I shake my head. “It’s neither one of our faults, so don’t feel like putting any of the blame on yourself, all right?”
When I don’t see that smile I was fishing for fast enough I reach out and grab both sides of her waist. She squeals as I start tickling her. She laughs and squirms so hard that she falls backward onto the grass, and I sit on top of her waist, holding my weight up by my knees on either side so I don’t crush her.
“Stop it! No! Andrew, I f**king swear! Stooooop!” She laughs hard, and I bury my fingertips around her ribs some more.
Then I hear the warning siren from a cop car sound once and go dead as it pulls up behind my car.
“Oh shit,” I say, looking down at Camryn. Her hair is matted with dried grass sticking out in various spots.
I jump off her and reach out my bloody hand to help her up. She takes it and rises to her feet, dusting herself off. We head back to the car just as the cop is getting out of his.
“Do you normally leave your door wide open on the highway like this?” the cop asks.
I glance at my door and back at him.
“No, sir,” I say. “I had to throw up and just didn’t think about it at the time.”
“License, insurance, and registration.”
I pull my license from my wallet and hand it to him and then go around to the passenger’s side to fish for my insurance and registration from the glove box. Camryn leans against the back of the car with her arms crossed nervously over her chest. The cop goes back to his car—after taking notice of the blood on my hands—and sits inside to run my name.
“I hope you’ve not been hiding any robberies or murders or anything from me,” Camryn says, as I lean against the hood next to her.
“Nah, my serial-killing days are over,” I say. “He’s got nothin’ on me.” I elbow her gently in the side.
A few unnerving minutes later the cop joins us at the back of the car and hands my stuff back to me.
“What happened to your hand?” he asks.
I look down at it, for the first time feeling the throbbing pain now that he’s brought it to my attention. Then I point to the tree not too far away. “I sort of hit the tree.”
“You sort of hit the tree?” he asks suspiciously, and I notice him glancing at Camryn every few seconds. Great, he probably thinks I beat her or some shit, and considering she does look pretty rough after last night’s incident and our recent scuffle in the grass, it probably helps confirm his assumption.
“OK, I hit a tree.”
He looks right at Camryn now. “Is that what happened?” he asks her.
Camryn, nervous as hell and likely knowing what the cop is thinking really happened as much as I do, suddenly has a Natalie moment.
“Yes, sir,” she says, gesturing her hands. “He got mad because some ass**les—” she winces “—sorry, took advantage of us last night, and he was beating himself up over it all morning to the point of ultimately taking it out on that tree! I ran out there to stop him before he hurt himself and we talked about it and the reason I look like hammered shit—sorry—is because of the screwed-up night we had. But I promise we aren’t bad people. We don’t do drugs and he’s not a serial killer or anything, so please just let us go. You can even search the car if you want.”
Face. Palm. Moment.
I laugh it off inside. We don’t have anything to worry about if he searches the car. Unless… our temporary friends, Elias and Bray, just happened to drop a bag of weed or any kind of incriminating stuff somewhere in my backseat, by accident.
Oh shit… please don’t let this turn out like it does on television.
I glance over at Camryn and subtly shake my head at her.
Her eyes widen. “What’d I say?”
I just smile, still shaking my head, because it’s all I really can do.
The cop sniffles and then gnaws on the inside of his mouth. He looks back and forth between Camryn and me several times without a word, which only increases the tension we’re feeling.
“Next time don’t leave the door wide open like that,” the cop says, his expression as unmoving as it has been this whole time. “It’d be a shame to see a passing vehicle knock the door off a 1969 Chevelle in that good a condition.”
A slim smile brightens my face. “Absolutely.”
The cop pulls out ahead of us and leaves while we stay parked inside the car for a moment.
“ ‘You can search the car if you want’?” I repeat.
“I know!” she laughs and throws her head back against the seat momentarily. “I didn’t mean to say that. It just came out.”
I laugh, too. “Well, looks like your innocent rambling, which by the way scares me a little; I think that bipolar best friend of yours has rubbed off on you, but it charmed us out of that one.”
I rest my hands on the steering wheel.
She was smiling and probably about to comment on my Natalie joke, until she sees my bloody knuckles again. Then she moves over next to me and takes my hand carefully into hers.
“We need to clean this before it gets infected,” she says. She leans closer and carefully starts picking tiny pieces of grass and dirt from around and inside the open gash. “That’s pretty bad, Andrew.”
“It’s not too bad,” I say. “I don’t need stitches.”
“No, you just need to be slapped. Don’t ever do something like that again. I mean it.” She picks out one last bit of debris and then leans over the back of the seat, reaching for the small ice chest in the back.