"Tell me I'm not crazy," Dastan says to Emma and I as we drive down the busy highway.
"I don't know, dimples. Maybe he just really wants to spend time with us." I offer absently while I scroll through my phone looking for a good Spotify Playlist for our drive. It's gonna be a few hours, Haider had booked a seaside cabin in Montauk for the week. We'd left immediately after breakfast to pack and by noon we'd all set off.
Emma, Dastan and I had decided to drive together in Haider's SUV, while Theo and Connor drive his Mustang, and Haider, Zahra and Zia took Zahra's Prius. It's really the best option to have us all travel separately because putting Connor and Dastan in the same car for any extended period of time wouldn't be a good idea and have Emma and Zia in one car would drive us all insane.
As it stood, Emma had been singing along to every song on the radio since we got into the car, I'm pretty sure she doesn't know most of them but that doesn't stop her from singing along as if she's Beyoncé on karaoke night.
Dastan shoots me a sideways glance, I can almost see the disbelief in his expression. "I might have to agree with D on this one, somethings up and he's not telling us." Emma pipes up from where she's sprawled across the backseat. I'd called shotgun for precisely that reqson; Emma is a terrible road trip buddy.
Humming a sound of disagreement in my throat I finally select a Playlist and the sound of upbeat pop music fills the car.
Emma and Dastan fill the drive with mindless chatter about everything from the Mets to the latest exhibit at the some trendy art gallery in the city. I tune them both out, letting the music wash over me; emptying my mind.
The sights of the city fly by, I barely notice time passing. Everything seems to blur into steaks of brown and Grey outside my window. The light starts to change slanting in form a different angle and the brown and Grey change to streaks of blue and green ever so slowly.
At some point in the drive my head polls against the window and I let myself wander. My mind finds itself running circles around the last conversation I had with Doctor Delany. She'd been cagey and closed off in a weird way. I'd attributed it to her having a bad day hut something about her attitude didn't sit right with me.
She'd been fidgety and almost nervous. As someone who's very familiar with the signs of discomfort, I'd caught it almost immediately hit I don't exactly know what I could've done to make her uncomfortable. I've been turning that idea around and around in my head. Yes, if gone to her on Friday which had been unusual for me but I'd wanted to vent after a particularly awful dream and she'd never had an issue with me adding on more appointments before.
My mind turn over what I said to her hoping to find the moment that her discomfort originated but I only came away with my pathetic attempt to explain these ridiculous recurring dreams of random gory scenes.
She'd known that my trauma would manifest itself in the form of violent thoughts and images, shed warned me about it so I doubt that's what caused her behavior. No, it had to be something else. God, why couldn't people just come right out and say whatever they wanted instead of making up excuses and lying.
I startle back to the present, when I feel Dastan's hand close over my thigh. His long fingers brush the inside of it while his thumb strikes a soothing rhythm in the outer side. I look in the review mirror to see Emma passed out on the backseat, so that's why he was getting brave. I give him a slight smile, reaching down and twinning my fingers through his. Running the fingers of my other hand lightly over his pulse point, down his wrist to the base of his index finger and then back again.
He shuddered with every upward stroke of my fingers, and I smirked at the reaction I was able to pull from him.
"You really think he's hiding something?" I ask after a moment of striking his hand with my fingers while he kept his eyes on the road.
"I'm pretty positive," he says, humming low in his throat as I trail my finger further up his arm to the crease of his elbow where he's pushed the sleeve of his sweatshirt up.
"Any ideas on what he's hiding?" I ask, not really paying attention to the conversation now, I had many of my own theories and I'm sure Dastan had plenty to add but knowing Haider none of them were correct. The only person who could come remotely close to figuring him out is Zahra but I'm not about to ask her if she thinks Haider's lying through his teeth.
"You're the journalist," Dastan says in kick outrage, as if that should be all the answer I needed. When I raise my brows questioningly goes on, "Shouldn't you be good at figuring this stuff out?" he says by way of explanation and I have to bite down in a laugh.
"Uhm," I begin, awkwardly scratching the tip of my nose. He turns his eyes away form the road for a second to glance over at me. "Yeah, I write fluff pieces in the society pages… I'm jot good at investigative." I say, my cheeks growing uncomfortably hot with embarrassment. It's not a proud moment for me when I have to admit that my career is pretty much a dumpster fire because my boss doesn't trust an amnesiac with the big stories. He's afraid I'll screw them up or forget to meet deadlines.
"You used to be," Dastan says, barely looking away form the road in front of him. The moment the words leave his mouth I watch his eyes fall shut for a split second and when they open again they're clouded with regret "Sorry, I didn't mean-"
"No, it's okay," I rush to assure him. "Most people are too scared to talk to me about how I was before everything happened and sometime I wish they would. It feels like a different life, someone else's life. I would've liked to get to know her." I don't know why I say it, I know I shouldn't be this honest or vulnerable with him. Especially not with our extracurricular activities but the words are pass my lips before I can think to stop them.
"You are her," he says, glancing sideways at me. I can't read his expression like this but his voice is sincere. "You know one thing that's never changed?" he asks, eyebrows raising slightly, almost playfully.
I give him a questioning look as if to say what.
"Your ability to light up any room you walk into. It's infuriating, like you carry the sun around with you wherever you go, makes it difficult for a guy pretending to hate you to ignore your presence you know." He says it so matter-of-factly that it takes a moment for me to catch what he means and when I do, I feel my jaw go slack. He goes silent, waiting for my response, seeming almost hesitant.
"What else?" I ask, turning in my seat so that I can see his face clearly. The seat belt cuts into my shoulder at the angle but I'm far more interested in this conversation than I am in comfortable seating.
"Well you still really suck at flirting. If the self-induced amnesia was going to take anything you should've made it take your social awkwardness." We both laugh at that, punching him in the shoulder lightly I turn back around in my seat to stare out the windshield.
"You still have the purest heart of anyone I know, you're always believing the best in people. Like my dad for instance, it's so clear he's lying but you still want to believe his story because you just want to see the good everywhere. I hate it." At this his jaw works for a moment. "because you always saw the best in me even when I couldn't. And when I was supposed to hate you, somehow you still always looked at me like I hung the moon. It made me sick because I don't deserve to be looked at that way, not by you at least."
"Dastan," Emma groaning in the back seat stops me from saying any more but my heart expands to four times it's size in my chest. My head feels filled with cotton, and my mouth is dry. I stare out the windshield feeling his physical presence like a siren next to me.