His finger lightly touches the bottom of my chin, and he pushes my face upwards so that I'm looking into his eyes. Eyes that are solely on my lips.
I can't help it. I bite them.
"Oh, Delta," he whispers, quietly giggling under his breath. His laugh...
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"Can you send a tow truck to Spruce Street?"
I hear murmuring on the other end of the line. Xavier gives a clipped nod and continues speaking into his phone.
"Yeah, there's a parking lot just across the street from Shell Shock. It's a silver corolla, the only one there. Get them to bring it back to..." Xavier looks at me, and I presume he's asking for my address. I ignore him, as always.
"Our house. Tell them to bring it back to our house." He pauses. "No, it's perfectly fine. Doesn't need fixing, she's just too lazy to drive it."
I gape up at him, watching him silently chuckle behind the phone. "Alright. Bye." He hangs up, throws his phone in the back seat, then looks up at the windshield.
It's around 8p.m., and the car ride is painful. I can feel the lingering tension between Xavier and I.
If he had just let me go in my own car, maybe I wouldn't have threatened to expose his little secret of being some street fighter named "Foster Prince". Maybe if he hadn't threatened me, I wouldn't be here and this wouldn't be torture for the both of us.
"Gosh, Flores. This is the second time today I'm giving you a ride in my car. You know what that means."
"That I get to staple your mouth shut when we get home?" I insist.
"Not quite." His hands, still wrapped in a thick layer of bandages, tightly grip the top of the leather steering wheel. "It means you now owe metwofavors, as apposed to one."
"Since when have I ever owed you anything?" I ask him with more bite in my tone than I realize.
His jaw muscles clench to hold back a response. I slump back in my chair and sink into the cushion, taking surprising comfort in the leather seat.
We both sit there in silence. I notice we're doing that a lot lately, sitting close to each other without saying a word.
I went to work tonight hoping to earn a couple more extra bucks, only to find out that the winner of tonight's Nightfall Knockout is none other than Mr. Rough-Tough-and-Totally-Buff Xavier.
I try and put these silent minutes to good use, counting the cars that pass us one by one. I pretend they're shooting stars, wishing with each set of headlights that I could somehow magically teleport myself back into my bed and sleep this traumatizing night away.
Soon, we're turning into a neighborhood just off of the country side. Enormous houses line the streets yard to yard, yet they're all separated from each other by towering cypress trees.
I spot a wide and colorful Californian bungalow, and I catch a glimpse of an Elizabethan home built with aged gray stones. My eyes go wide when we head through two open gates leading to a gravel driveway.
"Huh, he pulled through," Xavier mumbles, pinning his eyes on another car parked on the gravel driveway.
I spot my father's silver corolla, the lustred surface glistening in the beam of headlights.
