Guardian Angels (Part 1)

This is the first draft of a short story I’ve been working on. I finished it just a little while ago. I’m trying to make a point of either drawing or writing for a couple hours everyday. I started this a few weeks ago and it’s been percolating in my brain, but I just hadn’t gotten around to finishing it. It’s a little racy, but not overly so, and not even as explicit as most romance novels. Anyway, constructive criticism is always welcome….

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The stars were bright in the crystalline winter night, clear and hard away from the glow of the cities and suburbs. I-91 stretched long and black, the occasional streetlight reflecting off the snow, half hidden by the curve of the highway. Jeremy rubbed his arms with mittened hands and puffed out a short, exasperated breath. Even that seemed hard-edged and icy against the blackness. He stomped his feet as he walked along the shoulder, forcing the blood into his toes.

This seriously sucks, he thought, not for the first time. When his car had shuddered to a standstill, he hadn’t worried too much about it. He’d broken down before. He could usually fiddle around with just the right combination of hoses and wires to get it going again, at least long enough to get it to his mechanic. Every time Tom saw the Nissan limp into the drive, he’d shake his head and beg Jeremy to buy a new car. Jeremy saw his battle with the crumbling sedan as a test of his will. Generous people called him stubborn. “Pig-headed moron” was what Tom called him, but only in the privacy of his shop and only after the check had cleared.
This time the old car seemed to have given up. After dutifully popping the hood and attempting to reconnect anything that might have disconnected, Jeremy turned the key to a wheezing, asthmatic gasp, followed by horrified silence. A few more tries only lead to heartbreak. Now he was stuck in the middle of nowhere Vermont, his cell phone searching in vain for a signal, in the freezing fucking cold, in the middle of the fucking night!

    “Fuck!” he shouted. His voice echoed off the hills around him. The chances of anyone coming by were slim and the chances of anyone picking up a hitchhiker in the middle of the night on a dark, lonely road were even slimmer. He growled and pulled his hat low on his head before sticking his hands in his armpits. Even though he’d put on most of the clothes he’d packed for the Thanksgiving weekend before leaving the car for dead, there was no way to escape the cold. “Figures,” he grumbled. “Two weeks of temps in the 50’s and then we get a cold snap just in time for a midnight stroll.” He trudged on, kicking at the hunks of ice left by the snowplows and muttering under his breath. He’d be lucky to get to any kind of town before dawn. Overpopulation wasn’t exactly a problem in Vermont.
Jeremy though longingly of his dorm room at Dartmouth. His roommate Dave would be at home in Atlanta by now, as would Brian and Mike, the guys they shared the suite with. He imagined his nice warm bed, the threadbare couch in front of the TV. He sighed wistfully over the hours of uninterrupted quality time with the Xbox and the sheer novelty of not getting kicked out of the shower after five minutes. He was definitely cursing himself for not staying over the break. Family was overrated anyway. So wrapped up was he in his fantasies of microwaved turkey dinners and Grand Theft Auto that he barely registered the gradual brightening of the asphalt or his shadow lengthening before him in the glow of headlights.

He looked up hurriedly, throwing out his arm to flag down the car that was barreling towards him. It was coming awfully fast and seemed to be veering over to him without any indication of slowing down. Jeremy very suddenly wondered whether he ought to just keep walking, assuming of course that the obviously drunk driver didn’t splatter him across the highway. He jumped back against the snow bank as the car pulled quickly around him and stopped, brake lights burning in the blackness. Okay, so the driver wasn’t drunk. That much was clear from the precision of the maneuvering. Jeremy cautiously approached the car. It was black and sleek looking, only the sheen of the paint separating it from the pervading darkness around them. It looked like it might be a Benz, but he couldn’t see the emblem through the lights. Jeremy heard the whir of the power window going down as he walked over to the driver’s side. A pale blonde head emerged and squinted back at him through the uneven light.

<p>
“You need a ride?” The woman’s voice was high and soft, more like a girl’s, and pitched to carry over the purr of the engine. Jeremy stood in shock a moment, his need to get out of the cold battling with his desire to scold the girl. Hadn’t anyone taught her not to pick up hitchhikers? said a voice in this head that sounded a lot like his third grade teacher Mrs. White. In a much quieter voice, Mrs. White added, and I know you know better than to get in a car with strangers, young man. He shook his head and went over to the car, keeping his distance so he wouldn’t scare her off. He wished he’d shaved his goatee and maybe gotten a haircut. He probably looked like a bum to this pretty girl in her expensive car. Hell, he’d probably look like a bum to anyone right now, walking as he was down a dark road in five layers of clothes and only a gym bag over his shoulder.

“Are you coming or what?” Looking in, Jeremy saw that she was indeed a girl, probably his own age or a year older. And she wasn’t alone. Next to her was another blonde girl, her hair honey to her friend’s cornsilk, and in the back was a brunette, her eyes a shocking pale blue in contrast to her dark hair.

