17 Days & Die ✔️

6/ Cottages & Castle Combe

 "This is the worst road trip ever." I stated and Chris stopped beeping his horn for a minute before looking at me.

"You see this face." He pointed at himself. "This is the face of a person who doesn't give a shit."

I glowered his way. "And yet you were the one trying to convince me to give you 17 days. Why even bother?"

He kept quiet and continued beeping the horn. I was pretty sure my ears were on the verge of bleeding.

We had been stuck in traffic for at least thirty minutes now. We still had an hour's worth of journey left ahead of us and it was currently quarter to one in the afternoon.

The last three hours were spent with either deafening silence or the voices of our bickering.

We made two pit stops, when I needed to pee and the other when I was hungry.

Of course there had been incessant arguments where Chris had told me to hold onto my bladder and hunger and that he wouldn't stop.

In the end he had to because I was sure I would have peed on his leather seats. During the snack stop, he had begrudgingly stopped at an ASDA after just about ten requests from me. This was just before we were stuck in this traffic.

I opened another packet of chips and started nibbling on them. Chris continued grunting and beeping his horn, occasionally cursing his heart out at whatever was holding the traffic.

"Stop blaring the goddamn horn. The traffic is gonna move when it's gonna move." I hissed and Chris glared at me.

"Then what the hell am I supposed to do till that happens?" He spat back and I gave him a thoughtful look.

"We can always talk." I offered and he scoffed.

"Yeah right. I'd rather poison myself."

I shrugged and gave him a smirk. "I wouldn't mind that."

He flipped me off and sighed, but didn't continue to beep the horn. Leaning back in his seat he completely turned off the engine before looking at me and opening his mouth with a look that said 'feed me'.

"Absolutely not." I scoffed, only to yelp when he snatched the packet of chips away. Taking a fistful of them, he threw the packet back into my lap and I shook my head at him.

"So, let's start. Pasta or pizza?"

He narrowed his eyes at my persistence but answered anyway. "Pizza."

"Same." I nodded. "It's your turn now. Come on, ask me something."

"You seem changed. Almost carefree. Why's that?"

I paused, kind of bothered he had worded it that way. I wasn't carefree. I'd just stopped bothering with anything. If anything, that should have been a red flag.

"Because what's the use of thinking about everything that went to shit? I know how my story's going to end. I'm happy with that. I got nothing to fret over as of now. So, I'm just trying to take advantage of you sort of pampering me." I swallowed the lump in my throat and pushed a strained smile on my lips. "Okay, my turn. Tell me Chris, one thing you love about me and one thing you hate about me."

He gave me a bewildered look. "Is that even a question? I thought I made that quite obvious. I love nothing about you and hate everything about you." If that was his attempt to lighten the mood or if he was genuinely trying to offend me, I couldn't quite tell.

I gave him a fake smile and nodded. "Good answer. You go."

He glanced out of the window in deep thought. For a beat I thought he was going to ignore this game. Then after a minute he glanced back at me. "What is the thing you hate the most about yourself?"