Page 119 of Left on Read
“Can you imagine if you got your foot stuck in the steering wheel after hitting the terror horn?” I asked, closing the door behind him. “Now, that would be a fun call to the fire department.”
He yanked open the front door and slid into the seat. “Yeah, no. If I ever get my foot stuck in the steering wheel of a car, especially after sexy times with you, I’m just going to accept my fate and become one with the car.”
“I forget you’re from the Midwest until you say stuff like that. What does yeah, no even mean?” I asked, hauling myself up and angling my body through the gap between the front seats.
“It means whatever we want it to mean. In this case it’s a fuck that.”
I fell into the front of the car in a heap, laughing too hard to be graceful. Still laughing, I shifted and wiggled, trying to cram myself into my seat without hurting either of us.
“I know someone who got their big toe stuck in the faucet while they were taking a bath,” I said when I was finally sitting like a human. “His roommates had to call the fire department to get him out. They had to cut the faucet off the wall and use butter to get his toe free.”
“Oh god.” Hayden shuddered. “New fear unlocked. I would just accept my fate and live in the bathtub until the end of days.”
“Right? I’ll never stick any part of me in a faucet after hearing that.”
“Was this Johnny? I feel like this was Johnny.”
“It was Johnny,” I confirmed.
He laughed and started the car. “Have you ever seen him smash a can on his head?”
“Only like, every time I see him.” I snort-laughed.
“How long have you known him?” He put the car in gear and slowly navigated down the road.
“Since we moved here, so eight years now.”
“Ryan tried to set me up with him.”
“He did?” I went for casual but failed miserably.
I didn’t judge Hayden for his past, but it was different when he was talking about someone I’d been friends with for years and not some faceless random.
“Yeah. That lasted about five minutes. I like Johnny, and he’s a fun guy, but it’s like I told Ryan. I teach tweens all day. I don’t wanna date someone who acts like one.”
I relaxed. John was a good friend of mine, but the thought of him flirting with Hayden, especially now that he was mine, made my brain itchy.
“I imagine your students don’t slide down banisters instead of using the stairs,” I said, keeping my tone light. Hayden didn’t need to know where my thoughts had just gone. “I’ve helped him patch up more than one John-sized hole after he miscalculated a slide and ended up Spidermanning into the wall at the bottom.”
“I can honestly say I’ve never seen one of my students do that.” Hayden laughed. “How does he not hurt himself?”
“No clue. The guy has no fear, so maybe it’s because he’s always relaxed? It hurts more if you tense or try to protect yourself after falling.”
“I’ve heard that. But that feels counterintuitive. Like, I’ve never been falling and thought, Well, time to go limp and smash into that hard surface all willy-nilly.”
“It’s not something most people just do. We learned how to fall in gymnastics, but it takes time to train yourself to go against your instincts.”
He pulled onto the main road and headed toward my neighborhood.
“How long did you and Zane do gymnastics? I feel like an asshole for not asking this sooner. I knew you were a gymnast, but what you did tonight was beyond anything I pictured in my head.”
I settled in my seat, my body still tingling and my brain happy.
“You’re not an asshole. It just never came up. We started when we were six after I got us kicked out of Tae Kwon Do.”
“How did you manage that?” He shot me a little smile and returned his eyes to the road.
“I kept getting distracted and doing my own thing. Like, they’d tell us to practice our forms, but I’d get bored and start making up fake battles in my head and acting them out. They didn’t like that.”