“I think we should break up,” Lindsay said to Oliver in the darkness. Her voice was little more than a cracked whisper that spoke more of her pain than what her words actually meant.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, his hand reaching for hers, though he couldn’t see her well from around his inflated airbag.

“I told you.  You drank too much to drive,” she replied, refusing to answer his question. “And yes, I’m hurt. My airbag didn’t inflate. I hit my head. I’m bleeding and my legs are pinned between the seat and the dashboard!”

“Okay,” he said, collecting his wits. “Can you reach the lever that pulls the seat back?”

She reached down and found it. Tugging on it, it moved the seat and she felt blood flow into her legs again. 

“It worked?” he questioned, still unable to see her.

“Yes. It worked.”

“Can you open your door?”

Lindsay pulled the lever on the door, but it didn’t move. “No.”

“What about the window? Can you open that to get out?”

“I am not opening the window,” she objected immediately. “It’s raining, and if I open it, I might not be able to close it. We might be stuck here for hours waiting for a tow truck.”

“Can you reach your phone?” he asked.

She groaned.  “It doesn’t matter if I can or can’t. It’s out of power. I told you that before we left. I shouldn’t have let you drive.”

“I’d only had two,” he said, stiffly defending himself.

“Yeah. Two too many.”

Oliver stuttered some sort of apology, but Lindsay couldn’t hear it and even if she could, all she could think about was the string of men who had disappointed her before that moment and how she should have expected Oliver to do the same. When actually, she knew why she hadn’t pegged him for the same pig from a different litter as all the other men she knew.  It was because something about Oliver always made her feel like she had come home. He was like the brother she’d never had or the cousin who found her in a crowded room and introduced her to everyone like she was a star. 

The plan for her to come work at Oliver’s family hotel during the winter had been in motion since before she had agreed to be his girlfriend, and being his official girlfriend had been great until he wrapped his car around a tree. At the moment of impact, her first thought had been wondering if they would die. 

When she saw that they hadn’t died, her next thought was that she needed to break up with him. Lindsay had never been one to postpone difficult jobs.  Those were the first words out of her mouth after the crash. 

Now, she had to do the thing victims sadly need to do sometimes. She turned to Oliver and asked him the question that would make her inhuman if she skipped it. “Are you hurt?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. His legs were not squashed between the wheel and the seat. His seat was further back to begin with.  He’d hurt his wrist and his neck, he admitted in wheezy half breaths. 

“Where’s your phone?” Lindsay asked him.

“It’s in my back pocket.”

She let out a huff of annoyed air. “And I’m supposed to put my hand down your pants to retrieve it?”

“Only if you want to call a tow truck or an ambulance,” he replied crossly.

Lindsay had never heard him use that tone before.  He was probably in more pain than he was admitting.

“I love it when you talk that way,” she chucked, breaking the tension.

“You never love anything,” he scoffed. “You told me as much the other night when I asked you out. You said you never fall in love.”

She unbuckled his seatbelt and put her hand in the back pocket of his pants.  It was empty.  “No.  I said the opposite.  I said I always fall in love.  It just doesn’t stick. Something always happens to spoil love for me, but you were always so alluring when you smiled and played nice. I didn’t even know you could do a grouchy voice. It’s reassuring.” She felt behind him into his other pocket. It was also empty. “I thought you said it was in there.”

“I thought it was,” he said, peeking around the airbag.

“Charming,” she said drolly. “If it’s not there, then where do you think it is?”

“It’s probably in one of the front pockets,” he said quietly.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“And why can’t you get it?” Lindsay asked, almost at the end of her patience.

“My wrist hurts on that side and I can’t reach it with my left hand over the airbag,” he whined.

She patted his leg before diving into his pocket. “It’s there,” she said, reaching in with two fingers to tug it free.

When she turned the phone over to look at it, the screen was already lit up. Someone was calling, but the ringer was turned off so they didn’t hear it. 

“You’re getting a call,” she said. “Gavin.”

“It’s my brother. Answer it, and hold it up to my ear.”

Lindsay answered the call. “Hello, you’ve reached the phone of Oliver Grantford. Please allow a moment for me to connect you,” she said, not having lost all of her spunk. 

She held it up to Oliver’s ear while he spoke. 

“Hey, Man.  Yes, we were on our way up tonight. The girl? It’s Lindsay. Remember?  She’s going to help with the hotel renovations since it’s always impossible to get people to come. Yes… that may be… I’m sure you’ll be able to find something for her to do… Yes, I was driving when you called. No, we’ve stopped. Just outside Victoria. We had a little accident. We should be back on the road in no time.” There was a long pause before Oliver finally got the chance to speak again. “Fine. You’re right. We had a big accident. I need to see a doctor and maybe she does too. Fine! Do that!”

