Back to December

Chapter One

Chapter line: I think about summer all the beautiful times, I watched you laughing from the passenger side.
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"Ahh, James! It's my song!" I squeel, turning up the stereo in our white rental car.
" Yeah I'm out that Brooklyn, now I'm down in Tribeca
Right next to DeNiro, but I'll be hood forever
I'm the new Sinatra, and since I made it here
I can make it anywhere, yeah, they love me everywhere
I used to cop in Harlem, all of my Dominicanos
Right there up on Broadway, pull me back to that McDonald's
Took it to my stash spot, 560 State St.
Catch me in the kitchen like the Simmons' whipping Pastry" I say, pretend rapping and doing a little groove in my seat.

I look over at James and see him smiling and rolling his eyes.

"Oh come on," I say, playfully pushing his arm. "I know you love this song, look see know one will is going to judge you! Come on, live a little!!!"

"Candice, in the year that we have been dating, better yet the two years I have known you, I have been bungee jumping, which you chickened out of, skydiving, which you also chickened out of, abseiling, which I payed you $75 to do and learnt how to surf, which you gave up after two lessons and you think I need to 'live a little'?" He asks, chuckling to himself.

"Well excuse me and in my defense I do know how to surf, after you learnt you taught me, remember?" I reply.

I turn my head back to look out the beautiful scenery. This weekend is mine and James' 1 year anniversary so we are traveling back to where we first met, sunny Los Angeles.

I convinced James that he would need to stop somewhere and take a break, as he thought that he could be superman and drive the 6 hour trip from San Francisco by himself.

Knowing him he probably could but I didn't think that was very fair, so I took the first three hour drive and now he is driving the rest of the way to L.A.
" New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of. There's nothin' you can't do. Now you're in New York. These streets will make you feel brand new.The lights will inspire you. Let's hear it for New York, New York,New York" James bursts out singing steering with only one hand using the other for random hand gestures. My God, that voice though.

I smile uncontrollably, this is the James I love, I giggle slightly.

The wind through his hair, the sunset in the background and once again, that voice, this makes everything worth while.

"Sing with me, Can? I know you want to?" He says giving me a questioning look.

"Nah, I think I am good." I reply pretending to sound mad.

I turn my head away from him. He can tell I am joking and so on the next chorus we both join in singing like there is no tomorrow.

As we turn right off US-101S onto Los Angeles Street and approach a set of traffic lights, we find an old man and woman in a Toyota Corolla next to giving odd looks, and rather disapproving looks from the lady.

James smiles his cheeky grin at me and we know exactly what we have to do.

We roll down our windows, turn the stereo up and sing as loud as we can, maybe a little purposely off tune. Okay maybe we were making sure we sounded bad just to annoy them.

I wink at them as we drive off at the change to a green light.

Once we are far enough away from their car James bursts out laughing and raises his hand signaling me to high five him, which I couldn't deny.

"That was gold!" He says emphasizing every word, still laughing.

"So Candice, I was thinking,"