Work Text:
The purpose of the scene assessment is to ensure that the scene is safe for the crew and patient and to provide information about the potential nature and extent of the patient's injuries or condition.
HAZARDS
Are there any hazards? Are you wearing personal protective equipment?
Isabel learns that the seatbelt is nothing more than a strap of frayed rope when the second pothole near sends her head into the roof. She could make a construct, hold herself in, but she doesn’t. This might still be a dream, afterall. Is Isabel actually awake? She isn’t sure. Her eyes glance past the rippling scenery as the familiar cornershop is reduced to a dark smear of colours. In her chest, a shooting pain of longing — no, wait, that's just her crashing into the side of the car as it hits another sharp turn.
With the momentum on the backswing, she leans over enough to sneak a look at the speedometer. That’s pretty high. Maybe it's broken. Isabel didn’t think you could hit speeds that high on Mayview roads. She also didn’t think she got carsick, but as the “”vehicle”” — the thing she’s in is stretching the limits of the definition — finds its next target (another pothole), she’s learning new things about herself.
The sky isn’t light enough yet, a swirling cup of blues and greys against a stark black backdrop of slanted trees and old buildings. The select few lamps on the road are in desperate need of help, and the stop signs, nestled in overgrown bushes are doing nothing on that front. Tires screech as they pass one of the aforementioned signs and realize at the same time that they were supposed to take that turn.
They veer around the corner, the right side of the car raising ominously off the ground. Miraculously, it clears the curb by milimeters.Behind them, a blackened streak marks their escape to the edge of the city.
She gasps, startled laughter escaping from her throat. Her hair whips around her face, unbound by a morning routine of tying it in place. There wasn’t the time for that.
Light beams into her eyes and she looks up, ready for an incoming car with the headlights pointed straight to them. Shadowed in the darkness for the last twenty minutes, she finds she can’t see anything against the painful adjustment to new light. She can’t even tell which way she should dive out of the car
The car tires screech again, bouncing over what definitely isn’t road, and Isabel closes her eyes to brace herself. She hears the gravel and waits for whatever impact is inevitably coming, trying to time the sound to the instinctive memorization of the side of Mayview’s highways. Maybe she can time it, put up a barrier, a shield, before they’re crumpled into metal crust —
All the movement stops. The gravel does its job to assist the brakes, catching the car’s engine into a slow rocking lullaby. There’s a rattling thunk of a key being jostled from its holder, and then the engine shudders to sleep. The door on the driver’s side (opened before the car had even rolled to a complete stop) slams shut. Still feeling the heat of light from the headlights burning into her eyelids, Isabel glances a peek.
ENVIRONMENT
What is the environment? Is it safe to stay?
It’s the sun glancing off the lake. It’s the sunrise glancing over the lake. Through the streaky muddy brown of the windshield, pink scatters over the dashboard and into her lap. A shot of alertness and excitement fill into the holes of her chest and she wrestles with the car door handle until it pops out. Unceremoniously, Isabel crumples into the gravel and out of the car. She recognizes this place.
They’re on an old dirt road she’s hiked to often — the corner that peels off the disregarded highway and back towards Mayview. At the end lays an abandoned farm, soaked in trees and long forgotten. But in the middle of the twisting driveway is a hidden vantage point where someone cut through the trees to overlook from the peak of the mountain. The car is seated in the middle of that open section, carefully parked away from the ledge. It shimmers in the light: a beacon of stripped car paint, metal and rust. Warmth seeps past it in long swaths of summer sun through the trees and back towards the highway.
On the other side of the lake, the sun blazes through the cracks as it creeps its way above the rising trees. The light ripples down and off the waves, golden streaks casting ribbons onto the steeped blue buildings at the shore. Around them and crawling downwards, the trees are washed in pink and orange. Above them, streaks of pink fire cut over the scattered clouds.
Johnny stands at the ledge, back to her and hands on his hips. His hair, freshly dyed, is barely lines against passing clouds. Isabel tugs the thick bomber jacket further up her shoulders and stumbles over to join him.
“Perty good, right?” He flashes her a grin, all teeth.
“We almost missed it,” she huffs, a weary cold still staining her tone. The sun, while warm, is making its crawl slow and steady, and Isabel’s pants are thin.
