I decide to eat in silence.

I'm not sure how many hours pass with the two of us crammed into an old-looking car. As much as I try to hide it, I find myself becoming much more comfortable in his presence as time passes. Nobody says a word and nothing but the low murmur of the radio fills the quiet air around us, but that doesn't matter.

For the first time since I can remember, I feel like I know him. Not just as a passerby or some insignificant person in my life. I feel like he held an important meaning in the life that I can't remember. Before, I was merely told those facts, but now, I can start to see that it may be possibly true.

And that fact alone terrifies me.

No matter how hard I try, I can't shake this uncertainty within me. I'm not sure why it's there or what the source is, but it's blocking me from opening up to him.

"Aria?" He says, startling me into focus.

"Hm?" I reply, giving him my full attention.

James' eyes are on the road ahead of us. There isn't much around us besides tall, thin trees. The road is still damp from a rainfall that we had driven through earlier and light gray clouds still hang overtop of us.

"We'll be staying in a cottage for a while. We're almost there."

"A cottage?"

He nods once. "A friend of mine owns the place." James turns into a narrow driveway; one I didn't notice was there until we drove onto it.

My eyes draw to the passing trees and bushes. The smell of pine and wood filters into the car, and that lone can help calm the beast inside of me. During the ten minute drive down this long, narrow pathway, I smile at the passing trees, imagining myself running through them with four legs instead of two and a nose that can scent everything around me.

James, true to his word, brings us to a cottage, though that isn't what I would have called it. When I think cottage, I think of those small, wooden things you'd stay in for a summer vacation. The building standing in front of me now? Not even close.