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It’s about an hour and a half into the car journey when Sam sees it happen. Wordlessly, Ben passes Adam his water bottle, watches as he take several sips, then takes it back. Another hour later, it happens again. Sam lets his curiosity get the better of him.
“Do y’all have a secret signal for that or something?”
Adam snorts. “A secret signal for letting Ben know that I need water? That would be wild.”
Ben laughs as well. “Almost as wild as what’s actually going on.”
“Uh, what?” Sam really isn’t sure where this is going.
“Well, Adam doesn’t like asking for help. And while I do believe that he is a strong, independent man, it is in fact much easier to open a water bottle when you are not driving and are able to use both of your hands.”
“This I will concede,” nods Adam. “So originally the problem was that I was trying to deal with the water bottle by myself, forcing Ben to come to my rescue.”
“Which Adam thinks is embarrassing, for some reason,” chimes in Ben.
“It kind of was! So I sort of stopped doing even that. Which, I’m sure you will appreciate, is a worse situation to be in.”
“Yes.” Ben turns to look directly at Sam. “As someone very wise once told us, you gotta hydrate or die-drate.” Sam chuckles.
“The system we have come up with is very simple, and I think you’ll admire it. Occasionally, Ben will hand me my water bottle and I will drink from it. And I won’t complain or get embarrassed because hey, it’s just an offer. I didn’t ask for it.”
“Makes sense,” Sam says thoughtfully. “Has anyone ever told you two that you’re very weird?”
“All the time,” sighs Adam.
“It isn’t going to stop us, though!” grins Ben.
--
“Don’t eat that!” Brian says with such urgency that Sam nearly drops the piece of chocolate he’s holding.
“Why, did you poison it or something?”
“Yep, and I had an immediate change of heart the second I saw you pick it up. Seems like something I’d do,” Brian snarks.
“Well, maybe you’re not actually targeting me. Maybe you’re trying to get Ben, or Adam?”
“Trouble with that theory is, I like them too much to poison them. If I ever do decide to kill them, it’ll be much more personal than that”
“Sometimes I worry about you,” Sam says fondly, then considers the chocolate which is now starting to melt between his fingers. “Seriously, though, why can’t I eat this?”
Brian looks very slightly sheepish. “Well, it’s just coffee flavoured is all. I know you can’t stand coffee flavoured chocolate. You wouldn’t enjoy it.”
Sam blinks. He wasn’t expecting that. He didn’t even know Brian was aware of his chocolate preferences.
“That’s actually really sweet. Thanks for saving me from that.”
“I just didn’t want to hear you complain about it,” says Brian gruffly.
“So what am I meant to do with this half-melted thing, now?” Sam waves it in Brian’s face.
“Oh, I have some suggestions…”
And so it goes on, any genuineness in the conversation swiftly forgotten.
--
“Look at that view!” Sam points out of the window. Adam sensibly chooses to concentrate on driving, rather than admiring the scenery, but Ben takes a minute to appreciate the sunset over the hills.
“Pretty,” he acknowledges, turning back to see Michelle’s reaction. She isn’t looking though, instead staring straight ahead.
“Yeah,” she says, weakly. She’s breathing kind of funny as well, and… oh.
“Adam, I think we need to pull over at the next opportunity. Michelle’s feeling carsick.”
“Oh dear,” says Adam with a sympathetic grimace. “Could be a minute, I’m afraid,”
“Hang on a minute. If Michelle gets carsick, why isn’t she sitting in the front?” asks Sam. It’s a sensible enough question, but ill-timed. Adam shoots him a pained look.
“I don’t get carsick,” protests Michelle through gritted teeth.
“Of course you don’t,” agrees Ben, rummaging through his backpack. “Youtube’s daredevil would never. I am going to offer you a peppermint though. Just because peppermints are great and for no other reason.”
Michelle smiles slightly and accepts the peppermint. Once she’s put it in her mouth, Ben reaches for her hand and she lets him take it--.
“It can be helpful to focus on something. Like the patterns I’m drawing, here,” and he starts tracing circles and swirls onto the back of her hand.
“Helpful for what? If not carsickness?” heckles Sam from the front seat.
