***
“No, Isaac. I don’t want any,” I growled four hours later.
I’d already had a beer, and it was one more than I’d wanted to have.
I was a lightweight. Any more than four drinks, and I wouldn’t wake up for a very, very long time.
Which was why I always stayed with one and one only.
Isaac, though, didn’t seem to care.
“Seriously, I don’t want one!” I said, shoving it away.
After this night was over, so were Isaac and me.
He’d tried to publicly grope me and have sex with me, which was something we hadn’t done before, and now it was something we wouldn’t ever be doing.
He’d tried to get me to play beer pong, and when I wouldn’t, he played with a couple of other college coeds.
When I drank that first beer, he thought he’d hit the lottery and kept trying to force-feed me more.
“You’re such a fuckin’ downer, Sawyer. Get the fuck away from me,” Isaac slurred.
I wanted to nut punch him.
Repeatedly.
“Well, I think I’ll go home, then,” I hesitated. “Do you want me to give you a ride?”
His eyes narrowed, and he took a look around.
The party had been a ‘bust,’ or so he’d said. I didn’t know if it had or not.
Seemed there’d been a lot of people there, but they’d slowly drifted out of the main room until there were only about fifteen of us left in it.
“Yeah, I’ll go home. Let me go get one more drink.”
I wanted to tell him no, but I knew that that was probably the only way I was going to get out of here.
We were in his truck, after all.
“I’ll go get Bristol,” I said, wandering away from him.
I found Bristol in the kitchen doing things that I didn’t think were possible.
Mainly those ‘things’ were drinking upside down with a tube shoved down her throat while a few of the football players yelled, ‘chug, chug, chug’ over and over. She even managed to look good doing it, too.
“Um, Bristol?” I called to her worriedly. “It’s time to get going, are you ready?”
The football players looked up at me with open curiosity in their eyes.
They’d been doing that all night, and I had no clue why.
I wasn’t anything special, but they were staring at me like I was the biggest, juiciest steak they’d ever seen.
“Bristol?” I called again.
The closest football player finally lowered Bristol’s legs, and she hit the floor while spewing beer out of her mouth through her laughter.
Beer covered her from head to toe.
“I think it’s time to go,” I said softly.
Bristol nodded, so glassy eyed that I thought for sure she was going to fall over any second.
With the help of the football players, I loaded a very boisterous Bristol, and a very touchy Isaac into his big three-quarter-ton truck.
Isaac’s truck wasn’t my favorite thing to drive on the best of days, but it being night and slightly rainy, I knew it wouldn’t be fun at all.
Regardless of my apprehension, I got into the driver’s seat, pulled the seat up so I could reach the pedals and the steering wheel, and started it up.
“Remember, it pulls to the left,” Isaac slurred, leaning over the console to run his mouth along my neck.
I cringed and pushed him slightly to fall back into his own seat.
“Let me drive, please,” I said pleadingly.
Isaac laughed as he turned to Bristol who was sitting in the middle of the backseat, staring at us giddily.
“I knew y’all would make such a great couple!” She cheered, clapping her hands like she was a seal at Sea World.
I wanted to flip her off, but it took both of my hands to maneuver Isaac’s huge truck.
Did I mention I hated driving it?
He had huge tires on it.
They were so big that the top of the tire came up to my waistline.
His truck was the size of a tank on steroids.
His daddy bought it for him the day he turned eighteen.
Now, two years later, it still looked brand new because he took such good care of his ‘precious baby.’
When I got my first car, it’d been because I’d saved up the money for it since I started working at fifteen.
Although my parents were great, they weren’t the richest folks.
In fact, they weren’t even middle class.
We were the ‘barely making it’ class.
Even now, with me out of the house, they were still struggling to make ends meet.
They did have more kids besides me, so it was understandable.
But it was also probably why I’d be in debt until I was fifty.
Paying for my bachelor’s degree in nursing wasn’t very easy. Thank God for student loans.
Although they wouldn’t be my friends once I graduated.
“Why are you going so slow, Sawyer? I feel like we’re crawling!” Bristol yelled, leaning forward on the console.
“Put your seatbelt on or I’ll pull this truck over,” I said with as much venom as I could.
Neither one of them ever wore seatbelts, and it drove me absolutely nuts.
I heard two clicks, and I turned accusing eyes onto Isaac.
He knew my rule!
“Why is it so hard for y’all to follow that rule? I mean, seriously, it could save your life if we were in an accident!” I growled, turning back when I saw lights flash in front of me.
I couldn’t stop.
A Ford Bronco pulled out in front of me and did it at the exact wrong time.
Under normal circumstances, had he done that, I would’ve missed him.
But I was in Isaac’s huge truck, which was hard to slow because it was so big.
I was also driving at night. In the rain.
So, instead of stopping or even slowing when I slammed on the brakes, it slid.
Then the brakes locked.
The tires squealed.
Isaac, Bristol and I screamed.
And we hit the Bronco with a deafening, blood-curdling crash.
It was terrible.
I saw the whites of the man’s eyes before the truck T-boned him.
Saw the woman in the front seat turn to someone in the back.
Then nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I couldn’t get my brain to make any sense of what had just happened, and wouldn’t know until days later that I had killed every single person in the vehicle.
And it was all my fault.