[ 3 ]
It felt disgusting pulling up to her house. This car was the reason for the skip outside, waiting to be filled with old memories of a boy that had died needlessly.
But I'd done it before, I'd pulled up to her house with his blood still fresh on the rim of my tyre. Lori opened the door, but as she walked down the path her mother followed. I had seen bits and pieces of her family broken into news stories on the TV and in paper articles, but I'd never seen them in reality.
In reality, her dark circles weren't so dark and her frown wasn't as prominent. She teetered down to my car window and as Lori got in the passenger seat, I wound down my window.
"Thank you, Brady." She said with a voice that held respect, but I deserved none of it. "Make sure she gets home safe."
"Of course." I grinned. "She's safe with me." I said before thinking, but I immediately regretted it. I killed her son, her daughter couldn't have been in worse hands.
"Thanks mom." Lori said genuinely. Her mom smiled and turned around, waving behind her.
Lori was wearing a red dress that was long enough to pass by her mom but too short to pass for any public outing. It had a small turtle neck in a stretchy material, but her hair fell on her shoulders, making up for the lack of sleeves.
I only realized I was staring when she raised her eyebrows at me, urging me to leave this place behind. I coughed and turned away, pretending not to have liked or even noticed how her black heels matched her necklace and her earrings.
"You look very nice." I croaked out as we pulled away. Oh, God, did I just say that? Of course I did, she looks nice. But I didn't need to say it out loud, did I? You idiot, Brady. You killed her brother you can't just tell her she looks very nice. Very nice, very nice, by the way the red you're wearing matches your brother's blood on the tarmac!
I gripped the steering wheel and accelerated away. God damn all of this. I miss being a teenage boy, I missed girls and flirting and jokes and friends.
"So do you." She said after a while, so long after I'd first said anything that she must've had some sort of conscious battle with herself on whether or whether not to say it. The awkwardness that fell on us after that was stronger than any other awkwardness we'd previously encountered.
Sure we'd had the "I accidentally killed your brother" silences and the "I saw you in just a shirt on the edge of a cliff" silences, but none of them could ever match the "You have a dead brother, I'm the murderer and I'm also trying to flirt with you" silence.
I coughed in this time of dire urgency and tried to change the subject. "Is anyone from your year going to the party?"
"I don't know." She shrugged. Of course she doesn't know, dimwit, she hasn't spoken to them. Before I could mutter sorry or stumble over an apology she laughed and said "God, I haven't been to a party like this in ages."
I looked over to her just in time to see her smile and look down at her hands, curled on her lap. She was excited and nervous, and that made me excited and nervous. It was like she was radiating some kind of emotion.
I'd never imagined that Lori Kaye could look like this, beautifully dressed and blushing in my passenger seat. This wasn't the Lori Kaye that I had taken home months ago. Then she was smothered in grief, bawling to herself and looking out the window at the buildings that passed.
I smiled to myself and turned to the road again. If James hadn't had died, then Lori would've. For the first time I thought that maybe James' was worth Lori. That his sacrifice meant everything. That the smiling girl sat next to me was worth more than him.