She watches a line of dew at their feet slowly start to sparkle, and then to Johnny’s face to find him shooting her a Look. She rescinds, trying to keep the chill from her voice this time. “It’s nice. I love this place.”
His sharky grin grows wider. “A Johnny specialshuity,” he beams, “Don’t go telling them others now, right? This is Johnny’s.”
Isabel spins to look at him, the three hours of sleep cascading into the way her joints are shuddering in the almost-morning air. “Yours?” she scoffs in surprise. “I knew about this way before. I come here all the time!”
“No the fuck y’don’t,” Johnny snaps back, folding his arms. “No road could’a lead you here, me n the boys scoped this out ferever ago.”
It can’t be helped. Isabel is simply too cold to stand still. She bodychecks him.
MECHANISM
What is going on? How did it happen?
The head of the household does not need to eat, or sleep, or go to work. His existence is to be the head of the household, and when school ends for the summer, Isabel loses several precious hours a day where she does not need to be in the household.
And she loves Ed with all her heart, but there’s something about being outside of the household, with people who have never been in the household.
But for the first time since his arrival, Max is out of town the first week of summer vacation.
“The minute I get back, it’s back on. Call me the boys the way I’ll be back. Street. On your street. To hang out,” he says while his hands fold shirt after shirt into a bag. Isabel kicks around the room, pretending she isn’t watching, isn’t counting to make sure he isn’t packing for more days than he said he’ll be gone. “I really hate the timing, but—”
“It’s fine, Matrix,” she tells him again, “God, where’s your indifferent sarcasm? I’m not going to die without you. This is so important. You need to be out there.”
He shoots her a withering look, but at least he looks like himself. “Come on. You can say it sucks. That it eats shit expelled from the dankest of puckers”
“That’s vile, even for you,” she snorts from his bed. “It’s fine, Max. I have Ed, and Dimitri. I’m not made of glass.”
“And Johnny?”
“I am not hanging out with Johnny.”
Max sighs. “I told you your room wasn’t his fault entirely, it was my idea too. I stoked the flames… I lit the fuse…”
“Max, it STILL smells like smoke in there. I needed to get a new EVERYTHING for my bed.”
“Okay but you needed to do that anyway, the mattress is shaped like you on every side. The indent is in the mantle core.”
“I flip it.”
“You’ve run out of flips. You’re hitting the ground. No more corkscrews in your future, shred eagle” He packs his laptop into his bag. The room, now devoid of 25% of its things, feels barren and moved out.
Isabel looks out the window instead of his empty desk. “I don’t really get along with him anyway. We just don’t click.”
Max shoots her a look loud enough that Isabel doesn’t even have to turn to see it. “Riiight. Beach marathon 75 wasn’t clicking?”
“No, that was tactics.”
“Pancake-tropilis wasn’t clicking?”
“I needed Forge for a full surface stove.”
“You hang out with his jang as well? With Stephen?”
“His mom’s a cop. He gets it.”
“Dude, do you think Johnny doesn’t get it? Have you met his dad?”
“Max, I have friends. You don’t need to replace yourself. You know I’m going to be fine.” Her nail comes away, too close to the bed. It stings. She runs her finger over the ragged edge, trying to smooth out the sharp throbbing.
“You’ll be fine. But Johnny’s part of the team,” he reminds her, a dirty, backhanded play. “And you could get along with him.
“And we fight together just fine.” Isabel turns to the shuffling sound just in time to see Max pressing a bandage into her palm. She curls her fingers around it silently as he steps back to refold his shirts into his bag in an attempt to get the thing to zip up tight.
For a minute the only sounds in the room are a bag zipper being wrestled with and the papery crackling of a bandage being unpackaged. She carefully fixes it onto her finger.
Whatever. She can survive without Max just fine.
Isabel knows it’s coming. She knew a week of not-so-passive aggressive comments was leading to this. Snide remarks in the hallway, during dinner. Eyes watching her as she moved about in the training field.
“We’ll be going to the dojo to train tonight,” Spender says to the club in the library.
Isabel deflates. In the space where Max’s snide remark would land, she finds herself looking to the emptiness he usually inhabits and finds the Jang instead, with Johnny looking at her. She looks at the floor instead.
“Tonight?” Ed looks up at Spender with an Expression tee em. “That’s so close to tomorrow… why can’t it be next week? Or.. never, maybe? I feel like we train o’plenty between us.”
