Work Me Up

Now, though, Antonio has told me it’s time. Time to try the real thing again.

My heart flutters in my throat, my pulse skittering and anxious at the thought of what I’m about to do. My hand rests on the gear shift. I’m not ready to turn the key just yet.

“Just remember, take it slow,” Antonio murmurs from the seat beside me. “You can always stop, anytime it feels like too much.”

I nod my head, trying to concentrate on the familiar, deep rhythm of his voice, rather than the spiraling thoughts in my mind, chasing after one another, working into a frenzy. This is dangerous, the car is dangerous, you’re in danger, remember last time.

Over and over, those repetitive thoughts attack me, making me flash back to the night of the accident. To the broken glass, the crunch of metal. To my brother, unresponsive in the seat beside me — the very seat where I’m sitting now, as he bled from his forehead.

He was already dead, though I didn’t know it then. It took me days to accept it. Even longer to realize, deep down, that he was never coming back.

Tears burn at the backs of my eyelids and threaten to fall. But I suck in a deep breath, trying to hold them in at the same time, and reach up to grip the key. It feels cool between my thumb and forefinger. Solid and reassuring.

I turn it. The engine grumbles to life. But I still sit there, gripping the key, my mind a million miles and many years away.

A warm touch brushes the back of my palm. I glance over to find Antonio watching me closely. His gaze dips to my cheeks, and only then do I realize that I started crying.

I reach up to scrub the tears away with the heel of my hand, scowling.

“It’s okay to cry,” he says quietly. “It’s normal. You’re confronting something you’ve been hiding from for a long time.”

A lump forms in my throat. But I can’t explain what those words mean to me. How good it sounds to hear him say that. It’s okay. It makes me smile, in spite of the tears that continue to fall. He’s right. It’s just me and Antonio here. I feel safe around him, able to open up and be vulnerable.

So, even though the tears don’t stop, I reach down and step on the brake with one foot, feeling the rumble of the engine travel up through my legs, deep into my core. And then, still gripping the wheel tightly in both hands, as though it’s a lifeline I’m at risk of falling without holding onto, I take a deep breath. Another. Another.

Then I reach down for the gear shift, and put the car into drive.

My hands tremble where they rest on the steering wheel. My foot shakes a little too, when I ease it up off the brake and let the car start to roll forward. But when nothing happens — no smoke or explosion or crunch of metal collapsing inward — my heart starts to slow to an almost normal pace. A steady beat in my chest, that lets my chest loosen just enough for me to breathe normally.

In and out.

And the car keeps moving, rolling toward the far side of the parking lot. Antonio moved the few cars left in the lot into the garage, just to give me the most space possible to try this today. Even so, my heart rate kicks up again when I roll near the edge of the lot, and I have to turn the wheel hard to the right. I tap on the gas, and we jump forward a little jerkily.

But then Antonio’s hand comes to rest over mine again, and I hear him murmur, “You’re okay,” and I believe him.

Just like that. Because he’s right. It’s just the two of us here, out at this wide expanse of parking lot, off the beaten path. There isn’t anyone around for miles, and even if there were, I have Antonio beside me. Nothing’s going to go wrong.

I turn easily the next time, and before long, I’m rolling around the lot in slow, easy circles. Still not moving any faster than about twenty miles an hour, but still. It feels good to be behind the wheel again. To steer the car in the direction that I want it to go and feel it obey me flawlessly.

Not to mention, it feels even better to be doing it with Antonio at my side. In the car that we fixed up together, bringing her back from the dead with our own two hands.

“You want to try the road?” Antonio asks quietly, after I’ve done a couple laps of the parking lot. That makes my anxiety spike again, because I hadn’t thought about that, about being on a road again, behind the wheel of a moving vehicle, where other vehicles might appear out of nowhere and do unpredictable things.