Driving Me Crazy

Chapter Seven

Charles

After Katana and I snuck into my hotel room, avoiding Carlos and his party, she slid her Crocs off and immediately plopped herself on the bed. She burst into a fit of laughter and it was the cutest thing I have seen. I stand, leaning against the wall leaving her on the bed alone, which is a sight on its own.

While she told me about her secret getaway back home, all I could think about was how my car is my getaway, but I couldn't tell her that. Formula One is my everything. It comes before anything else in my life, it's just me and the car against the world on that track. The way she described her little pier getaway had me on my knees. Her eyes lit up while she was talking about the stars, and it just made me crave to know more about her.

"You've mentioned moving to Miami, where are you from originally?" I ask.

"Indiana. I grew up right on the border of Indiana and Michigan, so I got the Michigan beaches, but the Indiana crazies." She giggles slightly when mentioning the "crazies" and it causes me to laugh lightly in response.

Before I can get another question out, she jumps forward and gasps loudly. I jump out of fear, but as I go to ask what happened, she blurts out, "Have you ever seen Teen Wolf?"

With my hand on my chest and my heart beating like crazy, I say, "Jesus woman, you almost gave me a heart attack. Are you talking about the movie from like 1985?"

"God no!" she exclaims, "The show! With Tyler Posey and Dylan O'Brien!"

"I have not, I presume that's what you'd like to watch?" I question as she reaches for the remote in a hurry.

"Of course!" she yells excitedly. About .3 seconds after she says that, her face turns pink and her movement slows before she quietly asks, "That's okay, right? We don't have t-"

I cut her off abruptly as I say, "We are absolutely watching this show." Katana's face brightens as I say that and she blushes before looking back at the TV to find the show. When she finds Season 1, Episode 1, she looks at me and asks, "Are you ready for this absolute masterpiece from 2011?"

"Oh for sure, but this ensures that we have to hang out more than once, considering we can't finish every season tonight," I state. I would love to spend more time with her before I leave for the next city, but sadly I think that will come too soon for me.

"Oh definitely, now shush and get on this bed," she says with a serious tone before she gives me a glare that has parts of me waking up that don't necessarily need to be awake.

"Yes ma'am," I say before I maneuver myself onto the bed, sitting next to her. Our arms barely brush against each other, but we both ignore it without moving away or saying anything.

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"Why did Scott so willingly go into the woods to look for a dead body? I would have said fuck no," I ask about the show. We're 15 minutes through the first episode and I am in deep.

"Because Stiles is his best friend? You're saying if your best friend asked you to do that, you wouldn't go?" she asks as she turns her head to look at me.

"And you would?" I shoot back, also turning to meet her gaze.

"Absolutely! Does that make me crazy?"

"Only a little, Juliet."

A moment of silence stretches between us as we watch the show, but I break it by saying, "What made you agree to hang out with a stranger? You're too trusting. Could have been a murderer ya know?"

"It's 'cause you're hot. If I die, it will be worth it," she says without diverting her eyes from the television. I laugh slightly but don't see the need to respond with words. Over time Katana has slid down to the point where she is now laying down, so I do the same. I respond to her statement by wrapping my arm around her and allowing her to rest her head on my chest. No words were exchanged, just actions.

↫↬

Hours pass as we watch the show, me only breaking the silence to ask questions. I can't lie, this show is so good. I will have to continue watching it after we leave Miami. When I look at the time, I notice that it's 1:12 am.

"Hey, it's getting late, did you want me to take you home?" I ask. After a couple of seconds without a response, I look down at her face and notice that she is dead asleep. I don't want to wake her up, so I reach over and set my alarm for 5 am and tell myself I will quit watching after this episode. That was a lie.

After the rest of that episode, plus another, I notice that Katana is really starting to heat up. I keep the television from playing the next episode and reach my hand across her face to feel her forehead and she is absolutely burning up. Kicking the blanket off of us and turning the air on via my phone, I start rubbing her back to comfort her. I'm not sure if it was my touch or something else, but Katana started to visibly shake and the hand she had resting on my chest was now latched to my shirt. Her nails started to dig into my skin as she tightened her grip and she began mumbling incoherently.

"It's okay, you're okay. It's just a dream," I say repeatedly as I rub her back, trying to comfort her out of this nightmare.

It's now 3:02 am, and she has only gotten worse. Just as I talk myself into waking her up, which I know you're not supposed to do, she jolts upward and lets out a scream of pure terror. Her eyes are wide and she's holding herself as she looks around the room, trying to remember where she is. When she meets my gaze, I lean forward and put my hand on her shoulder before I say, "You're safe, Katana. You just fell asleep for a couple hours. Do you need some water? I'll get you some water, and a new shirt."

"Oh my god. I am so sorry. You don't need to get me anything, it's okay. I'll just go, it's okay. I am so sorry," she keeps saying on repeat.

"Please stop and take a breath," I say to her. "Don't be embarrassed. It was a nightmare, they're part of basic human functioning." She sits back down on the bed as I hand her a glass of water and go to the closet to find her a shirt. Finding one of my bigger shirts, I bring it over to her and sit down next to her.

"The bathroom is right over there if you want to change in there. I can get your shirt cleaned if you don't have anywhere to be today." I say to her while she drinks the water I handed to her.

"That's not necessary, but I appreciate it. Thank you for reacting okay to my nightmare, most people get freaked out so I avoid staying anywhere other than home. I guess it just slipped my mind when I came over." She is talking, but she refuses to make eye contact with me. She is blatantly embarrassed, but I won't point it out.

"Do you have them often?" I ask, based on the way she talked about the nightmares a second ago.

Katana meets my eyes with tears in hers as she says, "Every night, I don't even set alarms because I always wake up right around 3 am."

I pull her shaking body into my arms and hold her for a moment before saying, "It's okay. I used to have the same nightmare every night for fifteen years."