“Master Guerra said tonight, I’m afraid…” Spender winces with a glance at Isabel. She keeps her gaze even and still when she meets his eyes. “For reasons with his other trainees..? I think? Isabel, you must know more than me.”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I haven’t been paying attention this week.” The drone of fix your stance, Isabel! has blended into the backdrop of the first week of summer vacation being totally and stupidly ass. “He didn’t tell me.” This much is definitely true, as he never tells her anything, unless it can come out scathing.
“Oh, well.” Spender flounders. Sweats. Wilts like a leaf in the hot sun. “I suppose we can discuss it with him tonight.”
Isabel’s shoulders drop like rocks.
PATIENTS
How many patients? How many bystanders?
This is maybe the worst night of Isabel’s life, ever. The downturn of the week has gone from a gentle slope to a manic spiral, and its Johnny Jhonny’s fucking fault.
7:00pm: Show up for training
7:05pm: be informed that there’s a night mission and that master Guerra has to oversee it until four in the morning, so training will be at sunrise.
Tomorrow.
At five am.
In the morning.
7:07-7:25pm: start trying to nicely negotiate (mostly Ed and Spender) a new time, maybe next week? Wilt immediately when told no, even when reminding him that most of them have plans tomorrow and is five am necessary? Just this once? Meekly say okay when the answer is no, again.
7:28pm: Johnny Jhonny gets involved.
It is 8:13pm and Isabel is barely in her own body anymore. Johnny is still yelling at her grandpa, and Isabel is also yelling at her grandpa, because fuck if she’s going to let anyone go into the pits of hell on their own, even if that person did it willingly and stupidly.
Also she needs to be there to tackle Johnny out of the way if he somehow manages to send her grandpa past the brink of actual lasting damage to someone who isn’t part of his household.
She tried to pull him away around 7:37pm, but Johnny was sizzling hot to the touch and dug his heels in, saying something about doing this for her.
For her?????
The only thing he was doing was making sure she would never hear the end of this. Max was wrong. Max was so wrong. If Johnny got it, he wouldn’t be doing this. He wouldn’t be yelling at her crazy grandpa about how his rules were absurd, and how they needed a better time, and how he should train them right now. It was already 8pm. There was no way in hell that any training was going to get done now.
“ENOUGH, BOY,” Master Guerra yells again. He’s said enough, boy, like three times already. Through a red haze of panic, the absurdity of it reaches Isabel and a thick bubble of laughter catches in her throat. She swallows it quickly.
When she looks up, Johnny is looking at her.
He stops. Isabel isn’t sure why.
Master Guerra really thinks this is enough, though, and turns around to leave. Before he does, he shoots a last withering look at Isabel. “If you’re the leader of this thing you call a team,” he tells her, “I expect you’ll get what is yours in line.”
Which makes Johnny burst into flames, mouth open, ready for round three.
Isabel jumps to attention. “JOHNNY,” she all but pleads, and he pauses again. Francisco makes his exit for good.
A silent sweeps between them as her peripheral vision returns. The cold in her bones melts into the heat that is steaming off Johnny in waves. He’s still watching her, expression tight with rage. He opens his mouth. “He- that ain’t fair!” he barks. The sound echoes.
Isabel closes her eyes. Her muscles are tight and itching to release. Adrenaline swarms her head. “I’m going to bed.”
“Guerra—” She hears him call, tone harsh and uncaring. She squeezes her eyes shut and lets blind instinct guide her into bed.
Johnny can find his temporary spare room. She’s too exhausted to see if it even has the right necessities, or even a mattress. Ed and Spender can help him figure it out.
8:32pm: Get into bed
8:43pm: start shaking from the adrenaline wearing off
9:00pm - 12:00am: have a panic attack
12:00am: fall asleep
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Are more people or equipment needed?
Max is still gone. Isabel stared at her phone screen and looked at the pictures of snacks and trinkets he’s buying her a few more times to distract herself from the paragraph sat in her message box. She put her phone down before she could hit send.
The purpose of the primary assessment is to identify and manage life- and limb-threatening injuries and conditions.
LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS, AIRWAY, BREATHING, CIRCULATION, RAPID BODY SURVEY
Is your patient conscious, alert, and orientated? Is their airway clear? Are they breathing? What is their circulation? Do a rapid body survey for obvious injuries or bleeding.
