Emancipating Andie

A few minutes later, the sharp click of the gas tank reaching capacity snapped her out of it, and she placed the nozzle back on the pump before tossing the paper towels into the trash can. Using her knuckle, Andie pressed the button to decline a receipt and walked around the front of the car before sliding back into the driver’s seat.

She brought her hand to the ignition, freezing when she saw the way Chase was looking at her.

“What?” she asked.

“What the hell was that?” he asked through barely contained laughter.

“What the hell was what?”

“Did you just use paper towels to hold the gas pump?”

“Yeah, so?”

He looked down and pinched the bridge of his nose as his shoulders shook with laughter.

“Laugh if you want to. Do you have any idea how disgusting those things are? How many people touch them in a day? People who are sick? Who just went to the bathroom and didn’t wash their hands? No one ever cleans those things. They’re like disgusting little petri dishes.”

He looked back up at her, trying to straighten his expression, but that lasted about a third of a second before he burst out laughing again. She ignored him, starting the car, and just as she was about to put it in drive, she saw him reach for his door handle.

“What are you—”

But he was already out of the car. Andie put it back in park as she leaned over, looking out the passenger window. He walked over to the gas pump, ru

She rolled her eyes. “Point taken. You’re still alive. For now, anyway,” she added, looking at his hands with disgust.

Chase still hadn’t moved; he sat in the same position, watching her, his smile slowly growing more pronounced.

Andie pulled her brow together. “What are you doing?”

She saw him shift slightly in his seat, bringing his body a bit closer to hers, and she shot him a warning glance.

“Chase, I swear to God…”

She was obviously not as intimidating as she thought.

He lunged at her and she screeched in protest, attempting to get out of the car, but he grabbed her hand before she could reach the handle.

Andie sucked in a breath and froze.

It was like a static shock, only not unpleasant, a fuzzy electric tingling that shot up her arm the second he touched her, settling in her chest.

As soon as she gave up the fight, he reached over and took her other hand, sandwiching them between both of his.

She could feel the warmth of his skin permeating her own as he pressed his palms together, and then he began to rub his hands over hers, his movements gentle but determined.

It felt like forever before he finally released her, although somewhere in the back of her mind, Andie knew it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. She sat frozen, her eyes on him.

He met her stare as his lips twitched with the effort to contain his smile.

Andie turned abruptly, reaching into the backseat and grabbing her purse. She sifted through it quickly until she came up with a tiny bottle of hand sanitizer, squeezing a generous blob onto her palm and rubbing her hands together as she tried to avoid his gaze.

“Thirty-three seconds,” Chase said, and she looked up at him. “Not bad. We’ll keep working on it,” he added with a wink.

Andie shook her head, trying to ignore the sensation she felt in her stomach. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she murmured.

“A lot of things,” he said with a laugh.

But she hadn’t been talking to him.

She was overtired. That was the problem. She missed Colin. She had cabin fever from being in the car too long. She was shaken up by the whole germ thing. She rattled off any reason she could think of, any reason as to why she would have reacted that way to his hands on her.

Any reason but the most obvious one.

She tossed her purse into the backseat and put the car in drive, and as they pulled out of the gas station, the interior of her car had never felt so confining.

A minute later they merged back onto the highway, and Andie noticed the sign that alerted them to the upcoming toll.

“Damn it,” she said, reaching awkwardly behind her and feeling around for her purse.

“What’s wrong?”

“I forgot about the toll,” she said, stretching her arm a little further.

“Here, I got it,” Chase said, shifting to reach into his back pocket for his wallet.

“No, it’s okay. The EZ-Pass is in my purse,” she said, arching her back as she tried reaching further behind her.

Chase unbuckled his seat belt and turned, leaning into the backseat and coming back with her bag. He turned on the interior light and Andie reached to take her purse from him, completely horrified when she saw him sit back in his seat as he started rummaging through it.

She sat up straight, feeling completely unsettled. She couldn’t even be sure if Colin had ever been in her purse. It implied a certain level of intimacy, she thought, almost like letting someone go through your drawers, or your closet.

“Here,” he said absently, handing her the EZ-Pass as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Thanks,” Andie said softly as she took it from him, noticing that he made no move to return her bag to the backseat.

They went through the toll, and she held the pass up to the windshield. As soon as it registered, he leaned over and took it from her before dropping it back into her bag. Just as he turned to put her purse back behind them, he stopped, reaching his hand into it again.

“What are you doing?” Andie asked abruptly.

“Does this particular tube of makeup have sentimental value?”

She glanced down to see him rolling a tube of mascara through his fingers.

“What? No. Why?”

He held it up to her. “Because there’s a date written on it.”

Andie glanced down again, noticing the small neat numbers he was referencing, the ones she had written along the side of the tube with an extra-fine silver Sharpie.

“Oh, that.”

“Yeah, that. So what happened two weeks ago that was so important you decided to commemorate it on the side of your lipstick?”

“That’s mascara. And nothing important happened. That was the date I bought it.”

Chase looked at her, the most comical confusion on his face.

“You’re supposed to throw mascara out three months after you buy it. Otherwise, you can give yourself an eye infection.”

There was a slight pause before he said, “Is that so?”

She reached over and plucked the mascara from his hand, dropping it back into her bag before she pulled it off his lap and tossed it into the backseat.

Chase reclined in his seat. “You know something, Andie? If we could find some coal for you to sit on, we could both retire early.”

She whipped her head toward him, her eyes wide; the corner of his mouth was lifted in a self-satisfied smile as he looked down, opening a small bottle of Pepsi.

She heard him laugh to himself just before he brought the bottle to his mouth, and in that moment, something came over her.

Andie brought her foot down hard on the gas pedal, and as soon as the car accelerated, she slammed on the brake. She saw Chase fly forward and then back as soda gushed over his chin and down the front of his shirt.

He brought the back of his hand to his mouth, immediately looking out the window for whatever caused Andie to hit the brakes so suddenly.

“What the hell was that?” he asked frantically.

Andie shrugged. “Payback.”