Kiss Me: Jax and Gabi

For the past hour and a half, I’ve sat as patiently as anyone could at the airport waiting for their luggage to finally show up. By the time I had rented a car, a winter storm had started to pass through the area and a thin sheen of ice was already sticking to the roads.

Undeterred, I put my friends’ address into the GPS the rental company had provided and set out as slowly and carefully as I could.

In all truth, I wasn’t used to driving much. Back home in LA, I had a service that drove me to most things, so I didn’t have to deal with traffic, let alone curvy icy roads, and I had my groceries delivered when I was in town. My anxiety skyrocketed from driving in nowhere near pristine conditions; my hands shook on the steering wheel.

According to the navigation, my journey would take me approximately thirty minutes, but it was obvious it would take me much longer. I had only traveled perhaps five miles, and it had taken twenty minutes with my slow, cautious driving. At that pace, it would take me hours to get to my destination.

The worst part was that my phone had died sometime during my flight while I was sleeping. My only saving grace was that I’d had the forethought to write their address on a piece of paper before I’d left and had stuck it in my purse. In hindsight, I should have also put one or both of their phone numbers on the note and told them that my plans had changed; that I was coming to visit. It would also have been smart if I had put the charger in my purse instead of my suitcase.

Since I couldn’t bite my nails and keep both hands on the wheel during my nerve-wracking journey, I chewed the inside of my cheek and lips until there was nothing left to nibble on, but I still continued on the raw, sore skin. On one particularly hair-raising turn, I bit my lip so hard, I tasted blood. I was sure that by the time I got there, my lips would be a messy, bloody pulp, and possibly swollen.

I wasn’t sure how much longer I could drive without having a nervous breakdown or getting into a wreck. What I knew was that by the end of the night, I would need a good stiff drink.

Trying to get my mind off the terrible road conditions, I decided to turn on the radio, which was a poor idea. The first station I came upon was a weather report stating that extreme icy conditions had covered the roads and power lines. Many towns across the region were without power, hence the extremely dark roads I was traveling on. Of course, my destination, Fairlane, was included on the list.

If I had called the Sandström’s, I was sure they would have informed me of the impending weather and advised me not to come. Changing the station, Shadowed Alley’s latest hit song, “Fame Monkey”, was playing. After hearing the first beat of the song I knew so well, I turned off the radio and kept my eyes on the road. There was no way in hell I was letting Shadowed Alley make me run off the road. Especially after they had fucked me over this past week.

With fifteen more miles left to go, and who knew how many more minutes, I started up one of the steepest hills I had ever encountered in my limited driving history. My rental car slipped and slid twice trying to make it up the steep incline, making me wonder if I would be successful in making it up. Once at the top, I felt triumphant in my accomplishment to not only make it up the hill, but without a single curse word flying out of my mouth during the process, even when the brakes did a weird bumpy thing when I hit them while making a strange sound that didn’t sound at all good.

I shouldn’t have celebrated so soon, though, because the moment my car hit the downhill part of my journey, I immediately lost control. I tried everything in my arsenal to get the vehicle back under control, but nothing worked. Every time I pushed the brakes to slow my rapidly increasing speed, the car would veer in one direction and then the other with my overcorrections.

Thankfully, there were no other cars on the road for me to hit or cause me more anxiety. With the luck I’d had the last bit of my life, I should have known what would happen next. For only the briefest of seconds, I thought of how desolate the land was around me and how fortunate I was, so, of course, that was the moment an electrical pole seemed to pop up out of nowhere, just in time for my rental to lose total control, careening into a one-eighty, only for me to right the car into a three-sixty.

After a couple of circles flying down the hill, and me screaming at the top of my lungs, the rental slammed head on into the pole. The sound of the car crunching, the air bags deploying, and glass breaking was deafening. My face was wet with blood from hitting the side window. My neck ached with a throbbing pain that radiated up into a pounding headache, which threatened to overtake me. Spots started to fill my vision as I looked out the shattered windshield where the now icy rain invaded the once warm car. Blackness seeped in slowly, my head rested against the frame of the driver’s side window. Soon, it would be freezing in the car, and I would be coated in ice, but there was nothing I could do about it as the darkness took over.

There was nothing.

Only black.

Cold.

Darkness.