4am. Isabel is ripped from sleep like plunging into cold water. There’s a roar of blood in her ears as she throws herself backwards and off the bed — which makes her eyesight go out briefly while her veins struggle to catch up to Sending The Blood To The Brain. She keeps her battle pose steady, however. Never let the enemy know your weakness. This side of the room still whiffs of burnt wood and plastic, as does the other side of the room, because Johnny Jhonny is standing in her fucking. Doorway. Why is he here. “Get out. Of my room.” she hisses.
“C’mon Guerra. Somethin’ cool t’show you.”
“GET OUT OF MY ROOM.”
“NO. I need to show you this. Docta’ order. From the big man. Prescription? You gettin’ up an dressed.”
She sneaks a look at the time, and the calendar. This can’t be happening. “I’m not going anywhere with you you fucking maniac.”
To her horror, Johnny enters the room. He strides across and reaches for her arm. “You HAVE to,” he tells her, trying to dodge the other arm that comes up to bat his hand away.
“We have training in an hour,” she snaps at him, hearing how loud she’s being and dropping her voice. “My grandpa is going to kill us both.”
Johnny blinks. “That’s why we hatta do this now,” he nods to himself like this is all part of the plan, and maybe not a figment of Isabel’s unconscious mind. Oh my god he’s her paralysis demon.
He reaches for her again, but she’s ready, and the fight or flight kicks in. She grabs his wrist and uses his leaning over position to yank him down, feeling gravity do the work. Johnny’s other hand snaps outstretched and he catches himself against the ground, absorbing the impact and rolling onto his side, twisting his wrist violently so Isabel is forced to either let go or dislocate someone’s shoulder. Johnny’s legs come around and he springs at her, as the adrenaline reaches her brain and clears the last of the midnight fog from it.
Well, fuck. The only thing she can think about as she wrestles Johnny to the floor is that maybe, hopefully, Grandpa will be satisfied with her ability to take out intruders as she wakes up.
Of course not, she thinks, foot to Johnny’s shoulder, watching a new scorch mark appear above the scorch mark already fastened to the wall and feeling a new burn scar blossom above her elbow. Next time he’ll expect it in my sleep.
“Come with me.” says the heated section of the floor. Isabel peers down at the ever-intense shark grin reflecting doorlight back at her.
“You’re not giving up? What could be so important that you’re willing to become a rug carpet for it?” she asks him warily.
“Y’wont know till you see it,” Johnny replies ominously.
“I told you, no.” she loosens her grip and when he doesn’t make a move to flip her, carefully peels herself up from on top of him. He follows the way she stands, pulling himself to his feet in a single movement that she finds her eyes following. Tracing his weathered and stretched tshirt. She uses her tongue to wear at the inside of her cheek that she bit down on. “An ambush is the exact opposite of what I want right now. Do you realize how little I’ve slept? And how mad my grandpa is going to be after last night?” she snaps at him.
“That’s why we’re going.”
“What the fuck are y—”
“He’ll be off his rocker tipping point roller coaster’d no matter whatcha do,” comes the completely comprehensible sentence. Isabel is still asleep, Isabel decides. “Guerrila mode,” Johnny continues. His hands make a movement that is nothing close to a gorilla. Maybe more of a chimp. “Why listen’ta his ass right now anyway? In for a dime, in for a dozen, as they say. Plus it’s my fault anyway and I won’t let him forget that. Y’can just blame me when it’s over anyway.”
“You—” the world tips cold and icy and oh man, she’s really awake now. “Johnny, you really don’t understand what that would mean for you.” She’s trying not to plead but the sentence comes out wavery and wet like a washed up cat.
He shoots her a withering look. “Don’t tell me what I don’t understand.”
The sharp knife of his tone makes Isabel shut her mouth in surprise. She looks at the clock again, and then her phone, with one midnight text at the top from Max. The room feels cluttered, small, and ancient. Shadows fill every nook until they're creeping up her throat. “I’ll grab my jacket.”
To his credit, Johnny keeps his hooting and hollering until they’re safely outside. To Isabel’s surprise, he keeps the hooting and hollering till they’re well past the open window, the one Isabel thought only she had noticed and preemptively winced. But he stays quiet, all the way across the field and towards the dirt road that connects them by a thin thread to the rest of humanity.
She doesn’t understand where they’re going, or even his plan, but that’s why she’s following him, she decides. Johnny is some kind of threat, and right now, only Isabel stands a chance to undo his plot of chaos.
