State of Grace - Jack Hughes

002

Jack

The car rocks backwards after the impact. The airbags don't deploy, and luckily, I don't smack my face on the dash. I take a moment and turn to look at my brother, from a glance, he seems alright. Just stunned.

"Luke, are you okay?"

"Uh. Yeah. I am fine. Are you?"

"Physically yes. But what the fuck. The light was YELLOW. You are supposed to SLOW DOWN."

"The person behind me was not slowing down, he would have rear-ended us if I stopped. Just call the police."

To be fair, he was right. The car behind us blew by after we hit this small BMW nearly making this a three-car accident. Luke gets out of the car to go talk to the other driver, who is inspecting her car. It looks horrible, and she won't be able to drive it. As I take out my phone to call 911, the girl spins around, with a look of pure hate flashing across her face. I can't tell if she's screaming, but it is clear she is chewing my brother out.

I turn my attention to the phone call I am having, and the operator informs me someone else has already called and they will send officers over, but because no one is injured and it is not a major intersection, it might take a while.

Luke comes back to the car, and slowly moves over to the side of the road. "She's unhappy."

"You think?" I roll my eyes. When the girl approached the intersection, someone new was with her, I'm guessing her passenger. The driver had a nasty bloody nose. Luke gets out of the car and goes over to them. I groan, realizing he has not taken our insurance to them.

I collect our information and a bundle of napkins for the blood. I slid out of the door, and immediately walked over to the girl handing her the napkins and insurance.

"I am so sorry for my moronic brother. I thought it would be good practice. Dumbass. Anyways, I'm Jack," I reach out my hand with the insurance and napkins, "here is our information, because the child didn't think this was important," I roll my eyes, "and these, for the nose," I gesture to the blood on her face.

She seems less angry, more exhausted, emotionally. She looks up, flashing her bright green eyes and gives me a weak smile as if to say thank you. Her eyes are so bright it's hard to look directly at her. She has golden hair, not blonde or bleached looking, its bright and warm like the sun. Her skin had the same warm glow. She's in a nice outfit, almost as if she was coming from work, but now, the top is stained with blood.

Immediately, I want to offer to pay for a new shirt or at least get it dry cleaned. But I don't. Instead, I turn to Luke, and smack the back of his head.

"I am going to go call Coach, tell him why we won't be there today. Even though, you should, I save you the disappointed tone in your first week." I huffed at him and walked away from the group. I absolutely hate, HATE, telling Coach Ruff any bad news. He has the whole, I'm not mad, just disappointed speech down to a science. However, I think this time, he might outright be pissed. Playoffs are right around the corner and now is not the time to miss practice.

The phone rings, Once, twice, three times.

"Hello?" He answers, "Hughes where are you?"

"Coach, I am so sorry, but we aren't coming, we-" he cuts me off.

"Unless one of you is dead, there's no excuse."

"Well, does a car accident count? Its complicated, but we t-boned someone on our way and we are waiting for the police." I can hear the exhale and envision him rubbing his hand over his jaw.