My fingers tapped restlessly against my thigh. Nerves were already getting the best of me and we were only halfway there.

"Dash, relax will you? Everything will be fine," Danny said from the driver's seat.

"This is crazy. I don't know why I agreed to this. Your insanity is obviously contagious."

"You don't have to do it," he said gently. And I knew he meant it, rather than as a taunt to egg me on.

"I said I would," I snapped, pressing my hands together between my knees to keep them still. Fear made my words harsh.

We were on our way to Needle Rock Ridge, an illegal cliff jumping site out by the Poco River. It was the latest, and last of Danny's challenges. If he completed this successfully, he would be a member of his crazy dare-devil club. And I was jumping with him.

We both had wetsuits on under our clothes. The water would be ice-cold this time of year; I shivered just thinking about it.

"I'm just saying it wasn't part of the deal," said Danny, shrugging.

"Well, I want to see what all the fuss is about."

We were driving along a rock face, its shadow lengthening as the sun edged behind it. To our right lay a forest down a steep incline, trees waving in the breeze.

Graduation was still seven weeks away, but I could feel the invisible clock ticking faster and faster as it counted down the time we had left. School had been buzzing about it all day as seniors began signing the flags hung in the lobby of the university they would be attending in the fall. Excited as I was for college, I couldn't help but think of how much it would change. Even as I silently cursed myself for tagging along on yet another stupid "adventure," I realized how much I would miss it, all of it.

It was why I had agreed to jump with Danny. It was his last challenge of the year--he had promised to lay low until after graduation so that he could actually live to get his diploma--and I wanted to be there with him for the whole thing, one last time.  

"What happens in June?" I asked aloud.

"We graduate," said Danny with a chuckle.

"I mean after. When we all go off to college. What happens to us?"

"Dash, we'll always be a team," he said, glancing over at me warmly. The setting sun caught his eyes, setting them alight like blue fire. The beginnings of a five o'clock shadow darkened his jaw line.

"But I won't be around. We'll be at different schools. Who's going to talk you down and call you a moron?"

Danny laughed. "Technology is a beautiful thing. I'll facetime you in before every challenge."

"It's not the same," I said bitterly, looking out the window. The thought of Danny going off to do Danny-things without me made me sad. And the thought of him replacing me was more than I could swallow.

"Hey," he said, as though he could read my mind. "No one could ever replace you. We're partners, through thick and thin and everything in between."

But even as he tried to comfort me, the word "partner" rubbed me the wrong way.

"Is that all I am?" I asked quietly.

Danny shot me a glance. "Of course not. You've always been more than that." An agitated hand went to his hair, rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably.

I could tell the night at the zoo was on his mind, as well as the two times after that. The first had been after he had "borrowed" a horse from the farm on the outskirts of town only to be bucked off over the paddock fence and nearly kicked in the head. When I had rushed over to see if he was okay, he had hugged me fiercely and crushed his lips to mine. It had lasted a heartbeat, a heartbeat that tasted of blood from his split lip and mint from his swallowed gum, only to end with him stepping back quickly, looking confused and guilty.

The second had been when I told him I had gotten into my first choice of colleges, when I had thrown my arms around him in pure happiness and kissed his cheek only to find myself kissing him the next second.

We had never talked about any of it, employing a childlike mentality that if we did not acknowledge it, then it did not exist—it had never happened. Because we both knew it was wrong.

But I couldn't continue to keep it bottled up inside, only to have it explode like a champagne cork in heated, stolen moments that left us feeling so much worse for the elation it brought. Sooner or later we would have to talk, or get caught.

"What am I, then?"

"Dash—you and I both know—Chris—and I want to, but we can't," he said, tripping over the words. I could see the torment play out on his face as his loyalty to his best friend and his feelings for me clashed.

"I don't want to just keep pretending it didn't happen—" I broke off, not knowing how to put everything into words.

"Do you love him?" said Danny, suddenly.

"What?" I asked, caught off guard.

"Chris—do you love him?"

Danny's voice was slightly strangled, as though he wanted to know the answer but was afraid of it at the same time.

"I—" I paused.

Did I love Chris? He had told me he loved me and I had said it back. But I had been infatuated with him at the time, it had said been early on in our relationship. And once you said those words, it wasn't like you could take them back. Now I often said them by force of habit, when we left each other's company or on the phone at night.

My feelings for Chris weren't the same as the ones I had for Danny, but did that mean I didn't love him? You could love people differently, after all.

"I—I don't know," I said truthfully.

Danny shook his head, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. "Either way it doesn't make this right."

The wetsuit under my clothes suddenly felt too tight, like I had tried to squeeze into a suit two sizes too small. I tugged at my collar.

"Chris and I have been fighting a lot lately," I said, still pulling at the suit and wishing I could strip it off so I could breathe. "I don't even know if it's going to work out with us leaving for college..." but even as the words left my mouth, I felt horrible for thinking them.

Danny was still shaking his head.

"I don't want that—"

I couldn't seem to stop the words now that my mind had latched onto the idea.

"We could wait—a year or two into college—so it's not—"

"He would always wonder," Danny interrupted, staring straight ahead. "I can't do that to him—it's not fair."

"It's not fair to us either," I said, watching the sinking sun. My eyes started to water from the intensity of the light.

Danny suddenly grabbed my hand and my heart jumped into my throat.

"You mean more to me than you could ever know, Dash. I wish I could—that we could," he broke off, like he was afraid that if he gave a voice to everything he was feeling, he wouldn't be able to force himself to do what he knew he had to. He took a deep breath.

"We will always be together," he said, squeezing my fingers. "Even if it's not in the way you want."

I felt as though I had swallowed a lemon whole, sour and sweet all at once. It was what I wanted to hear all tangled together with what I didn't. Not trusting myself to look over at him, I kept staring at the sun, blinking back the tears it seared my eyes. It was both beautiful and painful.

Words failed me, even as my mind raced a thousand miles a minute trying to puzzle out how we had ended up like this.

"What the hell is this asshole doing?" said Danny, his eyes narrowing as he glanced up at the rearview mirror.

The car behind us had moved over into the other lane and was attempting to pass us.

"Just let him go," I said, knowing Danny had a tendency to be hot-headed on the road.

"Asshole," Danny muttered as the red pick-up zoomed past us in a cloud of choking exhaust.

Suddenly, the truck jerked back into our lane.

"Watch out!" I cried. Tires screeched as Danny hit the brakes, but it wasn't fast enough to stop the bed of the pickup from slamming into us. I threw my arms forward to brace myself. There was nowhere for Danny to turn,  and we were headed straight for the guard rail.

"Danny!" I yelled as the car smashed into the barrier. We were thrown forward as we hit, the airbags exploding into our faces, windshield shattering in a torrent of glass, and then my stomach dropped out from beneath me as we rolled up and over the rail.

_________________________________________________________________________

Hi everyone! Sorry for the long gap between updates; things got mighty busy for me. But I'm hoping to get back on track. I also really did not want to split this chapter up, but it would be too long otherwise. The second half will be up either Sunday or Monday, so stay tuned!

As always, I'm very interested to hear any and all thoughts about what you read! Thanks for reading!