Shay

twenty eight

"Can't you drive faster!?"

"I'm trying, Shay!"

Laylah was shouting at me as she tried to focus on the streets of Chicago. She held her grip firmly on the car wheel, making her knuckles appear lighter.

"Please, Laylah," I begged. "Hurry up!"

She made a sudden stop when we reached a red light, making the both of us almost fall forward. I caught myself on the glove compartment. "Be careful," I demanded as she looked at me in surprise.

"Are you giving the instructions now?"

"What is that supposed to mean?" I looked at the red light impatiently, while Laylah was watching me from the side, her hands still clinging to the steering wheel.

"You're telling me what to do and where we're going, erm, pardon, Shay, but we're in my car."

"In your car? And, uh, why though?" I moaned instantly and dared a look to Laylah, who was looking at me with a hard expression on her face.

"Because I wanted to go to YOUR shitty party with YOU, which I have planned for YOU, but that... nevermind."

"What?" I wanted to know, but the traffic lights turned yellow, then green.

"Laylah, what?"

She pressed her foot firmly on the gas pedal, causing me to fall into the seat of the expensive Cadillac.

"I wish I wouldn't have invited you..." Laylah murmured. "I don't even understand what's your problem!"

"Yeah, so, Laylah, I don't get yours! If you had a healthy human mind for once, we would have been at Jenna's already, and you would stop saying dumb shit." The words came out of my mouth like a river, and I needed water, immediately. My mouth was dry, but full of strong and harsh words, making me say things I wouldn't usually dare to say.

I was so in rage that I didn't even know what I wanted to say, or to express. In this moment, I felt nothing like the ladylike, popular journalist I wanted to be.

I felt like a woman who doesn't have behaviour, and maybe, that was the case.

It wasn't late, actually quite the contrary, it was still extremely bright outside, but I was exhausted. My body was having a roller coaster of different emotions, and I felt like hovering in the clouds, circled by thousands of tiny little stick figures.

Fifty percent wanted the best of me, twenty percent the worst, and thirty percent wanted me to re-think my decisions.

"What way now?"

"No idea.." I looked at Laylah and exhaled the words almost silently. I really didn't know where to go.

"You don't know where your best friends lives?" Laylah emphasised the words Best Friend. My face grew red, and I looked down to my lap.

When I visited Jenna for the first time, it was the taxi driver doing the whole job.

"And you don't even believe me," Laylah continued. And, she was right. I did not believe her a single word.

She tried to calm me, at least back to the state of me finding the complete of calmness, but I was much more beyond that – and, nothing seemed to help me anymore.

"Please just drive." I demanded as I continued to stare at my lap.

"Whatever," Laylah murmured. She continued to drive down the road, this time in an almost much slower pace, which was making me lose my mind. We needed to go to Jenna.