Spontaneous

A short story that may eventually turn into more. Andrew and Kat seem happy, but will they stay that way?

“I want to do something crazy,” Andrew said as the movie credits rolled on his television.

I squeezed his arm and tilted my head back so I could see his face. In that moment he looked younger than his 32 years. “How crazy?” I ask. “Extra butter on the popcorn crazy or hunting for bigfoot crazy?”

“I’m not joking. I want to go to the airport and buy a ticket to anywhere and just go,” He rubbed my fingers with his. “Go with me,”.

“Well duh. I’m not going to let you go off without me,” I said, playing along. In the few months since I started dating Andrew I’ve learned that he gets antsy like this every so often. I think this kind of dreaming keeps him from going crazy at the office,”

“I’m serious. You’ve got a couple weeks off before the next semester starts. Let’s get in the truck and go,”

“You really want to?”

“There’s nothing stopping us,”.

“I don’t know..it’s pretty cold out” I say teasingly.

“That’s it. We’re going,”. Getting up from the couch he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder and walked over to the kitchen. “Where are my keys?”

Laughing I half heartedly pounded at his back. “Put me down!”

“If I put you down you’ll escape.” Spotting his keys on the table he shifted me on his shoulder and reached to pick them up. “Got your passport?”

My passport? He’s getting really into this. “In my purse,”. I looked at him quizzically. Well, no, I looked at his back quizzically, because he still wouldn’t put me down.

“Good. We’re going on an adventure baby!” Andrew grabbed my purse and our coats and ran out of the house with me over his shoulder. He turned around to lock the door and I slid down to my feet. Handing me my coat he turned his back to me and ducked down. “Hop on,”.

“You want me to get on your back?”. He didn’t normally do things like this.

“Yup, come on,”.

I jumped on his back and he ran down the driveway, slowing down once we got to the icy sidewalk.

When we got to the truck he opened my door and plopped me inside before running over to his side and jumping in. Starting up the truck he turned to me and grinned. “You ready for this?”

“You bet!” I grinned back.

We drove past the grocery store about five minutes from his house before I finally broke the trivial conversation we’d been having and asked what I’d been wondering the whole time, “Where are we going really?”

He glanced over at me then back to the road. “The airport,”.

“I’m serious,” I said.

“I’m serious too,”.

“We’re really going to do this?”

“Yeah. We’re doing this.” He tightened his grip on the wheel and kept his eyes fixed on the road.  

We didn’t say much for the next 15 minutes. When he pulled into the airport parking lot all chatter stopped completely. He pulled into a spot and put the truck in park. I just sat there, shocked that we’d actually gotten this far. He sat next to me with his hands still gripping the wheel, staring straight ahead.

“So…” I said, looking at him and waiting for him to do something, anything.

Finally he let out a breath of air as if he’d been holding it in for the last 20 minutes. I watched him visibly deflate in front of my eyes. He leaned his head against the wheel, face down. “I can’t do this, Kat. This isn’t right,”.

“I know, it’s alright,”. This was pretty much what happened every time he had a big idea. Things never really happened. I’m fine with that, it’s what I’ve come to expect.

“It’s not just this. It’s us.”

“What?”  

He held his position with his head down, not saying anything.

“What about us, Andrew?”

“I can’t do this anymore,” he said, sitting up and looking at me.

“You can’t do--” I stopped myself and started praying silently. Please let him be talking about anything other than what I think he’s talking about. Please let him be telling me that he’s scared of flying.

“We can’t continue this relationship,”.

“We were doing perfectly fine until about two minutes ago. Is something wrong with me? What? Between here and your place suddenly you don’t want me any more?”

“God no, there’s nothing wrong with you. You are sexy, no, you’re beautiful. You’re smart, you’re funny, and sweet and young. You’re so young. I turn thirty-two next week,”.

“So?”

“You’re 20.”

“What does that have to do with anything? Wait, are you saying I’m too young for you?”

“No, I’m saying I’m too old for you,”.

“It’s not like you’re a crippled old man,”.

