GONE GIRL » Billy Hargrove

0.26 » sunset

"You seriously have a date?" Cameron let out an exasperated sigh, almost dropping his knife into his breakfast. "Why does everybody go on dates but me? That's ridiculous!"

"It's not a date." I replied, at which he rolled his eyes. "And I'm totally not eating waffles right now. Luce, that guy likes you, I mean, he made you a folder for the stuff you missed? Who even does that? God I'm jealous."

With a chuckle I took a sip of my coffee, putting the mug back down as I realised it was still too hot. "Cam, maybe if you didn't always get really drunk at parties you would remember how many people have asked you out already." - "... Fair enough. Anyway, how is he? Is he cute? I mean he probably is, but-"

I interrupted him, holding up my hand. "Jeez you're worse than your mother after two glasses of wine." - "Oh."

He looked down at his plate defeatedly before throwing a blueberry in my direction, missing me by a lot. "Cam. Sleep more, write less." - "You know that's awfully unlikely. You should probably go get dressed, it's almost ten."

Glancing over at the clock I downed half of my coffee and headed upstairs to shower and change into a pair of jeans, white top and my leather jacket.

As I skipped back downstairs the doorbell rang, which caused Cameron to jump up and run for the door before I could even reach the living room.

Loki ran up to Billy, greeting the boy, as my cousin studied him skeptically.

"Cam." I poked his arm, smiling over at Billy briefly. "Cam!" - "What?" - "You're standing on my shoe." - "Oh. My bad."

I slipped into my shoes, grabbing my keys from the desk in the hallway. As I pushed past my cousin, he gave me a quick but strong hug. "He is cute!" - "Jeez, auntie."
Rolling my eyes I said goodbye and closed the door behind me, Billy looked at me with a confused expression. "What-" - "Don't. He's low on sleep."

An understanding nod and a rushed greeting later I was sitting on the passengers seat of his Camaro, skimming through his collection of tapes in the glove compartment.

"Find anything good?" He asked while I kept picking out tapes before putting them back. "Yeah, too much that is. I have no idea what to pick." - " Just throw in what you pick up next." - "Alright," I said, inserting the Def Leppard tape, as Billy pulled onto a highway.

"Where are we going anyway?" I asked and he shrugged. "It's a surprise." Furrowing my brows in a worried manner I sighed, turning up the volume while Billy sped up the car.

∞

About an hour later he pulled into a smaller road and drove through a seemingly quiet neighbourhood for a bit until I noticed we had left the actual streets and were now heading into the woods.

"You gonna kidnap me or something?" I asked, joking for the most part as Ratt was playing in the background. Billy just chuckled at that, driving deeper into the woods.

When I was just about starting to actually worry about where we were going it cleared up a bit and he stopped the car, looking at me expectantly.

"So?"

The car was parked at the foot of a mountain, on a small cliff - there was a river running beneath and a narrow street as well. It was stunningly beautiful.

Billy had gotten out of the car so I followed, as he still rummaged around in the backseat.

Stepping forward I could see two deer from afar, drinking from a small lake that the river led to. It was so peaceful - I could barely believe a person like Billy would enjoy being out here. Then again, people never were exactly the way we thought they were anyway.