“Helpful for astrology reasons,” shoots back Ben instantly. “Also, did you know Mercury’s in retrograde? Leos like Michelle should really consider travelling in the front seat of any vehicles they happen to be in.”
Michelle’s smile grows. She’s lucky to be travelling with such thoughtful friends.
--
“Hang on a second – you’ve got something in your hair,” says Ben. “Look at me?”
Amy turns slightly to face him dead on, and he pulls something tiny from her hair.
“It’s a little spider, see?”
“Oh, cute,” she smiles. “He’d probably be happier outside though.”
“Yeah, I’ll just – no, wait a minute…” his hand is back in her hair, and he pulls something else from it. “He has a friend!”
“Well, of course. I wouldn’t want him to be lonely.”
“No, that wouldn’t be – oh, are you kidding me?” Ben pulls two more spiders from her hair.
“Guess I’m the Spider Queen today!”
“This is actually ridiculous,” Ben laughs, as he adds one more spider to the collection crawling over his hand. “Where are they all coming from?”
“It’s a nice day, so I walked here by coming across the park. I must have brushed past some webs or something. Um, I’m sorry to be the bringer of spiders?”
“Hey, it breaks up the workday, I guess,” says Ben, looking closely at Amy’s head. “I can’t see any more in there, but you might want to check for yourself.”
Across the room, Adam has been valiantly trying to ignore them, but suddenly it seems like he can’t help himself.
“I’m sorry, this is just too distracting. What is going on over there?”
“Amy had spiders in her hair, and I just think they would be happier outside,” says Ben, making use of his unique talent for saying the most unhinged sounding things as if they’re normal. He gets up to leave, presumably to rehome the spiders. Adam looks at Amy questioningly.
“He speaks the truth. I did have spiders in my hair, and they probably would be happier outside. I’m just going to go find a mirror and check that I don’t somehow still have spiders in my hair. Then did you want to go over the next batch of challenges?”
“Um, sure,” says Adam, slightly non-plussed. Never a dull day at the Wendover offices!
--
Michelle’s sitting on the floor. She starts when she feels someone behind her touching her hair, and whips around to find Toby there.
“Sorry, sorry!”
“Um, what were you doing?” asks Michelle, frowning.
“I think I was about to braid your hair? Muscle memory or something, I don’t know. I used to do it all the time when I saw people sitting down when I was at school. Wow, I guess teenage Toby didn’t have very good boundaries.”
“Oh.” Michelle relaxes. “Well, you don’t have to stop. Now I know what’s going on.”
Toby settles herself on the floor behind Michelle and starts gently pulling pieces of her hair together and twisting them. It actually feels nice. Having her hair braided has never been so comfortable.
“You’re good at this,” she compliments Toby.
“You haven’t even seen the end result, yet!” laughs Toby
“I just mean – you’re very gentle.”
“I hate when my hair gets pulled, so I try not to do it to other people wherever possible,” Toby responds, as she gets toward the end of the braid. “Oh, rats! I don’t have a spare hair tie. Teenage Toby would have had loads of them.”
Surprisingly, it’s Ben who comes to the rescue, proffering a red band. Toby works on securing the braid while Michelle asks, “Why do you of all people have a hair tie?”
“It was a trick my old therapist taught me. You keep a hair tie around your wrist and then you fidget with it when you have anxious thoughts and it’s supposed to help stop the spiral.”
“And that works?”
“No, it does not.” Ben grins. “But it’s a great fidget toy. And right now it’s helping you to look really pretty.”
Michelle opens up her phone camera. Ben’s right, the braid is really pretty – she looks sophisticated, and the braid looks more complex than she thinks it should for the amount of time Toby spent on it. She looks around at Toby.
“It’s impressive! Thank you. You used to do that to all the girls at your school?”
Toby nods. “And the boys, if they had long enough hair. And they’d let me.”
“Hey, Sam?” Michelle calls across the room.
“No!” He shuts her down definitively.
“Shame,” grins Toby. “He’d look cute in fishtails.”
“Or a half-up braid crown,” chimes in Ben. “Can you do those?”
“I don’t think so,” says Toby thoughtfully. “I could look it up, though.”
“I said no!” Sam calls out again.
“I heard you!” Toby shouts back. “I’m just wondering if we can convince Adam to grow his hair out…” she smiles mischievously.