No wonder they picked me up, Jeremy thought. There’s strength in numbers. Out loud he said, “How far are you guys going?” All three girls stared at him holding his eyes until he began to feel uncomfortable under their joined gaze. Finally the girl in the driver’s seat smiled, her teeth white and even against her pink lips.

“Northampton,” she said, her smile widening.

“No shit?” Jeremy said with a laugh. “That’s where I’m headed. What are the chances of that?”

“Must be a thousand to one.” She turned to the girl in the passenger seat. “Why don’t you get in back so our guest can have the front?” Jeremy hurried around to the other side of the car as the girl climbed out. It was hard to make out her features, backlit as she was by the car’s interior light, but she was tall and leggy and the light outlined her curves in a way that Jeremy certainly appreciated.

“Thanks,” he said breathlessly, as slid into the soft leather seat. “I honestly thought I’d be walking all night. And that’s just crazy that we’re going the same place.”

“It must be your lucky night,” said a lilting voice from the back seat. It was the kind of voice that sounded as though it was always laughing. Jeremy turned and smiled at the dark-haired girl.

“It is now,” he grinned. “I’m Jeremy.”

The girl giggled. “I’m Katie,” she said. She gestured towards the driver. “That’s Brooke and this is Lindsey. So what are you doing walking in the middle of the night?”

Jeremy shrugged. “My car broke down a while back.”

“That was your car we passed? The white one with the dents?”

“Yeah,” he muttered, embarrassed. “I’ll have to have it towed when we get to town, but I think it’s probably dead.” He was quiet a minute, luxuriating in the heat blasting from the dashboard. “So do guys have family in Northampton or something?” He saw the driver, Brooke, glance at the others in the rearview mirror. “I don’t mean to be nosy, but it’s not a big town, and I’m pretty sure I’d remember you.”
“We’re visiting friends,” Brooke said after a moment’s pause. Her voice was soft, but her tone suggested that she wouldn’t answer anymore questions and that he’d do best not to ask. From the corner of his eye Jeremy saw Brooke lift her glance again to the rearview mirror, her mouth tightening almost imperceptibly, communicating something he couldn’t read to her friends in the backseat. He gave a mental shrug. There was no point in upsetting them when they’d been nice enough to pick him up in the first place. Still, he wasn’t one to sit in silence surrounded by three pretty girls acting as his guardian angels.

“It really was awfully nice of you to pick me up,” he said as gently as possible. “I mean, it’s hardly a safe idea to go picking up strange men in the middle of the night.”

Katie laughed from the back seat and Jeremy half-turned to shoot a smile back at her. The cloud that had been over Brooke’s face lifted as she smiled. “Well, we can take care of ourselves.” She looked over at him and he felt his face flush. “Besides,” she grinned, “we outnumber you.” Katie laughed again, and Jeremy blushed all the more. From very close behind his head he heard a low, bell-like tone. He turned quickly to find Lindsey leaning towards him, her face shadowed by the headrest of his seat, the glow of the dashboard lights shining red against her hair.

“Not scared, are you?” Her voice was as low and as clear as her laughter. She was close enough that she spoke barely above a whisper. She smiled and rested one arm along the back of Jeremy’s seat and propped her chin on the back of her hand. The movement stirred the air around them, and Jeremy could smell her perfume, a heavily floral, old-fashioned fragrance, not at all like what the girls he knew wore. There was something slightly musty about it, as well, as if it had lain for a long time forgotten in some old widow’s bureau, a reminder of younger days. Jeremy found himself thinking of rainy summer days when he would play in his great-grandmother’s attic with Maggie Winters, who lived next door. Maggie had been dressed in lavender silk with a yellow flowered hat and a parasol over her shoulder when he had suddenly leaned over and kissed her. They were both eight and Maggie had smelled of bug spray and tasted like grape popsicle and Jeremy had immediately fled to the safety of the bathroom until he heard Maggie leave. He had felt very young and very foolish then, and the musty, flowery fragrance that wafted around Lindsey only served to deepen his blush still further as he remembered that stolen kiss.

He met her eyes as she peered around the headrest. For a moment they were illuminated by the headlights of a tractor trailer in the northbound lane and they gleamed deep green in the brightness before subsiding into dull embers once more. Truthfully, he was scared. But it was the same kind of scared that he had been that rainy day in the attic with Maggie. His fear was tinged with excitement. Lindsey smiled and it sent a little jolt through him, reminding him that she had asked him a question, but she seemed not to mind his silence. She leaned back into the leather seat and let her gaze drift to the darkened world outside her window.

Jeremy turned to face the road again, uncomfortable now. He shifted, tugging at his sleeves. It occurred to him that he should take off a couple layers of clothes.

(Continued… Next Entry)