Lily's Summer of Precarious Happenings

Chapter Ten

"So, do you have any hobbies?"

We had barely lasted thirty seconds in silence driving in his car before Colin had decided to break it.  I turned in my seat and looked at him skeptically.

"I mean... besides the obvious."  He added sheepishly.

So much for a peaceful, Uber-esque drive home.  I allowed his question to roll around in the quiet spaces in between the hums of his engine before responding.  "Reading, mostly."  He nodded and tapped on the steering wheel in an almost nervous fashion.  "Why don't you drink?"  The question had been eating at me for the past few minutes since Wesley had said it.

"Long story," He said so softly it barely registered.

"I only ask because I'm shocked we have another thing in common," I tried, hoping the bit of personal information would bait him into opening up a little bit more.  My words floated briefly through the air, never seeming to land.  The wordless atmosphere returned, this time lingering longer than the last. I wrung my hands together in my lap, mind racing towards what the house would look like when I returned.  Would they throw us out?  Had she finally gone too far?  How exactly would  an eighteen-year-old find a place to stay in the middle of the night with her drunk mother and in an unfamiliar state?

"You do that a lot."

I wouldn't have noticed him say anything if he hadn't motioned towards my lap.  Looking down, my knuckles had turned white as they clung to each other.  "Yeah," My grip loosened slightly, "I don't know why."

"Does it help?" My eyebrows furrowed together at his question.  He clarified, "When you worry."

I could've choked on my own spit.  It felt like he had climbed into my mind and had stealthily forced his way into understanding me in the span of only a few days.  Or was I just that readable? "I... yeah, I think it does."  My chest deflated as I sighed. "It's like... it keeps me on earth when everything else is threatening to rip me away from reality."

Colin nodded and hummed quietly to himself, looking as though he was intently digesting my words and locking them away.  The focus and intention behind his questions made me nervous.  No one, especially a guy, had ever cared to attempt the descent into the inner workings of my mind.  Or maybe I was just going insane.  That was probably more likely at this point.

I cleared my throat, "Do you... uh... do you know where you're going?"

"Don't worry, May-bell." 

There I go, choking again. "Sorry, what?"

"May-bell?"

"Did you have a stroke? That's not my name."  Well, no shit, Sherlock.

Colin's lips stretched in a small smile as his eyes continued to train on the road.  "May-bells.  It's another name for a Lily of the Valley."

"And why do you know so much about flowers?" 

"What, a guy can't know about flowers?" He tossed me a smirk that made my heart skip a beat, "That's a little sexist, don't you think, O'Sullivan?"  It could have been a trick of the light, the way the passing shadows danced over his features, but I could have sworn he winked before he looked back at the road.  "It was my mother's favorite flower."

I opened my mouth, before the phrasing dawned on me and I snapped it shut.  Was.  He had told me something about himself - albeit inadvertently.  "I'm sorry," I found myself saying, and watched warily as he gripped the gear shifter a little harder.  

Maybe I was going insane, because the next thing I knew, I had placed my hand over his own, hoping to ease some of the pain that had broken his stony persona.  I felt his hand loosen underneath mine.  Before I could think, we had threaded our fingers together in a grip so tight it was as though we were both desperately trying to keep each other from floating away.  Two broken people who had gotten cast overboard, tossed away and forgotten by the cruel luck of life.