Love You Better (Better Love 1)

Which is why, instead of working on my reading for my history class, I am about to spend my Sunday evening sitting in a truck I borrowed from a guy I play soccer with, in a vacant parking lot, teaching my best friend how to drive stick shift.

The last time we were in a vehicle in this capacity, we were in high school and I was helping her practice for her driver’s test. Ivy doesn’t handle being told what to do very well, and at sixteen, I didn’t really know how to give instruction without sounding like a condescending asshole. We ended up not speaking for three days, and that was fucking torture. We may have grown up a bit since then, but I’m still nervous as fuck.

Please let our friendship survive this.

“Okay, Kelley. Ask me to recite the steps of driving a manual transmission vehicle.”

“Ivy Rivenbark, please recite the steps of driving a manual transmission vehicle.”

“First, I put the gear in neutral, then I press the clutch all the way to the floor with my left foot.”

“Correct.”

“Then, I turn the ignition key.”

“Yep. Continue.”

“Then, I make sure the parking brake is off, and press the brake with my right foot.”

I nod and gesture for her to keep going.

“I put the car into first gear, take my right foot off the brake and move it to the gas pedal.”

“Yep. Now comes the hard part,” I tease, and she flicks her eyes in my direction and scrunches up her nose.

“I slowly begin to take my foot off the clutch with my left foot and gently transfer that pressure onto the gas pedal with my right foot until I am only pressing the gas.”

“Congratulations! You’re hypothetically driving in first gear. Now let’s put it into practice.”

“Don’t you want to know how I switch gears?”

“Let’s just master first gear right now, Ives. We can learn shifting next time.”

“Fine. Okay. Yes,” she says while nodding her head, and then mumbles to herself, “You can do this. You’re a powerful, fierce mountain lion of greatness.” I bark out a laugh.

“Hush,” she scolds me. “Geoff came up with it, and I like it so I’m keeping it.”

I put my palms up. “Okay, Ivy Mountain Lion, let’s see what you’ve got.”

She takes another deep breath, grips the steering wheel, presses hard on the gas, and then promptly kills the truck, jerking us both violently in our seats.

“Whoa, buddy, what was that? That didn’t happen in any of the YouTube tutorials.”

“That was you effectively stalling the engine.”

She looks at me with wide eyes. “Is it okay?”

“Yeah, Ives.” I laugh. “It’s fine. Now chop-chop, try again.”

She blows out a breath, fixes her face into a determined glare, and tries once more.

After four more attempts, and four more violent stalls, Ivy succeeds, and we crawl around the parking lot in first gear.

“Woohoo! Look at me! Danica Patrick, I’m coming for you!”

“You’re fucking ridiculous.”

“Whatever, you love me, so you’ll deal with it.”