Chase You

44; camping I

Moments passed, a flurry of screams, cuss words and shouts, livened up the room, but there was no pain. Even a few more moments passed, and still nothing. I opened my eyes, no longer seeing his knee in front of me, but that didn't mean I was out of danger yet.

I could hear Liam from the corner of the room, belting out choruses of laughter alongside his cousins. Zach's mother stood in front of me and shielded me from him, while Jace and Zach's uncles held him back.

Eventually the situation calmed down, and I had only realised someone had gripped me around my torso, pulling me away from Zach. His strength was familiar, and I almost forgot he existed.

"Can't we have just one normal camping trip, for once?" Zach's father chortled, "Christ, some things never change..."

"This... is normal?" Ben raised a brow, helping me stand upright. The room fell silent once again, suddenly everyone realising there was a brand new, unfamiliar person in the room.

"We've always had to apologise profusely to Flynn's mother and explain why her son always came back from these camping trips with bruises, knee scrapes, a fractured collarbone... once." Zach's uncle explained. I dusted myself off and straightened out my clothes.

Ben chuckled.

He was literally laughing at my pain.

"Ok, let's stop there." I lay my hand over Ben's mouth. "Are we ready to leave?"

Everyone continued to stare at him, their expressions almost laughable. They stared at him dubiously, trying to figure out this new person they've never met before. Even Liam, though his face contorted more on the disgusted side. I guess there was still bad blood.

After, everyone just nodded in agreement. We began to pack up all the bags, and soon after, we were loading the cars with people. It was no surprise that nobody felt eager to jump in with Ben and I, not even my dad, so we ended up filling the car to the brim with everyone else's belongings instead until we could barely see out the back window.

"Should I drive?"

"You can take over for second half." Ben said, jumping into the driver's seat. I went round and jumped into the passenger seat. I began to take my jacket off in the tight space, throwing my arms and turning my body left and right, but soon felt the material being tugged. With a smile on his face, he moved his hands down and pulled at my jacket sleeve, I was confused to begin with, but soon understood he was just trying to help me. I stopped flailing about, and accepted the assistance. Once off my back, he chucked the jacket behind the front seats.

He started driving off, and around four cars followed him from behind. After all, Ben did pick the camping location this time. It didn't cause any sort of stir when I bought it up to Zach father, he was just confused on why we were travelling so incredibly far - usually, the journey would take around 2 hours from our town, but this one was almost double that.

As soon as we got on the motorway, everyone sort of split off on their own. Jumping lanes and driving well above the speed limit. Ben however, remained in the very first lane. What confused me even more was that he had only just set his navigation up, he hadn't pressed start yet.

He ended up taking the next junction, and wordlessly, just drove.

"Isn't it like six junctions ahead, then onto the other motorway?" I asked.