Faster We Burn

signs and got onto the highway going in the right direction to get back to school. I pushed the accelerator and got in the passing lane.
    “Get fuck out of my way,” I growled at everyone who wasn’t driving at least seventy-five miles an hour.
    The faster I drove, the more I realized how much I wanted to go back and apologize and tell her we could work it out. That we’d find a way. That we could go back to just being fuck buddies, if nothing else.
    But I couldn’t, because I wanted more, even though it would never, ever work.
    I was a guy who she’d fool around with in college before meeting someone better and then she’d tell her own daughter stories about me when she was doing the same thing. I was the cautionary tale.
    I wasn’t husband material. I wasn’t boyfriend material. I wasn’t forever love material. I was ‘guy you fuck’ material.
    It wasn’t until I realized that I was nearly out of gas that I pulled into a gas station and stopped. I had a moment of weakness and found my phone in the backseat and turned it back on. Yep, I had a million texts and messages from Katie. I couldn’t read them, because I knew they would pull me back.
    “You fucking idiot!” I said, banging my hand on the hood of my car. That earned me a nasty look from a mother walking by with her two young children. She hurried to get them into the car as if I was going to come over and try to kidnap them, or sell them drugs.
    “Yup, that’s right. I was totally going to steal your obnoxious kids and do really bad things to them,” I said to myself.
    The pump clicked off and I screwed the cap back on my gas tank. I knew what awaited me back at my apartment. Nothing. No one. Trish was with Lottie, Zan had gone home to his parents and everyone else was with their families.
    I was fine with being alone.
    I threw my phone in the backseat, but something caught my attention, so I picked it up. It was one of Katie’s pink pearl drop earrings. Her dad had gotten them for her birthday, and I knew how much she loved them.
    The earring glinted under the fluorescent light of the gas station. The pearl was perfectly round and unblemished. I shoved it in my pocket and got back in my car.
     
    Katie
     
    I sat on the porch after Stryker left me, wondering what to do. Half of me wanted to get in my car and go after him and beg him to come back, and the other half wanted to find him and beat him senseless.
    As the two different instincts wrestled, I called his phone. It went straight to voicemail.
    “Look, I’m super pissed at you right now, and that was a dick move leaving like that so would you please come back so I can yell at you and then we can be friends again?” I paused, unsure of what to say that would make him reconsider. “It would suck if we weren’t friends anymore. It’s not just about the sex. I’d miss you.”
    I hung up before I said anything else. I also texted him a few times for good measure. I was freezing my ass off, but I didn’t want to go inside because I knew they were all talking about me and Stryker. The front door opened and I turned my head to make sure it wasn’t Mom. I couldn’t talk to her right now without saying something I would regret later.
    “Hey, Katiebug,” Kayla said, throwing a blanket over my shoulders. “You wanna talk?”
    “Nope,” I said popping my lips on the ‘p.’
    “I figured. I know everyone’s been giving you advice and I know how much that pisses you off, so I’m not going to give you advice.”
    “Good.”
    She sat down next to me and I held out the blanket so we could share it.
    “You know, the first time I met Adam, I was trying to hook up with his friend?”
    “Really?”
    She laughed and shook her head. “Yeah. It was the night before we were leaving on our plane and we all decided to go out. I was totally crushing on his friend Robbie, but he didn’t seem to be into me. Then I just started talking to Adam because he was standing right next to him. He seemed so cocky that I was totally turned off at first, but then a few hours later I couldn’t get him into bed fast enough.”
    I really didn’t need that part of the story. “Ugh, too much information.”
    She continued. “So anyway, I thought I didn’t like him. I kept telling myself that I didn’t like him, that I just liked how I felt when we hooked up. It took me an entire week to realize that the feeling I had when we hooked up was no different than the feeling I had when he made me laugh, or