I sighed. This certainly wasn’t quite a smashing idea. “Are you sure that pile of shit won’t befoul up my baby?” I blurted out a moment before biting my tongue. What do men have that intimidate scrawny urchin-like girls like me so much? Oh yeah, those sights of bulky meat and fat mistakenly identified as muscles. Just for the record, Archie was flashing one of his ‘biceps’ in my view as he loaded up my Mustang trunk with several black garbage bags.

He slapped down the bonnet with a ‘thunk’ and looked at me with a smug I would love to wipe off his face. “I thought we had a deal, sweet sistah of mine.” I looked up and saw his bald head glistening under the hot sun. I’ve gotten so used seeing this giant bald that I was wondering whether it was a natural-at-born case or something. “You chipping in the Cleanliness Campaign and our bonus will be divided three ways. Now, you would hate not to be able to grab that Home Theater System you saw in the catalog, wouldn’t you,” he voluntarily reminded me. OH….so THAT was the reason why I ended up with four rotten blood-soaked bags in my trunk.

I slumped my shoulders gloomily.

“I’ve told ya we could just hog down that stuff for you. I saw that big electrical outlet downtown and it kicks ass…..”

“I am just content leading this jovial life. I don’t need to add my profession as a kleptomaniac to add colors to my life,” I retorted as I swung the car door open. Can’t the guys see that I don’t want Jesus to hate me so badly much? I reckoned that I’ve done enough damage to last me an entire century in blazing hell.

Archie freaking giggled as he closed the door for me. Won’t Archie looking hideously cute be creepy enough to put the Energizer bunny to shame? “Just a proposition that won’t hurt you an intsy bit,” he declared. Bite me. I rolled my eyes inwardly, hoping the effect would somehow scare the hell out of him for once. His smile widened to the extend that can lit up a Christmas tree. He’d better be out of my sight. Fast.

“One more thing,  CJ,” he said brightly, knocking on my window with one hand on his hip, his butt sticking out like, majorly. Nice. He should run for that competition which picks out girls for calendar models.

Annoyed to a certain moderate point, I rolled down the window surprisingly without smashing it down in the process. “What?” I barked. He should be thankful that I was not PMS-ing.

He held up a pair of gloves that I haven’t seen since my last biology class two years ago. “Oh, so now I’m a freaking surgeon?” I spat out sarcastically. The faster I peel off his pavement the better.

“Trust me, this would come in handy,” he informed, grinning goofily.

I sighed. Without much thought, I yanked the stupid gloves from Archie and sped away. Now, do they sell sodium citrate in K-Mart?

So it took Brian approximately twenty minutes to shove down his tongue down Leighanne’s throat after an hour of tongue lashing, as in metaphorically speaking. I watched the closed hotel room door with a feeling of lost and unnoticeable regret. So Brian was busy with the woman he loves, how dorky of me crossing my fingers hoping that Brian would jump out anytime now offering a round of Final Fantasy with me? Wishful thinking, I suppose.

I discarded the Mario Kart CD and grabbed ‘Need For Speed’ off the rack. Mario and Luigi would have to wait for today. I was craving a drive by the coast, and holing up in a hotel room in the middle of Texas seemed a bit unrealistic for that. I pushed the ‘Open’ button, placed the CD carefully as the screen changed into a familiar setup. The room was about to crash down to dust as the loud speaker boomed, a red Ferrari zoomed past me on the screen, and I JUST have to push the ‘start’ button. I don’t even know if it’s legal to get jealous over a game.

And Brian was screaming down my ass.

I chose Camaro just for the heck of it. I missed my car to the certain extreme; someone has to run over me with a damn pick-up truck to shaken me up. Bad choices of words, and now I’m missing my Chevrolet even more. I might as well traded in both cars and grab a battered up Datsun or whatnot.

My car roamed fiercely, in time to drown Brian’s shouting rampage. Blasting the speaker to the top volume is the small price to pay comparing to having sex in your supposed-to-be-supreme bedroom where your best friend was conveniently sitting outside the door. That was so not my idea of spending my free afternoon halfway across the country.

The metallic blue Camaro made a sharp turn over the edge when the front door was rudely smacked open. I would hate it if the door has the mind of its own. AJ was literally hyperventilating; he was close to kissing the floor if it was not for the doorknob.

“I’ve got a fabulous news, Carter,” AJ reported, a wide smug decorating his weird face. He slammed the door like it was made of metal and plopped down on the sofa. That act just scored another point in Brian’s book as we heard another commotion coming from behind closed door. He raised an intrigued brow to me, shrugged it off and grabbed the controller from my hand.

THAT just minus several points in MY book. He pushed the ‘eject’ button and the screen went nothing but antsy. “What the hell did you do that for?” I yelled. I was a few feet away from my fifteen minutes of fame.

He absentmindedly brushed it all off with a careless wave of a hand. “This is ten million times better than dreaming of driving a Lamborghini down the highway,” he answered excitedly.

Okay, what could be more exciting that dreaming of driving a Lamborghini? “What exactly are you implying?” Curiosity filled my brain almost too instantly. “You just switched off my PS when I was minutes away from being sprinkled with expensive wine and chased by girls in bikini, this better be good to the infinity.”

AJ rolled his eyes somewhat irritated. “Nick, you’re twenty-one and a PS lover. Tell me which planet are you from again?”

Okay, THIS really was getting nowhere. “Do you have a point for disturbing my perfect afternoon cuz………..”

“Sheesh! Kevin told me to spread around that we’ve been given a week off starting tomorrow! Damn, I know cutting my fingernails was better than this………….” AJ babbled, his voice trailing as he exited the room. Nevermind that AJ had finally cut his fingernails, we’ve been given a week off! A week off? A week off!