She really doesn’t expect to be face to face with the ugliest car she’s ever seen.
Johnny had wedged it into the bushes along the side of the road, so in the dim, sort of barely lightening morning sky, one could have run straight into it without even noticing its hulking shape.
“What is that.” Isabel stares at it.
“Getcha in” Johnny replies, opening the passenger door for her against complaining bush branches and unsteady hinges. It creaks like a 90 year old trying to sit down. It looks older.
“Where did you get that.”
Famously, Johnny did not have his own car.
“Dontcha worry about it,” he says in a tone with no room for questions, so Isabel gets the fuck in. Because why not. Why shouldn’t she get in the ugliest car ever with Johnny Jhonny at 4fuckingwhatever am instead of doing training, or something, like, nice for herself. Sure. Whatever.
She closes the door behind her. It swings back open. She moves branches out of the way and closes the door behind her. It clunks and shudders back open. She looks at Johnny. “Use your muscles,” he says, so Isabel yanks the door shut until it jabs itself into its hinges and seems to hold.
“Johnny.”
“Dad won’t miss it fer a coupl’a hours. Won’t even be awake when I get it back in his scrapyard” Johnny says, fighting the engine to rise.
Ok. One question answered.
“Y’costed us precious time, so Imma drive us real quick, kay Guerra?” He looks at her like he’s… asking permission, which makes Isabel feel………………weird. She stares ahead at the dashboard.
“Drive fast,” she tells him. “Fuck it. If you’re gonna go, you better go.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. Maybe they’ll fly into the lake and she won’t have to worry about the rest of her day anymore.
Johnny, safely out of earshot of the house, finally whoops in agreement as the engine roars to life.
CRITICAL INTERVENTIONS
Manage life threatening problems and treat for shock.
“THIS IS MY SPOT YOU STUPID, TOMATO SOUP LOOKING SHARKHEAD,” Isabel shrieks as Johnny scrabbles at her shirt, pulling till the seams of her arms make a threatening noise. “I FOLLOW YOU OUT HERE AND ITS FIVE FUCKING AM. WHY IS IT FIVE FUCKING AM?”
“THE SUNRISE WAS GOOD” Johnny yells back, rolling them both over and kicking his legs out to try and hit one of the limbs encircling him.
“WE’RE GOING TO GET YELLED AT. I’M GOING TO GET YELLED AT BECAUSE YOU WANNA TAKE CREDIT FOR MY STUPID SPOT. I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HERE WITH MAX. I GOT THREE HOURS OF SLEEP! BECAUSE YOU WOKE ME UP. YOU’RE NOT EVEN MY FRIEND!”
“SO YOU WANT TO JUST GET UP AND TRAIN? ALWAYS TRAIN? WILL THAT MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER? TAKE A DAY OFF!” Johnny gasps, attempting to plant his feet as Isabel deathgrips from around his back. He gets them in the dirt and throws himself back, landing on her ribs hard enough to punch the air out of her.
Isabel opens her mouth to say more, tell him that she can’t, that he still doesn’t get it, but all that comes out is a heaving wheeze. She rolls herself onto her stomach, feeling Johnny’s weight leave her the moment he feels her chest shuddering and failing. Her lungs flutter uselessly as she gasps soundlessly for a second time, the world starting to burn up at the edges.
Johnny waits, watching as just a heavy shadow over her eyes as she blinks out of clarity with each gasp that fails to fill her with oxygen. Isabel blinks back tears, hoping they’re from the shock.
When air finally goes in and her blurry vision clears, she’s aware of the hand on her shoulder, and that the grass is finally warm with morning sun. Both are almost uncomfortably warm.
“M’bad,” Johnny mutters. She’s heard this tone of his forever, and her whole life, just a few hours ago, but now between the bits of glass he seems to talk out of she can see the remorse reflected through pieces. Huh. a thousand interactions shift like sand, just for a moment.
Isabel coughs again, delaying the moment so she can make sure the tears in her eyes are safely blinked away, even though her vision’s been clear since Johnny spoke.Since she doesn’t move, he doesn’t either, and the palm on her shoulder starts to burn harmlessly through to her skin.
