After our catfight a few days ago, Ava and I called a truce and she suggested I go with the whole flat tire item on the list next. Guys like a damsel in distress. Rocco assured me that it would be a good way to make Gavin feel like a man. He’s under the impression that Gavin is probably more embarrassed about what happened last week than I am. I find that hard to believe, but whatever. He hasn’t called or sent me a text since it happened and it’s freaking me out.

“No, really. Come here and watch this. It’s a Taylor Swift video and during the chorus, goats scream. Oh my God, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen,” Molly says in between hysterical laughter.

Opening the silverware drawer, I pull out the largest butcher knife I can find.

“Jesus, put the knife away. I’ll stop playing goat screaming videos,” Molly says in a panic as she comes up behind me, staring nervously at the knife in my hand.

Rolling my eyes at her, I close the drawer with my hip and grab my purse off of the counter.

“I swear to God you never listen to anything that goes on in this house.”

Molly follows behind me as I make my way to the front door.

“Oh, I heard all about you trying to beat the shit out of Ava. Why do I miss all of the good stuff?” Molly complains.

“Because you’re in school. Or you’re supposed to be. Why aren’t you at school right now?”

Molly is five years younger than me and from an early age, she loved helping Aunt Claire out in the kitchen. Right now she’s in school full-time earning her degree in Culinary Arts so she can be a pastry chef for one of Aunt Claire’s stores.

“It’s midterms week. I only have to go to class for my tests. So, remind me again why you’re taking a knife with you to meet Gavin? I don’t think gutting him like a fish will convince him that he loves you,” Molly says with a laugh.

“No, but hopefully slashing my tires will.”

Molly shakes her head at me. “I still don’t understand how you could possibly be in love with Gavin. I mean, this is GAVIN we’re talking about. He used to take the heads off of all of our Barbie’s and then staple them to the ceiling. And you two used to fight constantly when we were kids. How many times did Mom and Aunt Claire have to break you guys up before you killed each other?”

She’s right. We hated each other as kids. I don’t even know why we didn’t like each other. Every time we were in the same room together, someone wound up crying.

“That dress looks funny on you,” Gavin told me, grabbing my favorite I can be a teacher Barbie from my hands and then throwing it across the room.

“You’re a dumb stupid head. Go pick up my Barbie right now,” I said with a stomp of my foot.

“You’re such a baby. I can’t believe you called me a dumb stupid head,” Gavin replied with a laugh.

“I’m not a baby. YOU’RE a baby!” I shouted.

“I’m nine. That’s practically an adult.”

“Fine, then you’re dumb stupid adult!” I yelled angrily.

“You’re a labia,” Gavin replied.

“What’s a labia? That’s dumb.”

Gavin shrugged. “I heard it the other day. My mom said it’s a rare fish that no one ever talks about.”

“I want a labia,” I told him.

“You can’t have a labia. You ARE a labia. Labia face,” he said, turning his back on me and walking away.

I was so angry that I hurtled my six-year-old body at him and wrapped my arms around him from behind, tackling him to the ground.

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAH MY NUTS!” Gavin screamed in pain as we crashed to the floor and he flung me off of him.

I stood up quickly and stared down at him angrily.

“You’re mean. I don’t like you.”

Gavin scrambled up off of the ground and before I knew it, he charged at me and slammed his head into my hip, knocking us both back on the ground.

We were both screaming and crying when my mom and Aunt Liz came running into the room.

“What the hell is going on?” Aunt Claire shouted as she picked Gavin up off of the floor and my mom helped me up.

“SHE HURT MY NUTS!” Gavin cried, pointing at me.

“HE CRASHED HIS HEAD INTO MY NOO-NOO-COW!” I wailed, holding my hands between my legs.

“Jesus God. He head-butted her in the vagina,” my mom muttered.

“I hope these two get married some day or this is just going to get worse,” Aunt Claire replied.

Opening the door, I lift up my arm and wave good-bye to Molly with the knife. “Wish me luck. If this flat tire thing doesn’t work, I might have to punch him in the nuts.”

“I have no idea what that means, but have fun with that. Bring me home some mint chocolate chip ice cream.”

Thirty minutes later, after I called Gavin and told him my dilemma, I’m standing next to my car on the side of the road listening to the hiss of the air leaving the tire. I may have been a little overzealous in my stabbing. There’s no way Gavin is going to believe my car just got a flat on its own. He’s a guy. Guys know these things. I don’t have time to worry about that, though. I see his car pulling off the side of the road right behind mine. Leaning against the hood, I try to look as sexy as possible. Rocco suggested I pretend like I’m in a porno. Ultimate guy fantasy: a woman having car problems on the side of the road.

Gavin gets out of his car and walks up to me with a smile. “Flat tire, huh?”

Shit. He already knows. Time to distract him.

“Hey there, handsome. I could use a little help pumping myself back up,” I tell him in my best Marilyn Monroe voice.

Gavin looks at me quizzically. “Are you getting sick? You’re voice sounds funny.”

Fucking Rocco.

Clearing my throat, I turn away from him and walk up to the front tire. “I don’t know what happened. I was driving home when all of a sudden I had a hard time steering. My car was swerving all over the place. I was so scared.”

Gavin glances down at the tire, then back up at me and doesn’t say a word.

Son of a bitch! Do cars lose control when they get a flat tire?? I should have googled it.

“Aww, you’re okay now. It’s totally normal. Cars always do that with a flat tire,” Gavin tells me.

Oh thank God.

“So, do you want a lift home or something?” he asks.

“Uh, I kind of thought you could just change the tire,” I tell him.

Gavin nods his head. “Right, right. Change the tire. I can totally do that.”

He turns and walks around me, opening up the door to the backseat and sticking his head in.

“What are you doing?”

