#lulee

It’s a Thursday night when Lucas shows up on Rylee’s doorstep.

All he says is, “Do you want to go for a drive?”

-

After they had been driving for half an hour, directly down the road that eventually leads to the highway, Rylee realises that this isn’t going to be a short night drive.

“Lucas?” she asks, but he doesn’t say anything. Rylee tries again, “Lucas.”

“Everything is fucked.”

“What happened?”

“Everything fucking happened.”

Rylee doesn’t say anything else, just lets him drive. She puts her feet onto the dashboard of his car, opening the window slightly to allow the warm air in. She texts her dad and tells him she’s sleeping over at a friend’s house.

--

They drive for another hour before Lucas suddenly pulls over at one of the pit stops along the freeway, slamming on the break. Rylee flings forward, her knees bending painfully. She’s about to yell at him for being such a fucking idiot, but he beats her to it.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

She watches him, the way he holds on tight to the steering wheel and the way his face screws up. He looks like he has it in him to scream all night, to scream and yell and curse whatever universal fate or deities that brought him to this very moment.

Rylee places a gentle hand on his forearm before he can though, and Lucas falters at the contact, leaning his head on the wheel instead. He closes his eyes.

“They’re not going to give me the scholarship,” he says. His voice cracks and his eyes tear up from the pain of admitting it out loud.

“Oh shit, Lucas. . .”

“I bombed my SATs, Ry. I thought I had this scholarship in the bag but I didn’t and now everything is so fucking fucked!”

She doesn’t know what to say (when does she ever), but doesn’t hesitate to grab one of Lucas’s hand and interlace their fingers together. Lucas cracks a sob at that, leaning over to cry into her shoulder.

They stay like that for almost ten minutes, until Lucas stops sniffling and the tears clear enough that he can see. He scrubs at his eyes with his free hand.

“Is it alright if we keep moving?”

“Yeah.”

Lucas drives for a few more hours, before pulling over at a designated rest stop just after midnight. He looks over to her, “Is this okay?”

She shrugs.

Lucas nods, murmurs a small, “Good night,” before leaning his head against the window and falling asleep.

Rylee frowns at him. She looks down at their still joined hands briefly before closing her eyes to sleep, too.

-

Rylee doesn’t fall asleep quickly.

She doesn’t think that she was his first choice. She can think of a hundred people that would have been better to bring along for this trip, who were infinitely better at dealing with feelings and giving comforting words.

Or maybe she was his first choice.  Maybe he came to her door first because he knew she had nothing better to do and if she was going to waste away her life sitting on her ass she might as well do it next to him. Maybe he knew that she would bitch and moan but would drop everything for him, anyway.

(It doesn’t cross her mind that she’s there because he wants her to be).

In the end, Rylee never asks.

-

“What are we doing, Lucas?”

It’s the next day, and they had already been driving since dawn. Lucas had been quiet so far today, and while Rylee can hazard a pretty good guess as to why they’re currently driving down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, she wants a proper answer.

Lucas looks over at her. He bites his lip, and its the first time Rylee has ever seen Lucas so unsure of himself or what he wants to say.

“I just,” he falters for a moment, thinking. “I just really need to get away. For a little bit.”

“Okay.”

“I can take you back, if you want.”

“Nah. I’ll stay.”

“Thanks.”

-

The next day, they start regretting only bringing the clothes on their back.

“You’re stinking up the car with your sweaty gross boy smell,” Rylee says.

He glances over. “Sorry, not all of us can go six months without showering like you do.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

Lucas frowns, but doesn’t say anything more because he chooses to smell under his arm instead.  “You’re kinda right, though.”

“Duh.”

“Tell me when you see a laundromat.”

They don’t see one for the next hour, and eventually Rylee bothers Lucas into asking the next person they see for directions. The man says there is one in the next town, and some bickering later they manage to find it.

Somehow, they also manage to find enough change lying around in Lucas’s car to get a washing machine and a dryer to work. They also find some old junk food wrappers and a few condoms, which Rylee makes sure to fling into Lucas’s face.

They strip off their clothes (jeans and a scrappy t-shirt, in Lucas’s case, and pyjama shorts, tank top and a zip up jacket in Rylee’s) and throw them into the washer, along with the washing powder. They don’t really look at each other.

Before Lucas turns on the machine, he hesitates.

“We should probably, like, clean our underwear as well.”

Rylee finally looks at Lucas, but its only to give him a deadpan look.

“How are we supposed to do that, moron?”

Lucas looks around, before his eyes light up when he sees he sees a dryer with someone else’s freshly washed laundry in it.

“I’ve got an idea.”

In the end, they are left standing in a country town laundromat in nothing but stolen towels while they watch their clothes (underwear and all) cycle through the washing machine.

Lucas doesn’t smile, but he does look amused at the situation.

“Looking good, Rolls.”

“Bite me.”

-

“Hey Lucas, look at this.”

They had stopped at a mall. It was past the point where Rylee bothered to keep up with where they were -- town names constantly filtered past, memories of them lost between endless bickering, long naps and gaps of comfortable silence.

Lucas had wanted to stop after seeing that there was a travel agent. Thirty minutes later, and his arms were full of brochures of faraway places and volunteering opportunities and one million ways to get away from your reality. Rylee can’t help the unpleasant feeling at the thought of Lucas leaving, but ignores it.

Rylee is pointing at a t-shirt that reads, “FUCK OFF.”

When Lucas turns around to look at her, he bursts out laughing when he reads the shirt.

“Oh my god, Rylee.”

