"Thanks again for driving me, Kath. I still can't believe Racer flaked out on me to go after some girl in Jersey."
Katherine chuckled as she got into the drivers seat of her car next to Jack, who was in her passenger seat. They were both freshmen at a college in Boston, and since they were both heading to New York City for Christmas break, Jack had asked last minute if he could ride back with her. She, of course, had accepted. They were fairly good friends, after all.
"What are friends for, right?"
"Ditching you to hook up with girls in Jersey, apparently."
Katherine grinned as she put on her seatbelt. "Well trust me, I won't be doing that. Besides, I have to make the drive anyway, I might as well have some company."
"Then I appreciate you being willing to suffer through this drive with me all for the sake of having company."
Katherine's brow furrowed slightly at his odd wording. "And why do you think I'll be suffering?"
Jack grinned and plugged his phone into the AUX cord in her car, which Katherine never took as a good sign. "The drive is what, four hours?" She nodded in response. "I thought I'd take the liberty of making a playlist, just to kinda get us in the spirit of things. We can listen to it the whole way there."
Jack pressed play, and the song "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" started playing throughout the car, and Katherine groaned.
"Jack, really?"
"Yeah!" He pretended her reaction was one of excitement rather than of disdain. "It'll be fun, and by the time you get home you'll be in the Christmas spirit!"
"Or in the spirit of wanting to run over my grandmother when she asks me if I'm sure I don't want to pursue a more ladylike profession for the billionth time."
"See? Either way it works great!"
Katherine sighed, but smiled. "Maybe it won't be that bad."
"Trust me, it'll be fun."
oOo
Over three hours later, "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" had long since been turned off by Katherine, who claimed her head was going to explode if she heard the chorus one more time, and they had yet to make it out of Massachusetts. Clearly they had underestimated how much more traffic would be added to the typical pileups in Boston, considering they were almost definitely not the only college students trying to get out after finals.
"God I'm hungry." Jack said for the third time in the past hour.
"So am I." Katherine groaned, finally relenting to the traffic and putting the car into park, not wanting to hold down the brake with her foot any longer. "Ideally, we'd be almost home by now."
"It's gonna get dark soon, it's past four." Jack commented, glancing out the window.
"I told you we should have left earlier."
Jack gave her a look. "You suggested we leave at seven in the morning. I don't know what seven in the morning looks like."
"Well it'd be better than sitting on the highway for hours. At this rate we won't get back until around nine."
Jack sighed as Katherine put the car in drive so that she could slowly move a few inches forward with the rest of the traffic, and then put it back in park as the cars around them stopped again. They sat in silence for a while, before Jack spoke up again, his gaze fixed out the window.
"Y'know, why don't we just exit here?"
"What?" Katherine responded absentmindedly.
"There's an exit just up ahead with no traffic and it's looking pretty good to me."