Pulling his head back out, he turns and looks at me. “Changing the tire.”

“I think the stuff’s in the trunk,” I tell him in confusion.

He laughs awkwardly and slams the door closed. “Oh, yeah. I totally knew that. I was just checking to make sure you didn’t do any damage … to the … backseat and stuff.”

While he quickly walks to the trunk, I reach in through the driver’s side window and hit the trunk release button. Moving to the back of the car, I see him standing there just staring into the trunk.

“Everything is under that floor mat,” I tell him, pointing to the middle of the trunk.

“I know. I was just … um … assessing the situation. Thinking about my plan of attack,” he replies, reaching into the trunk and flipping back the mat.

I watch as he leans in and grabs the tire iron, flipping it up in the air casually as he turns and smiles at me. He reaches his arm out to catch it as it comes back down, but instead of catching it, he smacks his hand against it and the thing goes flying out into the middle of the road. His smile falls and he races over to quickly pick it up.

With his head down and the tire iron clutched tightly to his chest, he walks right by me and up to the tire. I’m pretty sure he’s trying to look cool, and I am not about to call him out on it since I stuck a f**king butcher knife into my tire to get him here.

Squatting down on his knees next to the tire, he attaches one end of the iron to a nut and starts to turn it.

“Um, you need to jack the car up first,” I remind him.

“I know that. I always loosen the screws first.”

“They’re called lug nuts.”

“Well, where I come from, we call them screws.”

“We both come from Ohio. I’m pretty sure they call them lug nuts everywhere,” I say with a laugh.

“Are you trying to tell me how to change a tire? I know how to change a tire,” he complains with a huff, grunting as he puts all of his muscle into trying to loosen the nut.

Oh my God. He doesn’t know how to change a tire.

“You don’t know how to change a tire,” I mutter.

Shit! Rocco is going to kill me. This is so not going to make Gavin feel like a man. I need to shut the f**k up.

Gavin drops the tire iron to the ground with a clang and stands up, stalking over to me.

“I totally know how to change a tire,” he argues, as we stand toe-to-toe.

“Fine. What’s the part on the tire where the air goes?” I question.

He purses his lips and stares down at me. “It’s an air-tube-put-inner-thing.”

It’s kind of cute that he’s trying to act like he knows what he’s talking about. But it’s also a little irritating. I have a flat tire and he was supposed to be the big man and fix it for me so he could feel better about what happened the other night. My dad taught me when I was five how to change a tire.

“Actually, it’s a valve stem,” I tell him with a smile.

“Whatever! It has nothing to do with changing the actual tire so who cares?!” he complains.

“I can’t believe you don’t know how to change a tire. You’re a guy and you have a penis. You should have been born knowing how to change a tire!”

Gavin puts his hands on his h*ps and glares at me. “Yeah, well you’re a girl and you have a vagina. Does that mean you can waltz over to that field over there, squat down, and pop out a baby?”

The way we’re arguing reminds me of when we were little. We haven’t done this in a long time. It always pissed me off when I was young. Now it turns me on. Gavin is so hot standing here in front of me on the side of a deserted road. My eyes move away from his, and I find myself staring at his lips.

I open my mouth to fire off a smart-ass reply to his va**na comment when I’m suddenly pulled up against him and his mouth crashes down to mine.

Maybe this whole flat tire thing actually worked.

Chapter 16 – Children of the Corn

Gavin ends the kiss before I’m ready for it to be finished and pulls away from me. He opens up the back seat of the car and jerks his head. “Get in.”

I don’t even hesitate. I have no idea why I’m getting in the back seat of my car, and I don’t care as long as it involves more kissing. Quickly crawling into the car, I turn around to find Gavin getting in beside me. I grab onto the front of his shirt as he slams the door closed behind him and pull him against me, our mouths colliding so hard that our teeth clank together.

“Ouch!”

God dammit! Once again I’m putting him in pain. At least it wasn’t his penis this time.

Moving back slowly this time, I press my lips to his. His tongue eases its way inside my mouth, and I can’t stop the groan when I feel it slide against my own. One of his arms wraps around my waist and he slides my butt across the seat, leaning his body against mine to get me to lie back. All of this happens really quickly, though, and my head smacks against the window.

“Fucking hell!” I shout, reaching up to rub the back of my head.

“Shit! I’m sorry, are you okay?” he asks in a panic.

“I’m fine. Totally fine,” I reassure him. I don’t care if I have a head wound that is spraying blood all over the interior of my car; we aren’t stopping.

Scooting myself lower onto the seat this time, Gavin turns his body and moves between my legs, bumping his own head on the ceiling.

Seriously? Can we catch a f**king break here?

Twisting and turning our bodies to try and get into a comfortable position, there’s a bunch of swearing, more body parts smacking into various pieces of the car’s interior, and the windows are starting to fog up from our exertion. This is so not as hot as it is in the movies. Why the f**k are back seats so small?

After ten minutes of us scrambling around, we’re finally both on our sides facing each other, my back pressed up against the seat.

“I should turn on some music or something,” Gavin tells me as he starts to move away from me.

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I pull him back to me. “Don’t even think about moving or it will take us another hour to find comfortable positions.”

Gavin laughs, moving his hand up to brush a strand of hair out of my eye.

“Are we going to talk about last week?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I really don’t want to talk right now. You should just take your pants off.”

Gavin stares at me blankly for a minute and I wonder if maybe that was too much. Before I can tell him I was just kidding so it’s not awkward, he quickly reaches down and undoes his jeans, sliding them right off of his body and then ripping his shirt off of his head in five seconds flat, tossing everything onto the floor next to us. I feel like it’s only fair that I do the same. I pull my shirt off and lift my hips, shimmying out of my skirt and kicking it up to the front seat.

“Oh my God. You’re na**d,” Gavin whispers in awe.