“I’m not getting younger. Some day I want to get married and have kids,”.

“That’s what I want,”.

“Maybe in another five or ten years. I’m running out of time,”.

“You want to get married right now? I can give you a kid in nine months, maybe ten at the most,”

“I’m not joking Kat. You don’t know what you want,”.

“I know exactly what I want,”.

“No. You think you know what you want,”.

“Excuse me? I-”

“Right now you think you want me. Give it a couple years and you’d hate me for tying you down. What you need, is a young guy, a guy who would actually get on that plane with you today and take you anywhere,”

“Is this still about the plane? I don’t care about the stupid-”

“No. It’s about us. We-”.

I stopped his talking by leaning over and kissing him. Positioning my hands on either side of his face I kept kissing him. He leaned into it and brought his hands to my hair, brushing it gently. He cupped my head with one hand and ran the other down my back, pulling me closer to him. This went on for several minutes before I swung my leg over so that I was straddling his lap. We kept it going for a while until he groaned and pulled his head back.

“Stop it Kat,”.

“What? You want me,”.

“I never said I didn’t want you,” he said, staring into my eyes with a look I can’t understand.

He awkwardly tried to pick me up and slide me back over to my seat. I looked away, not sure what to focus on, finally choosing to stare out the passenger window at the rows of cars.

His voice took on a softer quality when he said, “Listen, you’re going to hate me for a while, but I swear I’m doing this for you,”.  

“Funny you never thought to stop and ask me about how I felt about it,”

He sighed. “How many boyfriends have you had Kat?”

“I have had a boy-”

“Alvin from math camp when you were seventeen does not count,” he interrupted me.

I stayed silent.

“I’m the first man you’ve ever really dated-that you’ve ever really done anything with. I know you think these feelings you have for me are real--No that’s not what I mean. They are real, I know they’re real, but they’re not as real as you think they are. They will fade. You will meet another man, a younger man, and you will love him like you could never love me. I swear.

“Stop talking,”.

“I need you to understand-”.

“I understand enough. Take me home,”.

He looked at me for a while before turning the truck on and beginning the drive home.

My mind raced in a hundred different directions. I love him. I hate him. I want him. I hate him. At some point he must have turned the radio on because I recognized the sound of other voices. We pulled up to my apartment building after what seemed like an eternity. I scrambled around, unbuckling my seatbelt and looking for my purse which had fallen by his feet. Glancing down at it he reached for it at the same moment as I did and I jumped back before touching him. He picked it up and held it out to me. Our eyes couldn’t help making contact, which I had been avoiding so well up until that moment. He looked sad. If I wasn’t busy dreaming about ripping him into tiny pieces I would have felt sorry for him.

It seemed unreal. A couple hours ago I had gone to his house and we had talked and joked and everything was fine. Had he been thinking about this the whole time? It couldn’t end like this. But that’s exactly what was happening. It was ending. I broke eye contact with him and turned around to get out. I heard him say my name before I slammed the door.

I walked numbly away from the truck and into my apartment building. I took the stairs up to the fifth floor. I fumbled around getting my key into the lock before opening the door and walking inside. I went to the window and looked out at the parking lot. He was still there. I watched for a minute until I saw him drive away and out of sight. I tried to close the blinds but the strings got tangled and I couldn’t get them to close. They never worked. I threw the cords down before the blinds went flying haphazardly down to the floor. I leaned against the wall and slid down until I was sitting on the carpet, sobbing. The blinds never worked.      

Author's Note

Just let me know what you think!

Reviews

[magenta24uk]

I would love to find out what happened next. This is a great piece and well written. If it was me i would have made the guy older or the girl younger, a twelve year gap seems a lot but maybe only to someone young. I think late 30's and her being 18 or something would do it and stop him seeming like such an a*s for treating her like a silly little girl. Just my opinion. x

[Wanaka]

This is so sad. I was happen then I was like, "NO!!! How could you Andrew!!" It was so sad. You made it feel so real like I was have flash backs to some of my brake ups. You did an amazing job.