Page 25 of Her Sloth

She stares down at me, her blue eyes as dark as the night.

“Fucking move out of the way,” she whispers darkly, with her nose close to mine.

“No,” I say, staring up into her eyes as her fingers dig forcefully into my skin.

She tilts her head slightly, and for a horrific second I think she wants to kiss me, but she actually trails with her mouth up to my ear and whispers in derogatory iciness into it.

“You label me a traitor, but did it ever occur to you that I had to leave because I would have chosen the same path as her if I hadn’t?”

With that, she lets go of me, pushes herself off and walks away.

“Where are you going?” I shout after her.

“Somewhere where you are not,” she calls after her without turning.

“And the Eleanor? You’ll leave her, too?”

She stops.

Turns.

Scoffs.

Grabs the key from her pocket and throws it over to me.

“Take her. I don’t fucking care,” she says and walks away.

I just stare after her.

I stare after her as she breaks the window of a car she walks past, short-circuits it, and drives off with it.

It takes me several moments until I can move again.

My brain somehow didn’t process what just happened.

I pick up the key she threw and get into my Hellcat.

Sitting in there, I try to sort my thoughts. Thoughts that think everything at once and nothing at all. I can’t grasp a single one. So I do what I always do: drive.

I stop at the gate to tell Farid I’ll be back to get the Eleanor.

“Yo,” he says. “Whenever.”

I nod, and I’m gone.

I don’t even know where I am when I realize what she did. She short-circuited a random car in less than ten seconds. She realized what tuning I did with my girl. She shouldn’t know any of that.

And then, what she said⁠—

‘Take her. I don’t fucking care.’

‘Somewhere where you are not.’

‘Did it ever occur to you that I had to leave because I would have chosen the same path as her if I hadn’t?’

The crying.

“I’ll be gone in a minute.”