Re-Arranged

Chapter Twenty Five

Kelly knew she was forgetting something, but couldn't quite place a finger on it. Sawyer had an entrance exam, yes, that she recalled. But there was at least one other thing happening too. Her brain kept turning up a blank slate every time she stopped her work to think about it.

She decided she would ask Darian later, and put the matter aside for good. Any thought of getting back to it while driving back home could have been entertained if she had not spotted a familiar face waiting at a bus stop a quarter of the way from her office.

She slowed down while turning at the intersection into that lane and wondered if she should honk and rouse his attention. However, as luck would have it, Sawyer happened to see her right as she reached the stop. He willingly waved at her and pointed at the closest parking spot up ahead.

Once he got in, he sighed and muttered, "Your city's public transport is one of the worst I've ever seen."

"Really? I haven't used one in ages, but I don't remember it being bad," Kelly replied, typing on her phone while waiting for him to fasten his seatbelt. He put the bag near his feet and adjusted his shirt after buckling in.

"Lucky you."

"How was the exam?"

"I should pass, I suppose."

"Good."

They rode in silence for a while. Sawyer adjusted the air conditioning ducts so they would face away from him, and refused to open the windows either. He could not stop shaking his right legs or wiping his hands on them. If not for those movements, no one would guess looking at his face that he bore any form of anxious feeling inside him.

A few moments later, he broke the quiet with a question: "Can we not go to... home right away?"

"Hmm? Is there anywhere else you want to stop by?" Kelly asked, her eyes fixed on the road. This particular lane had become riddled with potholes ever since the unexpected rainstorm way back when. The city officials had not come round to fixing it yet, so it was a matter of choosing the shallower holes to drive through while crossing this road. It's parallel lane, though, had it worse. There the choice lay between deep and deeper potholes.

Sawyer considered it for a moment. ("Sorry," his cousin mumbled as they hit a deeper snag in the road.) "No. Nothing like that. It's just..."

It took him well over three minutes to say what he wanted to – that he got a message from Winslow in the morning, that he did not see until after the exam. Apparently, Winslow or Shawna or Wednesday, or all of them together, were set to call him in the afternoon. Sawyer did not have a good feeling about it, but he was also awfully nervous. He did not think he could talk straight, and at peace, at her house when it was so crowded and chaotic.

"I see. But you would not want to take the call in public either, huh?" Kelly ventured once it seemed like he had said all that he had been trying to.

Pressing his lips together, Sawyer shook his head.

"Very well. I know just the place. But," she added, as she turned on the right indicator and let one of the cars pass her by before turning the steering wheel, "you should know, the bumpy ride just now? It's about to get worse."

~

"I would have visited this place over the weekend anyway," Kelly explained as she opened the cupboards and pulled out unopened cartons. She checked the labels on them one by one. "Figured I'd replace the expired items before the folks return here. At the least, I could get rid of them. Ma and Papa have such a bad habit of not checking the expiry dates!" But she was essentially talking to herself.