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Macy held her knees together as tightly as she could as the fields whooshed by on either side of the road. She never dreamed that Wes would force himself on her, but then again, she didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, which was also why she wore jeans on dates even in the summer.
His right hand rested on her thigh now, furthering a journey that had started at her knee.
Wes’ left hand gripped tightly to the steering wheel of his Ford Mustang, the whine of the engine protesting its speed. Macy knew he wanted to impress her, but she didn’t quite know how to tell him that this wasn’t the way. After all, she liked Wes—a lot.
Despite being cautious of his roving hands, Macy felt this summer with Wes had exceeded all other summers. She maintained that Wes had the cutest dimples in town. Also, he acted like a gentleman around her more often than not, and—most importantly of all—he captained the town football team as the starting quarterback for the Rose Valley Jaguars.
Macy worried about where their relationship would go after the school year started. Wes would be busy with football, and she would return her focus to academics. Wes might change his mind about her when he reunited with his jock friends and the allure of the Jaguar cheerleaders.
Her friends told her that she should lock it down by sleeping with him, but Macy was cautious. She’d experienced firsthand what happened when a relationship moved too fast, and now she dealt with the aftermath every day, constantly bouncing back and forth between living with her mom and her dad. As great as Wes treated her and as desperately as she wanted their relationship to last forever, the more mature part of her knew that the long game meant getting out of Rose Valley.
She glanced over at Wes and he looked back at her, melting her with his beautiful smile. Macy had worked so hard to look pretty for him tonight. She lacked basic knowledge for putting on make-up correctly, but she’d worked on her face for hours. And despite genetics fighting very strongly against it, she even managed to tame her wild red mane into something resembling straight hair.
Macy played with her hair now, as she watched the road, and felt her heart jump in her chest when she saw something crossing in front of them. Too close for Wes to have any hope of stopping. She gasped.
“What the...” Wes exclaimed as he jerked a hard left. Macy held her breath and put her hands on the dashboard to brace herself.
The Mustang hit the rumble strip in the shoulder and then careened off the road into the grassy ditch. Wes fought with the wheel to try to get it back on the road, but the speed—not to mention his inexperience—proved too much. The Mustang slammed into a fence post, and stopped. He threw the gear shifter into park and jumped out of the car.
Macy took stock of the situation. She had rope burn from her seatbelt, but otherwise felt fine. The airbags remained neatly tucked into the dashboard. Wes must have slowed them down enough before they hit the fence.
She unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped out of the car. Wes stood in the middle of the highway, peering into the distance. She followed his gaze and could only vaguely make out the shape of something disappearing into the tree line. Macy took some solace in the fact that Wes also saw whatever they almost hit.
“What was that thing?” Wes said, finally turning back to Macy.
Macy didn’t know the answer. “I... I don’t know. A... a man... maybe?”
Wes shook his head. “Maybe, I guess. But bigger, right? And running weird. Like a gorilla or something.”
Macy rolled her eyes. “Have you ever even seen a gorilla, Wes?”
He looked briefly toward the ground. “Well, no. I mean. On TV, yeah. But not in real life.”
“Exactly,” Macy said as she pulled her cell phone from her back pocket. “I’m calling my dad.”
Wes rushed towards her. “Oh man. Don’t call your dad! He’s gonna be so pissed. Call your mom. She’s cool. She’ll understand. We can just get the car towed. There’s no reason to involve your dad with this.”
Macy shook her head and clicked Dad - Work in her contacts. “He’ll find out one way or another anyway, and my mom isn’t going to be able to help that guy that we almost hit.”
The phone rang a few times, then a voice came on the line: “Sheriff Donner here.”