The call abruptly ended and Oliver mushed his face into the airbag like he might suffocate himself.

“What’s going on?” Lindsay asked.

Muffled sounds came from the airbag and it was quite some time before Oliver took a breath. He admitted to her that his brother, Gavin, had been in Victoria for the evening and was coming to get them. “He says we can have the car towed in the morning.”

“Okay,” Lindsay said, opening the vanity mirror over her head to see what the damage was. The cut on her head had bled, but that didn’t mean it had spoiled her good looks. The car still had power and a light appeared to show her that she looked exactly like a zombie in a haunted house. She knew exactly what the zombies in haunted houses looked like. It had been her summer job two years in a row.

She hunted around for a tissue. “Don’t you at least have an old Tim Horton’s bag with a few napkins in it?”

“I cleaned the car for the drive,” he explained, his cheek still resting on the airbag.

She would have been more impressed that he’d cleaned his car if there had been no accident. “Shouldn’t that thing have deflated by now?”

“Probably,” he said, sounding desolate.

“Should we pop it?”

“No. I like it. It’s homey.”

“Homey?” she repeated. 

“It’s a lot homier than Gavin is going to be when he gets here.”

“Is he going to be really mad?” she asked cautiously.

“Yup.”

Oliver didn’t offer any more of an explanation than that, and Lindsay didn’t ask for one. Instead, she sat and listened to the rain on the roof of the car. After a minute of that, she turned to him and said, “Don’t sleep. People with head injuries aren’t allowed to sleep.”

“And I was so looking forward to our first night sleeping together,” he said in a shallow monotone.

She laughed. “Our first night together is obviously a success if no one is sleeping.”

He laughed too. Then he turned and looked at her with the vanity light still on. “You look like a zombie.”

“So do you.”

“Do you know any good necrophilia jokes? That would be a good way to pass the time.”

Lindsay groaned. “What do you call it when two necrophiliacs go on a date?”

“A group funeral?” Oliver offered.

“Your guess is as good as mine. I asked without having a plan as to how to finish it. I thought you’d nail it without me having to come up with a punchline.”

“I have a head injury if that’s any excuse.”

“I’ll use that excuse too,” Lindsay said, using the sleeve of her shirt to blot at the blood on her face. It didn’t improve anything so she closed the mirror and turned out the light.

“Even though things started out badly,” he said gently.  “The whole thing won’t be bad.  We’re going to have a good time and we can practice our jokes.”

The last class they had taken together had been an improv class. Lindsay had loved doing it, but she felt Oliver was better at it.  He always made her laugh so hard, she broke.  It was all very unprofessional, a strong hint that an acting career was not in her future.

On the road, there had been headlights that passed from time to time, but nothing could have prepared Lindsay for the truck that pulled up behind them. At first, she thought it was a tow truck, and then she thought it must be some sort of emergency vehicle, but did they have headlights shaped like parentheses? At any rate, why did they have their brights on?

“That’s Gavin,” Oliver said, trying to open his door with his left hand and failing at it. 

Gavin opened the door for him, said something messy Lindsay couldn’t quite hear, deflated the airbag, and helped Oliver out. He had an umbrella and he escorted his brother around to the passenger side door of the truck before coming back to the wreck of a car to get Lindsay. 

Lindsay couldn’t open her door, so she scooted across her seat and into the driver’s seat. The side-view mirror practically blinded her when Gavin came back to help her. He had a flashlight in his hand and whited out her vision completely as he shone it in her face. She leaned down in the driver’s seat, found the release for the trunk, and pulled it.

“What are you doing?” the man with the flashlight asked.

“Opening the trunk. My bag goes where I go.”

“I’ll get it,” he said as he grasped her upper arm in his and lifted her to her feet. 

“What are you doing?”

“Helping.”

“You’re hurting me!”

He let go and without the support, she suddenly found that her bruised legs didn’t give her much to stand on and she fell, knees first, into the wet grass. He caught her again, but only so she didn’t fall further. Dropping the umbrella, he put both arms around her and lifted her back onto her feet. Her head was swimming. 

“You don’t have to,” she wheezed.

“I think I do.” Gavin picked her up the rest of the way and carried her gingerly to a seat in the back of the oversized truck. He turned on the cabin lights and looked at her, but all Lindsay could do was blink at the light and cover her face with her hand. “I think you’re right about the hospital,” he said to Oliver. “That will have to be our first stop.  I’ll get your bags.”