It’s the first time she has seen him smiling in three days.

“You need that t-shirt. I am buying you that t-shirt.”

Rylee wears it for the rest of the trip.

-

“Dude! You can teach English in Spain, how, like, cool is that?”

Rylee conjures up an image in her head of a group of small Spanish children speaking like Lucas, with his terrible grammar and overuse of the word “like,” and shivers.

“Please don’t.”

They’re sitting in the back of Lucas’s car. It’s almost eleven, and they’ve parked in a fairly well lit parking lot that still doesn’t really feel safe, but its the best they can afford, for the night. Rylee is sprawled out on the back seat while Lucas is tucked up on the floor next to her, reading through his brochures.  

Usually, they sleep on the two front seats after they tilted them back all the way. But, Rylee was sick of sleeping over the little bump over the middle, and decided the commandeer the back seat. Lucas joined her without saying anything.

“You can go play sports with kids in Malawi! Man, all these sound so much cooler than college.”

There’s that word. The word Rylee’s been avoiding for three days, and she’s honestly surprised Lucas is talking about it so casually. It’s not a word that she was always comfortable with -- it had taken Rylee a while to figure out that she didn’t want what her dad and most of her friends wanted.

“I’m not going to college, you know,” she starts, gently.

Lucas lifts his head and looks at her as if she just said she wanted to shave her eyebrows off.

“What're you going to do instead?”

“I don’t know. Probably mooch off my dad for a bit then get a job somewhere.”

“What kind of job?”

She shrugs, “Something chill.”

Lucas smiles, laughs, and Rylee’s chest hurts from how much she’s missed his smile. It feels brighter in the darkness.

“Something chill,” he repeats, then thinks for a few seconds. “Y’know, you’re probably the smartest one out all of us.”

“Duh. There’s stuff out there that isn’t college.”

“Like Malawi.”

She snorts. “Like Malawi.”

Lucas lies his head onto the seat next to hers, and they lapse into silence while Lucas reads through the brochures some more. For once in her life, Rylee feels extremely uncomfortable in the silence. She needs to say something, because she can feel something negative brewing in her friend. She needs him, even if its against his very nature, to really think this out.

Voice quiet, she says, “These things aren’t permanent. You know that, right?”

He sighs, “Yeah, I know. I just, have no fucking clue what else to do. I had it all planned out, Rolls. It was right there in fucking front of me.”

“If you really want to go to college, you can always hook up with the nerd squad, study, re-take your SATs and get into one the way everyone else does. Or like, I don’t know, get credit through a community college or something? Try thinking outside the box.”

“Rylee, I can’t  --”

“Lucas,” Rylee interrupts, voice firm. “Giving up is my gig, okay.”

“I don’t know. . .”

“Whatever,” she says, turning over to face the seat. “It’s your life.”

Rylee hears the shuffle of paper and clothes. A moment later, Lucas presses his forehead against her shoulder blades.

“Rylee,” he whines, extending the vowels on her name.

“What.”

“Don’t be mad at me.”

“Read the t-shirt.”

Lucas laughs. “You’re not really going to make me sleep on the floor, are you?”

“There is not enough room for you up here.”

“Rylee.”

In the end, they compromise. Rylee rolls into a ball so that Lucas can tilt the driver’s seat all the way back, and his head ends up near her feet.

They lie in silence for a while, before Lucas yawns and says, “Y’know, if you’re not going to college, you should come play sports in Malawi with me.”

She kicks him in the face.

-

When Rylee wakes up the next morning, Lucas is already driving. After a few hours, she begins to recognise the scenery.

She asks, “We’re going home?”

“Yeah,” Lucas says. He’s quiet for a few moments, before he says, “You’re a life saver, Rolls.”

“Why?”

“You just are, okay. I goddamn love you.”

“Aw, thanks,” she mocks, ignoring her warm face. “You’re okay to be around, sometimes, I guess.”

“Never change.”

-

It’s night time by the time they reach Rylee’s house.

She steps out of the car and stretches out her back. She can’t shake the feeling that its weird to be stationary. Rylee gives Lucas a quick, “See ya,” before walking up towards the steps that reach to her house. She doesn’t realise Lucas has followed her out of the car until he grabs her forearm.

She turns, looks up at him, and asks, “What’s up?”

He hugs her instead of answering, his arms wrapping around her waist, bringing her flush against him in the process. Rylee grumbles for a moment, but eventually gives into the warmth. She steps up onto her tippy-toes, wraps her arms around his neck and rests her forehead on the curve of his cheekbone. Lucas tightens his grip on her in response.

She hopes to God no one is around to see them.

He kisses her forehead before pulling away.

“Thanks so much, like, really.”

“Didn’t really do anything, but you’re welcome.”

“I really do love you.”

“Shut up.”

He smirks, “You’re my favourite person in the universe.”

“Oh my god, go away. I’ve had enough of you over these past four days to last a lifetime.”

“You’ll never get sick of me, Rylee,” he says.

Rylee rolls her eyes, “Ugh.”

He laughs and waves while he drives away.

-

(In the end, Lucas gets a job playing acoustic guitar at a small cafe while he goes to community college for six months, gaining the credit to get him into a university. He says that the only reason he’s still trying right now is because of Rylee.

Rylee visits him at his job sometimes. He gets her a free sundae and sits with her on his break.

She enjoys seeing him often, even though she knows that it won’t last. He’ll eventually move to a university and leave her behind, chasing bigger and better things. Rylee’s okay with it -- it’s the reason she helped him in the first place.