Rayston Point Road || Editing

Chapter Eight

"What? No snappy comeback? No sage words of wisdom you can quote to me from one of your novels?" Isaac glanced at me as we pulled past the baseball field, one of the last blocks before Leighton's street that charming, teasing grin back on his face when I didn't respond to his latest revelation. "Am I not impressing you still?" His condescending reference to the other night made me roll my eyes, but I couldn't help the urge to laugh that I felt.

"No comebacks this time," I said, and then smiled. "I think I exhausted myself trying to scare you away last night."

"Well, you were clearly very unsuccessful, Harvard." Isaac rested his arm on the console between us, one hand resting relaxed on the steering wheel as he continued to drive, his body leaning towards me slightly as his position shifted. I creased my eyebrows as I looked at him, tiling my head slightly to the side.

"Are you going to keep calling me Harvard even after I just told you I go to Columbia?" I reached up as I spoke, untying my hair that had been piled at the back of my head all day, and was starting to pull at my scalp painfully. I shook my head to loosen the strands from the bun ran my hands through the messy brown waves a few times, adjusting them around my shoulder, thankful that Isaac had the air conditioning on and the strands didn't instantly start sticking to my skin. When I looked back at Isaac, he was watching me intently, despite the Jeep still propelling us forward, and didn't try to play off the fact that he had been staring at me when I caught his gaze, letting his eyes linger for a moment longer before I reached over and pushed on his cheek lightly, turning his head back to the road. His skin melded around my touch as he grinned, letting his head move with my touch.

"No, ma'am," he responded, straightening up in his seat, sounding the most southern I had heard since I met him, and I wanted to laugh, if it weren't for the annoyance that the title stirred in me. I frowned, my nose wrinkling in disgust.

"Don't call me ma'am. I've had a lifetime of-" I stopped myself, not wanting Isaac to know that part of me, praying he wouldn't push the sentence I had just abruptly stopped. Isaac eyebrow raised curiously at my sudden stop. "Never mind. I just hate when people say that. I'm only nineteen. It makes me sound ancient."

I glanced ahead of us as we neared Leighton's street, about to turn left when I suddenly found myself reaching for his hand and shouting, "Wait!" The sudden, loud outburst Isaac to press harder on the break he had already been leaning into lightly, causing us both to jerk slightly, his eyes darting back and forth between Magnolia Lane.

"What?" His eyes flew around as he tried to find the source of my exclamation.

"Don't turn." I wasn't ready to go back still, not wanting to have to confront my inevitable talk with Leighton just yet about last night, and my prolonged disappearance today. I knew staying out longer would likely only worsen the inevitable, but I was willing to take that risk.

"Let's go somewhere else. I'm not in the mood to go home yet." I tried to keep my voice calm and steady, swallowing down the urgency I felt as I tried to redirect Isaac, relaxing slightly when he let the Jeep roll past Magnolia Lane, even though his eyes kept glancing at me, concern and confusion etched into the frown on his face and his squinting eyes.

"Where is it that you'd like to go?" He kept casting his eyes sideways, watching me as much as he was watching the road, and I could see a dozen other questions behind his dark eyes as we kept driving straight per my request.

"Surprise me." I settled back into my seat, not having realized that in my urgency to keep Isaac from bringing me home, I had sat forward in my seat and angled my body towards him. I looked out the window to my left, resting my elbow on the edge of the door and bringing my fingers to my lips to bite at the nubs of one of my nails, another habit of mine that my mother hated, because nail polish never lasted long before I peeled it off or found some other way to remove it.