Аманда Хокинг: Fate

“I’m just saying,” I grumbled.

Leaning back in the seat, I crossed my arms over my chest and went back to staring at the little kids playing in the park. One of them was flying a kite, and I remembered in that not-too-distant past when Milo would have much preferred flying a kite than driving a car. But he was growing up, and while that was theoretically what I wanted, I didn’t exactly approve.

“Alice, everything will be fine,” Jack promised, suppressing a yawn as he talked.

“I’m the sensible one . So if I think something is okay, it probably is,” Milo reminded me.

Since our mother spent all of her time either working, sleeping, or gambling, that left us home alone a lot, and somehow, Milo was the one in charge. He made the meals, did most of the cleaning, reminded me to do my homework, tried to enforce a curfew, and got me up for school in the morning. It was an odd relationship we had, but it worked He actually had a point, so I gave up on my protests. Besides, we’d been sitting in the parking lot for twenty minutes while Milo made Jack explain every part of the car to him. Naturally, since it was Jack explaining, a disproportionate amount of the time had been spent on explaining the stereo and the seat warmers (which seemed like a really logical conversation for August), but Milo was getting antsy.

When he finally put the car in drive, my heart locked up. For the first time since the accident with Jack, I felt unsafe in a car, but I knew that strangely, I would’ve felt perfectly safe if Jack were driving. Before I had even agreed to the lesson, Ezra’s wife, Mae, had carefully gone over all the safety features of the Lexus. The car was actually Ezra’s (since Jack had totaled his own Jeep) and he’d chosen it because it was so safe. Everyone had reassured me as much as possible, but my stomach did a flip as Milo unsteadily drove across the parking lot, jerking on the brake unnecessarily several times.

“Just ease into it,” Jack said calmly, and Milo responded. Just the same, I couldn’t fight the nauseous feeling growing in my belly. Jack, on the other hand, was mostly bored and tired and getting vaguely annoyed by me. His calm usually swept over me, but I was too nervous and it was overriding him.

“Maybe he’s not ready,” I spouted, leaning forward between the seats.

“Alice!” Milo groaned.

Jack lowered his sunglasses enough so he could peer at me over them, giving me a severe look.

“Alice, you’ve got to lighten up. Or we really take you home. And I’ll let him drive all the way back.”

“Fine!” I threw my hands up in the air and fell back in the seat.

Initially, Milo drove around the parking lot in awkward circles filled with more starts and stops than a circle should require. We had yet to hit anything yet, and when his driving became smoother, I finally allowed myself to settle into it. By nature, Milo was a cautious person, and I shouldn’t worry about him. But this was precisely the reason I was sticking around. Jack had offered me a chance at immortality, but I had temporarily declined. I wasn’t quite ready to ditch out on my brother yet.

Jack yawned loudly again, and his fatigue washed over me thickly, and I had to fight the urge to yawn myself. To wake himself up, he started fiddling with the radio, causing the Cure to come blasting out. I opened my mouth to say something about that being too distracting, but Milo was already slapping his hand away and turning it off.

“I can’t concentrate with that,” Milo explained when Jack looked offended.

“See?” Jack groaned, thudding his head tiredly on the headrest of the car. “You’ve got nothing to worry about with this kid.”

“No thanks to you,” I muttered. Jack turned towards me, grinning his mischievous, crooked smile.

“What?”

“You know, someday you’re going to have to learn to drive.” This idea obviously delighted Jack, and it only deepened when I grimaced in response. “What? You didn’t really expect me to drive you around forever, did you?”

Forever carried an entirely different weight with vampires. In truth, I hadn’t really thought about driving in terms of spending the rest of my existence with him and his family, but it wouldn’t really make sense to have them chauffeuring me around until the end of time.

“No. But not today.” I went back to looking out the window, where the world went by in a very slow circle.

“Fine by me. It’s all on your time anyway.” With that, Jack turned back to watching Milo drive.

He’d been trying to hide his ever growing impatience, but he could hide very little from me. For some inexplicable reason, I could feel everything that he felt, and sometimes, it made things awkward, but it mostly made things better. He tended to be happier and more relaxed than me, and that would rub off on me.

Jack was definitely ready for me to turn. They all were, really, except for Peter, but that was a whole other story. Jack understood where I was coming from and tried not to pressure me into such a major life decision, but it was hard for him. In fairness, our whole relationship was difficult for him, and I didn’t know how me turning would really make it any easier.

“Should I take it out on the road?” Milo had paused by the exit of the parking lot and looked at Jack hopefully.

“Sorry, kid.” Jack shook his head sadly, and Milo looked disappointed but accepting. “You did really well today, but I’m pretty beat, and I think your sister’s had all that she can take.”

Milo hopped out of the car, and Jack grumbled something about the sunlight before he got out and switched places with him. It probably didn’t help that he was wearing a tee shirt and shorts, exposing even more of his skin to the sun, but that was his standard uniform, even in winter.

Today he’d gone for a white tee shirt with neon cassette tapes on it and black Dickies with pink Converse. He wasn’t exactly the image I’d had in mind when I thought of vampire, but there was very little about him that was stereotypical. As soon as he hopped in the driver’s seat, he fumbled with the stereo until “Mexican Radio” came blasting out. Milo wrinkled his nose at him, but he hadn’t grown up in the eighties like Jack had.

When we pulled up in front of the brownstone where Milo and I lived, Milo thanked Jack again before getting out. I stayed behind, wanting a minute alone to talk to him. Leaning forward between the seats, I turned down the radio and smiled at Jack.

“Thanks for taking him out like that. I know he really appreciated it.”

“Anytime.” He smiled at me, but there was something droopy about it, and I knew the sun was really starting to get to him.

Vampires didn’t burst into flames or anything like that, obviously, but they were nocturnal. The sun tended to tire them out, and besides, it was the opposite of his normal schedule. It was basically like keeping a normal person awake at three in the morning when they were used to going to bed at nine or ten.

“You should probably get going.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and started sliding to get out of the car, hoping that he could make it home before he fell asleep. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Nah, I can’t. I’m going on that business trip with Ezra,” Jack reminded me. “But I should be back in like two days. We aren’t doing much more than signing some papers.”

In the past few months, Jack had stepped up and started helping Ezra with the family business.

What that entailed, I wasn’t entirely sure, except that they owned a few companies overseas and had lots of stock holdings. Every now and then, Ezra would leave for a few days to work on something, and Jack had finally decided that he should learn the ropes. Also, he’d rolled his car, and Ezra demanded that he work for his money to pay for the next one.