She sucks in another breath and sits up into the sun, feeling the first summer rays of the morning along every curve of her face. Johnny’s hand falls back as he thunks into a seated position beside her, hair ablaze in the light and eyes glowing in the shine. Isabel can’t really look at him, so she doesn’t. She can’t think about what any of this means, so she stares out over the horizon instead.
“This is nice,” she relents after a long stretch of peaceful silence.
“Thought so,” Johnny leans back on his haunches. “Don’t worry. I know what’ta say. He won’t even think of blaming you, Johnny’s gonna be sucha red herring it’ll be like a matador.”
“Uhuh,” Isabel tries to snort, but it comes out as a laugh. She doesn’t believe him, not fully, but its nice to try. “You already proved yourself last night. Why did you do that?” her chest still tightens at the memory, mere hours ago.
“Dunno,” he sounds a little distant. “Sometimes it just comes out, even if I know I’ll get trouble later f’it. Like it might as well happen if it’s gonna happen, y’know. Sides, it was just—” he snaps bursts of flames between his fingers, “I couldn’t— It’s different. Seeing it. From the outside. Was it stupid of me?”
Isabel nods dumbly. The words rattle around her head.
He sighs, long and slow and unlike himself. “Parents don’t like me anyway. Bound t’happen.” He gets up. “I gotcha something.”
She frowns and pulls herself to her feet, new bruises starting to scream out as the adrenaline washed off. She follows him to the trunk of the car where he jiggles with the handle until it pops open with a force that cracks into his jaw loudly. Isabel winces at the sound of teeth hitting teeth as Johnny spits curses from his throat.
He peeks into the trunk and deflates. Curiosity gets the better of her and Isabel leans over his shoulder, close enough to soak in the warmth he’s giving off. It’s still cold in the shadows, afterall.
There’s a cake in the trunk of the car, carefully placed in a reused plastic container. Nestled against one side of the trunk, the right side of the cake has been very clearly deformed by several potholes and a served corner. Isabel stares at it. It says from Max in handwriting Isabel has come to recognize as Zoey’s. Mostly because Max never writes that neatly.
“Huh?”
“S’your birthday right? I knows that already, but Maximum ride blew up my phone last night. Said I could give t’cake he made Zoey make coz I fucked uRKHCOUGH HACK I wanted t’do something nice.”
“Oh.” Isabel stares blankly at the cake.
“And I gotcha this,” he pulls a leatherman from his pocket. “S’bunch of tools, fer missions and stuff.” he nods his head up and down. She turns it over, finding the uneven side where the remnants of a name had been scuffed and sanded away. “I wanted t’keep it, but you’d get wayyy more use outta it, I think. Prolly. Aren’t you lucky?” he beams at her.
She pockets it and decides she’ll figure out if she should hunt down the original owner later. What would she even do with a pocketknife like this? Weren’t they expensive? She slides it into her jacket reluctantly. Maybe she can just regift it to him at a later date?
“Max… made you do this?”
“Wouldn’t say made. Suggested. Hinted. All me, really,” he thunks his chest “I drank a monster, found those car keys, got the cake from th’ Pucketts — don’t worry Max’s gonna tell them and told me where th’key is so I didn’t break’n’enter this time!! — had anoth’monster then I got back here, uh, th’ dojo and picked you up. All’s in a day’s works.”
“Oh.”
She doesn’t know how to say more. The sun is burning into her eyes, scorching the places where the jacket is now a layer too warm. Johnny beams at her, brighter than the light behind him, somehow, haloed in gold in a way unfamiliar. Isabel can’t look at him. She can’t look at her phone, a hard weight in her pocket buzzing again with Max’s and Ed’s unique ringtones. “Oh,” she says again, barely past her lips.
He watches her. “Y’still wanna go back? I thought we’coulda hit the downtown. S’girl in the Pocketwatch cafe that gives me yesterday’s leftovers for breakfast sometimes. Pretty good. But we can go back.” he shuffles awkwardly, and Isabel realizes with a start that he’s nervous.
A laugh comes out of her and she covers her mouth in surprise, rubbing at her face to beat down the hot feeling in her cheeks. “No- uh. Sure. I mean that’s. That seems pretty good. I don’t want to go back, I mean.” She better apologize to him later. About the friend thing. She didn’t mean that, did she?
Johnny nods, his head bobbing stiffly. His gaze is on her. It’s weirdly, and always has been, sort of soft. warm.
Isabel blinks, the sun in her eyes again.