To Infiniti & Beyond

Chapter Three

We now have a group chat going called "gapplebees."

Gapplebees consists of Brynn, Grayson, Jaxon, Dean, Jake, Tristian and his girlfriend Darcy.

When my phone lights up and I see that title come across my screen, I know by now I'm not getting any sleep for the night.

The eight of us meet up at our local strip mall. The idea was to originally cruise to a meet a few towns over, but no one could agree on the actual plan.

So, here we are, messing around in the parking lot, doing a whole lot of nothing, but it's one of the best nights yet.

"Let's go to the car wash." Grayson suggests.

To my surprise, everyone agrees. We all jump in our cars and cruise five minutes down the road to our local wash.

There's only four bays, but five drivers. Tristian said he already washed his car earlier in the week so he parked over by the vacuums to be out of the way.

As we all start to finish up, we start to float back and forth between the bays. Most of the drivers stand back to admire their cars. That's exactly how it should be.

The fact that we're all so young but we all have a car worth looking back at once it's parked amazes me. I feel so lucky to have met such a group. It's an odd pairing of people yet we work so well together.

As the night drags on the number of people left at the car wash slims down.

It's now 1am. Brynn, Jaxon and I are the final ones left. We decide to go back to the strip mall.

Jaxon rolls down his window and I do the same. "Are y'all gonna head out?" He questions.

I look over at Brynn and ask her opinion. "Nah we're not ready to go home yet." I reply to Jaxon.

"Mind if I hop in?"

"Nah that's fine."

Jaxon rolls his window up and shuts his car off, I follow suit.

"Yooo this is nice." He comments as he slides into my back seat.

"Thank you." I chuckle.

"How are you ladies on this fine evening?"

"Good," Brynn awkwardly laughs. I agree.

The three of us get to catching up which leads us to my situation with my dad. Jaxon's always been a good friend and someone I'm comfortable talking to so it's easy for me to lay out the situation for him.

I tell him about how my dad was drunk one night and called me, the conversation started out normally then he started to get upset.

Unprovoked, he started to yell at me about how my old car - a Subaru legacy - which is now my daily, cannot go to my moms boyfriend's shop to be serviced. Unknowingly to my dad, it already has been.

My dad started to say some very harsh things about my moms boyfriend, a man he knows nothing about. I asked him to stop because it was making me uncomfortable.

When he didn't, I hung up and the harassment started. I was bombarded with phone calls, and texts threatening to turn my phone off and not be welcomed back on his property with my old car.

Jaxon reassured me as Brynn and my other two best friends Eva and Maya did constantly when everything went down. They said I did the right thing setting boundaries and taking a step back. As much as I agree with them, I still feel like shit about the whole situation.

After telling my story, Jaxon started to open up about his shitty father as well. Hearing everything he went through makes it much harder not to hate him.

The thing that stuck out to me though was that his father cheated on his mother. He was there to pick up his mothers broken pieces, so why would he cheat on Brynn like he did? I push that thought to the back of my mind.

The topic of conversation starts to get lighter. It's now 3am and still none of us are ready to go home, but all of us are hungry. We look up diners nearby and find one open 24/7 about twenty minutes away.

Since we're all in my car, I drive. Jaxon ended up falling asleep on the way. Brynn and I talked in a hushed tone about how she feels hanging out with him tonight for the duration of the drive.

In the diner, jaxon sits across from brynn and I in a booth. We spent the whole time laughing over greasy mediocre tasting food.

As we head back to Jaxon's car, I can't stop thinking about how refreshed I am after tonight. Jaxon has always been a better friend than he was a boyfriend.

I hope that it goes no further than a friendship between him and Brynn because I can't stand to see her upset. It breaks my heart picking up her broken pieces each time Jaxon leaves her.

As we pull up to Jaxon's car, he asks Brynn, "can I take you home?"

Hesitantly, but unsurprisingly, she says yes.

We all say our goodbyes, Brynn gathers her things and asks that I text her when I'm home safe as she exits my car.

I know by the time I get home she'll have a lot to debrief me on.