The sound of the engine screaming snaps her out of her thoughts and she lets the accelerator pedal ease up from where she has it pressed to the floor, the car slowing until the speed reaches a more sensible level. She tries to concentrate on the road, realising that she's gone several miles, through the town and out the other side, without even realising, driving on autopilot. The music has moved on as well, Jamie Woon now and she wonders whether it's a coincidence that the lyrics seem to fit so well or whether she would read something into any song that played. She feels again the tightness in her chest and the restlessness that caused her to run, well drive, again and reaches over to switch off the stereo. Now the only sound in the car is the low growl of the engine and the roar of the tyres on the tarmac. She lights up a cigarette, opening the window all the way and feeling the wind on her face, hearing it swoop and whistle around her head as she drives through the night, wondering how long it will take before she feels able to go home again. She doesn't understand why, for her, home is somewhere to run from rather than run to. Perhaps it's the loneliness, the feeling of being trapped somewhere, alone and unwanted. Sometimes she longs to have someone to curl up on when she feels like this, a chest to fall asleep on and a strong arm to hold her safe. But out of everyone she knows and has known, there is no one she wants to be with at the moment, no one she wants to talk to, nowhere she wants to be. This makes her sad again, she longs for that sense of safety, of belonging, but even now she feels there is nowhere she can go, no one she can run to, and so she carries on moving, driving, hoping to find that security in being alone, it's not the same, but at least when she's alone she feels content, like wherever she is at that moment is where she needs to be.
She flicks the cigarette butt out of the window, rolling it back up and turning up the heating, she's shivering now from the cold but the wind felt good in her hair. She realises that without knowing she's turned towards home and that's OK. If she feels like going inside when she gets there then she can, if not then it wouldn't be the first time she's sat in her car for hours outside her house, unwilling to go in and yet unwilling to leave. Sometimes that helps, to be able to just sit and think and stare at the stars rather than always be moving. She doesn't always need to run.
Again her thoughts drift back to him. If he were single, would she want more from him? She thinks not. She enjoys spending time with him, likes talking to him, touching him, kissing him, fucking him, she'd like to do it more often of course, she smiles, remembering how she once told him she'd happily strap him to her bed and keep him there for a week at least. This is still true, but would she want a relationship with him, "no," she thinks. Their meeting, their conversations, even the sex is based on lies and half truths, there could be no trust, and how long before she started to sink into the sort of jealousy she always despised, the kind she always demonstrated when she found herself in a relationship, the kind he was already demonstrating hints of. It would be hell, both of them always wondering if the other was with someone else when they weren't together, especially given the unpredictability of both of their jobs, they'd both already proven that the opportunity was there just by being together themselves. If she was completely honest, she thought to herself, the main reason she didn't want a relationship was because she hated the person she became when she was a girlfriend. Being a fuck buddy allows her to remain detached, no commitment means that she doesn't expect faithfulness and so any jealousy can be destroyed with logic, no commitment also means she can spread her attentions between a few guys so that she doesn't get too attached to any of them. She hates how she feels when she gets attached to someone, needy and pathetic, the tiniest rejection makes her feel useless and unwanted, destroys her confidence, makes her miserable and horrible to be around. Better to stay single, better for everyone, she thinks sadly, wishing it were different, that she was different.
She pulls into a supermarket to buy more cigarettes, parking the car and taking her purse from her wallet. The cashier is Asian in appearance, male, mid to late 50s, his name badge says Charles, she notes this all automatically as she queues, habit now due to her job. When he speaks she is surprised to hear that his accent is pure public school English. She's unused to this, expecting him to speak with a foreign accent or in that kind of gangsta style accent that everyone between Crawley and London adopts to fit in. It annoys her that she's made assumptions about him based on his appearance having always made a point of saying she takes people on face value. As he hands her her change and cigarettes she wonders whether any of the other things she says are actually true. She says she doesn't get jealous but she knows this is a lie, she does get jealous, if she thought about the girlfriend in any detail she'd rip herself apart with jealousy and so she simply doesn't think about it. It's self preservation, survival ultimately. She unlocks the car, noticing that the wind has picked up again although it is still warm, she's thinking that perhaps it is unfair to make an issue of his jealousy, the comment he picked up on her wall would have had the same effect on her had it been on his wall, she just wouldn't have said anything to him, so does that mean he's more honest than her. Can she really complain that he tells her he doesn't like the idea of her with other men, hadn't she in fact told him exactly the same about thinking of him with other girls? Is she making this into more of a big deal than it should be?
Plugging her phone into the charger she finds herself pulling up the messaging app, clicking on his profile and hovering over the block button for a second, unsure, before pushing it. "What am I doing?" she thinks, wondering if this is really a good idea, before remembering how she felt earlier that day, waking late, expecting a text message from him to say he was coming over and seeing nothing. Then checking on the app only to see he had been logged in over an hour ago, meaning the girlfriend had gone and yet he hadn't sent anything. The text message she had sent three hours later after he still hadn't sent anything, "Got a better offer huh? :p" hadn't seemed to offend, but it had broken her rules, never to text first, never to question if she wasn't sure of the answer. And she still remembered the tightness in her chest when she'd logged in to see he had spoken to somebody, but it hadn't been her, again she thought of jealousy, blocking him was needed, that way she wouldn't know that he'd been online, wouldn't wonder why he wasn't taking every opportunity he could to talk to her. What is she doing? Burning bridges, cutting lines of communication, raising barriers, protecting herself the only way she knows how, by removing things that make her ask uncomfortable questions, ignorance is bliss as far as she is concerned. While she's at it she logs on to google docs, removing the option to share, partly for the same reason, partly because she worries about his girlfriend reading it, he's told her that his girlfriend is suspicious, the result of several texts sent to the wrong person and it makes sense to remove anything that would raise suspicion to knowledge.
Satisfied that she's done everything she can, she twists the key in the ignition, feeling the engine catch, turning the music up high, her voice still catching at some parts as she sings along, but feeling the tightness in her chest ease slightly. Driving is when she does most of her thinking, this is what no one understands, they ask her why she wastes so much money on petrol whilst spending equal amounts on alcohol or computer games or gadgets. Pulling back onto the road she speeds up, feeling the darkness pressing in around her as she speeds along, she finds the darkness comforting rather than oppressing, favouring the night over the daylight, especially when driving. Feeling happier now she heads home, tired all of a sudden. Perhaps he'll wake her up tomorrow with a text, perhaps she'll hear nothing from him until the afternoon, or the following day, but now that she knows she doesn't have to end this today she can be patient, good things are worth the wait after all.
