Chapter Text
This is not the plan.
This is the opposite of the plan.
Never has there been room for a boy in her plan. Especially a stranger.
But Lily still knocks the indicator. Eases her foot off the accelerator and finds herself pulling up behind the aforementioned boy. The aforementioned boy who is also a stranger.
She tries to justify it as she parks a few feet down from his car and turns the key so the engine falls quiet. He clearly needs help. You’re just being friendly. That’s it. It doesn’t drown out her mum’s voice in the back of her head though: how do you know that he’s friendly? Would I want you to do this? Approach a random man in America? I don’t think so. Think this through, petal. But he’s seen her now. She can’t go back.
Lily watches through her windscreen as he stops kicking his car’s tyre and straightens up, running a hand through his hair. He looks at her. Raises an awkward hand.
Get out the car, Lily. She leaves the keys in the ignition, just in case she needs to make a quick escape. Then she takes a deep breath, swings her door open and jumps out. The boy still has his hand in the air, lifted to his shoulder, as if he doesn’t quite know what’s going on. That makes two of them.
“Hey, um, do you need help?” Of course he needs help. That’s why you pulled over, idiot. She resists the urge to turn tail and run.
His hand falls down to his side. “Yeah, I think my engine –“ he stops and runs a hand through his hair again. “To be honest, I have no idea what happened.” He smiles helplessly and Lily notices that this boy (who is actually really a man, just like she is now technically a woman) is cute. Maybe that’s how he lures his victims in, her mum suggests. His smile is cute, lopsided and easy. Like he has a million reasons in the world to smile, and not like he’s broken down on the side of the road. Or like he’s about to kill her.
“Can I take a look?” She asks, stepping towards the open hood of the car.
“Sure, be my guest,” he waves his hand at the engine and then tucks his thumbs into his belt loops. Lily has a suspicion he is only doing this to stop himself from touching his hair. She bites back a smile and leans over the engine, making sure she can see him out of the corner of her eye. Just in case.
Lily’s dad taught her to drive when she was seven. Well, he tried to teach her to drive when she was seven and then Lily’s mum found out and they had to wait a few years. So she was really eleven when she first sat behind the wheel, and drove them to the church and back. It was the lesson at seven though where her dad taught her about the engine. What’s in it, what everything does, what can go wrong. She runs through a list in her head but there’s nothing that jumps out. There’s no smoke, no broken cables, no loose wires. It’s hot, but not hot enough to have caused him to break down.
“Did you check the tyres?”
“Yeah, all fine. I know enough to recognise a flat tyre,” he smiles again, “not that thick.” As he speaks, she realises that he’s British. See, fine! She reassures her mum. It’s not perfect logic, not perfect at all, yet she’d much sooner trust a Brit than an American. They have common ground. And it’s a relief to hear an English accent, even if it is far from her own midlands’ one. A lot posher too.
“What happened?”
“Just kind of… stopped? I managed to start it this morning but she- it was being a real pain in the arse about it. Then the radio stopped about half an hour ago and then,” he gestures at the whole car, “this.”
“She?” Lily asks, because she can’t not.
He blushes, runs a hand through his hair, the belt loops having failed at their job. “Yeah, that’s not at all embarrassing,” he laughs at himself and scuffs the toe of his shoe against the dusty floor. Then he looks up at her, still blushing, and says, “she’s called Lola.”
Lily struggles not to grin. Really struggles. “Nice.” She can’t stop herself, “poor Lola.”
“Poor Lola.” He repeats, accepting the mockery with grace. And another hand through his hair. “Do you know what’s wrong with her?”
“Sounds like her battery’s dead. Do you have any jump leads?”
“For fuc- no, no, I don’t. I’m guessing you don’t either?” He looks angry and helpless and she wishes she could tell him that yes, she does, they’re in her boot. She doesn’t though, so telling him that would be a pretty mean lie.
“Where are you headed?” The question’s out before she can stop it, before she thinks it through. His hand stops at the back of his head, and Lily ignores the taut muscles on his arm that the movement puts on display. Tries to ignore them. Fails.
“Um, well, technically nowhere. I was just driving, anywhere,” he shrugs, the arm drops, his thumbs slip through his belt loops. “Driving helps me think.”
More common ground. “I’m stopping for the night at a motel, if you want a lift there? Or you can call for a tow. I don’t know how long that’ll take though.” She shrugs and closes the bonnet just for something to do. Lily, you can’t offer a stranger a lift. That’s the same as getting into a strangers car! Her mum is sort of right. She was always taught to never say yes to strangers, to never get into a stranger’s car… everything a parent taught their child to protect them. This is different though. At least, it feels different. Lily knows it’s not the best idea. But she also feels in control. She’s a woman now, her mum isn’t here, her dad isn’t here, this boy, this man is helpless, he’s British, he’s cute – no, that’s irrelevant. She tells herself off and then realises that the boy, man- guy is grinning.
“Would you do that?”
“Looks like it,” she smiles, shrugging with one shoulder. He shakes his head, disbelief on his face.
