LJ Idol: Week 24
This is supposed to be awkward, right? I’m not sure, as I haven’t gone on many dates myself. From the look of it, he hasn’t either. The Jim who is in the car with me now is not the same Jim who jokes around with me in Chemistry class. He seems serious tonight, or at least he’s attempting to be serious and gentlemanly. It’s coming off as sheer nervousness.
“It’s pretty cold tonight,” he says as we drive down the backroad slowly. He was right, it had been rather winterly the past week and even now there was a very faint coating of snow on the road. He drove cautiously, though just looking at him I could tell that all his concentration wasn’t on the road. I would’ve laughed except I was afraid that it might make him even more nervous.
“We don’t have to go out tonight, you know?” I offered. “It’s supposed to be warmer next week. Maybe the roads will look better and…”
“It’s alright,” he said. He looked at me as he did so, smiling a very fake smile. I could tell that pretending to be a stoic boy on a date was pretty tough, especially when driving in weather like this. Was this his first date? I couldn’t imagine him on a date with anyone else as I had practically been the one to initiate this one.
His eyes went back to the road, but there was a new expression in his face - fear. At first I couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, but then I realized that the car wasn’t exactly driving straight down the road. We seemed to be slowly, but surely, drifting off the road. He was trying hard to correct the steering, but it was no use. We caught a patch of ice or snow and we were no longer in control of the car. I had no choice but to watch as we slowly made our way off the road, over the icy shoulder, and into a tree, head first.
For a moment, neither of us did or said anything. The car seemed to be running still, and we barely hit the tree with any force. But still, Jm just ran us into a tree!
“Are you okay?” he asked. I nodded. He didn’t say another word, nor did he turn off the car. Instead he slowly got out and walked to the front of the car. Through the front windshield I could see him looking at the front of the car. His expression never changed. Even now he was trying to be as stoic as ever, even though I knew he had to be freaking out inside.
Finally, he got back into the car, closed the door and simply put the car in reverse, pulling away from the tree. We were back on the road and the car was in drive again. He had yet to say anything.
“Is your car okay?” I asked?
“Oh,” he said with another fake smile, as if the very concept of me asking that question was something he had never anticipated. “Yeah, it’s fine.” He went back to concentrating on the road again, as stoic as ever and without another word about our near disaster.
Dates probably shouldn’t be this awkward, I thought. They probably shouldn’t involve head-on collisions with trees, either. I was looking ahead to the future, long after this date was over, when I could joke about tonight with Jim in between taking Chemistry notes.