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My shoulders were rigid, tense and knotted underneath the knit material of my cardigan, as they braced against my seat, the claw clip in my hair scratching the back of my head and pulling at the sensitive hairs on the nape of my neck when the headrest bumped me, loosening its grip and I felt some of my hair falling from the clip as I blinked, hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel and the beer bottle in the passenger seat clinking against the seatbelt buckle, and stared over my dashboard at Bridgette, paused, in front of the bumper of my mother's car.
The headlights illuminated the prickling of her arms down at her sides before she reached up back the hair partially obscuring her face from me, the wind threatening to untuck it from behind her ear before her hand even released, and the fingers with the hair still tangled in them offered me a halfhearted wave. And, for a moment, I thought she might have been out there for me, like she was going to tell me not to go, say something about how Blane gets what he's drunk and try to apologize but I'd tell her she didn't have to, and I felt how tired that hope was, but it was still there, beating in my chest as sprinkling raindrops fell on the windshield between us, our eyes met.
I shifted the gears, putting the car in park, and when I glanced up, Bridgette had already gone out in front of my bumper and had resumed her stride on the road again, my headlights beaming against her calves and the crochet top billowing in the wind. Frowning, I unbuckled my seatbelt and opened the door. "Hey," I called out. "Bridgette, are you okay?"
She glanced over her shoulder, the toe of her shoe scrapping against the worn pavement under her feet as her pace slowed but didn't stop. "Yeah, I'm okay. You didn't hit me."
I heard the dinging coming from inside the car from the opened door, my hand still grasped on the corner of it as rain slid down my fingers and Bridgette ambled further away without much more explanation, and the realization sunk like the beer on my cardigan against my skin that she hadn't come out here looking for me, and when she—apparently inadvertently—found me, nearly being hit my car didn't even phase her enough to talk to me.
I knew she probably wanted to be left alone, maybe still upset about that fight she had with Thea Foster earlier or whatever it was she was showing Noel on her phone, but something in me twisted at the thought of just walking away with her out there. Thunder rumbled, louder than before with an echo that felt like a crack, and instead of flinching at the sound, I ran after Bridgette.
She paused when she heard the gravel crunching under my footsteps and something shifted in the expression on her face, coming across it like a veil before she blinked, and it slipped away and back underneath a neutral gaze. It stung, more than I thought it would, that she kept me from knowing what she was thinking when I used to be one of the first people she told.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to almost run you down," I told her, realizing that her hands were empty at her sides. She wasn't holding a purse or a wallet, keys. "Do you...need a ride somewhere? I was about to leave, anyway. Well, obviously."