“Really?” He waits for her to nod and then his grin widens, too big for his face. Cute. “Thank you, I’d really appreciate that, it’d be amazing, I’ll just –“ he jabs a thumb over his shoulder, “grab my stuff, thank you.”
“I’m Lily by the way,” she says as he jumps into his car and leans over to the passenger seat. He slides out and slams the door behind him, keys in hand.
“James,” he says, holding out his free hand. She takes it and his grin hasn’t slipped, “are you, um, British by the way?”
She laughs and their hands drop which she’s kind of sad about because James’ hand is big and envelopes hers and hell if that’s not – “yeah, from near Birmingham, how about you?” She needs to stop focusing on the fact that he’s cute. It’s irrelevant.
“Kent.” They walk side by side to her car and once they’re inside he looks across at her and this time his smile is small, just right for his face, “You know you’re the first person I’ve spoken to from England since I got here. It’s –“
“Refreshing?” She offers, turning the keys and reminding herself that it’s an automatic so she doesn’t need to press the clutch down.
“Refreshing, yeah.” He settles his backpack in the footwell and clicks his seatbelt on as she indicates then pulls back onto the road. She sees him turn and watch Lola fade out of view as she speeds up to match the other cars on the road and smiles to herself.
“You’ll see her tomorrow,” she says, not taking her eyes off the road.
He laughs, although it’s more of a chuckle and she’d forgotten people did that. He really is posh. “Feel bad leaving her and she’s not even mine.”
“Rental?”
“Yeah, you’re the same?”
“Yup. Fucking difficult to find a company willing to rent to someone under twenty-five but I managed it.” It’s sneaky. But it’s also a way to find out how old he is. Tsk tsk, her mum tuts in her head and Lily tries not to think about all the rules she’s broken. Speaking to a stranger. Getting into a car with a stranger (even if it is her car). Flirting with a stranger. I know his name, so he’s not really a stranger anymore. And he’s from Kent. How dangerous can someone from Kent be?
James settles at an angle, half-leant against the car’s door so he can face her comfortably, elbow pressed against the window. “I had the same thing. Probably why I got lumped with such a shitty car, the company I found was pretty dodgy.” He’s under twenty-five. He could be the same age as me. He surveys her car. “This seems pretty decent though.” He’s not wrong.
Lily hadn’t exactly been… her normal self when she rented the car. Which is why she’d been willing to fork out a little bit. Which is why she’d come to America at all. So she’d skipped the three cheapest options for a rental and settled on something that was comfortable. A little bit pricier but comfortable. A blue Volkswagen Jetta which was neither new or old and happily closer to new.
“I got a good deal,” she says, in lieu of properly explaining. James nods and they fall silent. She cannot deal with silence right now. Especially when her mum takes the opportunity to suggest all the ways he could kill her. “How long have you been here then?”
“A week. You?”
“Since yesterday,” she looks for his reaction and his eyebrows raise in surprise.
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Flew into Washington. I –“
“Are we still in DC?” He interrupts, straightening up as if he’s just realised something.
Lily looks over at him, eyebrows creased, “you don’t know where we are?”
“Um… I just drove, I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“We’re in Virginia. As in a different state. How long were you driving for?” It’s a trick. Someone couldn’t drive that long without realising. Petal, you need –
“It’s a bad habit. It’s not even a habit,” James runs a hand through his hair and smiles defencelessly, “I was on the road for a while. Might have even seen the state sign. Just won’t have registered in the functioning part of my brain. Not even sure if I have a functioning brain at the moment,” he settles back against the door. “Guess I’ll be sleeping in Virginia.”
It’s ridiculous how calm he is about this. How utterly unbothered he seems. “You sure you don’t need to get back?”
“More like I don’t want to get back,” James sounds like he’s saying this in lieu of properly explaining and look, more common ground, she thinks. Her mum does not agree, being secretive isn’t common ground. It’s murderous behaviour.
“Guess you’ll be sleeping in Virginia then,” she says, and she can’t help but laugh. And it’s the first time she’s laughed since… well since Then. He looks confused and this just makes her laugh more. She landed in America yesterday, ready for her big solo road trip and here she is, not forty-eight hours later, with a stranger in her passenger seat and, to add to that, a stranger who didn’t even know where he was. A stranger who doesn’t mind that he didn’t know where he was. Lily can’t remember the last time she met someone so carefree. Or careless, her mum pipes up but this isn’t the time. Lily’s laughing, it’s spilling out of her, she can’t help it, and James has joined in, not quite sure what the joke is but caught up in the sound of it. In the sound of her.
She laughs until she’s breathless. Until she’s not thinking about Then and That and is just driving. Driving with a strang- James in her passenger seat who’s kind enough to laugh along with her and not to ask any questions. Driving to a motel she found on the internet yesterday and would probably be the perfect location for James to murder her. Driving in a country she’s never been to before but had always wanted to visit. She laughs until she’s just driving and James is telling her about his one week in America without really telling her anything about him.
I hope you don’t regret this, petal, her mum cautions but Lily has laughed away all caution. She looks across at James, who’s recalling the security guard telling him off for getting too close to something in the White House and tells her mum not to worry, I won’t regret this.