Times running out (a Bret Von Dehl love story)

Chapter 19

Maybe it was all the whiskey we had ingested, and maybe it was just a mixture of lack of common sense and adrenaline that caused what happened that night, I may never know.

We had all spent several hours on the roof of some beat up old warehouse or whatever. At the point that I cared enough to try and figure out what sort of building it was that we were on top of, I was already drunk out of my mind.

Although we were all having a fantastic time, none of us had given any thought as to who would be driving us all home.

In our Jack induced haze, at about 8:30 at night, we elected to go back home.

We all piled into the car.

I hadn't had anything to drink in a while, as we ran out about three quarters of the way through our time up on the roof, so slowly I began to be aware again.

It was only after Alex was halfway home that I realized something was going horribly wrong.

By then I was doing okay in terms of my state of mind, and so were Ray and JC.

I looked over at JC and he looked back knowingly.

"Alex, you need to stop the car." I said

"Whyyyy?" Alex whined.

"Because you're fucking drunk. You're going to get us all killed!" I hissed.

"Jesus, calm your tits!" he huffed.

That's when Bret, who had been lazily resting his eyes and laying on my shoulder, shot up.

"Nobody talks about her tits but me!" shouted Bret, who was easily the most drunk out of all of us.

"Shhhhhhh." I calmed, rubbing his back. "Its okay baby, you can go back to sleep. I'm safe."

He sighed, and went back to sleep. I didn't see that in his mini-rage towards Alex, he had undone his seatbelt, likely planning on leaping at Alex when we got home.

Alex started to get visibly sleepy. His eyelids drooped and then shot back open, and he veered off to the left a little.

Within seconds I realized we were in serious danger.

We were in the wrong lane.

"ALEX HOLY FUCK! TO THE RIGHT, TO THE RIGHT!" I screamed.

But it was too late.

A truck far larger than our own flew straight into our front.

The impact threw us off the road, putting us in one of the many shallow ditches at the side of the road. We did barrel rolls until the truck finally landed on its left side.

There was glass, there was blood, and then there was darkness.

Just before I faded out completely, I heard the wail of what seemed like one million sirens. At that moment I could have thought dozens of things about not wanting to die, or hoping everybody was okay, but only one thing came to mind.

I don't know whether I said it for comfort, I don't know if I said it because that's what I wanted, or maybe if I said it because I knew that if this was my last word, that was what I wanted it to be.

The word that fell out of my mouth was,

"Bret..."